How To Get Started As A New Real Estate Agent

Real estate can be a tricky field to break into for a new real estate agent. Many agents do not equip themselves or plan adequately and end up failing. 87% of new agents won’t make it through their first year. However, despite the figures, there are many ways to succeed as a new real estate agent. Creating a career for yourself as a real estate agent can be exciting and fun. For starters, you can set your hours and be your boss. 

Once you get the hang of things and get into a good rhythm, you open yourself up to the opportunity to be significantly more productive than you would with a traditional 9-5 job. Setting yourself up for success and gathering the right tools will help you get started on a fruitful and successful career as a real estate agent. 

Set Yourself Up For Success As A New Real Estate Agent

There are a few different things to do to set yourself up for success. Taking these steps early on in your career will help you to build the foundation for a prolific and productive career as a real estate agent. Let’s dive into some of the things to do to set yourself up for success in real estate. 

Choose A Broker

Choosing a broker is an important part of starting as an agent. This will be a significant avenue for you to make sales. Knowing who you are working with as a broker will play a notable role in your success as an agent. Here are a few things to look out for in a broker when you are first starting:

• Fees
• Size
• Training Program
• Support
• Mentorship opportunities
• Advertising

Ask the right questions to make sure you are teaming up with the broker that best suits your needs. When looking for a broker, consider these common misunderstandings new agents have about their brokers. It helps to learn from others’ experiences so you can create the best possible foundation for your real estate career. 

Find A Mentor

Just like many other career paths and industries, the value of a mentor is immeasurable. The opportunity to have a reliable mentor to bounce ideas off of and ask questions that will help you to succeed. When finding a mentor, it is vital to find someone who feels like a good fit for you. Find someone with a similar target audience or experience in the region you wish to work in. This way you can learn vital and relevant information from them. Make sure to ask a lot of questions and bounce ideas off of them to get the full scope of their experience and knowledge. 

Develop Your One-Year Plan

Developing a one-year plan gives you a path and goals to focus on. This will be your compass and give you perspective if you start to stray too far from your goals. It will also help you to recalibrate if you feel like you don’t know what to do next or are having trouble making a decision. This plan will also help you establish a budget for both personal and professional expenses. 

Tools You’ll Need As A New Real Estate Agent

As a real estate agent, there are certain tools of the trade you’ll need to work with. Setting these up from the beginning will help you to start with a great foundation. Most of these involve the internet and connecting with potential leads and your target audience. Setting these platforms up early will make sure you are ready to go with the professionalism and communication necessary to convert leads into profitable sales. 

CRM-Customer Relationship Management

Having a CRM is vital for real estate agents. It helps to have one that is specifically designed for this industry as there are many varieties available. A good CRM will come with email templates. It will be easy to use and make organizing/contacting leads easier and less time-consuming. There are several options based on your budget, but our preferred choice is Engagemore CRM. It’s managed by a real estate agent with years of experience in digital marketing and comes with all of the features mentioned above.

Real Estate Website

Your real estate website is very important to the success of your career. It is the face of your company and is the perfect avenue for targeting content like how-to guides, blog posts, listings, and other marketing communications for your leads. Some brokerages provide a free website when you sign up. These may do the trick when you’re starting, but consider upgrading if you plan on spending much time on your site.  These real estate website options come highly recommended. 

LeadSites made by Easy Agent PRO is another fantastic option. The hosting platform is made with real estate agents in mind. It includes all the tools an agent needs to be successful including landing pages, farm page builders, customizable designs, social media sharing tools, blogging, and much more. If you’d like to see all that LeadSites has to offer, contact us today to see a free demo. 

Social Media Accounts

As many of us know, social media is a popular way for sharing marketing information and content. It is also a great way to make yourself known and start gaining traction in different regions. The most important thing about using social media for real estate is to pick a platform you are comfortable with and enjoy using. If you like making videos, look to TikTok or YouTube. If you’re more comfortable with blog posts and written content, posting to Facebook or posting links on Twitter may be a better bet. Those who enjoy photos and visual tools will likely enjoy using Pinterest or Instagram for their social media tools. 

The most important part of social media is consistency. Set a schedule for posting and content and have it ready to go so you keep your audience engaged. Social media platforms use algorithms that you must work with to make sure your content is seen by the right people. Make sure to post often and engage with your audience as much as possible.

Terms Every New Real Estate Agent Should Know

As with any other industry, it is important to get acquainted with different terms used by others in the field. This will help you to understand the conversation and make sure you are keeping up to date with the latest tools and techniques. Let’s look into a few terms you should know when it comes to starting as a real estate agent.  

SEO-Search Engine Optimization

SEO is a common term used when talking about online presence, marketing, websites, and content. Your SEO is a representation of how effective your content will be at showing up in search engine results. There’s no magic formula for perfect, top-ranking content every time. However, there are many best practices to incorporate to ensure you’re doing everything possible to succeed with SEO. Here are a few tips and tricks for SEO:

• Opt for keywords that aren’t too short but still popular enough to be searched for.
• Create longer content for your various online platforms. Aim for at least 1200 words for articles and be sure your keywords are present throughout. 
• Optimize meta description, images/alt tags, etc. for optimal results. 
• Share your content, create an audience, and link out to other content. This generates organic traffic and helps convert leads into sales. 

In addition to these tips and techniques, there are a lot of other SEO terms. If you want to learn more, check out this glossary of terms. For beginners, SEO may seem very complicated and confusing. Luckily, it is a lot easier than it sounds. With a little help and practice, you’ll be putting out impressive content in no time. Ensure your real estate website comes with a built-in SEO guide to make the process easier. If not, check out LeadSites which offers all this and more. 

Landing Pages

Landing pages are part of your real estate website. The landing page is designed to be the first page your visitors see when visiting your website. These are usually linked out to ads. Landing pages are meant to be short, provide context to the ad in question, and offer a call to action. It helps to make the information available in exchange for contact info. Asking for an email or basic contact information before providing access to the how-to guides, listings, or anything else on your landing page helps grow your reach. Add this contact info to your CRM to stay in touch and build connections with leads. 

Farm Pages & Geographic Farming

Farming is a strategy that many real estate agents use. It is an online marketing technique that allows agents to focus on a particular area, usually a neighborhood or small community. From here, the real estate agents create content that is easy to find online while targeting a niche audience. It is important to establish a niche with geo-farming. This reduces competition and allows you to target a specific group of people which concentrates your marketing efforts. Farming is a great technique to use to help your website grow and develop an audience over time. Geo-farming is especially successful when used in conjunction with your social media pages.

To create farm pages, you’ll need great content. Share it on social media to generate organic traffic. Some agents find lots of success by providing a useful tool like a mortgage calculator on the farming page. Others find success with targeted listings and how-to guides. Sharing the farm pages weekly is a great habit to set you up for success. These are all great ways to get farm pages to the top of search engine results. If you’d like to learn more about real estate farming, check out this post for an in-depth dive into the subject. 

Leads For New Real Estate Agents

Leads are likely one real estate agent term you’ve encountered frequently. It is a general marketing term referring to anyone you can contact with the hope of turning them into a client. Keeping the leads coming in is one of the most vital parts of being a successful agent. From there, you can move down the sales funnel as you convert leads into clients. 

The general flow of a good lead generation strategy is to drive traffic to your site, turn a portion of that traffic into leads, and then contact those leads through calls, emails, or any other method you find useful. This is where your CRM comes in as it allows you to stay in contact with potential leads as you build a relationship with them until they ultimately convert into clients. Lead generation is the name of the game in the online real estate business. It is the goal behind many of the tools and techniques we’ve talked about for starting. Here are 7 ways you can start generating leads online. 

Getting Your Career Started As A New Real Estate Agent

Starting as a new agent might feel overwhelming, but with the right tools and a good plan you can turn it into the best job you’ve ever had. Contact us today for a free demo of our lead-generating real estate website, where we’ll be happy to help you plan out your online marketing strategy!