Jess Lenouvel

Real Estate Lead Generation Vs Brand Awareness: What’s Most Important For Agents?

January 18, 2023 by Jess Lenouvel

Are you stuck trying to figure out whether you want to increase your real estate lead generation and get more leads…

OR focus on building brand awareness for the long term?

As a real estate agent, it’s hard to know where to put all of your energy and resources when it comes to marketing.

But you know what?

You don’t have to choose between lead generation and brand awareness.

For some reason, a ton of agents I talk to tend to think of lead generation and brand awareness as two distinctly separate entities.

But in reality, you need to learn how to weave both of these objectives together into a well-thought-out marketing strategy.

In this post, you’ll learn about which one is most important and how they work together (hint: they do!). Read on to get tips and insights into each one and understand why having both is ideal!

What is real estate lead generation?

When we talk about real estate lead generation, it’s essentially thinking about how many people are coming into your world.

How well are you able to take someone from not having any idea who you are up until becoming a contact?

Becoming a contact usually means they exchange some sort of information with you. Maybe they give you an email address or phone number. They might reach out and ask for information about your services, or maybe they opt-in for a lead magnet and give you their email.

Obviously, everyone wants leads for their real estate business. Lead generation is the sexier objective.

But the reality is, you can’t have lead generation without brand awareness…

What is brand awareness?

Brand awareness, on the other hand, is simple.

It’s essentially just making people aware of you within your ideal target market.

How visible are you and how much are you consistently getting in front of those people?

The goal of brand awareness is to take up market space in their brain.

At the end of the day, it’s noisy in the minds of our ideal clients.

It all goes back to basic psychology.

Did you know that your brain is only hardwired to easily remember only two brands in any industry?

Try it – close your eyes and think of two shoe brands.

Chances are you’ll say “Nike” or “Adidas.”

Through brand awareness, you can occupy this top spot in your ideal client’s mind.

That way, you’ll be top of mind when they ARE ready to hire.

Brand Awareness Methods

Traditionally, agents have used billboards for brand awareness.

If I go to a specific geographic area, I’m going to think of the guy who has a million billboards there.

But that same kind of brand awareness can be created online.

Social media offers a cost-effective way to be more visible to your ideal clients without investing thousands of dollars in billboards or physical advertising.

Another plus?

Developing an online presence allows you to create deeper connections and longer relationships with your ideal clients.

The human brain is incredibly talented at filtering out anything that’s not relevant to them.

So unless your ideal client is specifically wanting to buy a house or list their home at the exact time they see your billboard…they’ll most likely filter it out as noise.

Social media, on the other hand, allows us to build a true relationship with people that goes beyond just closing deals.

The key to brand awareness is connection.

Are you giving that person a reason to follow you between your transactions? Do you give value, tell stories and showcase the human side of your brand?

Because if you’re *only* throwing real estate content at them 24/7, you’re not going to be relevant to them for the long term.

People move every three to seven years. You have to give them a reason to follow you for the rest of that time. If not, you’ll have a high audience churn.

This is probably the hardest part of creating content as a real estate agent.

You have to learn the strategy to keep people engaged…even when they’re not buying or selling a home.

To keep people engaged for life, read this post about mastering real estate content for social media with three core post types.

So, what’s more important – real estate lead generation or brand awareness?

I actually don’t think that brand awareness and lead generation should be separated.

It’s not a question of one or the other.

There’s a certain amount of brand awareness that has to happen in order for that lead to become a client.

Here’s why I think agents get confused.

They might get a lead and then they focus exclusively on manually converting that lead into a client.

They email them.

They try to go back and forth in the DMs.

They try to get on the phone with them or set up a consult.

When in reality, they should be increasing their brand awareness with this person as well.

They should be presenting content to this person on social media, over email sequences, and through retargeting ads that showcase their authority and social proof.

This way, there’s no need to manually chase your lead.

They essentially convert themselves.

Real estate branding is so much more than just your colors and logo.

Your brand should be the answer to the question:

“What does your ideal client think about when they think about you?”

What do they associate with you? Are you top of mind at all? When they think real estate, does your name pop into their heads?

Brand awareness encompasses all of that, and cannot be taken out of the equation when we’re talking about lead generation.

Brand awareness and the customer journey

Some people might need more exposure to your brand depending on their buyer persona.

Everyone has a slightly different customer journey.

Certain clients might find you and be ready to book with you within a week or two.

Others might follow you for months or even years before finally feeling like they trust you enough to reach out about listing their home.

Everyone is different, but as long as you’re putting out relevant, engaging content and getting in front of the right people at the right time…your leads will become clients in due time.

Want to learn more about creating relevance, omnipresence, and intimacy with your ideal clients?

Download The Listings Lab Guide to master both brand awareness and lead generation and create a marketing machine that helps you scale to seven figures.

How To Create A Real Estate Vision And Mission That Catapults You To 7 Figures

January 11, 2023 by Jess Lenouvel

Do you have a clearly defined real estate vision and mission?

Or are you just chasing the next deal?

Unfortunately, for many agents today, hustling for their next deal is often their driving focus.

Initially, we got into this business for so many reasons.

The unlimited income potential
Flexibility of schedule
And the chance to make an impact in people’s lives

But the truth is, many of us lose sight of these goals along the way.

If that rings true for you, it’s okay. You’re going to uncover how to get back on track in this blog post.

A lot of the time, agents find themselves unconsciously stuck in a cycle of hustling, until one day, maybe decades into their career, they wake up and ask themselves:

What happened? How did I get here? How did my priorities and my life plan become so unbalanced?

Sure, the rush of closing a deal can feel fun. But eventually, you have to realize that you can’t build a life on the highs and lows of the deal chase.

Your business was created to serve your life, not the other way around.

If you live to serve your business, you’re going to be a slave to it – because you’re operating without intentionality. You don’t really have an idea of where you’re going. You’re running your business day to day, quarter by quarter.

You haven’t taken the time to properly craft your real estate vision and mission.

While entrepreneurs are visionaries, visioning is the number-one thing that many business owners overlook.

The real estate industry as a whole is relatively unpredictable. We’re at the mercy of market changes, seasons, interest rates, and government decisions. As a result, most agents run their business by simply putting one foot in front of the other.

But your real estate vision is also the number-one thing that can move the needle forward in your business. When you have a solid, compelling vision, not only does it help you attract A-players for your team, but it also helps you dominate your marketplace.

There are four core components that go into this important visioning work for your real estate business.

They are as follows:

Your real estate core values
Your core purpose (or real estate mission)
Your brand story
Your real estate goals, plans, and targets (these are broken down into your ten-year plan, three-year vision, and your quarterly rocks!)

Let’s get into each component so you have everything you need to develop a real estate vision that lays a strong foundation for your seven-figure business.

Real Estate Core Values

Core values are the foundation of building a thriving culture within your business.

Not only do they help guide you as the CEO, but they also serve as signposts for your team members, too.

By telling people in your company what you stand for as a business, they can base their decisions on those values.

This is crucial because it’ll prevent you from having to be available to answer every single question. Core values also determine practices for hiring and firing, reviews, rewards, and recognition.

Real Estate Mission (Your Core Purpose)

Once you’ve got your core values dialed in, your core purpose comes next.

Most coaches will refer to this as your real estate mission.

But I’m talking about something different than the standard generic mission statement you’ll see on nearly every agent’s website.

This is not “we strive for excellence” or “we take the stress out of finding a home”.

I’m inviting you to go deeper.

If you don’t feel 100% clear on your core purpose yet, that’s okay.

Do not feel pressure to nail down your mission right away. It’s normal if it takes you some time to figure it out.

In essence, your core purpose is why you do what you do – and why it matters.

Part of my core purpose for The Listings Lab is to help agents feel less alone.

I remember struggling in isolation as I tried to get my real estate business off the ground.

It wasn’t until I started building my own tribe, when I found people that cared about me and cared about my success, that I was able to truly see what was possible.

It was then that I realized that connecting with others was the core purpose of my business. And when I transitioned into The Listings Lab, my core purpose became helping agents to build relationships at scale.

You have to have a central idea about why you do what you do.

Your Real Estate Brand Story

As you start to bring people into your world, you have to tell a story around your mission.

This is your brand story.

It’s the origin story of who you are, where you came from, and why you’re here today, doing what you do. It should help people to understand your core purpose.

Your brand story should also increase your like, know, and trust factor with your audience.

So many agents only care about being credible and professional with their brand. Of course, those qualities are important, but the vital piece most agents get very wrong—if not completely ignore—is likeability.

When your clients see you as an authority, that means they trust you to provide a service…but they don’t want to buy those services from a robot.

They want to buy them from a person.

Whether or not those clients like you as a person plays a huge part in whether or not they choose you as their agent—and keep choosing you, as well as telling their friends to choose you.

But you can’t communicate your likeability as a bulleted list of benefits.

Let’s face it—any time we see someone list a bunch of great adjectives about themselves, the less likely we are to like that person. So, the best and only way to communicate your true likeability?

Your brand story.

Your Real Estate Goals

While your core values, core purpose, and brand story set the tone for your vision, you need real estate goals to flesh out what that looks like in practice.

We can break these down into longer-term goals (your ten-year target and three-year picture) and shorter-term goals (your one-year plan and your quarterly rocks).

Ten-Year Target

The ten-year target is actually very simple—where do you want your business to be a decade from now?

The ten-year target is your North Star. It’s your “big, hairy, audacious goal,” as Jim Collins put it in his book Built to Last.

To create that target, meet with your core team to discuss where you want to take the business.

First, ask them where they think the organization could be in ten years—it should be something crazy. The whole idea here is to inspire the hell out of everyone on your team to hit that goal. The goal shouldn’t just be revenue-based. Maybe some aspect of social change could come as a result of the revenue earned.

Whatever the goal, it should be something that gets everyone motivated and inspired. It should make everyone believe they have a purpose—and that they know where everyone is going.

Three-Year Picture

Now, it’s time to get a bit more granular with your real estate business goals.

What do you and the team expect the company to look like and to have achieved in three years?

The three-year picture is a terrific recruiting tool. It helps you ask: “Do you want to be a part of a business that looks like this in three years?” If a candidate’s answer is no, you know immediately that they won’t be a good fit.

Why three years?

There is little value in detailed strategic planning more than three years out.

Yes, you still do the ten-year target because you want to know where the ship is heading. But a vivid three-year picture will let your business attract top-quality team members and drive what all agents want, which is market domination.

Your three-year picture should involve a few things:

Annual revenue over three years
Profit margins
And what I like to call your “painting”

Your painting should help you visualize exactly what your business will look like in three years.

The number and quality of the people on your team, the systems and tech you’re using, the clients you’re serving – the whole lot.

You want to get your entire real estate team included in this exercise, if you have one. A 2-hour team meeting should be enough time to get everyone together and on the same page!

When your three-year picture is clear, it improves your one-year planning process because you can easily figure out what you have to do over the next twelve months to stay on track for the three-year picture.

One-Year Plan

The one-year plan brings the long-range vision down to earth and makes it real. It makes your three-year and ten-year goals possible.

Again, the best way to do this is with a two-hour team meeting. I know all of this seems to require a lot of meetings, but they’re worth it because they remove the possibility of people not being on the same page.

Hold the one-year plan meeting at the end of the current year you’re in, even if you’re planning in the middle of the year, just so everyone’s on the same schedule.

In this meeting, determine your yearly revenue picture by asking your team to estimate the annual revenue one year from that day. Once again, the answers will range, but pick a number.

Then, as before, agree on the profit number. Both answers should fall in line with your three-year picture.

Next, set up three to seven priorities or goals to hit your longer-term real estate goals.

Remember, if you make everything important, then nothing is important, so don’t create too many priorities. Those priorities should be what has to be completed this year for you to be on track for your three-year picture.

Quarterly Rocks

Next, set rocks—ninety-day priorities and goals to keep you on track for your one-year plan.

The rock metaphor comes from author Gino Wickman, and it’s one of my favorites.

The idea is you start with an empty jar. Throughout the quarter, the jar gets filled with your day-to-day activities, represented by sand, water, and mud. However, if you don’t put in your priorities—the rocks—first, they won’t fit in the jar and they won’t get done.

At the start of every quarter, put in three to five rocks for your best chance of hitting those goals, which feed into your one-year plan, and so on.

Establishing these priorities lets you maintain focus even when other unexpected situations pop up. You can still execute new ideas and initiatives, but get those three to five things done first, and everything else after that is gravy.

Again, assemble your core team for a one- to two-hour meeting that starts with a brain dump about everything you want to close out in the next ninety days. The list can be anywhere from ten to twenty items. Then make a decision on each one—do you kill it, keep it, or combine it as a quarterly rock?

Narrow it down to no fewer than three rocks and no more than five. Then set the dates when the rocks are due.

Make the quarterly rock objectives super clear, and like other goals, SMART. A good example of a quarterly rock is hiring a new buyer’s agent. A bad example is starting work on the referral process.

Make sure each ‘rock’ has an owner to make sure the project gets completed and that you’re using some sort of project management system to map out the timelines and individual steps necessary for each rock to happen!

Remember, visioning allows you to create the life and business you actually want.

Vision drives your goals.

Goals drive your planning.

Planning drives your resources.

Resources drive your execution.

Execution drives your results.

Your results will become more natural when they come from a place of vision.

So often we build for the sake of building. When you do this, you’ll end up resentful of your business or fall off track, and you won’t even care because your vision wasn’t created from a real place.

So, give yourself that space to work out your real estate vision. The more detailed you can be, the better results you’ll achieve!

If you want support in crafting a real estate business vision that offers you financial AND time freedom – apply to join us in The Listings Lab.

We’ll help you set the foundation for a 7-figure business and teach you step-by-step, the proven strategies and systems you need to dominate your marketplace in just 90 days.

Apply For The Listings Lab Here

3 Of The Biggest Differences Between Real Estate Side Hustlers and Top Real Estate Agents

January 4, 2023 by Jess Lenouvel

Everyone wants to be a top real estate agent, but not many understand that building a real estate empire requires you to shift the ENTIRE way you do business.

I used to think I had a successful real estate business.

But I didn’t.

I had a successful hustle.

Everything in my business relied on ME.

If I didn’t answer my phone, deals didn’t happen.

If I wanted to take a nap in the middle of the afternoon, the day was shot.

If I got sick or burnt out, the business would crumble.

The Biggest Difference Between A Real Estate Business And A Real Estate Side Hustle

The biggest difference between top real estate agents running profitable businesses and people who have a real estate hustle is this…

A real estate hustle is entirely dependent on one agent.

If you’re not hustling and putting in hours – the business doesn’t bring in revenue.

Everything must go through you.

You become the bottleneck of your business very quickly.

I still vividly remember the exact moment I decided I needed to stop settling for a real estate hustle and start building a freedom-focused business.

I was on a much-needed date night with my husband and we were deep in conversation, eating spaghetti, and my phone starts to buzz.

Without even thinking, I spit out my spaghetti in a napkin, pick up my phone, and walk away from my lovely husband to answer the call.

I walk out on my husband only to answer a call from a lead who’s telling me he’s not interested. He was one of the 200 calls I’d made that day.

When I walked back into the restaurant and looked at my husband, he looked broken.

I couldn’t blame him.

What was I doing?

I realized something needed to change.

I knew I needed to get serious about my business model if I wanted to make time for the things that mattered most in my life.

Here are the biggest shifts I made to go from a hustling agent to a TOP real estate agent with a scaleable, freedom-filled business.

Shift One: Manual Vs. Automation

I honestly believe SO many agents are not using the tools available to them.

When I think of my mom, who’s been an agent for 35+ years, she didn’t have access to tech or automation.

CRMs, were, for the most part, the old-school version of Top Producer only.

It was literally client management and nothing else.

Systems were checklists.

Virtual assistants didn’t exist.

If people had an assistant, they were paying them a lot of money to come into the office every day.

Real estate agents were operating in an entirely different era.

One of the biggest shifts I made to become a top agent grossing 7 figures sustainably was to implement systems and automation wherever possible.

The rule of thumb is to eliminate, automate and then delegate.

Don’t pay someone $25/hour for a basic task that software could do for $25/month.

And before you think to yourself…

“Won’t automation hurt my client experience?”

It won’t.

Systems and automation make you a better agent and a better entrepreneur. They create a white-glove experience for your client where nothing gets missed. Everything is streamlined without key details falling through the cracks.

Trust me, it’s a win-win all around.

Shift Two: Attraction Vs. Chasing

The next shift I made was in my mindset and strategy for getting business.

Instead of constantly spending hours chasing new clients, I started thinking about how I could get them to come to me.

If you’re in chase mode, you’ll always hit a plateau with how many potential clients you can reach.

There are only so many cold calls you can make in a day
There are only so many hours you can spend on manual prospecting
There are only so many networking events and opportunities you can attend

(And not to mention, all of that is exhausting. Especially if you’re an introvert like me!)

So what’s the solution?

If you want to be a top real estate agent that closes deals left, right, and center – it’s time to switch from a 1-1 model to a 1-many model.

Yes, real estate is a relationship-based business.

You need to be having conversations with your ideal clients.

But not every conversation needs to be one-to-one.

You can leverage your online content and marketing automation to consistently have conversations with your ideal clients and develop relationships at scale.

Shift Three: Solopreneur Vs. Real Estate Team

In the past, I always identified as a lone wolf in business.

This mentality kept me trapped in my business.

The thing that took me from a hustling agent to a top real estate agent with a booming business wasn’t working “harder” or doubling my output.

It was by investing in people who were smarter than me.

When I talk about how to build a real estate team, a lot of people think I just mean hiring an assistant.

And that’s certainly a good place to start.

But, I actually saw the most growth when I started delegating outcomes to people on my team.

It’s not enough to simply pass tasks off to team members.

You need to cultivate a team of leaders who will help make decisions for you.

Otherwise, you will always be the bottleneck.

Once I understood this concept, I was able to quickly double my business.

I still remember the exact moment when I realized I’d built a high-performing team.

After 10 years of being in real estate and constantly hustling, I finally booked my first REAL vacation.

It was a Mediterranean cruise.

I remember pulling into our first port and connecting to my hotspot after two days without internet.

I signed on and I was waiting for the fires to be put out, for the influx of emails and messages from my team…

…but there was nothing.

My team had it under control.

They were doing deals, all the paperwork was going in, and leads were being handled.

I remember looking at my husband, and saying:

“Oh my gosh…they don’t need me!”

It was a revelation.

I got to close my computer and joyfully eat spaghetti in Italy with my husband (this time, without spitting it out into a napkin because I had to return a phone call to a lead).

It was fantastic.

All of the work I’d done automating, systematizing and delegating was finally paying off.

And that’s what I want for you too.

For so long, we’ve glorified the hustle.

We’ve told ourselves it’s sexy to hustle and grind, to constantly be busy.

When in reality, true sexiness is spaciousness in our schedule.

If you want to be a top real estate agent, you have to break out of your side hustler mindset.

You have to stop doing everything on your own.

You have to stop cold-calling like it’s 1994.

You have to take the time to build systems and automations that allow you to remove yourself.

What got you here won’t get you there.

If you’re ready to break free from the six-figure hustle and build a multi-6 or 7-figure real estate business that offers you true freedom…let’s chat.

Apply for The Listings Lab here and book a call to speak with our team to see if the program is right for you.

When Choosing A Real Estate Email Address, Avoid These 4 Fatal Mistakes

December 28, 2022 by Jess Lenouvel

Your real estate email address is often one of the first points of contact a lead has with your brand.

Which is why it shouldn’t be overlooked.

In an instance, your email address can either communicate professionalism or amateurishness.

In order to properly harness email as an effective lead generation tool, follow this list of do’s and don’ts, and get our professional real estate email address ideas and recommendations!

Don’t Use A Personal Email

If you’re still using a personal email that ends in hotmail.com or gmail.com – your first order of business should be changing that!

It’s time to start keeping business and personal separate.

Real estate agents constantly tell me they want to be treated like true professionals.

But let me ask you this…

Would your doctor send you emails from an email address that says “drjames99@hotmail.com”?

I’m willing to bet if your doctor emailed you from that address you’d feel a little concerned.

Using a branded email is a great way to make a killer first impression and build trust with clients right off the bat.

Your real estate email address doesn’t just affect your professionalism.

It also affects your email deliverability.

Your email has a much higher chance of ending up in the spam filter. You’ll also limit your ability to scale your real estate business’s email marketing – as you won’t be able to use an email marketing platform.

Email marketing software such as Follow Up Boss or ActiveCampaign will require you to use a branded, domain-based real estate email address.

Don’t Use A Brokerage-Owned Email

The second thing I need to address when it comes to email addresses for real estate agents is using brokerage-owned email addresses.

This is an incredibly common real estate email mistake and I’ve seen it ruin businesses.

I’ve seen agents who have worked at brokerages for 10 or 20 years, relying solely on their brokerage-based email to conduct business.

When they finally decide they want to make a change – whether that’s switching brokerages, or whatever else it may be – they get totally screwed over.

Why?

Because they don’t own any of their data.

They lose ALL of their email addresses, contacts, past conversations, attachments…essentially, their entire database.

Not only that, but their clients don’t know where to find them once they’ve left.

It doesn’t matter if you don’t *think* you’ll ever leave your brokerage.

It’s just not worth the risk.

Why would you make yourself vulnerable to losing everything and having to start from zero?

It doesn’t matter if you’ve been an agent for two months or twenty years.

Everyone should own their own domain.

Go and buy your first name + last name .com or .ca, or your first name + last name + realtor.

That way, you’ll look like a legitimate business…

AND you’ll be in total control of your data and contacts.

Don’t Use A Heavy Real Estate Email Signature

I’ve seen so many agents sabotage their real estate email marketing efforts with this mistake.

Your real estate email signature shouldn’t be bulky.

You don’t need a ton of information, photos, or attachments.

And you certainly don’t need a 40-page disclosure statement on wire transfer fraud at the bottom of your email. (Yes, I’ve seen this more times than I can count).

Of course, you want to follow all local laws and regulations.

But deliverability should always be your #1 focus.

When you have a bulky, heavy email signature, two things happen.

Your emails don’t load properly, because they’re taking up too much space and using up data on people’s mobile phones.
Your emails are getting filtered into spam or promotions because they’re not simple, plain-text emails.

Your real estate email signature doesn’t need to be fancy.

The most important thing is to make sure your phone number is clickable.

Make things as easy as possible for your clients.

Don’t have a picture of your business card, because your phone number won’t be easily accessible – people will have to physically type it out.

Your name, title, website, and phone number are really enough. Don’t make it more complicated than it needs to be!

Don’t Choose A Complicated Website Domain

The other real estate email address mistake actually has to do with your website domain name, which in turn affects your email address.

You want your website domain to be three things:

Short
Easy
And memorable

Say your name is Jane Smith, and you buy the domain name:

“Janesmithrealestateaustintexas.com”

That is impossible for your ideal clients to remember!

They’re going to misspell something and send their email to the wrong address, resulting in a bounce back.

So now that we’ve covered the biggest real estate email address mistakes that agents are making…here’s what you should do instead!

Real Estate Email Address DO’s

The very first order of business if you’re looking to embrace email marketing as a real estate agent is to go out and buy your domain.

You can do a domain search on any popular hosting provider such as GoDaddy or Bluehost.

I recommend keeping things simple and buying your name.

Buying up any domains you can envision yourself using in the future is a critical step to protect your business.

Again, it doesn’t matter if you don’t envision yourself leaving your brokerage.

You never know what could happen.

Think of owning your domain and associated email addresses as a form of insurance for your business.

Your real estate email address matters a lot more than you think it does.

You need to start thinking about everything you’ve collected in your business as an asset.

All of the phone numbers, email addresses, contacts, conversations…

Make sure you’re protecting these things and treating your business like a real business.

Do you want more real estate business and marketing tips to grow to multi-6 or 7 figures?

Come join us in The Listings Lab Community on Facebook for more value-packed trainings and advice!

5 Reminders To Help You Build Your Real Estate Personal Brand

December 21, 2022 by Jess Lenouvel

What’s the key to standing out in today’s saturated real estate market?

Building a strong real estate personal brand.

What makes you different?

So many agents get lost in the sea of other agents because they’re terrified to break free from the “perfect realtor” mold.

But breaking free from what you think you “should” be doing is actually the key to successfully magnetizing more clients.

If you want to build a powerful real estate personal brand that makes lead generation effortless, keep reading for five tips to keep in mind.

Own Your Weird

Most agents don’t realize this, but people are actually getting tired of how real estate agents present themselves online.

Everyone is showing up as a carbon copy of one another.

In The Listings Lab, I teach real estate agents how to build a strong personal brand in the same way I’ve built mine as a real estate coach.

A lot of real estate gurus are preaching the same old things.

They look the same, dress the same, talk the same, and teach the same.

My motto in life and business is all about showing up as your true self.

I’ve grown my community by owning my weird.

I’m a crazy cat lady.

I’m obsessed with my husband.

I always have hair in a messy bun.

I don’t look like your typical real estate coach…but I look like me.

And people appreciate it.

If you want to strengthen your personal branding, ask yourself:

What makes me different?
What do I want to be known for?
What are my values?
What are my quirks?

And make sure you’re weaving those things into your real estate marketing strategy.

Have Fun

This might not be advice you hear every day, but I think it’s actually a big contributor to your success as a personal brand.

You have to genuinely love what you do.

I have so much fun running The Listings Lab. And my audience and clients can feel it!

People want to be around good people. People are attracted to those who vibrate at a higher frequency.

You may think that sounds a little “woo” but it’s true.

If you’re excited about your services, other people will be too.

We’re all human lie detectors.

If someone’s faking their enthusiasm in their content, we’ll be able to feel it.

If you have a genuine love for the work you do, that’s going to come through in your content, and your real estate personal brand will be that much more attractive to clients.

Be Polarizing

One reason agents struggle to stand out on social media is that they’re so afraid to say anything controversial that might offend someone.

So they “play it safe” in their content, resulting in generic posts that never seem to gain any traction.

A strong real estate personal brand produces a sort of brand evangelism.

But you’ll never be able to achieve that if you’re always trying to play it safe in your content.

You have to be willing to offend some people if you want to attract YOUR people.

Sharing polarizing opinions is one of the biggest ways I’ve been able to build such a strong personal brand.

For example, I lean into the fact that I don’t believe referrals are a solid way to grow your business.

For any industry filled with agents that think running a “repeat and referral business” is a badge of honor…this makes some agents dislike me.

Read my post on real estate referrals to learn more about why I don’t believe they’re a sustainable way to run your business.

To lean into your polarizing opinions and strengthen your real estate personal brand, ask yourself…

What do I think I do that’s different than other agents or people in my niche?

And lean into the controversy!

Focus On Marketing > Sales

Everyone knows that sales are important in real estate.

But I actually want to let you in on a little secret…

If you’re a really great marketer, you actually don’t have to be a really good salesperson.

When you understand buyer psychology and weave that into your online content, your marketing sells for you.

You no longer have to go into that pushy used car salesman mode.

Instead, you’re able to create genuine connections with people online that turn into clients.

Your online content magnetizes the leads that are meant to work with you.

You’re able to attract clients rather than hustle for them.

While yes, you still need to understand the framework of a successful sales conversation if you want to close more deals, but your marketing does a lot of heavy lifting for you.

Find Your Niche

Agents who advertise themselves as working with everyone, everywhere will not be successful in creating a profitable personal brand.

Saying “I help buyers, sellers, and investors from here to Timbuktu!” is the fastest way to make yourself forgettable.

Instead, you need to craft a signature system that gets results for a specific type of person.

Let me give you an example of one of our members who did an INCREDIBLE job with this in The Listings Lab.

This particular member is an agent in New York City.

Prior to being an agent, she was a lawyer, so she understood type-A women very well. Because of this, she decided she would niche down and exclusively serve corporate women.

As she started working with this demographic, she realized that they all were experiencing a similar problem.

These women were very busy, and at the same time, they liked to be in control.

So each time a property would come up, they wouldn’t trust anyone else to go preview them.

Her clients kept missing out on properties and sometimes the search would last eight or nine months.

So she came up with a genius solution to this issue.

Just like every other agent, she’d spent the first meeting going over must-haves, nice-to-haves, etc.

But she actually took it a step further and made her clients assign a number ranking for the importance of each feature they were looking for.

So each time a property came out, it was automatically put into a spreadsheet and system that spit out a number ranking for each property.

When onboarding clients, she explained this system, and together they agreed that each week they’d go see the top three properties.

The corporate women LOVED this system.

They felt their time was being respected. They were always shown properties at the same time each week, so they could easily fit it into their busy schedule.

And best of all, their agent was speaking their language. By getting data-driven reports each day on the top properties, they felt 100% understood by their realtor.

Do you want to know what happened next?

Her business absolutely exploded.

The corporate women were telling ALL of their friends about her.

Not to mention, her online personal brand gained a lot of traction.

Because she wasn’t trying to speak to the masses. She spoke to a specific person struggling with a specific problem.

As I always say…

If you’re trying to speak to everyone, you’re speaking to no one.

Niching down based on ZIP code is no longer viable.

When you’re able to target based on human being or life transition, your marketing becomes 1000x easier.

And your real estate personal brand starts to snowball.

Ready to learn more about mastering online real estate marketing so that you can become the only choice for your ideal clients?

Download The Listings Lab Guide for free to learn how.

How Paul Tripled His Revenue And Built A Scaleable Real Estate Business

December 14, 2022 by Jess Lenouvel

Are you ready to learn how to scale your real estate business to 7 figures? It’s time real estate agents work smarter…not harder.

Meet our Listings Lab member, Paul. His business has tripled since joining The Listings Lab and is growing FAST! Plus, he’s working half as hard as he used to!

He’s dropped the old-school hustle-and-grind mentality and automated his real estate business to work for him.

Now he’s watching his business grow while using his time smartly to focus on aspects of his business that he enjoys.

Check out What Paul did to make this change possible!

He Ditched Traditional Lead Gen Methods

Like many agents, Paul had previously been coached on old-school lead generation tactics like cold-calling and manual prospecting.

He had to spend two hours every single day cold-calling, and he was miserable!

He’d have to call 50+ people and 90% of them would be annoyed he was calling or would hang up on him without giving him the time of day.

Lead generation used to fill Paul with dread.

But ever since he implemented The Listings Lab Method in his business and prioritized scalable marketing methods, attracting leads has felt infinitely easier.

He ditched manual, 1-1 lead generation techniques and now markets using 1-many strategies.

He Embraced Attraction Marketing

By joining The Listings Lab, he was able to build a business based on attracting leads rather than chasing them.

He now has highly qualified leads coming to HIM rather than having to spend hours hunting them down each day.

Back in his cold-calling days, he’d have to touch base with a lead 5-7 times before they even started to remember who he was.

Whereas with attraction marketing, you’re able to accelerate the relationship and nurture clients through your online content.

People feel a deeper connection to you even if you’ve never met in real life.

Paul’s able to post about the Leafs on his stories and have a conversation in his DMs about hockey, and then all of a sudden, it naturally leads into a real estate conversation.

He’s able to build genuine relationships with clients by finding common ground and interests.

He’s now able to talk about his passions, like hockey, and sign clients off Instagram rather than get hung up on 30 times a day…

And he couldn’t be happier about it.

Attraction marketing didn’t just help him bring in new leads.

It also helped him re-engage old friends and connections through his online content.

By switching to an attraction marketing model, Paul’s been able to free up a ton of time and step away from spending hours on lead gen each day!

He’s now able to spend more time with family and on scaling his business for even more freedom.

He Built His Personal Brand

If you want to scale your real estate business exponentially, there’s no way around it…

You need to build your personal brand online and embrace content creation.

Manual prospecting and relying on referrals will only get you so far.

Being omnipresent through your content allows you to constantly stay “top of mind” to your clients.

You don’t HAVE to manually follow up and touch base. Your content and ads do that for you.

The key is being strategic with the real estate content you’re posting on social media.

Paul states that one of his biggest takeaways from The Listings Lab was learning how to put the human touch into his content.

He says his best posts have actually been the ones where he opened up and practiced vulnerability in his content.

By doing this, he’d get tons of messages from potential leads and clients who’d gone through similar things.

Before joining the program he’d only seen other coaches teaching how to share generic, ‘vanilla’ real estate content.

He even thought social media was fake because so many agents only share a perfectly filtered, curated image of what they want the world to see.

Paul learned how to create engaging content rather than posting the same market stats every other agent is posting. And his engagement has skyrocketed since!

He learned a huge lesson which was that most people just want to work with people they genuinely like.

The Listings Lab taught him how to show up as his true self in his content and attract perfect-fit clients.

He Started Attracting Premium Clients

There was another incredible effect the strategies learned in The Listings Lab had on Paul’s business.

He was able to totally eliminate price shoppers.

Soon after going all-in on real estate marketing, Paul began attracting a higher caliber of clients.

His clients genuinely want to be working with him. Not just the agent who will give them the cheapest deal.

He no longer has to deal with negotiators and discount seekers.

Want to hear about more success stories just like Paul’s?

Read dozens of reviews and client testimonials to learn how agents are successfully scaling their businesses to multi-6 figures and beyond using The Listings Lab method.

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Real Estate business?

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