Last year, I went through the process of selling a rental house I owned. As part of the process, I was on the lookout for a real estate agent. The local market has been super hot in Boise lately, and this was a house I didn’t want to keep as a rental. It was a little too nice for that.
As I searched for an agent, my wife brought something to my attention. The subdivision was the turf of a specialist real estate agent.
A Pro With a Plan
Each month, this agent posts on the Facebook group for the subdivision. She also mails out postcards about homes that have sold and how much they sold for. She talks about being a neighborhood specialist, and frankly, she is doing everything right to generate listings in this neighborhood.
Although I don’t know for sure, my suspicion is that she lists quite a few houses in this neighborhood. That’s the image she’s created for herself. It appears that all she does is list houses in this neighborhood. But I know her secret.
She does this local neighborhood marketing with a number of subdivisions in my city. I know this because I get similar marketing from her at the house I live in now, which is in a complete different subdivision than my rental. She changes out the stats and uses some variable data for the name of the subdivision, but the nuts and bolts of the marketing is identical.
As a guy who loves marketing, I have to say what she’s doing is impressive, for the most part. I have little doubt she’s very successful with it. I am surprised more people in the area haven’t copied her. But most people are lazy, so that shouldn’t surprise me much.
Hyper-Targeting Local Marketing Kills It
If you’re not a real estate agent, that’s okay. You, too, can also create a hyper-targeted local campaign. You can create postcards that use variable data to show you’re the go-to dentist, lawyer, or financial adviser for XYZ neighborhood.
Next, you can join the Facebook groups of these neighborhoods and make helpful posts, building your brand image. You can easily create a community event for a neighborhood and bring everyone out for a good time while you generate leads. You could even gather up several other people who service the neighborhood and split the cost of a newsletter to all the homeowners. This strategy has becoming increasingly popular for mass mailers.
There are a lot of options at your disposal. When you hyper-target local marketing, and the neighborhood feels like you specialize in their area, you end up getting more business in the neighborhood. This gets more people talking, which encourages more referrals. The number of customers you have in the neighborhood will increase until you basically own that subdivision. Now all you have to do is rinse and repeat.
Relationships Always Trump Marketing
The real estate agent did many things right, but she did two things very wrong. First, her numbers were off more than once in the info she was sending me. The issues weren’t major, but I’m a numbers guy, and it bothered me. But she had no control over her second challenge — call it her kryptonite. Here’s why.
I have an associate, a broker, whom I’ve casually known for 7 or 8 years now. Because of our long-standing relationship, I chose to go with the person I’ve known for many years over the specialist for my area, whom I just met.
Overcoming a multiyear relationship with marketing alone is a nearly insurmountable task. This is why building that relationship is so important and why you need to make sure you are personal in your articles and other content.
You see, the final challenge she couldn’t overcome was my relationship with another service provider. And while she may not have control over my relationships, she could have done more to add personal touches and build relationships with her marketing. This is a step that should never be overlooked.
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