We’re entering a time when a business might be slowing down if you’re a real estate professional. With record low interest rates, changing lifestyle priorities, and limited inventory for years, you were probably turning clients down as a real estate agent. The market has shifted in the past year, perhaps leaving you wondering about the best ways to keep your business thriving.

Word-of-mouth marketing can play a big role in that. Despite the saturation of digital marketing strategies, traditional word-of-mouth remains hard to top in terms of effectiveness.

These referrals remain a significant source of income for agents who effectively harness the power of this strategy. 

So, how can you boost your marketing with word-of-mouth reviews and referrals?

No matter their budget or anything else, give each client the most memorable experience you can deliver. You want to ensure that you’re someone who’s accessible to them, responsive, and who answers their questions. Solve problems before a client even realizes they exist, and then follow up once the deal closes. It’s that follow-up that can be the nudge or reminder a client needs to leave a review for you online or share their experience with someone else.

If you aren’t putting a fair amount of resources and attention toward your email marketing, commit to doing so in 2023. You want to use your email marketing lists to keep in touch with current and past clients, nurture these relationships, and use them to build new ones.

Your email marketing shouldn’t be focused only on sales. Instead, use it as a way to be a source of education and information for your readers. This will keep you top-of-mind for them, and they’ll be more likely to share their experiences with other people.

At a minimum, try to send out an email at least once a month. The more you can segment your audiences and send relevant information to each of them, the better.

While other real estate agents are technically your competition, they’re also a way to market your own services. When you get to know other agents, if they aren’t able to serve a client's needs, they might end up recommending you and vice versa.

There’s traditional word-of-mouth marketing which is informal and not always easy to track. In this model, your clients are simply talking about how great you were to people they know.

Then, there are other ways you can facilitate word-of-mouth marketing in a digital environment. Any time someone leaves a review or testimonial, this is an aspect of word-of-mouth marketing.

You can have a testimonials page on your website, and it’s also a good idea to encourage people to leave reviews on your social media pages. Another place where people can leave reviews for you is Google. Set up your Google My Business page, optimize it, and be proactive about asking your clients to share their experiences.

Many clients are more than happy to recommend you, but they aren’t sure how to do it, so make it easy for them.

Another great digital way to embrace word-of-mouth marketing is through video. If you have a client who was exceptionally happy with your services, ask them if they’d be willing to create a short video detailing their experience. Then, you have content you can share in many different places and get a lot of mileage out of it. You can share video content on your social media pages, website, and YouTube. You can also embed videos in your email marketing.

To sum up, while word-of-mouth marketing is something that ultimately happens organically, there are still things you can do as a real estate professional to cultivate it. Along with going above and beyond to deliver the best service and results to every person you work with, actively ask for reviews and feedback. 

Source: The Power of Word-of-Mouth Marketing for Real Estate Agents Realty Times (April 25, 2023) Ashley Sutphin