Beat the Competition with a Unique Value Proposition

In the field of real estate, agents are expected to create their own business. This means really getting your name out there and persuading clients to call or show up to the office.

Unfortunately, clients tend to see all real estate agents as the same and may not immediately see what makes you stand out. Don’t be just another name on a For Sale or Open House yard sign – find out how to strategically differentiate yourself from the competition and find a way to capture more leads.

This all begins by finetuning your unique value proposition to properly define yourself and your company from the rest of your competition.

Unique value proposition as a key component of an effective marketing plan

When creating a marketing plan for your real estate company, there is a lot to consider and unpack. To start off with, there are three components you must always find a way to incorporate into your planning:

• Message – your unique value proposition (UVP)
• Market – the intended recipient of the message based on demographic or location
• Media – the channel or method through which the message is sent to the intended recipient

Unfortunately, too many agents spend vast sums of money on quick solutions, like Facebook ads and sponsored posts, without as much as giving careful thought to the message, market, or audience.

The most effective way to tackle a marketing plan is to work on creating the message first before deciding which media to use for distribution.

Coming up with a unique value proposition

When crafting a UVP, you must specifically describe what makes you different from other agents. The UVP should explain exactly how you solve clients’ problems, the benefits of your particular service, and why they should choose you instead of another agent in your community.

It covers three areas:

• How your service works
• What makes your services valuable
• Why you’re better than other agents

To simplify, it’s a short and clever elevator pitch that a client who has never heard of you should be able to understand and remember.

To make it more effective, the UVP must be displayed front and center on your website and must be completely free of real estate jargon. The simpler and more mainstream the word choice, the better.

But it’s more than just a few catchy taglines. It has to be meaningful – crafting a good UVP requires an in-depth understanding, not just of your own brand, but of your target market as well.

It also requires an understanding of how your brand and your real estate services fit into the larger landscape of the real estate industry.

Here are several questions to prompt the creation of your UVP:

• Who is your target? Many agents make the mistake of marketing to everyone. While this approach is optimistic, it does not help you as a marketer to set realistic goals. Zero in on a specific audience. As an agent, you can begin by determining whether you specialize in residential, commercial, or investment properties.

  List which property types and communities you are most knowledgeable in, and what price range the homes and clients you represent typically fall under.

  Next, conduct some market research based on your existing clients and other groups who might become potential customers. Know their actual pain points, or the problems you are able to proactively solve.

  Get more into their demographic information, average income, age range, and gender. Determine what kind of income your target audience must have in order to do business with you. Find out their hobbies, interests, and professional backgrounds to understand more of the psychology that drives their lifestyle choices and financial decisions.

  You can go the extra mile by creating a user persona of the target audience, or a fictional character that represents your ideal client. It’s a useful tool to help fine tune your message, and a benchmark you can always revisit when writing and planning your marketing material.

  It’s not enough to create a UVP by yourself. You must test it by running it by a group of clients, or individuals whom you think fall within the target market you’re trying to reach. As time goes by, you are bound to receive feedback that either confirms or invalidates the effectivity of your message.

• What problem or pain point does your service address? Determine how exactly your services as a real estate agent alleviates your clients’ pain points. Do you help them save time or money? Can you make the buying process less stressful and confusing? Are your services more affordable or cost-effective than others?

  Then take your answers and cross out the ones that your competitors claim to be able to do as well. Keep digging in until you can find several points that are unique to you.

• What do you stand for? This one takes a while to figure out, but you can start by going back to your business philosophy, company values, and company mission and vision. This pretty much asks what the essence of your brand is, and what you believe in as an agent. If you stand by a firm set of core values and beliefs while conducting your business, it’s likely to attract a set of clients who are also looking for the same wavelength of professionalism or personality.

• Why should clients hire you instead of other agents? In order to stand out from competitors, you need to find out who they are and what their business stands for. This requires thorough research, from reading their company mission and business philosophy to finding out what kind of professionals their business employs.

While doing this, it helps to create a competitive matrix, a table that lists how you and your competitors stack up against each other based on significant factors like services, skills, experience, sales volume, and benefits.

Other factors to consider

Other ways to fine tune your UVP include:

Building your reputation. Maintain a clean and impressive professional track record by doing your work well. In order to create a sharp UVP, you must be able to demonstrate how you’ve helped previous clients succeed in real estate before moving in on the niche you want to fill. Let your performance over the years serve as proof of product.

Continuing and refining market research. Don’t rest on your laurels once you’ve already familiarized yourself with the market and have closed a few deals. Constantly seek primary and secondary research studies to develop a deep understanding of your clients and their perspective that may change over time depending on the market.

Adapting to your user persona. When developing your UVP, it’s crucial to understand your user persona in depth. Your UVP will only become relevant and resound well in the ears of your target audience once they see how it directly impacts them and addresses their problems. This connection is only possible when you truly understand your persona, getting to know them down to their niche interests and the various ways they’ll want to engage with your company.

Marketing is more than fluff – it is essential to the real estate business, and without it, you might not survive as an agent in an aggressively competitive industry.

Let Agent Image Marketing help you stand out from the competition. Consult with our team of expert marketers to refine and communicate your UVP effectively. Call us at 1.800.979.5799 to get started.