Events Marketing for Real Estate Agency
Marketing has changed. Change a lot. The development of digital has reinforced it with many new tools that allow companies to create more value added to their prospects and customers, and gain market share.
What are these tools? The website, content, CTAs, landing pages, emails, SMS, social networks … But also flyers and more traditional advertising displays, with which it is possible to create bridges to digital media.
All that is very nice. But it remains that the real estate agency is not a marketing agency! He is primarily a real estate professional. A communicant.
He can use these tools to acquire leads, but failing to inject a real commercial strategy upstream, the machine is running out of steam. It comes down to driving kilometers without having decided on a destination: you end up going round in circles.
These marketing tools are only devices. And these devices must serve an Idea. This is the only way to achieve business goals.
We propose you a series of articles about the real estate marketing events and the essential levers to activate to acquire leads, to qualify them, to convert them in customers, to increase your turnover, and to boost your turnover of real estate agency — all based on what you do best: human contact.
Here is the first of these contents: the marketing, the event, and the real estate agency.
Back to the roots: what is marketing?
First, a small general focus on the marketing issue.
Definition and purpose of marketing
Marketing is defined as all the means and methods used to:
- Analyze the needs of consumers,
- Influence their buying behavior,
- Encourage them to make a purchase (product or service).
Commercial techniques that tend to create need out of nothing work quite seldom — notable exceptions exist, we see it regularly with Apple products. But generally, consumers need to feel listened to, to know that brands meet previous expectations.
This is what marketing does: it creates value for the product or service for the customer. Then he adapts the commercial offer to the desires and needs of this client, to mold on what he really wants.
For the company, the purpose of marketing is multiple (beyond the simple goal of selling more). It serves to :
- Build a clientele
- Put in place actions that will enhance customer satisfaction for loyalty purposes;
- Capitalize on customer satisfaction to conquer new prospects, and continue building a customer base;
- Measure the results of marketing campaigns according to objectives set upstream, in order to make the actions always more effective.
In short, one must understand one thing:
Marketing is not about selling — not directly. It aims to decipher the expectations of consumers to mold the value of a good or service on their needs so that this good or service suits them. If this value created by the company is perceived positively, it is because the marketing strategy works.
A dynamic strategy that evolves with its environment
It will be understood that marketing is not a fixed entity. It evolves with its time and according to its environment.
The world of commerce is subject to the laws of natural selection. We adapt or we disappear. As a result, marketing has changed its nature as consumer behavior changes, to the point where it is now using its third version.
A quick little history:
- Marketing was first focused on the product: it was mostly selling (marketing 1.0);
- Then he focused on the customer, with a mission to understand his needs, to satisfy and retain (marketing 2.0);
- Finally, his latest evolution pushes him to take into account the whole environment in which the consumer exists and to try to make the planet a better place by proposing a new way of buying a product / a service.
In fact, marketing has become participatory and social, largely thanks to the rise of the web — and it is a fact that puts real estate marketing events at the heart of the subject, as we will see below.
The consumer is more individualistic. He tends to make his decisions alone, drawing information from the Web. Astonishing statistic: 57% of the purchasing decisions are already made when a consumer contacts the provider or enters the store!
In this context, we no longer sell in the same way. This is why marketing will also include:
- All that concerns the study of needs (market /qualitative/quantitative studies, consumer behavior analysis, etc.);
- The set of communication tools with which a company will be able to influence these needs (advertising, promotional offers, direct marketing, public relations — what can be called “events”);
- Methods and devices that aim to adapt the product/service to consumer behavior to push them to purchase (also called “marketing mix”: policies that affect price and product, communication, the distribution).
How should this data be taken into account in real estate event marketing? This is what we will see immediately.
The main principles of real estate event marketing
After this global definition of marketing, you certainly look forward to getting to the heart of our subject:
Real estate marketing events and the best levers to operate to return qualified mandates!
But first and foremost, you need to understand what marketing is for real estate, and why event planning is the basic idea that will allow you to optimize it.
Real estate marketing: showcasing your property and offers
Real estate marketing is inspired by the principles of global marketing to make the most of it.
Thus, it covers all the means and methods that real estate agency has to analyze the behavior of their future customers (prospects sellers and buyers), influences their decisions, and meet their needs.
These means and methods are combined into a series of actions to be taken to become number one in his market (in his town/neighborhood).
For this, we must add value to the service, that is to say:
- Develop a mandate on behalf of an owner in order to attract the attention of the purchasers and to close a sale;
- Highlight the service offered by the real estate agency, which is to sharpen the commercial arguments that will convince the selling customer to choose this professional rather than another.
This brings us to the specificity of the sector compared to others, specificity to which an event marketing strategy is only able to answer:
A real estate transaction is based on the trust that is created between the service provider and the consumer.
Indeed: buying a house is not the same as buying a TV. If it breaks down after a few years, it will be a pity, but the amount invested was moderate and its use quite dispensable.
Now, a house, or an apartment, is a residence (one lives there) or it is heritage (the stone remains the best investment). It is a decision that has many implications and involves significant amounts of money. Many people in a lifetime will only make one or two transactions of this kind.
This explains the crucial importance of the relational strategy, and the setting up of liaison events that will allow both parties (the real estate professional and his client) to establish a relationship with others. good bases.
What obstacles does an event real estate marketing strategy allow to circumvent?
Event real estate marketing will, therefore, help to overcome 4 obstacles inherent to the sector:
- The problem of trust. No need to hide the face: people are wary of real estate agency(most often wrongly, but sometimes rightly, because all professionals in the sector are not virtuous). They also believe that their fees are unjustified and that they have every interest, therefore, to carry out their real estate project by their own means.
- The problem of DIY (Do It Yourself). Not only do customers tend to think that they can take care of their own home buying/selling, but they now have plenty of tools available to get started. And are encouraged by the context favorable to DIY.
- The problem of legal constraints. They are becoming stronger and are designed to improve transparency while supporting real estate transactions. In return, the professional must provide more effort to develop.
- The problem of competition. You are not the only real estate agency in town, not even in your neighborhood. A well-thought-out event marketing is the best way to convince prospects to trust you, and for you, to gain market share.
And this by using the tools of marketing, but especially by basing their use on a first idea: to create contact, to ensure a physical presence, to launch promotional offers, to propose a targeted communication, etc.
In short, set up a real estate event marketing strategy!
That said, we already hear you asking the question:
And the Inbound all in that?
The Inbound, which we regularly talk about on this blog, for which we give any tips? What do we do in the context of real estate event marketing?
The Inbound is there, it is even the most effective method to meet the specific needs of the real estate sector and mold its communication on changes in consumer behavior. But this Inbound must also rely on this Idea which is the base of everything, and become an event inbound — to stick to the requirements of the profession.
The 3 levers of real estate event marketing
The equation of real estate event marketing is simple:
Qualified acquisition + local e-commerce animations + sponsorship and strong notoriety = taking orders, so sales, so turnover up (with a better ROI)
Here is an overview of the 3 levers that make up this equation.
Qualify your database locally
Acquiring leads is good. Qualify your database, so get more information on the contracts entered in the base, it is much better.
Event-based real estate marketing involves geographic targeting: as real estate is a local business, it is important to know the prospects and clients in a specific catchment area. This will allow you to create events that will attract their attention and meet their expectations.
At the same time, you will be able to acquire more leads and qualify the existing database (thanks to digital tools in particular).
For this purpose, it is necessary to set up a strategy to qualify its customers — or, as it is also said, to enrich its community.
It is a form of digital prospecting: we encourage the local prospect to come and register and provide data that concern him, in exchange for something (an offer, a gift …), and without immediately focusing on the idea to take charge of a real estate project.
The alternative? Buy databases already ready. But as much to warn you that this type of base is generally not qualified — because people have not consented to the use of their data, because they have moved or changed their habits — and that the possible use it’s pretty poor.
Define an e-commerce strategy
Let’s get to the bottom of things: in absolute terms, a real estate agent wants to sell.
It is an unmistakable fact. Real estate event marketing takes note. But it simply decrees that to achieve this, we must deploy an appropriate strategy, inspired by e-commerce.
Namely: acquire, conclude, retain.
The e-commerce methods consist of:
- Set up marketing activities, for example, promotional offers (earn 10% discount on such service as a reward for a contest, etc.);
- Present innovative products and services
- Promote the goods and services, but also the marketing animations themselves (especially via social networks to attract more participants and generate a positive buzz).
E-commerce is also the essence of event marketing real estate!
Reassure, engage, maintain relationships … these are the keywords of this concept specific to real estate event marketing.
If you consider marketing in general, loyalty is a major weapon. It is widely believed that repeat customers can account for up to half of a company’s sales; that 15% of these customers alone achieve up to 60% of turnover; and that keeping a customer costs 5 to 10 times less than buying a new one!
For real estate event marketing, it’s a bit more complex, because of the nature of the products sold and the service offered. However, the following statistics can be kept in mind: 82% of customers participating in loyalty programs (all domains combined) sponsored at least one person!
Sponsorship is, therefore, an essential weapon of event marketing in real estate — provided it works in good agreement with the other two levers.
Originally published at Entrepreneur News and Startup Guide.
