It’s difficult to imagine another industry that works with and is paid for by a client – the homebuyer – but has to create a marketing strategy that completely bypasses the buyer of their service to sell instead to the referrer, in this case, the real estate agent or lender.
For consumer products, advertising and marketing is the generally accepted method of building brand recognition and sales. Advertising expanded the reach of many industries in the 20th century including fast food, soft drinks, cigarettes, rental cars, and household products (think Proctor and Gamble).
Today, some companies have shifted their marketing efforts to social media, specifically working with influencers to get their product name in front of potential customers under the theory that you are more likely to trust the word of a friend than the palaver of advertising.
This has always been the thinking in the title industry. The homebuyer or borrower, having built a trusting relationship with the real estate agent or lender is likely to follow their advice in choosing their title agent and closer.
But taking a page from the current-day super-marketer, how can a title agent engage in a more sophisticated referral marketing program to broaden their reach?
Everyone is an influencer
Everyone involved in a transaction is a potential influencer and the more often you can engage their support in spreading the word about your agency, the more successful you are likely to be in growing your referral base.
Create the celebratory moment
Throughout a transaction, the title agent and hopefully the real estate agent is telling the buyer and seller to refrain from posting transaction details on social media to prevent scammers from mining that information to try to insert themselves into a transaction. But once the transaction is completed, it’s time to jump into high gear.
Make sure every transaction, with permission from the participants, includes a celebratory photo and post on social media. Encouraging the buyer, seller, and real estate agent to share these posts can increase your visibility exponentially over the course of hundreds or thousands of transactions you complete in a year.
Also, highlight the achievements of your staff on social media. This puts a “face” to your agency
Make it easy to review
Ask for reviews from everyone in the transaction and make it super easy for them to do so. This can include asking for the review at closing and providing a hard copy guide to how and where to do that as well as making sure that follow-up emails include links to those sites where you would like them to post a review.
Create useful content
While it’s fun to post up your latest event on social media, sharing useful content that other people will want to share to their pages is a more productive way to expand your reach. Posting blogs on a variety of subjects that you can link to in your social media posts provides an effective way to get people to your website to learn more about your services. And if you can turn that blog into a podcast, even better! Your real estate clients are on the road all day long. Getting them linked to your podcast to expand their education about the title, escrow and closing process is one more way to stay connected and relevant to your referrers.
Position your staff as experts
Your title agents and closers are experts in their field. Creating short, informative YouTube videos that can be pushed out in your marketing not only provides important education to your sphere of influence but makes an immediate connection between prospective clients and the people they will be working with at your agency.
And remember, Alanna helps you take your message directly to your prospect with Campaigns. You’ve heard the term “If a tree falls in the forest, but there’s no one there to hear it.” The same is true with your content. Your content is only useful if your prospects can take it in. So in addition to using social media, take the link directly to them!
Also, Alanna helps you take care of your clients from start to finish, keeping everyone up to date on progress and important dates throughout the transaction. Accordingly, one of our most valuable services is our post-marketing protocols that keep your name in front of your clients for that next referral. Call us today to learn more!