Defining your target markets as a Realtor is critical to your success. The myth among Realtors is that you're selling your services to anyone who wants to buy or sell a home. The truth is that you need to narrow down the criteria for your ideal prospect you want to work with. If you do, you can triple your closings and earn thousands more in commissions. Let me explain......
First off, I'm not saying that if a prospect, who you wouldn't normally want to work with, comes to you and wants to buy a home, that you turn them away. Take the business, if you want it. I would.
3 Sander
What I am saying is that when it comes to your brand and your image as a Realtor, you need to target that specifically to the prospects that are most likely to respond to it. Work on defining your target markets and focus your marketing dollars on those prospects, rather than every person out there who's breathing.
For example, let's say you were a war veteran. In your real estate business, instead of having all your marketing pieces and efforts say you're the "Best Realtor" to work with; describe how you are the "VA Realtor Ready to Help". Become known as that and make sure that "brand" is in all your marketing. That's the essence of what defining your target markets is all about.
Next, you target your "VA Realtor" marketing brand to, whom else? Veterans, of course! You can buy a list of the veterans in your area (there are a number of ways to do this) and market directly to them.
They'll be far more likely to identify with you than any regular, "Joe Shmo" Realtor out there. You appear as a specialist and end up grabbing a bigger piece of the real estate pie.
Are you starting to see how this can revolutionize your real estate business? Are you realizing how important defining your target markets is to your success as a Realtor?
Your marketing dollars will go light years further if you spend them this way. Naturally, your conversion rates will rise too; that's the point.
So if you were getting, let's say, 1 client for every 1000 postcards you mailed out, you could easily triple that and get 3 clients due to simply defining your target markets like this. See how much more your marketing dollars can stretch?
The hardest part of defining your target markets as a Realtor, which isn't really that hard, is deciding who you want to go after. And you don't need to only have 1 target market; you can have multiple target markets.
Let's continue our earlier example; you could target veterans but you could also target first-time home buyers in a certain neighborhood as well. You could be "Mr. Friendly: The First-Time Home Buying Specialist" (only don't be that corny). Of course, you can't use the same marketing message for both target markets but you can design your message and marketing pieces specifically to each.
Think about this whole marketing concept like this......
Citicorp is a gigantic corporation with many, many offerings to the public. They have a credit card product, an insurance product, a mortgage division, a banking division, etc.
Just as you will be defining your target markets as a Realtor, Citicorp defines their target markets for each of their services and products. They may cross-sell products to each market but when they're marketing a particular product, they're intentionally going after a certain type of prospect.
I know, I know, you're not a huge corporation so this doesn't even apply, right? Wrong! You can do the exact same thing; just on a smaller scale.
Once you start defining your target markets as a Realtor, there are tons of ways to market specifically to those prospects. I can't go through all of them here but a few good options to start with are...
buy lists of your target markets to email or direct mail to design all your marketing pieces specifically for your prospects place any marketing ads in publications and websites that are tailored to your target markets join associations that are specific to your target markets and begin networking with them tell everyone you know what type of prospect you're a perfect fit for brand your clothing to reflect your image out in public
Starting today, don't continue to sell to every person out there with a pulse. Begin defining your target markets you want to work with as a Realtor and start tailoring your marketing like a laser beam on those prospects. It's going to make you a pant load of cash, believe me!