Challenging The Way Real Estate Professionals Market Themselves

The real estate marketing industry is experiencing a major shift, as a new age entrepreneur teaches individuals how to build a personal brand and market themselves effectively online.

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk

The real estate industry has come a long way since the National Real Estate Association of Australia was founded in 1980. With no internet, agents opted to advertise properties in the newspaper, and word-of-mouth marketing was how they built a strong business reputation.

Fast forward to today and with the immersion of the internet, there are plenty of marketing resources available for real estate agents across the world to promote their companies and market their client’s listings. Yet the question remains – is there a right way to market oneself?

Dubbed Australia’s top agent by Financial Review, Alexander Phillips believes that newspaper coverage is still a useful marketing tool. Phillips reportedly sold 254 properties in Sydney worth a combined $1.1 billion dollars, and has been ranked an industry’s sales leader by Real Estate Business since 2016.

Today, almost every newspaper and bus bench hosts the face of a realtor. Billboards, bus shelters, and yard signs are all surefire ways to get your name out there. But what about online marketing?

According to NAR’s 2022 home buyers report, 96% of all home buyers used online tools in the search for a home process. With a vast majority of home buyers looking for properties online, it’s a no brainer for agents to leverage that. 

But posting an ad online or using a marketing tool like Zillow isn’t what we’re talking about here. Creating unique content on social media allows you to build that critical relationship with your audience and potential buyers that online ads simply won’t do.

Real estate maverick Neel Dhingra, AKA neelhome, is a Las Vegas native and founder of Forward Academy, and he grew his real estate finance business by 1000% over 3 years through content marketing. 

Through his organization and its subsidiary the Forward Event, Dhingra hosts live workshops and conferences, teaching real estate agents, mortgage loan officers, and other sales professionals how to market themselves effectively online.

Newspaper ads and bus shelter signs are what he calls “tried and true ways to get business in real estate and finance,” but Dhingra shares how taking a risk can lead to more reward.

“A lot of people shy away from taking risks, but in hindsight, I realized it was actually risky to not try something new. So the risk is actually not taking a risk,” he says. “It allows for a disproportionate return, meaning you can get a lot more upside.”

So how exactly does one create that upside? Dhingra says it comes down to giving before you ask.

“I think the problem with most people in sales is the customer is on the left end of the spectrum and then the closed sale is on the right end of the spectrum, and they’re asking the customer to go from left all the way to the right in one step. So they’re saying, “Hey, if you’re ready to buy, let’s work together.’”

But the problem is, many consumers, especially young consumers, aren’t quite sure about moving forward. They’d like to have a middle step where they get information, and so that middle step is your content. It’s your YouTube channel, your social media posts, your ebook, whatever those digital assets are. It’s your personal brand. “You give people the opportunity to follow along, and then they learn from you and begin to build that trust,” he continues.

Through Forward Academy, Dhingra hosts content creation workshops where he helps individuals create their message and write content that will perform well on social media and actually get results. 

It’s thinking about what you are an expert in and then how you can go about teaching that in a way that will actually get the most reach on today’s social media platforms.

“Because there’s so many things you could be doing in digital marketing, sometimes you can get overwhelmed with where to start. What we do is handle that process by telling you where you should focus on based on who you’re trying to reach and what you’re trying to teach,” he continues. 

Once you have that plan and you begin to implement it, you’ll notice as your clients will start to  feel comfortable asking you their questions, and then from there, your business will begin to grow and expand.

“Instead of trying to focus on the bottom of the funnel, which are people who are ready to transact right now, this strategy allows you to reach people who may be 6 or 12 months away from transacting, but now you have a way to reach a lot of these people at scale,” he says. 

“So we actually help them come up with a message, teach them how to shoot a video and deliver a message confidently on camera, and then how to optimize the content so that it can reach the most people.”

He continues; “The last step we teach is really important, which is now that you’re doing all this, how do you actually turn this into business? Because the novelty of getting likes and followers is great in the beginning, but then it wears off over time. But what never gets old is getting another client or helping change someone’s life,” he concludes.
If you would like to leverage your online presence so you can help more clients and turn your online engagement into business, visit Forward Academy’s website for more information and follow real estate expert Neel Dhingra on Instagram where he regularly shares marketing tips and tricks.

Photo by Pavel Danilyuk

The real estate industry has come a long way since the National Real Estate Association of Australia was founded in 1980. With no internet, agents opted to advertise properties in the newspaper, and word-of-mouth marketing was how they built a strong business reputation.

Fast forward to today and with the immersion of the internet, there are plenty of marketing resources available for real estate agents across the world to promote their companies and market their client’s listings. Yet the question remains – is there a right way to market oneself?

Dubbed Australia’s top agent by Financial Review, Alexander Phillips believes that newspaper coverage is still a useful marketing tool. Phillips reportedly sold 254 properties in Sydney worth a combined $1.1 billion dollars, and has been ranked an industry’s sales leader by Real Estate Business since 2016.

Today, almost every newspaper and bus bench hosts the face of a realtor. Billboards, bus shelters, and yard signs are all surefire ways to get your name out there. But what about online marketing?

According to NAR’s 2022 home buyers report, 96% of all home buyers used online tools in the search for a home process. With a vast majority of home buyers looking for properties online, it’s a no brainer for agents to leverage that. 

But posting an ad online or using a marketing tool like Zillow isn’t what we’re talking about here. Creating unique content on social media allows you to build that critical relationship with your audience and potential buyers that online ads simply won’t do.

Real estate maverick Neel Dhingra, AKA neelhome, is a Las Vegas native and founder of Forward Academy, and he grew his real estate finance business by 1000% over 3 years through content marketing. 

Through his organization and its subsidiary the Forward Event, Dhingra hosts live workshops and conferences, teaching real estate agents, mortgage loan officers, and other sales professionals how to market themselves effectively online.

Newspaper ads and bus shelter signs are what he calls “tried and true ways to get business in real estate and finance,” but Dhingra shares how taking a risk can lead to more reward.

“A lot of people shy away from taking risks, but in hindsight, I realized it was actually risky to not try something new. So the risk is actually not taking a risk,” he says. “It allows for a disproportionate return, meaning you can get a lot more upside.”

So how exactly does one create that upside? Dhingra says it comes down to giving before you ask.

“I think the problem with most people in sales is the customer is on the left end of the spectrum and then the closed sale is on the right end of the spectrum, and they’re asking the customer to go from left all the way to the right in one step. So they’re saying, “Hey, if you’re ready to buy, let’s work together.’”

But the problem is, many consumers, especially young consumers, aren’t quite sure about moving forward. They’d like to have a middle step where they get information, and so that middle step is your content. It’s your YouTube channel, your social media posts, your ebook, whatever those digital assets are. It’s your personal brand. “You give people the opportunity to follow along, and then they learn from you and begin to build that trust,” he continues.

Through Forward Academy, Dhingra hosts content creation workshops where he helps individuals create their message and write content that will perform well on social media and actually get results. 

It’s thinking about what you are an expert in and then how you can go about teaching that in a way that will actually get the most reach on today’s social media platforms.

“Because there’s so many things you could be doing in digital marketing, sometimes you can get overwhelmed with where to start. What we do is handle that process by telling you where you should focus on based on who you’re trying to reach and what you’re trying to teach,” he continues. 

Once you have that plan and you begin to implement it, you’ll notice as your clients will start to  feel comfortable asking you their questions, and then from there, your business will begin to grow and expand.

“Instead of trying to focus on the bottom of the funnel, which are people who are ready to transact right now, this strategy allows you to reach people who may be 6 or 12 months away from transacting, but now you have a way to reach a lot of these people at scale,” he says. 

“So we actually help them come up with a message, teach them how to shoot a video and deliver a message confidently on camera, and then how to optimize the content so that it can reach the most people.”

He continues; “The last step we teach is really important, which is now that you’re doing all this, how do you actually turn this into business? Because the novelty of getting likes and followers is great in the beginning, but then it wears off over time. But what never gets old is getting another client or helping change someone’s life,” he concludes.
If you would like to leverage your online presence so you can help more clients and turn your online engagement into business, visit Forward Academy’s website for more information and follow real estate expert Neel Dhingra on Instagram where he regularly shares marketing tips and tricks.