Best Practice: Dominate a (Very Tiny) Market!
One of the biggest mistake agents make is to take on listings and buyer clients from a wide geographic area.It’s tempting because in working our SOI, we know people from many areas, and it’s hard to say no to business.However, a laser-like focus on one neighborhood or community can create efficiencies in terms of marketing, expenses, and allow you to dominate the market.
My niche is a one square mile area of land – that’s right.That’s not a typo!I can walk to all my listings.I spend very little on gas.I see my face on a half dozen sign riders during my walk.People stop and talk to me about real estate on my walk, at parties, and at community events.
Here’s what my geographic market niche looks like on a Google map:
Within three years as a new real estate agent I became the #1 listing agent in both sales amount and volume and have stayed #1 ever since by focusing on this very small geographic area. I do have sales and earn money from referrals outside the area, but I can attribute $17 million in closed listing volume from the area within this circle since 2004. That doesn't even count buyer volume. Now does it seem worth it?
1.Pick the Right Geographic Niche. Make sure it’s an area where you have inroads already. In my case, it was my own community, where I had been active in local organizations. You also want to be sure that there is enough turnover of homes and at a price point where you can make a living from it. You can’t expect to get 100% of all the business in a geographic niche. If you can make a living off of 15% of the annual sales and dominate the market (become #1) then you’ve got enough of a base for a geographic niche.
2.Focus Your Marketing on Social Media. Create a community blog where there is a calendar of events, create a real estate blog focused on your community, create a Facebook Fan Page for your community, sponsor the community on AR’s Localism, Twitter, etc. Another best practice I’ve written about, which was even Featured on AR, is to drive traffic from one social media site to another. Post a link to a community blog post on Facebook and Twitter, put a widget for Facebook on your community blog, etc.
3.Be a Publicity Hound. Remember my best practice blog about publicity? Make sure that the news media knows you are best resource for information about your community – not just for real estate, but for anything about your community. You know what’s going on because you publish about your community every day on social media.
4.Put Your Face and Your Website on Sign Riders. Go after listings on the major streets. Sign riders are free advertising and bring you both buyers and more listings. As one buyer said, “You must be the one to call. I saw five of your signs as I drove through the area.” People who have never met me, stop me in public places – “You’re that REALTOR in Black Rock. Can I talk to you about my home?”
5.Go After Subscribers and Send Out E-mails. Capture e-mail addresses, they are critical for effective e-farming. Without e-mail addresses all you are doing is sending out broadcast messages and you don’t know who is receiving them or how to follow up. I have over 480 subscribers to my Constant Contact e-mails and I send out 50 e-mails a year. When subscribers sign up, they give me their names, addresses, and phone numbers as well as their e-mail addresses. They have the opportunity to Unsubscribe with each e-mail, but very few do (and those are mostly people who have moved out of the area).
Feel free to click on the icons below under my signature, if you want to see examples of my Black Rock community blog, Black Rock real estate blog, Black Rock Facebook Fan page, or other social media focused on this niche market.
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