Buying and selling property is an intensely personal and high-stakes move for the majority of people. This is why buyers and sellers are selective when it comes to choosing and connecting with a real estate agency. A strong relationship and connection will result in a strong client base — and positive reviews.
In order to do this, an agent must have a clear understanding of how a client thinks; of how a client spends their days. The question is: how well do you know your target audience? Understanding demographics is one thing, but have you drilled down further to find out more about your potential customers?
Marketing #101 is about thoroughly understanding your audience, and for industries that survive and thrive from strong campaigns – such as the real estate industry – identifying your buyer persona is a must.
But what exactly is a buyer persona, and how do you create one? Creating a buyer persona is like drafting a fictional character to enter into your brand story. Your buyer persona should reflect the values and aspirations your brand upholds. Once you have a vision for your buyer persona, you can then create stories from your content, keeping in mind that the persona is the central character in all your storytelling and is used to draw in your target audience.
Crafting a buyer persona will ensure that your agency is focused on your potential buyers, sellers and vendors. It will give you a crystal clear idea about the defining traits of your target customer, and why your product is the solution to their problem. It will enable you to create marketing content for your agency that resonates with multiple audience segments such as vendors, sellers and investors.
5 Tips on Creating a Marketing Buyer Persona for Your Real Estate Agency
Here are five useful steps to follow if you are ready to create a strong and solid buyer persona that benefits your real estate agency.
1. Collect Data about Your Persona Creation
As successful start-up founder and entrepreneur Clare Muscutt once said, “Building a good customer experience does not happen by accident. It happens by design.”
We are here to tell you that part of this ‘design’ is knowing your potential buyer, seller or vendor.
The first step to shaping a buyer persona is collecting data and information about your potential buyers, sellers or vendors. Your research can be the foundation of your buyer persona, ensuring that the profile you create is anchored in facts. Social media is a great place to start. According to the Hootsuite Digital 2022 Australia report, 21.45 million Australians use social media. In fact, Aussies spend an average of one hour and 57 minutes utilising social accounts each day. Given this significant reach, it’s fair to say that social media could act as the building blocks for your research. But, how exactly do you extract and successfully use the data?
There are five ways marketers can use social media to build a buyer persona.
These include:
- Audience evaluation – Accumulate all of your social media data into one place to get a clear snapshot of your followers across all avenues. This will identify your key demographic and further information.
- Analyse the competition – analyse your competitor’s social media followers and post comments. ‘Social listening’, as it has become known, is a way for businesses to garner data from potential customers.
- Develop customer support insights – Invest in customer care and use the feedback to not only help build your buyer persona but to improve the business as a whole.
2. Develop a Personality for Your Buyer Persona
Who is your buyer? Are they assertive or quiet? Do they base their decisions on facts or on their emotions? These are some of the questions you need to answer as you build your buyer persona.
As highlighted earlier, a buyer persona needs to have a distinct and clear personality to ensure that the marketing content and initiatives you create are targeted and effective. The key to developing a solid buyer persona is to piece together common data and build the pillars of your buyer persona’s background and personality from the research you have completed.
The data can range from basic demographic details to in-depth information such as lifestyle preferences, communication style and other personality traits. When it comes to building this profile, it can be useful to understand the common personality types of buyers, and how to sell to them.
Familiarise yourself with the traits of the four main buyer groups:
- Assertive – Clear, direct and confident
- Amiable – Great listeners, personable and calm
- Expressive – Cheerful, colourful character, and confident
- Analytical – Prefers facts over emotion, serious and direct
Identifying personality types will go a long way to establishing a clear understanding of your target audience.
3. Identify your Buyer Persona’s Needs and Goals
Adele Revella, an author and researcher in buyer persona marketing, sums up the importance of developing a buyer persona with her swift statement: “Catching someone’s attention and being heard amid this streaming torrent of information is the greatest challenge of contemporary marketing.”
One of the greatest ways to secure the attention of your clients is to know who you are talking to, and what it is they seek. Outlining goals and requirements for your buyer persona will help your future content’s success rate.
There are several methods an agent can use to identify the needs of your potential buyers, sellers and vendors. Three methods for identifying customer needs include reflecting on your own experiences as a customer, observing the behaviours of your target audience and conducting interviews with them.
The latter is perhaps the strongest point. After all, if you want to know something, why not go straight to the source? Try an email or phone survey, or an online poll. Your existing buyers, sellers and vendors will be able to tell you exactly why they chose to use your agency; former clients can reveal why they no longer use your services; and non-customers can provide insights into why they chose to utilise another real estate agency over your own.
4. Identify Your Buyer Persona’s Problems and Challenges
Understanding your buyer persona’s pain points can help you identify how your real estate agency addresses those challenges, enticing people to contact you and inquire about the services you offer.
Of course not every person has the same problems or challenges, so when creating a buyer persona, we recommend tackling the pain points that affect the majority of your potential client base. Through our extensive research, we have identified four main points that regularly cause issues for a business’ customers.
These include:
- Financial – Price is always a pain point. Consider creating key messages or statements that address financial concerns.
- Processes – Buyers, sellers and vendors like systems to run smoothly. How can you eliminate these errors?
- Productivity – Do you offer value for money? Are you a savvy agent? What do your clients need to hear to convince them of your productivity?
- Support – People want to feel understood, supported and listened to.
By painting a clear picture of the buyer persona’s worries and issues, you will be able to address the concerns at the get-go, in all of your marketing and communication strategies.
5. Create Marketing Content for Your Buyer Persona
Okay, so you have established your buyer persona. The next step is to create marketing content that is tailored specifically for that target client.
Using buyer personas in content marketing is a winning formula. Having a clear audience in mind when you, or your professional writing team, are developing strategies and content will result in a more strategic approach to ensure your messaging and branding is piquing your existing and potential clients’ interest. It will also enable you to create engaging content (podcasts, blogs, social media videos!) and help to prioritise the tasks in your communication strategy.
Knowing your audience and sharing your story with people who can relate – who will engage – will equate to successful marketing campaigns.
Let us help you create a comprehensive and realistic buyer persona. Contact us and we will guide you through the persona creation process.
