The DS Murphy Newsletter

By: Hudson Holder – CRA, AI-RRS, SRA with D.S. Murphy

If you are in any corner of the real estate industry, your inbox is probably overflowing with emails from marketing firms – offers for self-help seminars, ads from social media branding experts, invitations to webinars about operational efficiencies, gaining more business, and New Year’s marketing resolutions.  Real estate corporations spend millions of dollars every year on marketing because of its direct impact on profitability.

The beauty of the real estate business is the entrepreneurial options within a corporately marketed business structure.  Most residential real estate practitioners – whether agents or appraisers – essentially operate as independent contractors.  Many of the highest producing and highest income real estate professionals choose to align themselves under a larger corporate organization that has brand name recognition and marketing dollars.  These individuals see the benefit and economies of scale with being part of a larger organization.  The benefits of corporate marketing to the individual are astronomical.  However, the affiliation with an organization that spends thousands or even millions of dollars per year on marketing does not equate to equivalent earnings among independent practitioners under the corporate umbrella.  Why?  Because marketing yourself is critical in residential real estate – regardless of your experience or affiliations.

You can pay $10,000 to attend a seminar for a guru in a three-piece suit to teach you how to market yourself – or you can look around at the most successful people in our industry.  I have had the opportunity to work with, for, or as a reference from some of the most successful people in the residential real estate industry in the state of Georgia over the past 20 years.  The quantity of success depends on how you define success, which is more than money to me.  These are the people who have become leaders in major organizations, gained the respect of peers inside and outside their organizations, helped and/or changed the industry, maintained reputations, and made a lot of money.

Here are some of my observations about how successful real estate pros market themselves:

1. They believe in themselves and believe in what they are selling; if you do not operate with conviction about your skill set or your service/product, you or your product will not be in demand.
2. They do not look at marketing themselves as a short-term program or New Year’s resolution; rather they view it as a set of fundamental values or practices which will inevitably lead to respect and success.
3. They put work quality at the top of the priority list. Poor work quality is not a marketing tool in any industry, nor can it be meaningfully explained.
4. They treat people right and treat them equally, whether customers, employees, or people at the subway station.
5. They make deliberate efforts to self-improve; these people have professional designations, advanced degrees, and credentials that no one coaxed out of them or paid them to obtain.  These people are life-long learners.
6. They know what they are talking about and have done the hard work to become experts in their field.
7. They communicate well.
8. They have the confidence to let money be a side effect.

While there is obviously legitimacy to marketing efforts that analyze google ad clicks, online algorithms, and Realtors dancing in TikTok videos to gain millennial market share, marketing yourself is fundamental at its core.  If you pursue excellence everyday in your work quality, the way you communicate and conduct yourself, and the way you treat people, your customers will hire you because of YOU, time and time again.