The residential real estate business has always been hyper-local. Realtors, teams, and brokerages all need to find ways to connect directly with consumers in their target markets to generate trust, and set themselves apart from the competition.
But how do you achieve this in an intangible, service-based business where many consumers see all service providers as the same?
Anyone can claim to be the neighborhood expert, but how do you demonstrate it? Especially when everyone’s been isolated at home, dealing with the pandemic. With the peak days of print-based direct marketing in the past, and with restricted in-person engagement, how can you convey your local expertise and passion for the community you serve to get noticed and invoke trust?
You have six seconds to make an impact
In the new real estate reality, everyone is online. Online appeal has become the new curb appeal. The battle for consumer attention and preference is being won and lost digitally. With all the distractions and fragmentation online, you only have six seconds to break through the clutter and win your place at the virtual table with your prospect.
A tagline or unsubstantiated claim alone will fall flat with today’s pitch-wary consumer. By contrast, your neighborhood expertise, understanding, and commitment will resonate strongly with consumers if you invest your time and effort in showcasing the community story online. This will position you as a hyper-local, lifestyle expert, and will add value to sellers by directly driving demand for the community you serve. Imagine being able to offer real differentiation before a prospect even contacts you; a customer-centric approach that leads with legitimate value rather than dubious self-promotion.
This storytelling approach to supporting your community while building your business will also generate other benefits. Success in real estate is driven by the strength of the network you create. Fostering your reputation as a champion of local businesses is a golden opportunity for gaining community traction. Whether existing contacts or brand-new relationships derived from your content creation, local businesses can be significant additions to your referral network. The explosive growth of online engagement by consumers can accelerate your road to local market dominance, especially in connecting with younger buyers and sellers with a multi-transaction, real estate lifespan ahead of them.
Deploy the power of story to be a local expert
There are numerous opportunities to apply Studeo’s storybooks to strategically dominate in your market. You can showcase various businesses, amenities and landmarks into one integrated, hyper-local storybook. Other alternatives include storybooks focused on a singular marquee event, a storybook showcasing a calendar of local events, a storybook formatted newsletter, a storybook showcasing community amenities and services, or a storybook focused on a singular local business or like group of businesses.
At a team and brokerage level, there are brand and recruiting benefits associated with accentuating your hyper-local presence. In off-peak markets, consider deploying under-utilized staffers and content providers to help build a library of local storybooks over time that’s unique to your team or brokerage. This will feed consumer hunger for high value community information, generate leads, and help facilitate successful relocations.
Gaining this advantage is easier than you think. Studeo’s storytelling platform enables fast and easy, digital storybook creation powered by beautifully curated, editorial-formatted templates. The simple drag and drop format generates immersive, interactive storybooks, proven to win 10 times the level of engagement versus traditional real estate marketing tactics.
This strategy of leveraging a hyper-local approach to storytelling adds immense value to online engagement, draws people to you, and creates a legitimate perception of you, your team or brokerage as a preferred community advocate, trusted advisor, and indispensable lifestyle consultant. Learn how Studeo can help you dominate with a digital, hyper-local storytelling strategy today.
