“Sixty-eight percent of buyers Googled their agent, the highest percentage since the survey started tracking this statistic in 2007.” – California Association of Realtors, 2013 Home Buyer Survey

The recently released 2013 California Association of Realtors buyers and sellers reports are chalk full of highly relevant data and trends for real estate agents. But the statistic above is perhaps most piercing to those agents who don’t prioritize real estate branding. If you’re like many of our most successful customers, the focus has traditionally been on direct marketing, lead generation, or referral-based systems. Many see ‘branding’ as wasted marketing dollars with poor ROI. 

In the age of Yelp, Angie’s List, and a plethora of other consumer information and review sites, simply having a nice website, or being a nice person for that matter, just won’t cut it for your business. For real estate agents in particular, this is where having authentic, credible testimonials to help set you apart comes into play.

For many Realtors, the primary goal during a first conversation with a new real estate lead is to uncover when they want to purchase. While this is important, our customers often find that greater success with leads comes from a more engaging and consultative approach. Such an approach is paramount given that each lead is embarking on a major milestone in their financial and personal life. Instead of simply asking “When do you want to buy?” try to engage your leads on a deeper level with the questions below:

At Zurple, we look for every opportunity to help our customers save time and make money.

To that end, we want to share a tool called Rapportive that we learned about from Chris Smith, chief evangelist at Inman News. Rapportive is a free tool for Gmail users. Rapportive shows you a photograph, city of residence, job title and social media profiles of contacts from inside your inbox.

Using Rapportive in conjunction with Zurple can significantly enhance the personal conversations you have with your real estate leads.

Wouldn’t life as a realtor be perfect if your real estate leads started looking for a house on day one and bought on day two?

It doesn’t work that way, unfortunately. According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), the average home shopper takes a minimum of 12 weeks before committing to buy a home. After the commitment, it can take much longer to find the right home and close on it.