5 Ways To Make Your Real Estate Brokerage Stand Out From The Rest

When you’re running a real estate brokerage, one of the biggest challenges is differentiation. After all, in essence, all brokerages are the same: each one offers a host of real estate services to their clients, ensuring that they get the best value for their property sale or purchase.

The question now is, considering this fact, how do you stand out from the rest and grow your brokerage? To help you out, here are some suggestions:

Focus on Recruitment

One of the most important parts of a real estate brokerage—or any business, for that matter—is its employees. When you hire the right people, it’s so much easier to achieve your goals as a company. As such, you need to improve your recruitment process. For one, make it easy for talented real estate professionals to find your brokerage’s hiring ads. Whether they’re on social media, on your own website, or on a job board, visibility should be one of your priorities.

Then, make your ads as specific as possible. If you need a real estate agent with at least 5 years of experience, say so. There’s no use in being vague. In addition, emphasize which are the needs and the wants in your list of qualifications. This way, you’ll have a bigger pool of potential candidates. That said, don’t discount an applicant who doesn’t meet all of your requirements. An exact match for a job is incredibly rare and you may be surprised by what someone who doesn’t “tick all the boxes” may have to offer.

Last but certainly not least, invest in the right technologies. Take advantage of recruitment software with built-in features like CRM to simplify processes, like sending out drip campaigns, scheduling meetings, and capturing leads. This allows you to allocate more time for interviews and onboarding.

Make Sure You’re Present on Multiple Channels

If you want your brokerage to stand out from its competitors, you need to be where your potential customers are. This way, you’re there and ready to go once they make a decision. The challenge here is that there are multiple channels that your customers use. For example, real estate agents looking for jobs will probably use two or three platforms: social media, search engines, and job boards. In order to cast a wider net, make sure to have a presence where your target market will most likely be.

Some of the spaces where you want to be present include search engines (through your own website), social media, email, video-sharing sites, and forums. It might feel like a lot and it is! That said, you don’t have to do everything all at once. Focus on a couple of channels first, ensure that you have traction there, before moving on to the other.

You should also evaluate which channels work best for your brokerage. If you aren’t seeing results, make some adjustments with regard to ad budgets, content style, and targeting. If you still aren’t achieving your objectives, it may be wiser to leave that platform and focus your efforts somewhere else.

Invest in SEO

As previously mentioned, you need to be visible in order to stand out. One of the ways to do this in the digital space is through SEO or search engine optimization. Essentially, SEO techniques help your website and its contents get indexed higher on search engine results pages (SERPs). The higher you are in the SERPs, the faster you’ll be seen. Those at the top are also often seen as trustworthy results, which add to your credibility.

Do note that while SEO techniques are usually applied on websites, you can also use them on the content you post on other platforms. For example, don’t take the “About” section on Facebook or YouTube for granted. Follow the same techniques as you would on your website so that these pages will also rank high in SERPs.

Host Events, Both In-Person and Online

It’s easier for someone to establish rapport with a brand or company if they can put a face to it. Thus, don’t limit your content to just photos and videos. Consider live events as well, such as webinars, where you can discuss the latest real estate industry developments with your peers. You can even host a Q&A session about a job opening or post “day in the life” vlogs created by your own agents.

For in-person events, networking sessions are always a great idea. These gatherings present the perfect opportunity to reach out to passive candidates, as well as further bring your brokerage’s name as an industry leader. You can also host “lunch and learn” sessions as pocket events every so often, so that you’re always top of mind amongst colleagues, clients, and job seekers alike.

Step Up Your Customer Service

Last but certainly not least, you need to step up your customer service strategies if you want to be a stand-out brokerage. Make use of technology like chatbots so you can always address queries as they come; you should also prepare FAQs, blogs, and instructional videos in case the automated responses don’t do the trick.

That said, there are also those who prefer to speak with another person than deal with chatbots. Thus, you need to provide an easy way to access this option; don’t bury it under layers and layers of automated chat or you’ll invite customer ire.

You should also maintain the same level of service and communication with job applicants. If you don’t provide regular updates or worse, if you leave candidates hanging, they’ll be more than willing to take their talents to another real estate brokerage. Your reputation as an employer will also take a hit.

These are only a few recommendations on how you can set your brokerage apart from its competitors. If you haven’t focused on these aspects already, consider improving them now so you can continuously steer your brokerage towards success.