It All Begins With Personal Branding (2): Effective Tools for Marketing

• Damilare

As discussed in phase one of this article we would discuss how your personal brand affects your company’s brand and services. Building your personal brand in relation with your company's brand is an essential precursor to success in the real estate market. Whether you own your own properties, manage a rental property, or partner with a real estate company, there are several ways to engage with the public to create your marketing plan. With more than millions active real estate agents and companies operating in Nigeria alone, boosting your marketing efforts isn’t just a question of effectiveness. It could be an issue of survival for your real estate business.

Here are seven top tips to turn your real estate marketing into powerful branding for your business:

1. Consultancy or Support Services: To get potential customers to sit down with your agents, you need to be able to create a support service for marketing for them. Whether you offer your marketing consultation physically or online, you may have to shell out a bit of money to convince your potential clients to do business with you.

2. Use Social Media to Build Your Company's Brand: More than three and a half billion people use social media platforms every day, and with more than 98.39 million Nigerian internet users, 54% access the internet on a daily basis while only 12% (24 million) are active on social media. You cannot afford to be lagging on the social media front, you did miss a significant portion of your potential audience!. Whether or not you own an established company, set up social media accounts on the platforms most likely to be used by your target demographic, and make sure to interact whenever possible. Share content and respond rapidly to messages, whether questions or concerns.

3. Use Branded Materials: Any good real estate agent knows the value of good branded materials like business cards, branded shirts, etc. Any branded materials that can be handed out for publicity is a goodway to create an impression that you are serious with business, especially if you’re just getting started. People like free things, so if you can give out pens, t-shirts, and coffee mugs, they’re likely to remember your company and seek you out when the time comes to start home-searching.

4. Value With Professional Advice: Home buyer or seller should know the ins and outs of the real estate business, that's why it is necessary to invest in the knowledge of real estate by taking real estate courses before investing time, energy and money in it crafts. 

5. Create a user friendly website: The most important factor for a real estate website is how user-friendly it is. Make sure to create a website that is easy to navigate, clear and easy to follow. A website is a demonstrably powerful tool for sales and marketing, your website should achieve two main goals: Increasing exposure for your business and maximising conversion of Internet traffic into customers. Also, try to include an FAQ section, search engine friendly navigation and multiple ways to contact your customers for feedback and follow ups. Try to make the website aesthetically pleasing and eye-catching.

6. Take Advantage of SEO: SEO is the most important factor for any real estate website. Make sure to include keywords on your website and create a content marketing strategy. A content marketing strategy is a method of using data to discover which content is most valuable to your audience. 

7. Sponsorship or Partnership: Sponsoring or partnering with an event gets your name out and gives an immediate positive and connects your name with people that are important to your business. An event on Startup, Cryptocurrency, Entrepreneurship, Fintech, can be a perfect way to meet with potential customers and also to publicise your business. While in a partnership, your company is a co-sponsor of the event.

The factors outlined above are essentially about delivering a personalised, high-quality experience for your business which will, in turn, help you enhance the perception value in your services. However, personal branding is not just about getting instant top profit for your property; it's about establishing your brand, catapulting your business's reputation and securing its future success.