Real estate agents have always had to be masters of not just one, but many crafts, and underpinning everything they do is the importance placed on strong communications. Marketing is a huge part of this communications umbrella, and involves not only marketing the listings an agent represents, but marketing themselves to potential clients. These two marketing ‘verticals’ overlap, as a portfolio that demonstrates an agent’s ability to market a property is key to marketing the agent to new customers.
Running through all the marketing an agent and agency carries out on a daily basis is a steady reliance on physical products that act as marketing tools for both properties and agents. Digital tools are vital, such as an agency’s website, but printed materials continue to accompany an agent in their daily pursuit of new relationships with new clients, and as such need to be given the same level of attention as a new website or SEO marketing.
Business cards
As ubiquitous as a handshake, business cards are a reference point for potential clients and business partners, while also acting as a piece of branding that your potential customers literally carry on them as they go about their daily routine. They simply have to see that business card to be reminded of their interaction with an agent, like an instant replay. If that interaction was positive, the card has a stronger chance of staying on that person, to continue its role as a branding reminder and advertisement for that agent and agency.
For agents, it is important that their business cards reflect both their agency’s public persona as well as the individual agent’s specific role within the company. Hopefully, that agent’s interaction with the person they provide their business card to related strongly to their specific role within the company (i.e. a property manager relaying changes in the industry as they relate to tenants and landlords) so that when viewed, the business card replays that exact conversation.
Business stationery
Business stationery plays a similar role as business cards, and should maintain a sense of continuity in the branding, and not deviate month by month with different designs. The design of business stationery must be as considered as that of a business website, with the hierarchy of key branding areas considered strategically. There is no use spending time and money on geometric designs on your stationery if the business logo is not both clearly visible and in an area that customers expect a logo to be (customers have expectations and reading patterns for any given piece of branding).
Printed collateral & marketing tools
One-on-one interactions still drive the real estate industry, as it is a service industry. One of the most crucial times for a real estate agent in developing new business is in the presentation of their service to a potential client.
Printed marketing tools that are tailored for that potential client are key to both communicating an agent’s suitability for the role and providing a reference for clients to consider. A person selling their home will spend more time considering an agent that has provided well-designed printed references than an agent that did not provide the same level of references.
Different marketing tools are required for different stages of a client-agent relationship. An agent trying to secure a client may consider providing them with printed information about their agency, their history of sales within the area and key marketing data about the client’s neighbourhood and property type.
Alongside the need for printed material to market an agent’s services, agencies are increasingly using printed materials, such as magazines, that are produced for the agency themselves, to advertise properties for sale as well as key market insights that relate to their local market. In such a highly competitive field, agents are aware that they need to be seen as a leader of insights and knowledge for their local area, which is where self-published marketing materials can play a vital role.
Real Estate Signage
As long as people walk their dogs and drive their cars past houses, there will be a role for signage in advertising an agent and their agency’s brand. Company’s pay tens of thousands of dollars to have their branding advertised on posters along main roads, an agency can produce similar signage and benefit from free advertising for the duration a property is on the market, and then the period in which the property is advertised as sold. It is hard to quantify just how powerful this tool is for agents, but the amount of money companies spend to advertise on billboards is evidence enough of just how powerful curb side signage can be.
This article was provided by view.com.au, one of Australia’s leading property listings and market insights websites.
