As a Realtor, knowing how to market your services as well as a clients property online can be very powerful. In the Real Estate field it can certainly be the difference maker in whether or not a client chooses to hire you or NOT!
It is not that hard to figure out that Realtors are a dime a dozen. Picking the wrong Realtor can get ugly. In most industries 80% of the business is done by 20% of the people. In Real Estate the ratio is 94% and 6%! It is easy to see why there is a lot of dissatisfaction within our ranks.
Unfortunately, there are very low barriers to entry for becoming a licensed Real Estate agent. Pass a test and you are in business. When the market was booming every Tom, Dick, Harry and Mary wanted a license into the promised land of easy money. They came in droves expecting to be living the life of luxury.
Then Real Estate markets around the country changed. The 3 P’s of Real Estate no longer worked. Put a sign in the yard, put it in MLS, and pray. This marketing strategy used to work for many agents when the Massachusetts market was booming.
From the mid 1990’s to 2005 Real Estate was Easy Street. Multiple offers and home values rising by the month. There was much less marketing skill involved in the Real Estate business. Commission checks were rolling in and there were smiles everywhere. The life and times of a Realtor were rosy!
Heck you could price a home improperly and a few months later it wouldn’t matter because the market would have caught up to your mistake. An inexperienced Realtors blunders could suddenly turn into genius. Those were the days.
The Real Estate market today is much different. Terms such as auctions, short sales, mortgage meltdown, and foreclosure, are all common things we deal with on a daily basis. There are no lines forming at the door to the division of Real Estate licensing anymore.
In fact the Real Estate industry has gone through a consolidation. Many of the agents who didn’t realize that you need to invest a serious amount of time and energy in actually working your tail off are getting out just as fast as they entered.
There is also another set of agents that have managed to hang around but don’t have a clue about what you need to do in order to be successful in a challenging market. Up until a few years ago, a Realtor that entered the business in the last ten years had not seen a down Massachusetts Real Estate market.
Times have changed and so should your thought process about picking a good Realtor to sell your home!
If you were looking for skill sets of the best Realtors it would be those that know how to price homes accurately, have a strong grasp of online marketing and communicate well throughout the home sale process.
The Internet has grown by leaps and bounds as a tool to sell homes. Survey after survey says that almost 90% of all buyers find their home from an online search! If you are considering selling your home it makes sense to be aligned with a Realtor who provides a dominate online presence for their clients. Not an agent that is not going to tell you what you want to hear in order to get the listing!
Using Google as an interview tool can be very important of selecting a great Realtor to work with!
There are lots of Realtors that love to talk a good game about how much online marketing they provide. Here are three tips that will expose the online pretenders from the internet savvy Realtor. Google the agents name you are considering hiring and also ask them for an address of a home they are marketing. Lastly, Google the town you are located in, state and the word “Real Estate”. As an example Hopkinton MA Real Estate or Framingham MA Real Estate.
You should Google all of them. If the Realtor has any grasp on social marketing there should be pages upon pages of results for their name! You should be able to quickly get the picture as to whether or not this agent is Internet savvy.
When you Google an address of a home they are marketing, you will be able to see all the sites that the home is being marketed on. Think about this for a moment…if you Google a homes address and don’t come up with anything other than Zillow or Realtor.com you have found a Realtor that follows the 3 P’s of marketing. Run for the hills Amigos this is not what you want!!
The most competitive search terms to rank for online are the city, state and Real Estate combined. Everyone vies for the 1st page of Google for these terms because buyers will use them to search for property! An agent that is on the 1st page will see an exponential difference in Real Estate traffic to their site. Obviously this is what you want as a seller.
Besides Real Estate, one of my passions is SEO (search engine optimization). When a client hires me to sell their home it will be found everywhere online. My clients property becomes front and center for those buyers who are looking in my market area. A good Real Estate professional understands the importance of implementing a social media strategy into their marketing plan.
The goal is to provide the greatest exposure to my Real Estate listings, while also generating worth while hyper-local, geo targeted content that can be found through the search engines. So how is this accomplished? Well 1st let me tell you it now takes days to get the marketing set up for my clients homes.
The 1st thing that is done is getting the listing into my website that covers Real Estate sales in Metrowest Massachusetts. This website is highly indexed by Google and will usually come up on the 1st page for anything related to Real Estate in the towns I cover.
This is important because if the site can not be found what good is it? My knowledge of search engine optimization has allowed me to have a top ranked Real Estate site. One of the best features of my website is the ability to syndicate the listing to some of the most heavily traveled Real Estate sites at the click of a button. Click the link to see all of my Metrowest MA Real Estate marketing. There is not another Realtor in the area that provides this type of Real Estate exposure.
If you are not in my coverage area and need a Realtor this is the type of Real Estate marketing you should be looking for! Of course an agents track record is also an important consideration. Here are some great interview questions for listing agents to help you make a great selection.
Related Real Estate articles:
- Picking a top producing Metrowest MA Realtor
- Communications skills for Real Estate
- What kind of Massachusetts Realtor do you want
- Massachusetts for sale by owners
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About the author: The above Real Estate information on picking the wrong Massachusetts Realtor can get ugly was provided by Bill Gassett, a Nationally recognized leader in his field. Bill can be reached via email at billgassett@remaxexec.com or by phone at 508-435-5356. Bill has helped people move in and out of many Metrowest towns for the last 24+ Years.
Thinking of selling your home? I have a passion for Real Estate and love to share my marketing expertise!
I service the following towns in Metrowest MA: Hopkinton, Milford, Southboro, Westboro, Ashland, Holliston, Upton, Mendon, Hopedale, Medway, Franklin, Framingham, Grafton, Northbridge, Shrewsbury, Northboro, Bellingham, Uxbridge, and Douglas.
Bill,
I am simply amazed at the frequency and quality of your posts.
This is one topic that I am very passionate about. A huge portion of my Unique Selling Proposition is online marketing. My competition are all practitioners of the 3Ps. As an experienced real estate consultant new to the market I am in it will be easy to rank ahead of my competition for the right keywords.
Let’s just hope they don’t catch wind of your article and realize what they are missing. :-).
Regards
Thanks Ray. I appreciate the compliments! I have been in the Real Estate business for 24 years so I have seen quite a bit change over the years in our industry. The thing that has remained constant is home sellers often times not doing their home work on who to choose as their Realtor. Online marketing is so vital today as well as making sure you are on your game about giving the seller proper market value advice.
Checking people out online is so easy now. I know more sellers are doing it, but ALL sellers SHOULD be doing it.
By the way, I knew the 80-20 rule was “off” in my area, because of the trouble my son had when he wanted to buy a house and couldn’t find an agent willing to help. But I didn’t realize it was all the way to 94-6. I’m not surprised, after what he went through.
When I was licensed I knew some agents weren’t actually working – but I didn’t realize just how bad it was.
Why? Is it because people get into real estate because they think it looks easy?
Marte you are correct there are more sellers checking into a Realtors credentials but still not enough. All home sellers should do careful research if they want to increase the odds that they will be happy with the home selling process.
In my opinion it is way too easy to get a Real Estate license. The barriers to entry in this field are way to low. Many folks do think Real Estate is Easy Street and you should have no problem making tons of money. It is quite the opposite and one of the hardest fields to make good money in. The best of the best do very well and the rest barely make enough to survive.
Great tips on using Google as an interview tool Bill!
Thanks Rich! Google can be a powerful tool when selecting a Real Estate agent to work with.