How to target local property buyers

The age of the internet has opened up the vast reaches of the world to us, and while this is beneficial to real estate agents and out-of-town buyers there is still something left to be said for targeting local property buyers.


These days you would be hard-pressed to find an a successful real estate agent that doesn’t have some sort of online presence - whether it is in the form of a Facebook Business page or one of our Flex responsive websites. However, being easy to find by potential clients are just a small step in the right direction when you are trying to become an area specialist.

So how do you reach buyers that are looking to move closer to work or to a bigger home for their growing family?

The answer is not a new one - localised marketing has been used in the real estate industry for ages, but the way it is achieved in the age of the internet has changed over the years.

This doesn’t mean that you should let go of your website or Facebook page, advertising in your local paper just won’t cut it. You just need to be smarter about how you advertise online.

Here are some tips on how you can attract not just out-of-town buyers, but also homegrown buyers:


  • Share information about upcoming local events such as markets, shows or sports events. You can have buttons that will link to your social media accounts on your Flex website that will make it even easier for clients to find your pages.
  • Write about the area on your website! Not only will this help with SEO this will also make clients feel that you are the go-to agent when it comes to buying or selling property in the areas you operate in.
  • In your listing description, you should mention it when a property is close to a school or other amenities.
  • If possible, get involved with community events by way of sponsoring a prize or by providing water for a school sports event for example. This way you are connecting with potential clients and promoting your agency’s brand.
  • Remember that on show boards are still an excellent way of marketing yourself, make sure you have them at the ready and mark your on show days on the OMS so that people can easily find you online.
  • Last but certainly not the least, local marketing relies heavily on word of mouth advertising - always make sure people are talking about you for all the right reasons!


Popular posts from this blog

Easily link Base with external CRM systems

Image
What is the Base Zapier integration? The Entegral Base system was recently improved with a native Zapier app integration . This allows estate agents to exchange data and create automated workflows with over 2000+ popular apps, including all the leading CRM specific apps.  Why even link a CRM system? Although Base has contact management, contact categories, automatic lead import, and other great CRM features , users sometimes require very specific CRM functions that we don't (yet) cater to. With our Zapier integration , we allow agents to link any popular app with Base. Once linked with your app, you can for instance automatically synchronise your contacts from Base to the external app or vice versa.  The added benefit is that you can create automated workflows and link more apps (e.g. insert contact details into a Mailchimp drip email campaign  and ZOHO CRM at the same time). This makes the Zapier fee irreverent compared to the derived benefits.  Automated portal lead import from
Read more

Property24 acquires Private Property, what do estate agents think?

Image
Property24.com, South Africa’s largest property portal owned by Naspers, has bought rival Private Property . The deal is likely to come under the close scrutiny of competition authorities as it involves the two biggest property portals in the country. Due to the impact of such an acquisition on the industry, Entegral was interested to find out what the perceived advantages and disadvantages of such a deal would be, both through the eyes of the consumer and the estate agent.   Here are the results from around 250 responses received on a survey done over a 2 day period , mostly from agents and agency owners. While the survey presents a small portion of the market (a ccording to the EAAB's latest annual report there are 19,424 registered agents and agency owners, excluding intern estate agents, in South Africa) , f eedback has been received from well-respected agency owners and agents, and we believe this gives a good indication of the current view of agents. The fear from estate
Read more

US trends show more buyers come from internet, less from print

Image
Where home buyers found the home they purchased- 2001 vs. 2008   Have a look at the very interesting figures published for USA home buyers on: http://rismedia.com/2009-03-29/buyers-becoming-more-successful-finding-homes-through-internet/   The NAR statistics show that 7 years on from 2001, 32% of home buyers found their home through the internet. What’s even more interesting is that print newspaper hardly makes an impact, a mere 3% of buyers found their home through print.  
Read more