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Luxury agents who pay attention to diversifying their marketing stand to increase their income by tens of thousands of dollars, according to a report released Friday by marketing and tech platform Luxury Presence in conjunction with Sell It Like Serhant.
Luxury agents who used nine different marketing methods in 2022 earned more than $250K in median gross commission income (GCI) compared to those who earned $200K when using six marketing methods and $60K for those who used only two marketing methods.
The takeaway from the “State of Real Estate Marketing” report comes following a survey conducted in February 2023 of over 1,000 top-producing luxury real estate agents across the databases of Luxury Presence and Sell It Like Serhant.
Credit: Luxury Presence
With the National Association of Realtors’ prediction that overall home sales in 2023 will decline by roughly 7 percent year over year, the report aims to give luxury agents insights on how to grow their business in the face of tougher market conditions, the report reads.
Luxury Presence CEO Malte Kramer
“Our report uncovers agents’ top marketing goals, highest-performing channels, and common obstacles to achieving marketing success,” said Malte Kramer, founder and CEO of Luxury Presence. “It also shows which marketing activities correlate with high GCI. We’ve distilled the best practices and winning strategies from top-performing agents to help other agents elevate their marketing game and achieve outstanding results for 2023.”
Luxury agents surveyed named professional websites as their most important marketing channel for 2023, followed by Instagram and then search engine optimization (SEO).
Regularly posted updates, high-quality images and videos and the sharing of valuable content like home-renovation tips or local market news are some of the top social media best practices, the report notes. In addition, using hashtags, responding to comments or DMs promptly and engaging with content from clients or other agents are also helpful practices.
Luxury agents’ top two marketing goals for 2023 are to generate more online leads and build their personal brands online, according to the report. Overall, 95 percent of luxury agents said they’d spend money on marketing in 2023 compared to just 85 percent in 2022.
With 63 percent of sellers finding their agents through referrals, according to NAR’s 2022 Profile of Homebuyers and Sellers, some top referral best practices include requesting testimonials from past clients to use on websites, asking clients for referrals and rewarding the clients for them and staying in touch with past clients in-person and online, the report also notes.
For agents who are hoping to get more out of their paid media marketing, the report suggests agents define their audience and set clear goals to engage them, experiment with different advertising platforms to see which reaches their audience best and create high-quality content tailored to an agent’s ideal client.
Out of the agents surveyed for this report, less than half made use of single-property websites to market a listing. However, the report suggests that doing so can position a property as a brand unto itself and create a more personalized client experience that can pay off.
Coaching is another strategy that the report found can provide a significant boost to an agent’s business. Agents surveyed who used a real estate coach made an income that was 35 percent greater on average than those agents who did not use a coach.
Credit: Luxury Presence
Update: This story was updated after publishing with additional information about the report’s methodology.
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