Want to be the first name that comes to mind in your area when someone thinks about buying or selling a home? It begins with building your reputation, connecting with the community, and proving your authority.
Use Your Local Market Knowledge
Becoming the leading local agent starts with an in-depth understanding of your market. Know every street, every neighborhood, and what’s happening in the local real estate scene. If there are entire neighborhoods or pockets that you aren’t intimately familiar with, this means you have too broad of a market. You should be so niched down that you’re a total expert in your market.
Once you have a niche, your job is to stay informed about market trends, upcoming developments, average prices of homes in different neighborhoods, etc. Then, use this knowledge to your advantage. When you’re the one with all the answers to your clients’ questions, you build trust and establish yourself as the local real estate authority.
Engage and Connect with the Community
Real estate is as much about properties as it is about people. To become the go-to agent, you need to be a familiar face in your community. There are plenty of ways you can do this, including:
- Sponsor local events
- Volunteer for community projects
- Join local organizations or clubs
Community engagement means being genuinely interested in the well-being of the area you serve. Advocate for local causes, support local businesses, and be an active participant in making your community a better place. This commitment shows potential clients that you’re invested in the area and care about more than just making sales.
These activities allow you to engage with residents in a non-sales context, building relationships and trust along the way. You won’t find a new client every single time you participate in one of these community events, but it’s the repetition and consistency that will ultimately breed results.
Build a Strong Online Presence
It used to be that local brands relied entirely on word of mouth and offline branding. But today, a strong digital footprint has to be a major priority. This includes:
- A professionally designed website
- A thorough and intentional LinkedIn profile
- Consistent social media content
- An email list with a high-value newsletter (even if it’s just monthly)
You don’t have to be glued to your phone, but you should have a strategy for how you’re going to approach digital marketing. Not only that – but you need systems in place for handling this new lead flow so you’re able to provide high-quality service and responsiveness. Platforms like HouseJet can make this possible through the use of artificial intelligence and other advanced systems that remove manual steps from the process and allow you to automate repetitive tasks.
Master Content Marketing
Content marketing is a powerful tool to establish your brand and authority in the real estate industry. You need to create and share content that speaks directly to your local audience. This can include blog posts, videos, infographics, and newsletters that address the needs and interests of potential buyers and sellers in your area.
For example:
- Produce a monthly market report on one neighborhood per month and send it to everyone in that neighborhood.
- Take one Friday a month and produce a podcast episode or webinar where you answer the most frequently asked questions you get from people in the community.
- Create downloadable guides for buying and selling homes in your community and share them with your social media followers (requiring them to go through a landing page and give you their email address in exchange for the resource).
Content marketing helps you build a narrative around your brand, showcasing your expertise and providing value to your audience, which can convert them into loyal clients. It’s not a “get rich quick” strategy but it works over the long run.
Leverage Testimonials
Nothing speaks louder than the praise of satisfied clients who have worked with you in the past. It should be a majority priority to encourage happy buyers and sellers to share their experiences with you. This could be through online reviews, social media, or even just word-of-mouth referrals.
Make it easy for clients to leave reviews on platforms like Google, Zillow, and your own website. Then make it a point to share these testimonials on your social media and in your marketing materials. As you probably know by now, a good reputation can be your best asset in becoming the go-to real estate agent in your area.
Become “The” Real Estate Agent
There’s probably no industry that’s more crowded than real estate – especially over the big bull run we’ve been having for the past 13 or 14 years. But if you’re willing to take some extra steps to build authority and trust, you can become the agent that people go to for buying and selling homes in your town. Just know that it takes consistency and intentionality!
