The Right Media at the Right Moment
Agents know that the key to their success lies in how well they are able to demonstrate not only their industry knowledge and experience, but their attentiveness to their client’s needs. But in today’s digital climate, customers don’t necessarily have just ‘one need’. The best agents know that building lifelong relationships with customers is the gift that keeps on giving, leading to repeat clients, referrals and the broadening of their own business goals. And because customers today are digitally adept in their own right, agents know that one of the most efficient ways of keeping their brand top-of-mind for their audiences is by targeting the right media at the right moment.
But what does ‘the right moment’ look like? What does ‘the right media’ entail?
Right Moment in a Customer’s Life
In a nutshell, it’s the key moment when a customer has expressed the desire or need to buy or sell a home. Without delving too deep, we can assume they may do so in a number of different ways: visiting an agent’s website to see what’s on there, sending a Tweet out into the Twitterverse for recommendations, joining a relevant Facebook group to find some inspiration on taking the first step, etc. However an agent comes to identify this moment in a prospect’s activity, there are a number of ‘right media’ items they can start pushing in order to get the ball rolling:
- Listings catalogue
- A ‘welcome to all first-time homebuyers’ guide or booklet (in either digital or print format, or both!) that they could quickly offer for free
- A short video introducing themselves as well as key testimonials
- A free consultation offer etc
The list goes on, but this gives a small indication that there are so many things an agent can do to get themselves ahead of the competition, and show that they have any number of solutions to offer on hand.
Right Moment in the Industry
What we’re really talking about here is the active social listening that smart agents do so as to become proactive and become the first to create and offer content that answers or addresses new hot topics in the industry.
Because the market is always changing and so are customer buying trends, agents who do well are the those who have their finger on the pulse of trending news, whether it be the repercussions of Stamp Duty, or the long-term effects of the COVID-19 pandemic in the US housing market, or finding out the most Googled homebuying related searches by audiences in the last two months etc. Agents then have a great opportunity to stand apart from other professionals, doing their homework and writing up a quick blog post on their take on the issue and perhaps offer some recommendations to their audiences. They don’t have to have all the answers; what matters is they are placing themselves right in the ongoing dialogue, offering ‘the right media at the right moment’, especially for all those people who are actively searching online for commentary and guidance on the issue.
Right Moments throughout the Day
This is about an agent’s social media flow, because savvy real estate professionals harness the power of social media channels and make it part of their sales pitch, advertising, and overall media strategy.
Social media offers the unique chance to go beyond one-way broadcasting (non-stop advertising of self and brand), and open up instead diverse avenues of two-way conversations with new audiences. There are so many softwares that enable agents to schedule regularly programmed messages and images to be broadcast throughout their social media platforms. These don’t have to ‘push product’ all the time, but instead are a great way for the agent to show a more personal side, or get in on relevant Twitter or Instagram hashtags. Agents can also host Facebook Live, Q&A or AMA (ask me anything) sessions where they can field questions from audiences (and it’s also a great way to build a subscribers base quickly). The good thing about social media is that the potential for ‘right media’ is endless, and it’s almost always ‘the right moment’.
Right Moment in CRM
Agents who have crafted an efficient and smooth-running CRM system will be able to not only have new prospects coming in every month, but will have prospects who are being nurtured progressively down the customer funnel, even right down to transaction.
But in the world of CRM, great agents know there are multiple ‘right media’ that need to be deployed at multiple ‘right moments’. Just a few examples:
- Sending a free e-Book or webinar as an automatic thank you for them signing up with their email (which goes directly into the database)
- Monitoring their continued activities on the website via CRM and noticing they may be viewing certain types of listings more than others, thereby sending them special deals or additional housing market info
- Giving additional and personalized messages or video content once they’re further down the funnel and increasingly become ‘high-intent’ customers, and so on.
Right Moment Retargeting
Great agents know that it’s worth retargeting prospects, because roughly 95% of all traffic on websites bounce, leaving a huge market that otherwise remains untapped potential. Agents can retarget in various ways;
- Adopt retargeting tools that help identify higher-intent customers (those who have viewed more than one page etc) and exclude visitors who have already signed up
- Create special, branded ads featuring services that target specific segments of traffic
- Do some A/B testing and find a way to upcycle or rebrand landing pages after figuring out which elements are proving least popular with new audiences
- Utilize Facebook custom ads, reporting and multiple dynamic ads to help keep the brand top-of-mind for prospects
- Create retargeting lists and craft new, effective ads and copy that cater to newsletter subscribers, social media users, etc
