Real Estate Reputation Management Secrets

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Real Estate Reputation Management Secrets

Christopher Ike • Feb 27, 2024

Effective real estate reputation management is key to staying relevant and competitive in today’s real estate industry.

Do you know why? 93% of potential clients will research your profile online to know what others are saying about you before deciding whether to hire you or not. And the slightest dent on your reputation can hurt your business severely.

Studies have shown that 94% of consumers will likely abandon you for another realtor once they see a negative review on your profile. It’s that serious!

Needless to say, putting efforts into managing your reputation isn’t an option but a necessity. If you don’t, it’s just a matter of time before your business comes crumbling.

Thankfully, building a strong, positive reputation for your real estate business isn’t rocket science, and in this post, we will show you how to go about it.

But first, why should you bother?

Benefits of Real Estate Reputation Management

1. Reviews Build Trust

Prospective clients looking to hire your services will naturally have misgivings. They won’t trust you right off the gate. As such, they will likely want to find out how trustworthy you are by checking for reviews online.

The more positive reviews you have online, the more they will trust you and want to do business with you - vice versa.

2. More Leads

People tend to trust online reviews like they trust recommendations from friends and people they know personally. So they will be more willing to do business with you if you have sufficient online reviews that prove you are a reputable real estate agent.

This means more leads and sales for your business.

3. Better Visibility

Positive online reviews can help generate positive PR for your business and, hence, boost your visibility. The reason is that the more positive reviews you garner, the more people will want to talk about you online. And you know, your business needs a lot of visibility to thrive.

5 Secrets for Effective Real Estate Reputation Management

Here are five simple strategies for building a strong, positive outlook for your real estate business online.

1. Ask for Reviews

We hate to break it to you, but your past clients will likely not leave you a positive review unless you ask. People are busy, and leaving a review for you is the least of their priorities. For this reason, you just have to ask but in a polite way.

One of the most effective ways to ask for reviews from your past customers is by emailing them. Emailing is so effective that for every $1 you invest in it, you stand to gain back $44. What’s a whopping 4400% ROI!

For best results, always start your email by thanking them for doing business with you before asking for a review.

Keep in mind that you may not get a response the first time you send a review request to a past client. Therefore, you might have to email them a few more times. But keep your emailing frequency low, too - no need to send an email reminder every day.

If you don’t have their email addresses but phone numbers, then send an SMS.

2. Create a Google My Business (GMB) Profile

You are leaving a lot of money on the table if your business is not visible enough on Google. And the best way to build visibility for your business is by creating a GMB profile.

Doing so allows you to take advantage of local search. Local search is a search engine optimization (SEO) technique that is location-specific.

For example, let's say your business is based in Atlanta, GA. You will want your business to show up on Google when someone searches for “best real estate agent in Atlanta, GA”.

If you have an active GMB profile, your customers will find it easier to find you on Google and leave reviews even if you don’t ask. And the more positive reviews you get, the more Google will rank your business. Higher search ranking will eventually translate into more sales.

Follow this link to create a profile if you haven’t yet.

3. Get Active on Social Media

One disgruntled customer can spread negative PR for your business on social media. If not curtailed on time, that negative PR can snowball quickly and come back to bite your bum.

This is why you need to be active on social media. In doing so, you will know what people are saying about your business online. Also, it will allow you to understand how people perceive your business.

Most importantly, it will enable you to spot and address negative reviews and feedback before it escalates.

Facebook and Twitter are the two excellent social media platforms you can start from.

4. Respond to Reviews

It’s easy to get carried away with hunting for reviews that you forget to acknowledge and respond to them when they come in.

Failing to respond to reviews has dire consequences. One is that it might discourage anyone that wants to give your business a positive review. Another problem is that you will come off as unprofessional and lackluster, which you definitely don’t want.

The easiest way to respond to reviews is to say a simple thank you each time someone says something nice about your business. “Hey, thank you for the review” will suffice.

What if it is a negative review? Respond to it as well, and address the concern of the aggrieved customer. Apologize, but never get defensive. You will only hurt your business the more by getting defensive.

Also, be prompt with your response.

5. Send out Press Releases

Reviews might not always be enough to help you build a solid reputation for your real estate business. At times, you have to take an aggressive approach by sending out press releases to media houses.

Do you have a newsworthy development you would like the whole wide world to know about?

Craft an attention-grabbing press release and send it out to news outlets for publishing.

Are clients talking about your business positively? Write and circulate a press release about it as well.

Aggressively putting your business in front of people will not only help you boost your reputation but also help improve your visibility, making it easy for potential clients to find you.

Wrapping it Up

A solid real estate reputation management strategy will help you go far in business. Thankfully, developing one isn’t hard; just follow the five steps we have shared in this post, and you will be fine.

If you would like help dialing in on your online reputation then book a game-plan call with our team today.

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