Marketing And Real Estate Agents

Marketing and Real Estate Agents. The American Marketing Association defines marketing as "the process of planning and executing the pricing, promotion, and distribution of goods, ideas, and services to create exchanges that satisfy individual and organizational goals."

Many companies, particularly prior to the 1970s, were product-focused, employing teams of salespeople to push their products into or onto the market, regardless of market desire.

However, a market-focused, or customer-focused, organization instead first determines what its potential customers desire, and then creates the product. In terms of marketing and real estate agents, this would be done by finding out some information about the clientele who are in need of property i.e. demography, financial status, then matching them up with real estate properties.

There are two major aspects of marketing; the recruitment of new customers (acquisition) and the retention and expansion of relationships with existing customers (base management). It is especially important for real estate agents to continue marketing to past clients, because if they were satisfied in the past, there is a greater chance they will come back to the agent for future procurement.  They are also likely to refer friends, family and colleagues in the interim.

Acquisition & Retention An emerging area of study and practice concerns internal marketing, or how employees are trained and managed to deliver the brand in a way that positively impacts the acquisition and retention of customers.

Once you, as a real estate marketer, have converted a prospective buyer, base management marketing takes over. The process for base management shifts to building a long term relationship, nurturing the links, enhancing the benefits that sold the buyer in the first place and improving the products/service continuously to protect the business from competitive encroachments. 

Most real estate agents drop the ball right here, as many of them are eager, or compelled, to move on to the next buyer, thereby leaving past buyers under served.  Ever wonder why a past client went through another Realtor when they got ready to sell again?  Now you know why! 

In terms of marketing and real estate agents specifically, it is important for real estate professionals to acknowledge these marketing distinctions, as the cost of acquiring new customers is escalating and the continued marketing to past customers is less expensive and is arguably equally productive.  As an old friend once said. "Sometimes it's better to keep and maintain what you have than to go out and buy all over again."