What NOT to do Starting off in Real Estate
I have been in real estate for close to a year. With this amount of experience you start to understand the do’s and don’ts of when you start your journey into the real estate world.
Starting off in the real estate business can be hard especially when people expect immediate success.
Real estate is not a get rich quick scheme.
Marketing yourself is a long and tedious process that can take months or even years. It will be a smoother process if you can avoid falling into some of these pitfalls. When you do the work consistently, you will become successful in the real estate world.
Rushing into it
A lot of agents just starting off expect immediate impact in their firm or agency. Not a lot of agents can make huge impacts within their first couple months.
It takes time to get your name out there and continually prove that you can hang in this business. You can’t compare yourself to other agents, no matter how long they have been doing it. Comparing I believe is the number one reason for failure. I too am guilty of this.
You can’t get caught up in other peoples success, but focus on yourself and stay consistent.
Your Sphere
Some may not know what a sphere is. Your sphere is the people you know.
Your family, friends, co workers, anyone you can possibly think of.
You want to let everyone know you are available to help them with their real estate needs. Get your name out as much as you can. One of the first things you should tell people when you first meet them is “I am a real estate agent”.
A lot of people usually don’t care to hear something like that, but that small number of people will eventually pay off.
Everyone you meet is a potential client!
When first beginning looking at your circle … they will be a majority of your clients. Clients aren’t going to flood to your doorstep to work with you so you have to work your circle of friends and eventually their circle to get your name recognizable.
Marketing Correctly
When you first start in real estate one of the biggest mistakes you can make is dumping all of your money into bench ads, billboards, magazines etc. I am not in anyway disregarding these strategies, but when you first start off that shouldn’t be your only marketing strategy. There are other ways you can go outside of having to pay money for ads is
Open Houses for other relators
Showing homes for other agents clients when they are unavailable
Join a local organization/community
Door to door marketing
Thats just to name a few. There are so many different possibilities when it comes to marketing yourself without dropping loads of cash.
Every agent, when they first start, should be doing open houses almost every Sunday. IF they can.
When you work in a firm, all you have to do is let all the agents know you are available. It’s a win for the agent due to them getting traffic through their listing and for you getting your face out there. Possibly gaining a client while you are it !
Often times, agents will pay you for your time and you can leave business cards at the home you are showing. Then other agents know you’re out there as well. The little touches go a long way.
Joining a community or organization will also help you get your name out. Meeting people and other agents shows them that you care about your community.
Door to door knocking is a very underrated way to market yourself. Since marketing yourself has become so digital, a lot of people will appreciate the fact that you’re introducing yourself. You can try your surrounding neighborhood, areas that you know personally and even areas that you aren’t educated on, it doesn’t matter. Just get your face and personality out there!
Not Utilizing Social Media
Social Media is apart of almost every individual in the United States.
Facebooks 1.91 Billion users everyday or instagrams 500 million.
There is no better time than right now to be on social media. Facebook would be the most important as of right now. You can post videos on facebook that are 5- 35 minutes long. You can post stories on your instagram feed and even do live streaming.
If you are marketing yourself or marketing for someone else. The 2 things you absolutely need are a social media platform and YouTube.
There are hundreds of thousands of minutes spent on YouTube everyday. Look at your competitors and see what they are putting out there and see how you can improve it with your platform.
You may think you need a lot of equipment…..you would be wrong. All you need starting out is your phone camera, purchase a little snip on microphone and a camera stand/tripod.
That’s all you need. You don’t need a crazy camera or a state of the art computer. If you really want to get crazy, you can teach yourself how to edit your videos. That is for another post!
