In real estate, your reputation among past clients is essential to building your business. That’s why testimonials should be a key component of your marketing strategy. Are you keeping your real estate client testimonials on LinkedIn or your personal website? Or do you have them filed away in letters, cards, and emails for a rainy day? Here are several best practices to help you get the most out of your client reviews.
Make testimonials part of your email marketing strategy
When you send out email blasts about upcoming or current listings, make sure to include real estate testimonials in your emails. You can do this by regularly highlighting one or more of your former clients in a “Customer Spotlight” section.
For example, set up a biweekly or monthly email campaign that has a quote from a past client, their photo, and a brief explanation of how you helped them. If you want to get fancy, target seller testimonials to the potential sellers in your database and buyer testimonials to the potential buyers in your database. This segmentation will ensure you’re not bombarding your prospects with messages that aren’t relevant to them.
Dedicate a page on your website to client testimonials
On your North Carolina real estate website, create an eye-catching and unique landing page that is solely used for displaying testimonials. This can be similar to the “Customer Spotlight” email campaign, using their testimonial, their photo, and how you helped them.
Of course, if you want to step it up a notch, make this page searchable by the type of transaction so buyers can find buyer testimonials, sellers can find seller testimonials, and so on.
Free Guide: 2020-2021 North Carolina Real Estate Income Guide
Promote testimonials on social media
In addition to having a website page dedicated to testimonials, you should also actively share these kind words on your social media platforms. Use a marketing automation tool, such as Hootsuite or HubSpot to schedule Tweets, Facebook status updates, and other posts that link to your testimonials page. When you share these types of posts on social media, clients may share it with their friends —thus extending your reach.
You can also leverage social media by asking your happy clients to post a positive review about the experience they had working with you on Facebook, Google+, and the many other sites that allow online reviews.
One other note about social media: consider posting videos. A video testimonial can be far more compelling than a written one. Consider taking your GoPro to the closing and recording your client’s feedback while they are still beaming with excitement. Or for the especially tech-savvy, how about streaming live on Facebook?
Add a mention to your email signature
Underneath your email signature, add a link to your website’s testimonial page. It could say something like, “See what my clients are saying about me,” or “Check out my latest reviews.” If you are like most people, you probably send out quite a few emails each week. That can mean a lot of eyeballs on your testimonials.
Don’t forget national search sites
Finally, don’t forget to add your real estate testimonials to your broker profile on national search sites such as Zillow and REALTOR.com. There are thousands of potential buyers searching on these sites for homes and brokers, and profiles are often ranked by their activity and reviews in search results.
Be sure you’re taking advantage of these channels. A robust profile could mean all the difference when a potential lead is thinking about contacting you.
