I imagine that when real estate agents do any type of marketing, their goal is to have people choose them as an agent. That’s how you (as an agent) get paid. So a good question to ask is why anyone would want to choose you. What is your competitive advantage? I’ve got to be completely honest with you: when I’m looking at a bus bench ad, or at the sea of faces in the newspaper, “competitive advantage” isn’t something that is immediately visible. If my decision was based on who has the nicest smile, maybe, but otherwise these ads are pretty useless in terms of communicating value to a potential client. Now, if you’re that guy who has a full 4-page spread of listings all to yourself I can imagine that would generate some interest. But according to “that guy’s” ad, he’s in the top 0.5% of all agents, so we need a strategy for the 95.5%.

Let’s be honest about something else: you have a lot to prove. Like most households, my wife and I were hesitant to hand over $12,000 of our home equity to someone else (especially in this market). The public doesn’t understand everything you have to do; and they also don’t want to hear a sob story about how hard it is in-between commissions. What they do want to hear is why you’re worth that money. You need to prove to your clients one thing: that they can trust you to work your butt off to sell their home (or purchase a new one). You need to know your stuff, you need to be creative, and you need to build trust.

Trust is key. I know I just said that in the previous paragraph, but it’s the most important thing you will read today. Trust is key: when people trust you, they will call you up and ask you to sell their home. So how do you build it?

This is an idea that comes from the guys at 37signals: people trust those that teach them. The best way to do this is to start a blog, and post at least every week. Here are the rules:

• Be genuine: You know what I would love to hear, just once? A real estate agent telling me that now is not the right time to sell! If you do that, you will gain my trust, and I will talk about you with everyone I know.
• Take a stand: This goes with #1, but the other thing you need to do is take a stand about the things you believe in, and be willing to lose a part of your “potential market” for it. I, personally, think that buying a home in a trailer park is a bad deal. In my market you could pay $80,000 for a poorly built structure, have to pay hundreds in monthly fees, and still not own the land it sits on! If I was an agent I would be honest with people that are looking for their first home: don’t buy a mobile home. It would be way better for them to wait, save, and by a condo or a smaller starter home. I’m willing to bet that people would respect me more for taking a stand on something that’s important to me.
• Say something that matters: this is where your social skills come in. You need to listen to people around you. What’s the current “nerve” that you need to hit? Right now, in my hometown there are a lot of people that bought 2nd and 3rd homes in the “boom” hoping to flip them and make them a quick buck. Now they’re freaking out because the market has crashed, and they are left holding the keys (and three mortgage payments). I just asked my agent if he, or anyone in his office, bought 2nd properties during the boom. He said: “Nope, none of us. We’ve always felt like it’s almost always too risky.” That’s good advice; I hope that he said that during the boom, when the trend was for every homeowner to use their home equity and pick up additional properties. That’s advice that matters.
• You have to write it yourself: Given everything I’ve just said, you can’t delegate this off on somebody else. You can’t go and buy some pre-written content. You can’t have your assistant do it. It has to come from you, or it will just look like all the other generic crap out there

Once you’ve got a blog, and you’re updating it regularly, you’re going to have a pool of great content. This is content you can use in other places: your email newsletter, articles you write for the paper, or that next talk you give at the Chamber meeting.

Equally beneficial, people are going to start visiting your web site regularly. Your organic search results (on Google) are going to improve. And your visitors are going to come back. Eventually, it’s very likely that they’ll ask you to serve them.

What if I’m not a good writer? You don’t necessarily have to post writing on your blog. You could post video, images, or a weekly cartoon strip (illustrated by you). Gary Vaynerchuk, owner of winelibrarytv.com, realized early on that he couldn’t write; but he was great on-screen. For the past 3 years he has produced a new episode of his show every single day and amassed a following of thousands.

At one point, my wife and I were thinking about moving to Prince George. We started our search on the web. We were looking for more than just home listings, we wanted to get a feel for the community. The first site we found was Dean Birks. He maintains a video blog and a real estate blog where he passionately explain why “Prince George BC is a fantastic place to live, work and invest.” His posts provided real insight into the community, and were personal and honest. I instantly trusted him.