If you were going to sell or buy a home, and you were looking for a real estate agent to help you do it, you’d have a lot of different options about which agent you choose to work with.
To narrow it down, you might have a list of people you’re considering working with made up of agents you found online in a Google search, agents that your friends recommended, and perhaps even an agent that you worked with in the past.
And while 20+ years ago, you may have just called them all and set up a appointments to meet in person, nowadays, that has changed, and most people will do some research online about each agent before they consider reaching out to them (often, even if they’ve worked with them in the past).
As part of that research, there are a lot of different ways people will determine if they’re going to reach out to you or not, but a big part of their decision will likely come from looking at the experience others have had working with you, which is called social proof (which is also a big part of your online presence strategy).
★ Want to learn more about online presence? Have a look at these posts:
- How to Build an Online Presence Strategy for Your Real Estate Brand
- How Your Real Estate Referral Business is Tied to Your Online Presence
- How to Effectively Monitor Your Brand’s Online Presence
Social proof is the direct experience others have had working with you, which is primarily made of past client reviews, endorsements, and documented experiences.
Basically, any form of endorsement or recommendation from others can be considered social proof, whether it’s something someone else did to promote you (like writing you a Google review) or something you did to promote yourself (like you posting that Google review on your social media profiles).
There’s no doubt, social proof is a really powerful way to convince someone that you’re the right fit for them, based on what you’ve done for others. When someone sees that other people like them have had a positive experience working with you, they’re more likely to believe that they’ll have a positive experience working with you as well.
In short, it helps make people trust you, and in a lot of cases, before they’ve even met you.
Here’s an example of how social proof works. If you were researching real estate agents you were considering working with, you’re probably going to start with a Google search; and if in those search results, you find that agent #1 has 250 5-star Google reviews, and agent #2 has a couple of 4-star reviews (or maybe in no reviews at all), which one would you choose to work with? It’s a pretty obvious choice.
In the above situation, you might not even read the reviews. Just seeing the number and quality of the reviews might be enough to help you make a decision about who to reach out to without digging deeper.
★ Want to learn more about building social proof? Have a look at these posts:
- How Case Studies Can Boost Your Online Review Strategy
- Why Every Agent Needs an Online Review Strategy
- How Your Online Reputation Can Lose or Win You Business
And while it’s fine for someone to research you and see a lot of feedback from people that you’re a really nice person, it’s a lot more powerful if they outline how you’ve solved problems for your clients, especially if the people reading your reviews have similar problems.
For example, if most of your online reviews consistently say that you sell above the asking price and have gotten your clients more money than they expected, then people who want the same type of result will reach out to you.
Social proof is a powerful way to influence people, often in the background without you even knowing it, so that they’ll reach out to you. By leveraging the opinions and actions of others, you can build trust and credibility with your target audience, and get more business as a result.
Want to get better, more qualified leads and build your authority? Our Inbound Marketing Guide is a walkthrough of the overall philosophy of inbound marketing, why it’s effective, and how you can build it into your own real estate marketing strategy to get better marketing results.
