Having a strong network with Real Estate Agents is a critical pipeline to staging jobs, no question. However, we have all identified challenges in terms of building referral alliances with the REA community.
Although there is a wave of agents using staging as a standard marketing tool for their vendors, there is a larger faction who use it hit and miss, or do not use it all.
It is not the agents who have the most to lose from a mediocre approach to property marketing, it’s the homeowners.
And therefore I believe that the homeowner is our real target market.
I am asking for your own experience of where staging leads come to your company.
Do the majority of your projects come from agents or homeowners?
How are you reaching those markets?
Let me start with my own experience.
I have never received a staging assignment directly from a REA, although I have been approached by several and marketed to many.
Homeowners have reached me by referral only so far. One of my projects came from a well established residential referral company in my community dealing primarily with guaranteed contracting services. Through them I market interior decorating services.
Two of my bigger projects came from a client with whom I networked while building our businesses.
The rest have come from referral from former design clients.
These vendors came to me from a general understanding that a lot had to be done to get their properties ready for sale. None of them would have looked specifically for a staging service, they were focusing on the renovation and redesign they needed, so they reached out to me for those services, and I did the education about the staging process.
I am working on a marketing strategy which will get me and my colleagues in front of large groups of our target market. For me that would be homeowners transitioning from the equity rich empty nest into the condo. For my colleague Dane Caldwell from 2-Hounds, I presume to guess it would be downtown homeowners and landowners with rental properties, selling vacant living spaces.
Whatever your niche, I would love to hear how your clients have reached you so far, and how you get yourself in front of your target market.
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