Real Estate Agents: 5 Tips for Selling to Millennials
Posted by : Premraj | Posted on : Friday, April 26, 2019
DELICIOUS
SU
REDDITThe millennials have now officially exceeded Baby Boomers as the leading generation in the U.S. For real estate agents, this seismic demographic shift represents either a profitable opportunity or a stressful challenge. To ensure that you’re firmly in the former category, here are five tips for selling to millennials:
1. Stop dialing, and start emailing and texting.
One of the paradoxes of millennials is that despite being over-communicators, they tend to eschew — or outright avoid — the phone. Perhaps it’s a speed thing, perhaps it’s a convenience thing, or perhaps it’s a “this reminds me too much of how my parents and grandparents do stuff” thing. Regardless of the motive, if you want to earn credibility with millennials and stay on their radar screen, you need to be very comfortable emailing and texting.
2. Become rapidly responsive.
One of the reasons that millennials embrace email and texting, is because they prefer — and in some cases expect and insist — on rapid responsiveness. This means waiting until the next business day to get back to a client (or prospective client) can be fatal. Even if you can’t provide a full response on-demand, you should at least send a note acknowledging receipt, along with a promise to follow-up shortly. And woe to you if you go on vacation (even a mini one) without setting up an auto-responder.
3. Have an exceptional social media presence.
You might have a Facebook and Twitter account, and maybe even an Instagram and YouTube account as well. But simply being visible on these (and other) platforms isn’t enough anymore. To impress millennials, you need to have an exceptional social media presence. That means your pages need to be professionally designed, and you need to push out a steady stream of impressive, sharable content (e.g. infographics, press releases, videos, etc.). If this isn’t your wheelhouse, then work with a digital marketing agency or another specialist who can help you keep up with the millennials on the social media landscape.
4. Become a neighborhood specialist.
In the past, real estate agents obviously needed to be well versed in the areas they served, but not necessarily experts. It was enough to know the details of a property (e.g. size, layout, amenities, etc.). However, millennials are very interested in what surrounds a property; especially things like public transportation, parks and green spaces, bike trails, eating and entertainment options, and more. Make sure that you include all of these details in your listings, and be prepared to sell the neighborhood as much as — and sometimes even more than — a property.
5. Be a resource — not just a vendor.
Last but not least, millennials gravitate towards experts and specialists (a.k.a. “thought leaders”) who provide them with relevant information to help them make smarter, safer and faster decisions. You can plug into this paradigm by offering content like ebooks and reports on your website. For example, the company Brickworks Property Restoration offers a free resource called “The Ultimate Guide to Brick Repair” on its website, which covers things like how to prevent brick deterioration, brick repair best practices, and more. Prospective clients can download it anytime, and each time that happens the company adds a new name and email address to its database. Everybody gets what they want.
The Bottom Line
Forget about the news that the millennials are coming — because the millennials are here, and they’re taking over the real estate world. What’s more, in the next couple of decades, they will inherit billions of inheritance dollars. A significant amount of this will be allocated to real estate. By following the five tips above, you’ll put yourself in position to ride the millennial wave vs. get crushed beneath it.
