Using Familiarity in Your Marketing Strategy to Get More Business
People choose to work with people they like, but they also choose to work with people they feel a connection to and are reminded of consistently. That connection takes time to build, and it doesn’t happen on its own. If an agent doesn’t continually remind people that they exist, it’s almost as if they don’t.
That’s where familiarity comes in. Familiarity in marketing is about positive repetition. The more times someone sees your brand, engages with your content, and is reminded that you exist, the more likely they are to connect with you, trust you, and eventually choose to work with you when they’re ready to make a real estate decision.
Because the average real estate transaction happens only once every several years, there’s a long gap between when someone works with you and when they might need you again.
If you don’t have a strategy in place to stay visible during that gap, another agent who does will become the familiar name, and familiarity is often what tips the decision in their favor.
Why Familiarity Matters More Than Most Agents Think
A lot of agents assume that because someone worked with them in the past, that person will automatically work with them again in the future. In a lot of cases, that’s not true.
People are constantly being marketed to in a variety of ways. If you worked with someone years ago and never did anything to remind them you exist, there are other agents who are actively marketing to that same audience and building the kind of familiarity that could win their trust and their business.
The less you do to remind people you exist, the less you actually do exist in their minds. Competition is everywhere, and the agents who stay visible are the ones who stay top of mind.
That doesn’t mean you need to be aggressive or intrusive. It means you need to be consistently present across the places your audience is most likely to see you, whether that’s through your content, your email marketing, your social media, or your overall online presence.
★ Want to learn more about staying visible to your audience? Have a look at these posts:
- Creating a Returning Visitors Marketing Strategy
- Building a Real Estate Marketing Stickiness Strategy
- Planning an End-to-End Brand Experience for Your Real Estate Business
How to Build Familiarity Through Your Marketing
The most effective way to build familiarity is through consistency across multiple channels. No single person in your audience is going to see every piece of marketing you produce, so the more places you show up and the more consistently you do it, the more likely your audience is to remember you.
Through your content strategy. Every blog post you publish, every guide you create, and every resource you share gives your audience a reason to come back to your website. When someone returns to read your content multiple times, they build a stronger connection to your brand with each visit. Over time, that repeat engagement turns you from someone they discovered once into someone they’re genuinely familiar with.
Through your email marketing. Email is one of the most effective familiarity tools because it puts your brand directly in front of the people who have already opted in to hear from you. A consistent, value-driven email strategy keeps your name visible and gives your audience a regular reminder that you exist, along with a reason to engage with your content.
Through your social media. Your social media presence keeps you visible in your audience’s feeds on a regular basis. Only a small percentage of your followers will see any given post organically, so the more consistently you post, the more likely your content is to reach more people. The goal isn’t to chase followers or likes; it’s to stay present so your audience continues to see you and associate your brand with the topics that matter to them.
Through your online presence. Your website, your review profiles, your directory listings, and your brand mentions across the web all contribute to how familiar your brand feels to someone who encounters it. When all of those sources are consistent and reinforcing the same message, familiarity builds faster because your audience sees the same brand everywhere they look.
The key to familiarity is consistency. It’s not about any single marketing piece or any single channel. It’s about showing up consistently across every touchpoint so that your audience sees you, recognizes you, and remembers you when the time comes to make a decision.
Familiarity Also Builds AI Visibility
The same consistency that builds familiarity with your audience also builds familiarity with AI platforms. When AI platforms are evaluating whether to recommend you, they look at the consistency of your brand across your website, your reviews, your content, and your mentions on other websites.
A brand that appears consistently across multiple credible sources, with the same name, the same messaging, and the same areas of expertise, sends a stronger signal to AI platforms than a brand that appears in one place and is invisible everywhere else.
That means the work you do to build familiarity with your audience, through your content, your email marketing, your social media, and your online presence, also contributes directly to your AI visibility. The two strategies reinforce each other.
★ Want to learn more about building your brand and online presence? Have a look at these posts:
- The Steps to Building a Trustworthy Personal Real Estate Brand
- How to Build an Online Presence Strategy for Your Real Estate Brand
- How Unlinked Brand Mentions Help Your AI Visibility Strategy
Consistency Is the Long-Term Strategy
The key to making your brand as familiar as possible is to market with consistency over time. Familiarity is a long-term strategy designed to keep your name and your brand present in the minds of your audience so that when the time comes to buy or sell, they think of you first.
It’s not about any single campaign or any single piece of marketing. It’s about showing up, over and over again, with valuable, consistent, and recognizable touchpoints that make your audience feel like they know you, even if they’ve never met you.
Want to drive traffic, build your brand, and engage your target audience? Download our eBook: ‘The Ultimate Guide to Real Estate Marketing’. It’s a collection of some of our best marketing articles, tips, and tricks that we’ve collected over the years.
