©Nadezhda Buravleva / Getty Images
I recently met a newer agent who shared that despite networking, door knocking and even a bit of advertising, he hadn’t landed his first listing.
After discussing some of the ways he could get in front of potential sellers, I searched his name online and found very little. He had a website provided by his brokerage, but that was it. When agents come to their brokers and are unhappy with how their businesses are advancing, one suggestion a broker might make is that the agents spend time honing their online presence.
Build a Strong Personal Brand
People do business with people they know, like and trust, which is why a strong personal brand is so important today. The foundation of any effective brand is based on three factors you’ll want to counsel agents to embody in their online marketing.
Principles
Principles guide all humans. Ask your agents to consider what they believe in so strongly that it affects who they work with and how they conduct business. An agent’s answer will be the foundation of their brand.
Brokers can help agents understand why they serve a particular niche, what they do and don’t do for clients and what causes or passions they stand for outside their work. Whether it be service, equity or even building wealth, these principles guide how they live and work and should be communicated. Using principles to guide their online presence will help them attract their ideal clientele.
Messaging
Everything an agent says or does needs to align with their brand. Once they’ve figured out their principles, brokers can guide agents to develop their pillars. They serve as a North Star, guiding all the messaging in a cohesive direction.
In my public relations firm, I start by having clients identify the five principles they’re most passionate about and use that to direct all messaging across all media. Agents can do the same.
Aesthetics
While this is the first thing most people think about branding, it’s the last part of the equation.
In crafting an online presence, aesthetics refers to color palettes, graphic elements like a logo, cover photos and marketing materials. Encourage agents to make sure these elements are cohesive across platforms. Explain to them that this helps them form a recognizable brand. If your brokerage already has a color palette, logo, fonts and styles picked out, consider putting a branding package together for your agents to use.
Acquire Testimonials & Reviews
There are a couple of distinct differences between testimonials and reviews: Testimonials are usually solicited by the agent. Reviews are usually written by the customer and posted on a third-party website, like a Google Business Profile. Also, reviews are usually only text, whereas testimonials can be in any format.
Ideally, your agents will want video testimonials because they can be more persuasive. Think about it like this: When you see a written testimonial on someone’s website, attributed to “Mike S.,” how convincing is that? But a video where someone is describing their experience working with an is far more authentic and persuasive.
People tend to get nervous on video, so you can encourage your agents to provide clients with some bullet points. This gives them structure, which helps put their minds at ease, and tees them up to use stories that highlight what makes the agent stand out.
Advise your agents that testimonials can be embedded on their website and used in newsletters and social media posts. They can also create a montage of their best testimonials, which should be embedded on their website homepage.
Leverage Case Studies
A case study is a brief report about a problem a client had, how the problem was solved and what the outcome was. In this case, the problem was that your agent’s client needed to sell their home or buy a home. The solution was your agent’s approach to helping the client achieve their goal. The result was the end: the client achieved that goal and was satisfied with their service.
You can tell your agents that the key here is to leverage storytelling to get people emotionally engaged. They will want to include enough details and data so readers can clearly see how your agent can help them with their buying or selling goals.
Three to five should be plenty but advise your agents that they’ll also want to replace case studies from time to time with new ones as they move forward in their career. This is important because the market changes frequently, and if the circumstances of a particular transaction don’t align with current market conditions, the case study may not seem as credible to potential clients.
Agents will want to make these available as pages on their websites, and they should also make a PDF download available as well. The download gives potential clients something they can walk away with and use when comparing agents.
Use Search Results to Inspire Trust
Before a seller lists their property with an agent, they will run to their favorite search engine and look that agent up. Help your agents by highlighting the importance of crafting a strong presence in the search results.
Step 1: Have a Complete Profile on the Brokerage Page
The first step is to make sure they have a profile page on your brokerage website, because it has some degree of authority from an SEO perspective, so it should be easy to get that page to rank for their name.
Step 2: Use Social Media
Next, you’ll make sure they have a profile set up on at least one major social media network—preferably more than one—and that their profiles include a descriptive bio that differentiates them from other agents. Make sure they include a professional headshot and cover photo as well. They should also be active on these platforms, by consistently posting useful content that demonstrates their expertise.
Step 3: Publish Articles on the Brokerage Website
If you can publish articles on your brokerage website, you should encourage your agents to do that because it benefits them and you. If your website is built and optimized properly, these articles will rank for your agents’ name so they’ll show up in the search results when someone looks them up. Over time, by helping your agents demonstrate their expertise in this way, you’ll also increase the overall organic search traffic, and as a result, leads to your website.
Step 4: Become a Media Source
You can also encourage them to start writing for other publications and getting featured in the media. Doing so adds third-party validation to the equation. Think about it like this—these publications have a barrier to entry, meaning they won’t feature just anyone, so when they do, it sends a clear message to prospects that the person featured is among the best of the best. Plus, these publications tend to be authoritative from an SEO perspective, so the content will likely rank well for your agents’ names.
For a technical step-by-step guide that breaks down SEO, here is a comprehensive article Entrepreneur magazine asked me to write on the topic.
Earning a listing requires the kind of online presence that clearly demonstrates an agent’s expertise, positions the agent—and thus, the brokerage—as an authority in the market and inspires trust in potential clients. These steps help an agent cultivate and communicate their authority in the profession and their dedication to their clients.
