The real estate industry is probably one of the most saturated markets today. With property booms happening left, right, and centre, and people constantly looking to buy, sell, or rent – it’s no wonder there are thousands upon thousands of real estate agents operating all over South Africa.
While this might be a good thing overall, it can be pretty challenging for the individual agent looking to find new clients that want to commit. These days, buyers and sellers alike are spoilt for choice when it comes to agencies and agents. This market saturation makes it difficult for an individual agent to stand out.
As a result of this difficulty, an agent who tries to market themselves to any and all clients won’t get very far. As a real estate agent today, what you need is a targeted approach to attracting new clients and not just any clients but your ideal clients.
Whether through social media or your Google My Business page, you’ll stand out and be noticed far easier if you’ve got specific marketing targeted towards your dream clients. Those clients will want to work with you.
So, now that we know why you should start targeting your marketing to the kind of clients you want, the next step would be to actually identify those kinds of clients.
How do you do that? Let’s find out.
Create a Target Client Profile
When you think about who your ideal client is, what comes to mind? If you’re not sure where to start, ask yourself where they live, what their goals and challenges are, and what various demographics they fall under when it comes to things like age and property type.
Once you’ve answered those questions, you’ll have a clearer picture of your ideal client, and thus you’ll be able to be more specific in your marketing toward them. This is the best place to start identifying your target market. Here are some next steps you could take once you’ve created a profile for your target market.
Analyse Where You’ve Been Successful in the Past
It’s helpful to stop and zoom out every once in a while to reflect on what you’ve achieved and potentially identify trends in that process. This practice can reveal any potential target markets you’re already working with, especially if you’re an experienced agent.
Looking back at your sales patterns is essential to moving forward with your target market in mind.
Look at Yourself
A great way to identify a potential target audience is to look at what makes you as a real estate agent unique and what gives you a competitive edge. This may sound counter-intuitive, but if you start marketing your personal interests and hobbies, you may find that you begin to attract clients that hold similar interests or hobbies! This would most likely make them a pleasure to work with (hopefully!).
This practice helps you become more relatable to potential clients and builds a unique trust from the outset. It’s an excellent way to identify any particular kind of customer that you could include in your target market.
Do Some Research
Relating to the above practice, make a short list of your best client traits and ideas and find out if there’s any real estate demand from those types of clients. You don’t want to market yourself to people who are just like you but have zero interest in buying or selling property.
You can do this by checking up on the current market statistics, analysing transaction history, and even speaking to fellow real estate agents.
Another way could be to get on Google and pretend to be your ideal client. Search what they would search, and see if any results come up. You may have to open up your target market a little. If too much comes up, your target market is most probably competitive.
This process is all about finding your sweet spot of just enough demand to target but not too much to get lost in the competition.
One last thing you can research is whether or not your target market is active on social media. This is a significant boost to any marketing as it creates direct channels to engage and interact with potential clients and opportunities to target your ideal clients with content specifically tailored for them.
In Closing
We know it takes a lot of time and effort to do everything we’ve mentioned above. It can get overwhelming! With all the running around you do as a real estate agent, it might be too tall a task to identify a target market and then proceed to actually market yourself to that market.
That’s where we can help.