5 Forces Against Real Estate Brokers

Every brokerage has a fundamental challenge: you want to grow your profits. What are the obstacles to overcome to dominate your market and increase your revenue and profit? 

One of the biggest threats to a real estate broker – new or established – is competition. Who is your competition? How are their actions in the marketplace going to affect your current bottom line and future planning? 

To answer those questions, you must analyze and understand your competition. One way to do that is by using Porter's Five Forces model to break them down into five distinct categories. 

Below are the five forces you are currently losing profit to: 

1. Rivals: your direct competition 

As most real estate brokers, the first person you're losing profit to is rival companies - companies and brokers that do what you do and compete with you directly. You know who they are. How do you prevent an owner from listing his property with another brokerage, how can you reach out to a qualified active buyer before your competition does? How can you make sure that one of your past clients will reach out to you if/when they go back on the market? When rivalry competition is high, advertising and price wars can ensue, which can hurt a business's bottom line. 

2. Sellers/Buyer bargaining power: 

The third thing that you're losing to is consumer bargaining power: powerful customers. Powerful owners and buyers always negotiate to lower your commissions; they ask for more value, increasing your cost. Both of those reduce your profit. Profit equals price minus cost. Your commission always gets squeezed. How can you prevent it? 

3. Threat of new entrants: your new competition 

There is a constant flow of new agents and new real estate brokerage companies using better and smart technology and with great inventory. How do you stay competitive? The easier it is for a competitor to join the marketplace, the higher the risk of a business's market share being depleted. 

4. Powerful supplier and their bargaining power 

The fourth thing is a powerful supplier: supplier bargaining power. There are a lot of different types of suppliers; we're going to talk about your marketing suppliers; companies like Google and Facebook that you typically use for your PPC and online advertising. If they change their terms or increase their cost, raise their prices, they're going to grow your cost, and therefore, lower your profit. How do you protect yourself against it? 

5. Substitutes 

How easy it is for customers to switch from your service to that of a competitor or companies that do something similar, close enough that they could be considered a solution. For sale by owner, individuals not using brokers, property management companies. 

Those are the five forces that you compete against you for profits. Do you have a strategy to beat the five forces and to grow your profit? 

If you're interested in a strategy that can deliver against all five of those, while bringing on new clients in an affordable acquisition cost, you have to look into a different type of strategy to expand your competitive advantage. To that end, Brandora uses data-driven insight technology to help brokers market solely to prospects who are ready to buy now (active buyers) or looking to sell their property (real sellers). 

Brandora eliminates wasteful ad spend, drives down the cost per client acquisition and increases real estate brokers’ profits. 

Related Article: If you are interested in finding out how to grow your profit and how to beat these five forces, click here.

5 Real Estate Marketing Ideas The Pros Use

5 Real Estate Marketing Ideas The Pros Use

There is no “one size fits all” in marketing. Marketing depends on your goals. Whether you are a commercial broker selling office buildings or a residential agent renting luxury penthouses, the way you want to be perceived by your clientele will vary. Your tone, your style, and your content need to be relevant to your target audience. Below are the essential marketing tools we believe a real estate agent/broker should have.

1. Real Estate Website: Brand yourself as a marketing machine

Brand yourself. Let clients find you online. Not only will it help you look professional, but it also shows your marketing capabilities. If you know how to brand yourself, it means you know how to market your listings as well. You can also showcase your recent closings and show your personality. Your website is your online resume. It is easy to put in place and is one of the first things I would do as a real estate professional.

2. LinkedIn Account: Rank on the first page of Google

LinkedIn is an incredibly powerful SEO tool and a great professional social media platform. Translation: You will pop up first on Google search via LinkedIn and look like a pro. It is a free resource that I find is often underutilized by agents. If you’re not much of a writer, hire someone to do it for you. A nice biography with all your credentials can only make you look more legit.

3. Email Newsletter: Stay in their minds; get referrals

Again, you don’t have to do it yourself. Newsletters are time-consuming, and you want to send relevant content to your audience. Hire someone to do it for you: Pick some topics, the frequency, and a design-and-feel for your email blasts, and that’s it. To do an excellent newsletter, you need to know your clients well. What do they want to read about? Newsletters are great for staying at the top of their minds. Consistency is king. It’s better to pick a lower frequency with quality content than to annoy with weekly emails having “meh” content.

4. Blog: Brand yourself as an authority

Whether you are in residential or commercial, you will want to appear as an authority in your field. Not only can your blog help you with search optimization, but it will also brand you as an expert. And we know that real estate is all about trust (and referrals!). Once again, you don’t have to do it yourself; hire someone to manage your blog for you.

5. Headshot: Professional photograph

Yes, it should be common sense, but it still looks as though it is not. I am amazed to see what the brokers I am working with are using: outdated headshots taken in the 90s or selfies taken with their iPhones. I think the worst is old photos: When you meet your real estate agent and discover that he/she is ten years older than the picture he/she has online, it’s just plain deceiving. Be genuine, and show your true colors!

Overall, if you’re not going to keep up with your marketing platforms and just keep a ghost blog, for instance, or send inconsistent newsletters once in a while, don’t do it. Marketing is all about frequency and consistency. Sometimes, less is better. Also, remember that you don’t have to do it yourself; you have plenty of resources to assist you with your marketing. Focus on closing deals, and let professional marketers handle your brand.  

4 Excellent Reasons to Redesign Your Real Estate Website

So you have the best team of brokers, and you just feel that marketing is “Meh.” You’ve built your site in 2012, 2013, and well, you think it’s good enough because marketing is just fluff. Or is it… Well, business owners are experts in their field but not website experts. And that’s why 95% of small businesses have outdated websites. A lot of small and medium brokerages either don’t think about their website much, or don’t realize that it’s outdated.  Here are some ways to know whether it’s time to revamp your site.

1. Your site looks outdated.

Websites have drastically changed over the last few years. Web design is leaning towards clearer, more minimalistic layouts and of course towards great user experience. Just a few years ago, you had to hire an ad agency to design a very simple website for $5,000. But those days are over, and real estate companies now have access to much more affordable solutions. It comes as no surprise, as studies have shown, that customers have more trust and are willing to spend more with businesses offering better-designed websites. 

2. Your site is not mobile friendly.

Your website looked great on a desktop five years ago, when you built it, but looks just odd on a mobile today. That’s okay. A website is a constant work in progress and has to evolve along with the company. Even if you did a great job just a few years ago, updating and improving your online presence is an absolute necessity. Most people are going to visit your website from a mobile, and you want to make a best first impression as possible. Responsive design is a new technology that makes your website work flawlessly on all devices by automatically adjusting to each device. 

 3. It’s hard to update

You need to be able to do these things without wasting money by hiring a web company to do it for you. So, either you are lucky and have an admin, or an office manager that knows how to use your old Wordpress template, or an IT guy who is kind enough to add your recent closings, or new listings to your website. However most likely, you don’t update your site often; your recent transactions are not up to date, your “team” section has brokers who no longer work for your company, and there is still that typo you hate on the home page. Most modern website builders have tools that make updating your site easy. I love Squarespace because of their beautiful design and their user-friendly experience for non-tech users.

4. Your competitors changed their site.

I know. You don’t need to give your site an overhaul every time one of your competitors changes theirs. But having said that, if they make substantial changes, improving their look and rankings, it also means they are pushing you down in searches. If you spend some time on a competitor’s site and realize “Wow it’s sexy” (= “they’re much more appealing than we are”), it’s time to roll-up your sleeves and get busy. It’s time to get cracking on a new design.

5 Reasons Why Real Estate Agents should have their Own Website

5 Reasons Why Real Estate Agents Should Have Their Own Website

1.    Helps to Create a Recognizable Brand

You work in a competitive field, which makes it especially important to create a clear brand image. Ideally, you want your name and logo to instantly conjure up certain images and associations in the minds of potential clients. A website can help present and reinforce your brand image to the world, so that visitors recognize what makes you different without having to do too much thinking.

2.    Works to Shift the Focus onto You and Away from Your Company

If you are a partner at a real estate firm or one of many agents, you are probably listed on the company website, but with so much information on one site, clients won’t even navigate to your bio. Creating an independent website that focuses solely on you, your skills and your accomplishments will allow you to enjoy the spotlight and let clients get a better feel for who you are and what you can offer.

3.    Helps Create Optimized Pages

In the world of online marketing and search engines, no one is flipping through the phone book to find services anymore. They type search terms into their favorite search engine and scan through the first 10 or so results that appear. If you are not showing up on the first page of results, there is a slim chance that people are even coming across your website. Launching a personal website can help you to publish SEO friendly content that will improve search engine rankings and increase organic traffic, which translates into more clients and more sales.

4.    Help Establish Yourself as a Trusted Resource and Industry Authority

Clients want to work with true professionals who know the industry and can help them close deals. Without a strong internet presence, it is almost impossible to establish your credibility. In most cases, your personal website is your chance to make a great first impression. You want to get their attention while also providing truly helpful information and resources. The more clients see you as a trustworthy expert, they more likely they are to want you on their side locating properties and negotiating deals.

5.    Makes You Appear More Accessible

Even if you do have the freedom to only work with exclusive clientele, it is still important to appear accessible and willing to network and be contacted. While you may end up sorting through inquiry emails and phone calls, your personal website can act as the perfect gateway to establishing important connections and generating meaningful leads. The beauty is that you can choose how people are able to contact you. Perhaps you simply direct them to an email address. That is more than enough to create the impression that you are open to being contacted and discussing partnerships.