Broker Marketing Series: How to recruit and retain top agents
Recruiting top talent is vital to brokers working to build a successful real estate team because your team of agents is your face to prospects and clients. Even though they are the people finding opportunities and closing deals, most of those agents work independently, with or without a brokerage. If you’re seeking to recruit and retain the ‘cream of the crop’ agents, it takes smart, relevant strategies.
Successful real estate broker marketing and recruitment start with building a strong agency culture. The two main components of a strong culture are your offerings and the people in your company.
Let’s start with the offerings that you provide to your real estate agents. What are you providing that they might not be able to get on their own? What are you offering that they might not be able to find by working with other brokers?
Four Ways to Differentiate Your Brokerage with Standout Offerings
You need to stand out to real estate agents and entice them to join your team (instead of your competitor’s team!) Here are some the best ways to differentiate your brokerage:
Offer Competitive Commission Structures. Show (don’t just tell) agents that they will be valued if they work with you. Do some research and compare commission structures. Look into ways to make a more appealing offer during recruitment that helps agents feel they will have success and longevity by joining your team.
Invest in the Latest Technology. Let agents know that they will be more successful working with you than independently or at another agency. Show them that you are willing to invest in the latest technology to help them be successful. Matterport 3D cameras are a cost-effective, easy-to-use, highly successful tool your agents can use to create 3D virtual tours (similar to 3D floor plans), 2D photography, and virtual reality experiences. Agents can download the 3D experiences to their iPad to access them via mobile with clients while on property or send to clients after visiting a property for follow-up that is sure close the deal!
Create a Mentorship Program. Show agents the benefits of working in a strong team by pairing experienced agents with some of your new hires. The new hires will benefit by learning from your top talent. You can create a checklist to help navigate the conversation around some of the tips and tricks you invest in for your agents. You will create a culture of camaraderie and help ensure that your latest hires are successful.
Provide Unique Marketing Services. We know that more people are starting their house search online than ever before. You can help your agents reach their online audiences by investing in digital advertising opportunities through Google AdWords or Facebook at a very low cost for the impact. You can even have your mentors walk new agents through the digital ads and how to set them up. With your Matterport technology, you can also use your 3D virtual tours to make your real estate marketing stand out and increase your conversions. Most of the digital ads have the option to rotate through many listings or agent profiles so that you can support all of your agents for one low price. Learn more about other powerful marketing services you can offer your agents here >>.
Make Retention a Top Priority
When people start turning all of their focus to real estate broker recruitment, they can easily lose sight on one of their strongest recruiting assets - their current team of top agents! Once you have invested in appropriate assets for your recruiting strategy, consider how those offerings can strengthen retention.
Continue Competitive Commision Structures. Across many industries, recruiters entice people to leave their current jobs by offering them better compensation structures. You can stay ahead of this by ensuring your commision structure stays competitive. If other agencies raise their commision offerings, you may want to look into doing the same or applying a new structure that is more beneficial to top performers.
Introduce Your Investment in the Latest Technology. When you adopt new technologies, give your top agents the tools they need to learn about the resources and apply them right away. Matterport makes this process simple and successful by offering many webinars and digital resources to help you keep your people informed. We also love to send representatives directly to your brokerage to help get everyone on board and utilize the selling benefits of 3D technology.
Create Leaders through Mentorship. When you begin your mentorship program, introduce the idea to your top performing agents as an opportunity to hone in on their leadership skills. Give mentors the opportunity to present ideas to the agency as a whole with monthly lunch-and-learns.
Grow Marketing Services with Your Agents. Marketing strategies are constantly evolving. Help your agents stay ahead by providing resources on the latest trends and supporting them with the most recent marketing tactics. Don’t let your agents get out of date. Matterport gives you a full library to house all of your 3D photos, 2D photos, and videos. Your agents can easily share the graphics vital to their marketing strategies on the resource that best fits their audiences’ preferences. Learn more about using visual content to entice target audiences here >>.
Why invest in the latest real estate tech?
Inman News did a special report to learn more about agents’ expectations of technology from their brokers and how frequently agents are using that technology. You can see their finding here:
62% of agents at franchised brokerages expect to pay a fee to their broker to receive a bundle of tech tools and products.
91% of agents and associate brokers use tech products provided by their brokerages daily or a few times a week
On average, 70% of agents are satisfied with the technology they receive from their brokerage.
Leverage Recruitment Marketing on Facebook
With a healthy company culture in place and an arsenal of proven marketing resources, your brokerage is more ready than ever to ignite real estate broker marketing tactics that make recruiting and retention more predictable and measurably successful. Healthy company culture will result in word of mouth that can attract new agents, and you will gain a broader reach with your marketing efforts.
As a bonus, how you perform your own marketing strategies will provide evidence of the high level of expertise that agents are searching for in a brokerage. You can tailor the same kinds of the marketing strategies you offer to agents to recruit even more top agents. Here are some tips to adjust real estate Facebook marketing strategies for recruitment:
Create Target Audiences: Similar to how your agents will adjust their audiences on Facebook, you can narrow the reach of your ads to people within the age range and location of your ideal agents. You also can narrow down your audience to people who like pages associated with real estate or real estate associations with which you align. Finally, you can identify your target audiences interests by selecting on topics such as “real estate” or more specifically, topics like “commercial real estate.”
Use Strong Visual Content: When you bring in Matterport 3D technology to your brokerage, you can use it to display the range of technology you offer agents within your Facebook ads. You can share multiple 3D floor plan photos, link directly to your Matterport Spaces and give them an opportunity to take a 3D tour as a future home buyer would.
Host Events or Live Videos on Facebook: Set up an event or live video on Facebook and invite agents in the area that you are looking to recruit. During the event, have one of your top performing agents display their leadership skills by walking the recruits through your Matterport Spaces. You will have a direct line to the agents you are seeking to hire, and agents will be lining up to join your team to use the services for themselves.
As you work to ramp up your real estate broker recruitment and retention marketing, remember to be on the lookout for recruits who are forward-thinking and innovative. Every new agent you bring in has an opportunity to redefine your company culture, and you want the agents who are eager to enter the future of real estate with you!
Learn more about Matterport and view all of our resources to help you with marketing and recruitment here.
