There is an old adage that states, “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Now, this is normally said in a playful or sarcastic manner, but there is definitely some truth to it. When it comes to working as a real estate professional, who you know is a major part of your livelihood. It’s very hard to be good at what you do without creating connections with people that will either buy/list with you or refer someone to you who will. Relationship building is an integral part in your job, so let’s take this back to elementary school and talk about the 5 W’s of relationship building marketing.
To begin discussing the 5 W’s of relationship building marketing, we have to dispel the notion that advertising and marketing are the same thing. Advertising and marketing ARE NOT the same thing. Advertising is a subcategory of marketing and it makes up a very small piece of the huge pie that is marketing. When you are truly marketing yourself and your business, you are using multiple avenues to grow your brand. And while social media has most definitely helped to create these connections, it doesn’t have to be the only avenue you take, you can take the back roads too! Jared James likes to say that there are different ways that you can pay for this. The first is check equity. This is when you are physically putting money towards growing the brand. The other is sweat equity. Sweat equity is about putting in the work to get your brand know. When you are working on relationship building marketing, sweat equity is key to the development of relationships that will create business for you. Now that we’ve got that straight, let’s get into the 5 W’s of relationship building marketing (end rant).
WHy:
Now, I’m going to mix things up a little bit here and I am going to start with why it’s important to have relationship building marketing. To start, if you do not have relationships in this business, essentially, you have nothing. People want to work with people that they can relate to. Creating these connections is crucial to showing people that you can relate to them and that they can trust you with their business. Relationship building marketing can also get you business by association. Not only will building these relationships get you referrals, but being associated with certain people can get you business from their sphere as well. So now that we know why it’s important, let’s move on to what.
WHAT:
Mixing it up again… Let’s talk about what relationship building marketing actually is. Now we’ve discussed what marketing actually is, and we’ve discussed that sweat equity is the key factor to relationship building marketing, but how do you tie this all together? Relationship building marketing for us means that we are going to use multiple different avenues to create, maintain, and leverage relationships that we have to create business. Now a lot of the leg work in this is going to require some sweat equity, but we can also put some money towards it by running ads once the relationships have been built.
WHO:
When you first start relationship building marketing you might ask yourself, “Who the heck am I going to start with?” Think about the local businesses that you go into multiple times every week. Do you know the owner of your favorite coffee shop, breakfast spot, hardware store, or restaurant? If not, that is a great place to start. In fact, sit down and write down a list of at least 25 different businesses that you go into on a regular basis. Then write yes and no at the top of the page and check off whether or not you know the owner of that business and they know you. Your goal is to keep growing this list and to check off yes as many times as you can. Then we can talk about where and how we are going to grow these relationships.
WHERE & HOW:
Let’s start with where we are going to create, maintain, and leverage these relationships. First of all, the physical where is going to be at the place of business of the person who you are creating the relationship with. You will need to physically go into the business and speak with the owner of the business. Tell them why you enjoy going to their business. Ask them questions about their business (why they got into that business). Then, once you find something that you can relate to, relate it back to why you got into real estate. Be genuine with them. One of the biggest faults that you can make is creating relationships strictly to get business for yourself. You should want to create relationships in the community because you love the community. The business that it brings you should be a bonus.
Once that relationship has been created, you can ask that business owner to shoot a quick video with you. For the most part, it’s free advertising for them so they most likely won’t say no. Interview them about their business for 5 minutes or so. Then, once you have that video, you can post it on your social media accounts (either organically or paid). This is going to do a few things for you. First of all, you are building a relationship with the owner of that business. They are going to be more likely to send people your way knowing that you have helped them out as well. It’s also going to show potential clients that you know the community well and that you have an interest in the community, which in turn will get more people to want to work with you.
WHEN:
Now when the question “When?” comes up in terms of marketing, the answer should be “ALWAYS” Especially when it comes to relationship building, the train should never stop. This is part of what you should be doing on a daily basis. This is why it is so important to systematize your business. If you’re only marketing yourself when you have no business, what are you going to do when the business you just marketed runs out? Only marketing yourself when you have no business creates a vicious cycle of peaks and valleys in our flow of business. As a real estate professional, you want to make sure that you always have business coming in, and the only way to do that is to make your marketing a part of your daily routine.
Now that you know the 5 W’s of relationship building marketing, it’s time to go out there and start building those relationships. I know that it can seem a little bit daunting or uncomfortable to get started, but the only way to get started is in fact, to get started. Don’t worry about having a massive database by next week, build relationships as they come. This is a snowball effect, not an avalanche. How do you eat an elephant?... One bite at a time.