Today, real estate agents need to manage their online reputations and proactively seek positive customer reviews. Here are 4 vital tips, ideas, and strategies to help your real estate agency maintain a positive reputation and use reviews to generate leads.
House hunting starts online. That’s obvious in 2018. The internet has resources that let you check out properties with detailed images, neighborhood information, pricing, and ways to schedule showings.
It follows course, then, that most real estate agents get discovered online. Whether through search or in connection to a listing, the agent’s name most often comes up first as prospects research properties.
Unless the prospect already knows you, there isn’t much to help distinguish you on a site like Zillow. If they check out your website, you have an opportunity to talk more about your areas of expertise and experience.
The one thing that does stand out is reviews. Look at a listing on Zillow and the first thing you notice with agents is the reviews:
Those little green stars…you better have them, and when people click through to read what your clients said about you, it better be positive and detailed. On a platform like this, reviews pretty much are your marketing material.
Buying or selling a home is a big deal, and working with a real estate agent to make it happen gets personal. If you’re like most agents, that’s what you love about your job. You work on behalf of your clients as if they were a member of your own family, and you share in their joy with a successful closing.
For marketing purposes, you need to ensure that joy turns into published online reviews praising your work. Here are 4 tips that will help you build a solid review profile across the most important platforms.
#1. Earn the Reputation You Deserve
At Top Rated Local®, we interview hundreds of businesses a year that win our award for top-rated business in their area. These are businesses with excellent review profiles.
In almost all cases, the main reason they cite for having a stellar online reputation is the quality of their product and high level of their customer service. When they deliver on their promises and treat their customers with integrity, strong reviews follow naturally.
Earning a strong reputation as a real estate agent is no different. It’s a mindset and attitude. You go above and beyond to delight people with your work. It’s also a business policy. You’ve chosen to be a customer-centric business. You won’t undercut a client just for a short-term gain. For you, it’s all about making sure your clients get into or sell a house with results that exceed their expectations.
While there are exceptions when it comes to individual reviews, for the most part you’ll receive the reputation you earn. Be aware that everything you do as a real estate agent can become part of a published review that impacts your lead-generation for years. Do everything you can to make that impact positive.
#2. Ask Clients for Reviews
Because of the importance online reviews play in marketing today, most real estate agents can’t just wait for reviews to happen. And it’s not that hard to ask happy clients to review you.
This is particularly true if you’re a new agent who has few reviews, or if there is a platform you’re on where you need to get more reviews.
Also, it’s a good idea to keep your reviews fresh. If someone goes on Zillow, Top Rated Local, or Google and sees you haven’t been reviewed in the better part of a year, they may discount your reviews – or worse – assume it’s been that long since you had a closing. If you don’t have any recent reviews, you may need to ask your latest clients to help you out.
You can ask for reviews informally at a closing. Just mention you’d appreciate it if they reviewed you somewhere.
We’ve also found it effective to use email follow ups, with a template like this:
When they give you a thumbs-up, it links to the review site where you want to get a review. If they give a thumbs down, it opens a feedback form where they can detail the problem (so this email favors publishing positive reviews).
#3. Respond to Reviews and Welcome Feedback
One action many real estate agents overlook in building their reputation is how reviews offer an opportunity to communicate with clients. You don’t just have to read reviews – you can expand on them with your comments.
When you respond to reviews, do so with purpose.
First, if there is a negative review, give a detailed response to clarify the situation and explain what you did to rectify the problem. With the proper response, you can turn a negative into a positive.
Second, only respond to positive reviews when you want to expand on the topic of the review. What you want to do is clarify the benefit you delivered to the customer – particularly when they’re vague about it.
For example, many agents get reviews where the client is happy about how they “explained the process”, but they don’t detail what the explanation was. In your response, you can add details that will help new leads understand the value you offer. Don’t simply thank someone for a positive review, and certainly don’t do that repeatedly. Make sure your responses are relevant.
Google states that responding to reviews and having more positive reviews helps with local rankings via your Google My Business account, so stay active there.
Facebook is also good place to turn reviews into a dialogue. Be sure to respond to posts where someone comments on or recommends your work.
Look through your reviews for feedback that can improve your work and language that will help you tighten your value proposition. Use constructive criticism to make improvements. If you hear the same positive statements in many reviews, integrate it into your marketing message. Your clients are telling you what they love about you, and that’s likely to motivate new prospects.
Important Idea: Perfect is Overrated
It’s interesting to note that data shows that websites convert better when they don’t have a perfect review profile.
Consumers are skeptical, and when they see a perfect 5.0-star rating, they get suspicious. They wonder that this is “too good to be true”, and think maybe the business is tampering with things.
Not everything is going to go perfect with every deal. You may have some dealings that go sour on you, and the client may leave an unflattering review.
Respond to these reviews with professionalism. Acknowledge constructive criticism and how you acted on it.
You don’t want a long series of negative reviews, but acknowledging that you’re not perfect can give you some street cred that actually helps win over new leads.
#4. Centralize Reviews and Monitor Your Brand
Real estate agencies are a type of business that can suffer from review overload. That is, they get too many reviews on too many different platforms.
If you search for “best real estate agents near me” on Google, you’ll see reviews from Yelp, Angie’s List, Thumbtack, Zillow, Realtor.com…to just name a few. It’s easy for potential clients to get lost in the deluge of reviews, and difficult for agents to monitor their reputations across so many review sites.
We designed Top Rated Local® to bring these disparate resources together. Our system provides a Rating Score™ that results from aggregating reviews scores across all verified sites. The business page itself shows and links to each of these review sites:
This system allows real estate agents to keep track of their online reputations with relative ease, using centralized management software that tracks review growth and ratings. From here you can link to each site where you have reviews, respond as needed, and make sure your reputation is working to help you generate leads and close more deals.
