Table of Contents
- What Is My Real Estate Sphere of Influence
- How to Market to Your Sphere of Influence in Real Estate
- Grow Your Business With The Help of a Real Estate VA
Effectively marketing to your sphere of influence (SOI) is foundational to your success and potential in the real estate industry.
By systematically marketing to your SOI, you build a resilient source of potential clients that will keep expanding your business.
However, many real estate agents don’t know how to market themselves to those closest to them.
Therefore, in today’s post, we will look at how to effectively market to your sphere of influence in real estate.
But first, let’s understand what we mean by your sphere of influence.
What Is My Real Estate Sphere of Influence?
Put simply, your sphere of influence is the entire set of people you know personally — family, friends, neighbors, coworkers — it includes the people you know well, but also your loose connections and acquaintances.
You’re going to want to leverage your SOI for the following:
- Having them use you as their agent for their personal sales
- Having them refer you to their friends and family wanting to sell or buy
Sphere of Influence marketing is like playing the real estate edition of Six Degrees of Separation. Most people are surprised by how far their connections reach in the local community and beyond.
Even if the people you know aren’t buying or selling right now, they can still:
- Help you reach home buyers and sellers in your market that you wouldn’t otherwise know about or be able to reach
- Provide leads and word-of-mouth advertising
Familiarity leads to trust. So to build your real estate business, you need to start with the people who already trust you.
By working your SOI in this manner, you’ll get current listings and deals while also setting yourself up for future ones.
How to Market Your Sphere of Influence in Real Estate
So, now let’s look at ways you can market to your sphere of influence.
1. Start by Making a List
Write down everyone you know. This list should include:
- Family
- Friends
- Neighbors
- Neighborhood organizations
- Coworkers and former coworkers
- And volunteer organizations
Also, don’t forget to add names from:
- Other community organizations
- Former classmates
- Your church or place of worship
- Sports/Recreation teams
- Local businesses you frequent
- Service providers you use
- Online networks
- Families of your children’s friends
As you can see, the list is likely larger than you first thought. Now that you have your list, what do you do with it?
2. Staying in Touch With Those in Your Real Estate Sphere of Influence
Your next step is working out a plan for communicating with all these people regularly, reminding them of the real estate expertise and services you offer.
However, it’s important that your communications:
- Are real and personal
- Aren’t too often to annoy people
While you might have come up with quite a long list of individuals, understanding how to best market to these individuals takes some finesse.
3. Genuine and Personal Communications
The most common mistake when marketing to your SOI is the failure to be authentic.
Sure, you have sales targets to hit, but don’t let that rush you into treating family, friends, and acquaintances like a business cold call.
If you reach out to people and ask them how they’re doing, half-listening because you’re trying to rush your sales pitch, this will be obvious to the person on the other end.
Don’t do this.
And always focus on the quality of your conversation rather than trying to communicate with many people quickly.
Remember, the point with SOI marketing is to:
- Deepen your connections
- Build more trust
Adopting this approach will lead to referrals and increased sales because the people you know are confident in your ability to navigate this large financial and personal decision.
4. Focus On Their Needs – Not Your Sales Pitch
People in your sphere of influence need to consider you a source of valuable information, advice, and services.
Therefore, it’s vital that you focus all your communications and conversations around their needs and interests. For example:
- Are they looking for a new job and you might know who’s hiring?
- Were they curious about the value of their home?
- Do they have any real estate-related needs or questions?
- Are there other issues you can help them with?
Let the person you’re speaking to know that you care and are always willing to help.
Also, set the expectations for follow-ups. Express your desire to stay in touch, and specify when you’ll be reaching out next.
5. Consistency Is Important
It’s extremely important to keep track of your contacts and communications and maintain a schedule of regular follow-ups.
You want to make regular contact to:
- Check-in and see how your contact is doing
- Subtly remind them that you’re in the real estate profession
- Ask them if they, or anyone they know, has real estate-related needs
Staying top-of-mind is going to take effort on your part, but it will set you up for a massively productive book of business.
6. Vary Your Means of Contact
After your initial contact, don’t just stick people on an email drip campaign and forget about them.
Instead, vary your means of contact, using all the communication platforms your SOI also uses. There are many to choose from:
- Gmail chat
- Facebook Messenger
- Texting
- And many others
Change your means of communication periodically so your messages or posts don’t get ignored.
Also, don’t underestimate the value of hand-written note cards thanking people for their time in speaking to you, and mentioning something specific from the earlier conversation.
Personalized holiday cards can have a similar impact as well.
7. Expanding Your Real Estate Sphere of Influence
Your sphere of influence expands with every new person you meet, which means there are a lot of opportunities to meet potential clients by meeting new people.
Here are some ideas to expand your sphere include:
- Volunteer at your local school
- Get more involved in your religious community
- Attend friends’ parties, gatherings, and events
- Join a sports league or team
- Consider a professional networking organization
- Stay engaged in online groups
The ways to meet new people are almost endless.
8. Maintaining Your Sphere of Influence
Repeat all of the above steps once a quarter or perhaps twice a year.
However, before you follow up with anyone, take a moment to review your notes from your previous conversations.
Staying in touch with and providing value to your SOI will not only make you a force to be reckoned with in your local market — it’s also what makes a career in real estate so rewarding!
Grow Your Business With the Help of a Real Estate VA
As you can see, marketing is time-consuming as well as important.
And showing houses, advising sellers, getting a property ready to list — all these, and related tasks can leave real estate professionals with little time to market themselves as should.
Many overwhelmed agents think about finding an assistant but worry that they might not be busy enough all the time to justify hiring one.
This is where AgentUp can help. We offer virtual assistants for real estate (VAs) who can be hired on an hourly, as-needed, basis.
A virtual assistant can handle many of the day-to-day marketing tasks leaving you more time to do the things that only you can do. Here are just a few marketing tasks a VA can help with:
- Marketing projects and tasks — including your real estate sphere of influence
- Transaction coordination
- Updating and answering client questions
- Scheduling showings, meetings, and events
- And much more!
For a decade AgentUp has specialized in building virtual teams in the Philippines. With a staff of hundreds of real estate virtual assistants, we have the size and experience to connect you with the perfect virtual personal assistant.
AgentUp will match you with a VA who has the right educational background, skill set, and level of experience for your specific needs.
Why not take the first step today? You won’t regret it!
Schedule a free consultation to learn more about AgentUp’s real estate virtual assistants and how they can make a noticeable and positive difference to the way you work.
We hope this post helped you better understand how to market to your sphere of influence.
