In another article, you may have read about how partnering with real estate professionals who don’t compete with you can help increase your credibility and get more referrals.

Today we want to go deeper on that subject.

You will learn about finding and screening potential partners for strategic partnerships in this article. The steps needed to find these potential partnerships will be gone over so you know what to do.

Some important points to remember about strategic partnerships and alliances are: We will be discussing how to go about finding the right people or businesses to form a partnership with. it is important to first understand what a strategic partnership or alliance entails. Some key points to remember about these partnerships are:

What Is a Strategic Real Estate Partner?

A strategic partner is an outside entity that you can collaborate with, such as an individual, a real estate team or brokerage, or a business. You must make sure that you choose a partner who does not compete with your own business.

It’s beneficial to collaborate with people who are in complementary, rather than competing, fields. However, it’s best to avoid working with people who are in the same industry and targeting the same consumers.

You can collaborate in a number of ways, such as combining your efforts in the way of content, marketing and branding, or helping each other out with referrals. There are many different ways to work with partners, as I cover in part two of this series.

You need to make sure you are targeting the same audience as your potential partners in order to find ones that are relevant to you.

Who Works With Homeowners?

There are many different entities that provide services that are typically provided to homeowners. Some of these entities include electric companies, water companies, and gas companies.

1) Financials/Legal

• Mortgage brokers
• Lenders
• Insurance brokers
• Lawyers

2) Home-care

• Interior designers
• Furniture companies
• Builder supply stores (For DIY projects)

3) Trades & Services

• Painters & roofers
• Landscape companies
• Electricians, Plumbers & HVAC
• Builders & Construction Companies

There are many businesses in your city that provide services that can add or fix things in your house.

How To Find Strategic Real Estate Partners

But for now, let’s focus on what qualities you want this strategic partner to have. When searching for a strategic partner, you should check if the company is reputable. We will talk more about this screening process later. For now, let’s focus on the qualities you want this strategic partner to have.

EDIT: I am looking for a partner, not a pen pal. This is a list you can use to find potential partners.

1) Through your network

Do you know any other business owners in your area? Do you have a friend or acquaintance that recently received some type of service? Get the information for the business or individual you wish to contact.

2) Online directories

Search the Better Business Bureau, Yellowpages, or Yelp online. Their review systems are a great bonus to using these directories. We’ll discuss this more later.

The company page will have the contact information of the individual or business.

3) Referral groups

A referral group is a group of people who focus on giving referrals to each member. With a referral group, you can find other individuals or businesses that you know are open to collaboration.

4) Business networking groups>

Business networking groups help professionals network and develop relationships with other professionals in the community.

This subject is very important, so we will go into more detail.

Real Estate Marketing Strategies: Ideas, Tools & Plans

Strategic Focus

The most important part of your real estate marketing plan is your strategic focus. It is essential that you get this right before you start using any of the other techniques.

1. Target a Particular Niche
   People have no shortage of real estate brokers and agents to choose from. So how do you become their first choice? By specializing in a particular niche within the broad domains of residential or commercial real estate.John A. Jensen Realty Inc. is a real estate agency that has found success in the senior housing sector. They are one of the leading agencies in that area of the industry.

1. Focusing on a niche gives you several advantages.
   • Your marketing messages are targeted towards a specific audience and are therefore far more impactful.
   • You can dedicate your limited time and resources to building your expertise in one niche.
   • That expertise helps build your credibility which is necessary to connect with a particular demographic.

   There are many options that Honey Bar Media provides for businesses to find their niche.

   This strategy will work best if you are familiar with your audience and pick a niche in the real estate industry that shares the same interests. For example, if you are interested in the military, you can help army veterans find their future homes.

2. Know Your Audience
   How do you ensure you meet your clients’ expectations?It is important to know as much as possible about your target audience. This is an important driver of succeeding in one particular niche. This is especially vital if you are planning to get into the luxury real estate market.

   The more you understand your potential customers, the easier it will be to understand their needs and give them what they want. You need to spend significant time investigating your audience’s lifestyle, habits, and needs.

   Building a good relationship with your clients is important for several reasons. First, it will help you understand their needs better. Second, it will help you build trust with them. Lastly, it will make it easier for you to emotionally connect with them.

Partnerships and Team

You can’t build a successful business by yourself. You need a team of people to help you.

3. Co-list with Other Realtors
   By co-listing with other agents and brokers you can ensure you will get enough leads to survive, by receiving important referrals that you otherwise wouldn’t have access to. If you are concerned about giving away half your profits to other realtors, remember that you will get the same in return.
4. Hire a Marketing Team Member/ Virtual Assistant
   Executing any marketing plan will require time, and you will never have enough of it. You will never have enough time to do adequate marketing and service your clients at the same time. So go ahead and hire an employee, or a part-time virtual assistant if you are on a budget.If you’re looking to save time on routine work, hiring a virtual assistant from a website like Cut Your Payroll may be a good option for you. Barbara Kauffman from Iron Valley Real Estate says that her virtual assistant helped her by qualifying prospects in her database, which allowed her to focus only on those who are genuinely interested.

   Since real estate agents often work out of the office, the iovox mobile app makes it easy for them to collaborate with their employees or VAs. With the app, agents can share records of phone calls with clients and have real-time discussions with their team.

Showcase Your Properties in Style

5. Hire a Pro Photographer
   Photos are an essential component of real estate marketing materials. 89% of all homebuyers believe photos are useful during their decision-making process.While you can take your own photos for your home listing, professional photographs will make a much better first impression on potential buyers. Having impressive marketing materials will encourage people to contact you or attend an open house.
6. Try Out Matterport Scans
   Want to go beyond still pictures?The Matterport 3D camera will be a cutting-edge addition to your real estate marketing toolbox. It combines photos of the interiors and exteriors of the property to create a three-dimensional representation. Prospects can remotely explore the property through VR headsets.

   The Vanderblue Team from Connecticut have an online tour of their historic country estate that you can take.

   Matterport provides you with access to a wide range of network of photographers you can hire.

7. Take Your Audience on a Virtual Tour
   Another way to build an immersive experience for your potential clients is through online virtual tours.In the following text, Steven Ho is a real estate agent who is giving potential homebuyers a virtual tour of the neighborhood Erin Mills. By the end of the video, viewers should have a good idea of what kind of lifestyle they could expect if they were to move into this area.

   Virtual tours can help potential home buyers learn more about a property and its surrounding area. By highlighting nearby schools and hospitals, virtual tours can give home buyers the information they need to make an informed decision.

   Virtual tours can be helpful for commercial real estate deals where people do not have time to visit every option in person.

8. Use Stunning Drone Shots
   Camera drones are one of the hottest technologies in photography and videography. However, only 14% of realtors use a drone while shooting for their marketing materials. This gives you a fantastic opportunity to stand out from the competition through attractive aerial shots.

Get More Leads from Your Website

TheNational Association of Realtors’ 2017 Report found that 95% of people visit company websites when looking for a realtor. If you don’t have a website, your target audience has no way of knowing you exist.

Having a website is the first step in creating an online presence. However, there is much more you can do to attract leads from your website beyond just having it exist. This section provides ideas for marketing your website to generate more leads.

9. Design a Compelling Website UI
   Outdated websites can turn off most potential buyers, so even if you already have a website, consider giving it an overhaul.Real estate websites have to achieve three things:
   • Impress visitors with beautiful design
   • Make it easy to find the information through intuitive and simple navigation
   • Prompt potential clients to take action and call you

   Your website’s design should match your brand’s values and target audience. Hilton & Hyland has a great design that represents their properties well.

10. Make Your Pages Conversion-Centric
    Your real estate website only has an average of 8 seconds to convince visitors to stick around longer. That’s why your site’s home page should be simple and visually appealing.The most important thing you can do when designing your website is to make sure it encourages potential customers to take action.
11. Grow Your Email List Through Opt-ins
    You need to convert as many website and blog visitors into leads as possible. If you rely only on your contact page, you will only get a tiny fraction of the leads you could potentially capture. What you need are opt-ins.An opt-in is similar to a pop-up, in that it is automatically triggered when a visitor fulfills certain conditions on a page. However, unlike pop-ups, opt-ins are not intrusive and can be very effective in capturing leads.
12. Add a Home Evaluation Widget to Your Site
    The #1 question most homeowners ask is “What is my house worth?”The home valuation tool on Real Geek’s website lets users find out how much their home is worth by looking at market reports for their area. People who want to see their value report have to sign up, and their information is kept as a lead.
13. Create a FAQ Page
    You may also receive hundreds of questions about your real estate services and the technicalities of the buying/selling process. Lake Ontario Realty has compiled a huge list of Frequently Asked Questions for website visitors.Providing buyers and sellers with more information about your services increases the likelihood that they will contact you.
14. Add Live Chat to Your Website
    Be always available to connect with website visitors through live chat.
15. Keep Client Testimonials
    After a successful transaction with your client, don’t hesitate to ask them for a testimonial. If the client had a great experience, they would be willing to leave a few good comments on your website.
16. Add Yelp Reviews to Your Website
    Along with testimonials, ask your clients to leave a review on your Yelp Page.If you want your customers to trust you, it’s a good idea to have a lot of reviews. 88% of customers read up to nine reviews before they decide what they think, so the more reviews you can get, the better. You can use Spectoos to embed Yelp reviews on your website, which will help show that others trust you and recommend your business.
17. Optimize Your Website for Mobile Devices
    Having a mobile-optimized website is the easiest way to stand out from the competition.Why?

    Since a majority of users browse your site through mobile devices, you have an advantage over your competition if your website is optimized for mobile devices.

18. Google Analytics
    Google Analytics is a free tool that helps you see the number of visitors your website is getting, as well as which pages are most popular and the corresponding sources of traffic. You can use this information to set content publishing targets for your real estate brokerage, as well as which channels are working for you and focus on those.This means that if you want 400 leads in a month, you need to find out what kind of content is causing your visitors to convert into leads. With that information, you can then create and share similar content on your website and social media platforms.

     

Content Marketing and SEO

Content Marketing is all about providing relevant and useful information to get quality leads with an online presence.

19. Maintain a Useful Blog
    A useful blog about real estate is a great way to provide value for your future clients. The more helpful the content, the more you can build trust with future buyers/sellers.If you want to be successful in real estate like the BREL Team, you need to showcase your expertise with catchy headlines and in-depth insights. This is what sets them apart from other agencies.
20. Create Eye-Catching Infographics
    People love visuals, which is why infographics are so popular. Infographics are a great way to depict useful information and statistics in an easily consumable format that people enjoy viewing and sharing on social media.