Determining your niche for real estate marketing will be one of the most impactful things you do this year for your marketing.
Knowing what type of content to create and market yourself as a real estate professional online can be a difficult task.
Saying things like, “I need to do more video” is like saying “I need to go to the gym more”. Without a plan, these great endeavors to grow your business often fall flat due to the busyness of the job itself, not making time for the creative process, struggling to pick the best social platform to hone in on, or just not knowing the right questions to ask yourself to get yourself started.
One of the best ways to first begin narrowing in on your content strategy is picking a niche where you can dominate and present yourself as the expert.
In real estate marketing, it is very important to consider targeting niches, as connecting with a niche can make marketing significantly cheaper.
Explore niches that can be defined by traits generally viewed as positive unifying factors by people who belong to this group--these could include native language, religion, military affiliation, ethnic identity, sexual orientation.
Also consider niches where you can really shine in your unique areas of experience and expertise, such as luxury home buyers/sellers, first time homebuyers & newlyweds, medical or academic professionals, or vacation homes and out-of-state purchases.
Here is how you carve out your niche for your marketing:
Step 1: Determine a real niche (Hint: pick your audience!)
A great way to determine your exact audience is to begin asking yourself questions like, “what is important to me?” or “what trait do I see within myself that I tend to automatically connect with when meeting new people?” and writing down your answers.
Any traits that are important enough to jot down are prospective niche audiences.
Do not skip this step, as so often we hear people wanting to become the real estate expert in a given area, but the thought stops there. Who do you want to appear as an expert to?
A pursuer tech moving from California is typically going to want to connect with someone potentially very different than a small retail business owner who has grown up in the area all their life looking to purchase homes.
Ages, occupations, interests, passions, music, religion, family, background, location, schooling-- with so many points of potential connection, really take the time to ask yourself those questions and dig into more about what makes you, you. This will give you a great idea of who your niche target audience is.
Step 2: Examine your niche size
Once you have taken the time to define your niche, it’s time to take a look at the size. No, you do not need to get an exact number; finding an estimate will do in order to determine if it is large enough to be profitable.
Let’s use an example here, and see how many ‘pros’ vs ‘cons’ that we can check off for this niche. Let’s say you find that your niche are people interested in tech, moving from California (because you yourself also moved from California-- Huntington Beach to be exact) to relocate to a new job in the Bellevue/Redmond area, who are also big foodies and wine connoisseurs.
Ok, first of all, the number of people moving from California to the Seattle area is already a big number and is continuing to grow each year. According to the US Census data, more than 658,000 people living in Washington in 2018 were born in California. Pro: CHECK.
Seattle Eastside seems to be expanding faster than ever and tech jobs are booming right now. With Facebook doing its META universe, the growth is only going to become more. Pro: CHECK.
There are tons of food channels, networks, bloggers, influencers, in the Seattle Eastside area. Pro: CHECK.
Ok, we are onto something here!
Step 3: Be You
Oftentimes, business owners and agents alike want to move into a market because the money is there, so they make a fast jump into action before really understanding the market as a whole.
This becomes dangerous because communities that you are looking to work with now have the potential to see you as phony--only being there because that’s what is trending, or exciting, or where the money is.
It is important to be very familiar with the targeted niche audience and have a solid understanding of the culture within the group. This is not to say that you shouldn’t go where there is big potential.
But caution yourself before diving in head first; before really knowing the people you are looking to communicate with.
If your connection is weak, that means you have work to do in getting to know that people-group--that niche audience--better.
Conclusion: Get to know yourself, get to know your audience
In reality, this exercise of narrowing down your niche audience and understanding who you want to communicate with and attract to do business with, is a phenomenal experience. You will learn a ton about yourself and your business.
Once you have a clear idea of your niche audience, all online marketing you create then has a goal and purpose. You no longer are just posting to make a post because you feel ‘behind’ on social media.
You now are creating content that has direction and a specific goal of communicating directly with YOUR niche. This experience can be empowering and life-changing, so don’t forget to have fun!
FreeStyle out.
