The Secret to Supercharging Your Real Estate Business – Part II

In Part I of The Secret to Supercharging Your Real Estate Business, you learned a bit about that secret, niche marketing. If you don’t see why a niche could help you, take a look back on that blog post. For Part II, you’ll learn more about how to create a niche.

You Need to Identify a Niche That Separates You From Your Competitors

If you’re like many real estate agents, you may struggle with identifying something that makes you stand out in your marketplace. As one agent stated, “I know my market area is highly competitive. But, we’re real estate agents – we all do basically the same thing.” That’s the mindset you need to work your way out of.

If you could travel with all of your competitors for a few days, you’d discover that you all do things a bit differently. You all have different strengths and weaknesses, and you need to identify your strengths and opportunities and capitalize on them. There are things you can do to accomplish that.

How to Identify Your Strengths and Potential Niches

First, sit down in a quiet place where you can let your mind wander. Brainstorm – don’t worry about sentence structure or duplicates, and then start making a list of all of the following :

1. Categories of homes and homebuyers: Are there distinct categories of homes and homebuyers in your area? For example, do you have a lot of golf courses and homebuyers looking for golf homes? Or, maybe you’re in a vacation destination and you have a large group of second-home buyers, which means you also have a large group of second homeowners who will need to sell their homes.
2. Types of transactions you love: Do you have a passion for historic homes or luxury condos? Do you have an inside track on listing and selling in a particular geographic area? Does your skill set include financial knowledge to help people buying and selling an investment property? Are you passionate about urban living?
3. Who you are and who you know: Think about your own characteristics. Are you a Millennial who can relate well to other Millennials? Are you a more “mature” individual who does well working with seniors? Take a cruise through your real estate CRM. What do the people you know have in common? Do you all love to play tennis, and could you translate that hobby into working with buyers and sellers in that community?
4. What you do well: Are you great at working with first-time homebuyers? It may not be a passion or hobby, but if it’s something you do very well, put it on the list.
5. What your competitors focus on: Is there a competitor who focuses on a particular niche? If you’d like to address that niche, it’s worth putting on the list to determine if there’s an opportunity for you to get some of that business. When you think about your competitors, are you surprised to realize that no one in your area focuses on golf communities, for example? That niche is evidently underserved, and it could be an opportunity for you, or lead you to identify other segments of the market that no one is helping.

Next Steps

Now that you have a list to help you identify a niche, it’s time to evaluate the potential they represent. And, that will be the focus of Part III of this series.

It’s true that this evaluation takes some work; but keep the benefits in mind. When you identify a niche, you’re much less likely to be hurt by the ups and downs in the market. In addition, you have eliminated or significantly reduced the number of agents you’re competing with – and, that’s never a bad thing.