Estate Agents: Are you Playing the Long Game?

You’re a fantastic estate agent, right? Of course you are.

Or, you think you are.

But how does your target audience see you?

Or, do they see you at all?

Each day you show up, and you run your agency. You collect leads from property portals, and you duly go to booked valuations.

Depending on your workload you work early, you work late, you work weekends, you add your market share stats and data to your website so that everyone can see how amazing you are. You give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back at the end of the week for all the hard work and the hours you are putting in.

Collecting luke-warm leads that may or may not get followed up, valuing properties that you may or may not win, working from 6am to 9pm and shouting about all your hard work doesn’t make you a fantastic agent though.

It makes you a reactive agent. Your target audience doesn’t really ‘see’ you doing any of these things.

If you’re working 12 or 15 hour days, there’s a reason for it – and it’s not because you’re busy pushing your brand out there and drumming up the business – it’s because you’re reacting to day to day stuff that ‘needs to be done’ for your business even to be viable.

And there are a million and one reactive estate agents out there.

• The biggest mistake that estate agents make is being reactive rather than pro-active in their marketing efforts.
• The second biggest mistake estate agents make is not playing the long-game in said marketing efforts.
• The third biggest mistake estate agents make is being startlingly aware that they are not being pro-active or indeed playing the long game in their marketing efforts… and thinking it doesn’t matter.

Well, it does matter!

An estate agent who understands that a pro-active and consistent approach is critical in their marketing efforts, one who understands it’s not enough to show up and work the hours, one who gets that it’s a long, slow road to winning the race, is the agent who is correctly playing the long game.

Building respect and becoming the expert, go-to agent in your location does not happen overnight. You have to court your target audience. Put yourself in front of them (and that’s not just by advertising your stock on the property portals). Get them to truly trust you.

And you can do precisely that with consistent content marketing.

Oh, hang on, you already do content marketing?

You posted an article on your blog in January?

Just the one? But it was a good one?

Nope sorry, it doesn't matter that it was the best article you've ever published.

Because you only posted once.

You thought you were pro-active, but if your approach to content marketing is not consistent, you will not get noticed by your target audience.

Show up regularly, and by that, we are talking a minimum of once a week, forever, with content of value, and you will get noticed.

It’s that simple to be pro-active when marketing your agency.

I’ll do it later.

I’ll do it tomorrow.

I’ll do it next week.

I’ll do it next month.

Not good enough!

Putting a task off before you’ve even thought about the potential positive outcome is something we are all guilty of doing.

But every day you are not pro-active is a wasted day when you could be out there playing the long-game. If you want to stand out over your competitors, quit being a reactive agent, get a clear content plan in place and settle in for the long haul.

Ultimately you will come out on top.