Blog / Prospecting
Leveraging off your profile
With Rachel Morley & Danica pasins
It’s so important to make the most of any service that can generate opportunities for your business. Portals should play a very important part in building your profile. Recent consumer research found that that on average consumers research an agent in four different places. They’ll talk to their friends, log on to a real estate website, search in Google and look up the big portals.
Customers certainly know the power of real estate portals and realestate.com.au. Again, recent research commissioned by REA Group found that when people search on Google for agents, in 84% of cases realestate. com.au agent profiles are in the top three results. It’s a trusted brand. People recognise the URL.
Further research indicates that people spend just over two minutes on each visit examining agent profiles alone. That’s a lot of time in the digital space. Rachel at REA Group says, “They’re not diving in skimming for three seconds, and leaving. They’re having a really good look. They are really engaging with the content that’s meaningful."
Maximising your profile on realestate.com.au therefore is a key opening for you to promote yourself to a huge audience. It’s an incredible opportunity to make a lasting impression. Rachel adds, “Just under six million individual humans in Australia researched agents on our site in the last 12 months. There are about 120,000 searches a month for agents on our site.
"We basically offer the opportunity for agents to promote themselves to our audience. We really encourage each agent to invest in the content, and their profile." She adds. “You can showcase your performance, and stand out If you invest in that content, but also show a bit of personality, because you’ve got control of the words, and the tone, and the language that you use, and the way that you describe your distinctiveness as an agent."
Danica Pasinis, Marketing Communications Manager at REA Group adds, “I think it is important for agents to put their personality on the page as well. I think that goes unnoticed a little bit sometimes, and personal branding is such a big thing in the real estate industry. There are different ways you can write, or you can create a different type of video. Really, really make your presence known."
To really stand out, and create a great personal impression:
- Upload your photo.
- Add a catchy strap line about who you are – add a personal quote.
- Have a big background splash image to really help yourself stand out.
- Detail your business, list specialties and awards.
- Add informative and entertaining videos – videos are the most effective means to show your personality. Search around the site and look at other agent videos. What are the most effective ones? What elements do they have that make them hook potential vendors? Really consider your audience. Think about your client base. What are the questions that they want to know from you? How can you answer those questions in a short video format? Rachel says, “REA prepopulates the page with your sales data. So, once you've got a bit of a record as an agent that comes through as well - the properties that you've sold, properties you've currently got on market, any rentals if you're also a property manager with stock."
- Go and check out the Agent Marketing Centre. Danica says, “The Agent Marketing Centre is essentially our one stop shop for agents. We've got a lot of educational content. So, we really focus on the things such as personal brand, tips and tricks in the presentations to consumers, and really, really leaning on bringing the industry experts to start focusing about content sell."
Rachel says, “If you're a new agent, and wanted to make your mark, and you're willing to stand out for customer experience, you'd be able to describe that, and really make a mark on that page. So, to get the content there right now today it's actually a pain because you need to go, and speak to your office manager, and the agency, or your principal, and get access to agent admin. We'll ask them to upload the content for you. So, basically write it down, and then get office admin to log into agent admin, and do it for you. However, we are actually starting to work on a log in where agents will be able to get in for themselves, which hopefully will be in market by next calendar year."
As the market turns, REA is developing more features to assist agents build more leverage from their profiles.
To help newer agents find an audience, REA will soon offer a feature to enable customers to list on consumer rating. Rachel says, “As a new agent starting out, you can really choose to focus on a couple of areas that you want to be like, 'This is my thing. I'm going to really focus on delivering a great experience for all my buyers, and sellers'. So, that then might be your opportunity to climb up the rank, and get more notice, and more attention, and get more leverage out of that profile."
REA will also be offering a packaged product that lets you grab your profile, or bits of content from it, to then market that out across Facebook, and Google, and other social channels. Rachel says, “It will help agents make it nice and easy and efficient to run an easy campaign across a bunch of channels, and to leverage that content. So, it might be grabbing some of your sold history, or your photo plus your details, and your latest favourite review that really showcases who you are as a person. And, push that out on social channels, and help you manage that effectively. So, starting to really use that profile as that central vehicle that lets you do a lot of things to market yourself."
Grow your business easily – get working on your profile!
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