How Top Real Estate Agents Crush Competitors | Power Tool 1: Expertization

This is Part 1 of a four-part series on the genius marketing techniques top agents use to crush competitors.

Over the past nearly 3 decades, we’ve seen how top agents supercharge their marketing to accelerate growth and capture enormous market share. The specific methods they use have changed over the years, but the “tools” that power their marketing are virtually unchanged.

These power tools are:

1. Expertization
2. Stickiness
3. Relevance
4. Volume

In this article, we’ll start with Expertization. Stay tuned for deep-dives on the next three tools.

The only way to get big in real estate is to go big – in smart, and radically different, ways. This starts with mindset; how an agent approaches the business of real estate. Because what it means to implement a good real estate marketing strategy – the tools, methods, platforms, messages – will constantly change with technology, markets, regulations, buyer and seller patterns, and so forth. A winning strategy transcends all these things and underlies specific marketing choices.

In working with top agents for about 30 years, we’ve learned that no two market the same. That’s because they all have unique markets, personalities, specialties, and strengths. But it’s striking how they all seem to use the same general strategy powered by the same tools, and go about formulating it in roughly the same way.

Here’s the Top Agent strategy in two sentences: First, top agents learn who their prospective clients really are; what information they’re seeking and what drives their decision-making; where the best places are to reach them (without getting lost in a sea of ads); why they hire an agent (and why they choose one over another); when they might want to move (what time of year, and after what life events); and how they consume content and respond to calls to action. And then, they unleash a beast of a marketing storm integrating all that intel. That’s how they win.

But this insight alone is probably not helpful – it’s not tactical. So, we’ll delve much deeper and look at the four “power tools” used in these big, bold marketing storms. We know a lot about these tools because they’ve been the basis of our real estate marketing products since 1993.

Expertise (a noun) is different from Expertize (a made-up verb). Expertize/Expertization is marketing jargon for marketing that demonstrates a person’s expertise effectively, causing the audience to identify her as a trusted expert. Real estate marketing that “expertizes” is good at showing – not just telling – that an agent is the local real estate expert. The agent’s skills and knowledge must be demonstrated in a compelling way, and not simply proclaimed; otherwise, the marketing would be advertising the agent rather than expertizing him.

It’s important to understand that when we talk about expertization, we are not talking about the actual process of becoming an expert. The assumption here is that an agent already has expert skills and knowledge in real estate. If an agent is new to the field, she should connect with a mentor and spend a few years honing his craft, rather than launching a dishonest campaign that will most certainly backfire.

Let’s explore exactly how an agent (who truly is a real estate expert) can “expertize” himself through marketing.

1. Clarify your expertise
2. Learn how your prospects are NOT experts
3. Find the gap!
4. Make a list of topics

Top agents take great pride in their real estate expertise, and take time to define their most relevant skills and abilities. Often this includes understanding the housing market, seasonal cycles, the impact of the economy (and recently, COVID), negotiation, pricing, marketing homes, finding replacement homes in a tough market, and so on. Top agents who belong to or manage a team understand the skills of their team members as well as their overall strengths as a group.

Top agents also emphasize their “specialty” expertise, like downsizing, vacation properties, condo sales, or whatever sub-market they want to (or tend to) focus on.

How are you an expert? What specific real estate know-how, training, and experience do you have? In what ways are you better than the average agent when it comes to assisting buyers, sellers, or homeowners in general? In what ways are you a mentor or go-to for other agents or industry partners? What real estate topics could you probably write a book about? Write this all down.

Top agents uncover the gaps in knowledge or expertise most of their clients have when it comes to the market, homeownership, and the buying/selling process.

What intimidates, overwhelms, or frightens your clients? Sellers are often overwhelmed by prepping the house, juggling showings, or buying while selling. Buyers – especially first-timers – may get intimidated by competition or pressure. These days, many sellers are terrified they won’t find a replacement home, or worried about how they can finance a new home before they sell their existing one. Buyers might worry about over-paying for a home, or getting over-extended on a loan if their income or expenses change down the road.

What questions do you get? Sellers might often ask what the market will pay and how fast they can sell, or what to expect during the process, among a million other questions. Buyers probably have a million more questions. And homeowners who may not currently be thinking about selling often think and worry about the housing market.

Top agents are skilled at becoming the go-to expert right at the intersection of what the agent knows and what prospects need to know, and don’t know.

You can quickly find this intersection by comparing your list from Step 1 to your list from Step 2. Where’s the overlap?

Start by reading through your Step 2 list – the concerns and questions your prospects have. Circle all the areas where you can fill the gap for prospects, and provide your expertise. Match that question to a related skill or strength you jotted down on your Step 1 list.

When you’re done, you may realize that you have a lot of expertise on your Step 1 list that didn’t match up to your prospects’ needs, and that’s okay. The point of this exercise is to uncover what you know that matters most to your prospects. For example, you may be good untangling title problems, but that probably won’t resonate with most of your prospects.

In order to fill your prospects’ “knowledge gap” effectively, you have to know your prospects well. If you find yourself guessing, take a step back and do some research. Make some calls, talk to some homeowners, probe some more experienced agents, and chat with people who have recently bought or sold in your market.

Now that you’ve sufficiently analyzed your prospects and your own expertise, you should have a good idea of information you can provide that will both get attention and be of value. Make a good, long list of these topics. Highlight the ones that you think are the most important, attention-getting, and relevant.

Starting with your highlighted topics, for each one jot down several ideas for specific pieces of content. You want to come up with specific article, video, email, or social media post ideas (like a focused headline or subject line). For example, a good expertization topic for you might be Prepping your home for sale in Appleville, and good content ideas for that could include “How Appleville home sellers can maximize ROI on pre-sale repairs” and “5 essential to-dos before selling a home in Appleville.”

Try to come up with a total of 15-20 good ideas to get you started. You’ll want to return to this process (or at least a modified version of it) at least once a year, and anytime there’s a major event or change in your market.

Now that you’ve identified the topics which you know a lot about (and which will get engagement from your prospects), it’s time to put your expertise out there. This is called content marketing, and there are many ways to go about it. The best ones for you depend on a variety of factors.

In the next installments of this series, we’ll go into more detail about specific channels and platforms, and how to integrate Expertizing content with the other three Power Tools. But as far as content marketing goes, there aren’t a ton of options. You’ve got: video, print, social media, and email.

The key to Expertization, regardless of the type of content, is to provide content that is:

1. Engaging (attention-getting, interesting)
2. Unique (nothing canned, recycled, or regurgitated from other places)
3. Well-made (well-shot, well-edited, well-written)
4. Informative (addressing real and relevant questions and concerns)

After reading your article or watching your video, your prospects should come away feeling that you offer tangible value as a real estate agent, and that they can look to you as a resource.

Let’s take a look at the different vehicles you can use for deploying your content.

Video is an excellent channel for content marketing, but it’s debatable whether it performs better than written content (and it certainly depends on the industry, customer profile, and the subject matter and purpose of the content). Entertainment videos probably outperform celebrity blog articles, whereas a video about the local housing market may or may not be as effective as a written market update with charts and graphs.

In fact, in a 2021 study by CMI (Content Marketing Institute), only 29% of brands reported that their audiences seem to prefer video over articles, and the remaining 71% reported no obvious consumer preference for video over other types of content. Further, in this same study, 83% of brands reported average or below average results from video last year, compared to 17% showing excellent results.

Having said that, many agents have shared with us that they get great engagement from videos, especially when they are short, well-produced, and sent according to a predictable schedule. Video content may also give your email marketing a boost; Hubspot reported that adding “Video” to your subject line may increase open rates (they stated ‘19% improvement,’ but did not show the source of that data).

If making high quality video content is feasible for you, this is a great medium for Expertization. You can host your videos on YouTube or other platforms, and embed them directly onto your blog. Then, you can email a link to your database (just be sure to include adequate text and a good thumbnail inside your email), and you can post it to your social media channels.

Print marketing, when mailed directly to prospects, is called direct mail marketing. In real estate, it’s often referred to as farming. This is generally the most expensive content option (especially since you’ll need a format bigger than a postcard in order to demonstrate expertise), but it can also get the best engagement. Your budget will dictate when it’s feasible to begin direct mail. Depending on your market, direct mail can be a very productive investment, generating ROIs of 150 to 400 percent or more for agents who use it consistently (Discover survey, 2018).

You’ll want to choose a larger format medium for your campaign, as the “expertizing” content you place on it will be an article (or multiple articles), and can include other features like stats and recently sold area homes.

The most important content you’re sharing should be readable immediately – don’t create barriers like envelopes or excessive folding, and don’t bury it on Page 6. The headline should pop out while the homeowner is sorting their mail, and the entire article should be easy to find and read without any hassles involved.

Although direct mail is costlier than online options, one huge advantage is that you can send it to prospects who aren’t already on a list that you’ve compiled. They don’t have to “opt in,” meet you at an event, or inquire in any way to receive your mail; they simply need to reside in the carrier routes you mail to. By regularly sending print publications or newsletters with information about the market and other relevant topics, you can over time build a reputation as the local real estate expert. For this reason, direct mail is a great for Experitization.

Direct mail marketing for real estate agents is what we do. If this is of interest to you, we invite you to learn more about our custom, content-driven real estate publications.

Depending on the social media channel, it may or may not be easy to post effective “expertizing” content in its entirety. Instead, the best way to use social media for content marketing is to post a “teaser” update with a good image and a link to the full article or video.

Producing an article or video takes time and effort (and money, if you’re not a skilled writer or video editor), so it’s important to get as much value out of each piece of your expertizing content as possible. Whether you choose video or written-form, it’s a great best practice to post it on a blog which is part of your main website. This makes it easy to deploy across all your social media channels, and also helps your website’s SEO.
Within your blog content, you can place calls to action which direct readers to your contact form, your free home evaluation, or any other lead capture form or landing page. You can also track how many folks click one of those links from your blog, which will indicate how well your content is performing as a lead generator. Just be careful when looking at those metrics in a vacuum; as you will see throughout this series, Expertization is just one component of an integrated success strategy that takes time.

Like social media, email is more of a delivery method than a content form. While it’s true that you include a ton of content in the body of an email, doing so isn’t always the best approach.

For one, email filters have gotten very astute. They can quickly identify marketing email, and are very picky about which marketing messages they let through to an inbox. It’s critical that you use an email system that contains tools to ensure your email is CANSPAM compliant, and that can also run a test on your email to see how “deliverable” it is (and provide suggestions for improving the inbox rate). Typically, using text with lots of different fonts, sizes, and colors will land you in the junk box, as well as emails with spammy words like “Free,” “No risk,” “Call today!” and so forth. Excessive exclamation marks can ding your emails, as well as bad punctuation.

Images can do well in emails, but it’s best to present just one or two, without excessive clutter. For your content email, put your content headline at the top of the email, an image, and the first paragraph or so of the content. If it’s a video, create a professional thumbnail, and include a few sentences describing the clip. And then, like with your social media posts, have them click over to your blog for the complete article.

It’s also a great idea to include your expertizing content within an email newsletter. There are many great templates for creating a newsletter, or you can check out our My e-Newsletter service for a turnkey solution.

Expertization is the first – and perhaps most important – Power Tool in the strategies we see our top agent clients using. But just putting out good content (even using all the channels above) isn’t enough.

In the next installment, we’ll delve into stickiness. We’ll discuss what it means, how top agents leverage it, and how it goes hand-in-hand with expertization. Stay tuned!