Use Video To Enhance Your Personal Brand In 2020

In 2020, there is absolutely no denying that real estate agents and brokers need to make video a priority. Not only is video content important for helping your real estate website gain listing visibility in search engines, but it is also a powerful tool that helps potential clients connect with your personal style and brand.

The most common videos in real estate remain virtual tours; however, there are many other ways that you can use video to enhance your real estate brand and carve out a powerful name for yourself. Here are some practical ways that you can incorporate more video into your personal branding strategy from the experts at Weichert.

Translate Your Blog Posts Into Videos

Are you already generating a regular real estate blog or regular social posting? You can get more leverage out of every post by translating that content into a video. All you need to do is use your blog post like a script to showcase your expertise. Affordable software like ContentSamurai can create videos from your blog posts in seconds by automatically analyzing the content! You can also use videos to supplement your blogs. For example, if you write an article about how to stage a house to get it ready for the market, you could include videos of you showing them how to complete the steps in the article.

Interview Local Businesses

The top experts in branding and marketing will tell you that as a real estate agent or broker, it is in your best interest to make your company name synonymous with your market. In other words, when someone thinks of your market they should automatically think of you and vice versa. One of the best ways to accomplish that goal is to use content like videos to showcase your expertise on all things local. Take time to interview and feature local highlights on video, like restaurants, boutiques, schools, and attractions that make your market such a great place to live. Since those businesses will be grateful for the free advertising, they are likely to promote your videos as well, gaining you lots of extra and free exposure to potential clients.

Showcase Members Of Your Team

One of the best ways to help the community get to know your business and recruit new members to your team is to showcase those who are currently part of your team. For this tactic to be effective, you need each video to clearly communicate the following:

•    The agent’s role within the team
•    The agent’s specialty or niche
•    What makes them unique
•    Why they chose to work in real estate
•    Why they chose to join your team
•    What they love most about being a member of your brokerage

It is a good idea to feature these videos on your website, social media, a newsletter, and YouTube channel. When done correctly, each one of these interviews will provide confidence and social proof to clients who are considering hiring a member of your team, as well as and agents looking for a brokerage.

Gather Video Testimonials

Speaking of social proof, it is well worth your time to gather video testimonials from clients as well. Before hiring an agent to represent them in the largest financial transaction of their life, they want to know that other people just like them have had a positive experience with that agent. Video testimonials are more powerful than written ones because they can better communicate the emotion behind the words. Ask each client to tell the story of why they chose to work with you, what impact you made on the transaction, and what they enjoyed most about the process.

Profile Your Farm

Another extremely powerful way of pushing your real estate website up in the search engines is with hyperlocal content like neighborhood pages or profiles that showcase each city or neighborhood you serve. While there should be written content and links to any blogs that are relevant to each neighborhood, you should also include as many videos as you can. One easy way to do this is to ask the photographers that work your listings to do a drone shot of the neighborhood in addition to the house.

Becoming a master content creator with video will dramatically elevate your brand awareness and overall success. It should be one of the many tactics you employ as part of a comprehensive marketing plan. A partner like Weichert can give you the guidance and tools to own your market.

For more information about how Weichert can empower you to grow your brand, go to www.weichertfranchise.com.

Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/use-video-to-enhance-your-personal-brand-in-2020/

Hit the Ground Hard, After the Holidays

There is no denying that many real estate agents and brokers across the country experience the slowing season in Winter. While many will just accept this as being par for the course, in real estate, your drive to start off the new year with a bang can put you ahead of the game in 2020.

In between hanging those holiday decorations and doing all your shopping, you can use your extra time over the holidays to recalibrate, allowing your business to tear out of the starting gate in the new year.

Explain the Advantages of Buying A Home Now

One of the reasons that the spring season is so crazy in real estate is that people perceive it as the most convenient time to make a move. Conversely if more people understood the benefits of moving during the winter, they might be motivated to make the move now. Create blogs, videos, and podcast episodes to explain the advantages of moving during the less competitive winter season, such as lower costs and less competition to book moving companies. Share your best tips for moving in the colder months. Create this awareness all year round, but especially in the slower winter months.

Leverage New Year’s Resolutions

While many people focus on common new year’s resolutions like losing weight, there are plenty of people out there that resolve that this will be the year that they become a homeowner or move to the neighborhood of their dreams. With tax season right around the corner, remind people that their returns would be better spent on a down payment than something frivolous. Take advantage of this line of thinking while their motivations are still high by planning, promoting and hosting a first-time buyer seminars. Weichert, for example, supplies its affiliate offices with complete seminars in a box—including invitations, presentation deck and handouts–to host such events. This helps you connect with potential prospects early before they make the decision to act and engage with another brokerage.

Grab the Attention Of Sellers Early in the Year

Once the ground begins to thaw, it is a mad dash for agents to get their hands on all the shiny new listings. However, if you initiate relationships with people who are considering selling in the upcoming year now, you will already have your foot in the door when they are ready to list. Now is the best time of year to start holding seminars about how to sell a house. When marketing these seminars, be sure to tap into the common reasons why people may want to sell their house this year including an upgrade in lifestyle, a change in career, or even a change in their family needs. Weichert also supplies its affiliate offices with complete seminar kits to support hosting these types of events.

Focus on Your Existing Relationships

Once you have your buyer and/or seller seminars in place and operating like a well-oiled machine to attract new prospects, you can return your focus to your sphere. This is a great time to personally check in with everyone to see how their holidays were, what they are looking forward to in the year to come, and if there is anything you can do to help them. Remember, it is through the cultivation of your personal and professional relationships that you will attract your best clients. Having a good CRM system will allow you to do this efficiently.

Have a Great Post-Holiday Season, in Every Way!

Do you have the tools and systems in place to take advantage of the winter season and prepare you and your agent team for Spring? From farming materials, such as seminar kits to a powerful CRM to stay in touch with your sphere, an affiliation with Weichert can give you everything you need to compete. Sow the seeds for a great 2020. Make one of your new year’s resolutions to contact Weichert Franchising to find out more about how we can help you and your agents be more productive than ever.

Best wishes for a prosperous year ahead!

Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/hit-the-ground-hard-after-the-holidays/

Yes, Your Agents Need a Business Plan, Too

As a knowledgeable broker, you’ve hopefully been writing your own business plan every year. You have seen the benefits of planning out your growth goals and “knowing your numbers”. However, are your agents taking the time to do the same? As a coach and the leader of your team, you can stimulate growth and inspire your agents by sitting down with them to write their own business plans. Even the most experienced agents can benefit from this exercise and once they see its power, they will be convinced of how necessary it really is in their business. Here are some helpful strategies to take when appealing to your agents to write a business plan.

Why Do Agents Need A Business Plan?

At the end of the day, real estate agents are independent small business owners. As you know, any business without a sense of direction and goals will struggle to grow. In fact, in a Harvard Business Review report, it states that those “who write formal plans are 16% more likely to achieve business viability than the otherwise identical non-planning entrepreneurs.” If you want to build a formidable team of agents that come to you for guidance, but are otherwise self-sufficient and successful, steer them toward developing a plan that outlines a path to reach those goals.

Easy Ways To Empower Agents To Write Their Business Plan

Once you have convinced an agent of the overwhelming value of a business plan, you may still need to give them an extra nudge to actually sit down and write it. Often, this challenge can be overcome with these five steps:

1. Lead By Example: Sometimes a simple example is enough to light the fire of inspiration. Sit down and show agents your process of writing your business plan and how you use it to achieve your goals.
2. Give Them A Template: If you don’t already have one, a quick search online will yield a never-ending library of easy-to-use business plan templates to alleviate some of the learning curves for your agents. Even better: create a template for them based on your own business plan, this will help them align their goals, with yours.
3. Give Them A Sense Of Urgency: Six months in, is too late to begin writing a business plan. Insist on your agents developing an initial business plan when they join your team, followed by annual plans each October-December, to ensure they start off the new year with a bang. Better yet, schedule a group planning day for the office
4. Check-In Throughout The Year For Progress Reports: With the endless surprises, curveballs, and distractions that life brings, it can be easy to get off-track throughout the year. Much like a New Year’s Resolution, it can be common for agents to stray from their business plan goals. Holding regular meetings to check in with them and hold them accountable for their production is a great way to counteract this challenge.

The bottom line is that working with each agent in your team is time well spent for both the agents, and for you the broker. Often you may find that working through this valuable exercise will increase your own motivation and spark further inspiration for your own business plans. Not to mention the obvious fact that the more success that your agents achieve, the more you will experience as their broker.

Brokers that have joined the Weichert Franchise have seen first-hand how empowering their agents with training, processes, and resources like business plans can be instrumental in their own growth. Having clear-cut goals, partnered with a proven system designed to achieve them is what allows Weichert brokers and their agents to do more. For additional information on how to further develop your real estate business, visit www.weichertfranchise.com.

Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/yes-your-agents-need-a-business-plan-too/

How To Turn Renters Into Homebuyers

Despite the myth that renters are not a valuable lead source, 46% of renters are actively considering a home purchase. If you are anything like most real estate brokers, you understand that with careful and strategic targeting, a great deal of those renters can be converted into long-term clients that will buy, sell, and refer your brokerage to their friends and family. In today’s post, the experts at Weichert are sharing their tips to help you turn those untouched renters into a cash cow for your real estate business.

Which Renters Are Ready To Buy

Randomly targeting renters will usually result in a poor return on your investment of time and energy, which is why many real estate agents have come to think of renters as a bad niche. Therefore, it is important that you invest the resources upfront to gather data about the demographics of the local community to find the highest concentration of potential buyers that are currently renting. Once you have the data revealing the right people to target you will be better able to reach and attract them both on and offline.

Lead With Education

One of the biggest reasons that people rent rather than buy is that they don’t think they are able to afford a home. The best way to combat this concern is through education. As a broker, you need to make sure your agents are up to speed on the very latest financing options. Then run marketing campaigns targeted specifically at renters all based around the idea that “Yes, You Too can Afford Your Own Home”. Flooding your real estate blog, newsletter, and social media platforms with information on financing and entry level inventory that educate renters on how to buy and how much they can afford is key.

If you want to connect with renters in an even more personal way, consider holding first-time-homebuyers’ workshops that explain the process of getting pre-approved, finding the right property, and the value of hiring a Realtor to protect their best interests. The more education you supply with the right renters, the faster your pipeline will fill with leads.

Be Patient & Consistent

While some of the renters you target may convert right away, many will take time. Be patient and remember that you must continue to remind them that you are there to take care of them when they are ready. Connect with them in as many ways that you can to help make this easier. For example, invite them to follow you on social media, invite them to attend any events that you host, drop-by when you are in the neighborhood, etc.. You may be surprised how many people won’t respond to your efforts until they are ready to buy so don’t assume their silence is a lack of interest.

You Need a System to Target Renters

Having a clear cut system for following up with renters, and the right tools to help you do so, will dramatically increase your success with this market. Make sure you have a schedule in place for regularly staying in touch with all of your renters, no matter how hot or cold they appear. Remember that when renters decide or discover that they are ready to buy a house, they will likely do it with the agent that is front-of-mind and that they feel most familiar with at that time.

One of the biggest reasons that Weichert brokers are so successful with the rental market is that they leverage proven processes for generating renter-to-homebuyer leads. It also doesn’t hurt to be able to leverage things like the Weichert Rental Network, a national service for relocation rentals for both individuals and corporate clients. Renters that come through our network, have a much higher likelihood of contacting your team when they decide to buy.

For more information about the full suite of tools and lead generation system that Weichert offers, go to https://www.weichertfranchise.com/

Original content posted on https://www.weichertfranchise.com/blog/how-to-turn-renters-into-homebuyers/