With an ever-growing number of competitors in the real estate industry, it’s not enough to simply have a valuable service and hope your cookie-cutter marketing will be enough to win customer conversions. Your potential clients are flooded with marketing campaigns left and right, whether by email, PPC ads or simply in their Google search results.
Most importantly, your audience is perusing mostly through words as opposed to audio. This means you must stick out by showing the worth of your service immediately through your word choice. As recently emphasized by Jim Walberg and David Collins in our Estate of Mind podcast, we believe that changing the vocabulary of your marketing campaigns can effectively improve your audience’s perceived value of your services.
Here are five simple vocabulary shifts that every real estate agent should use to easily create a higher perceived value of your real estate services:
1. Luxury Real Estate “Business” vs. Luxury Real Estate “Practice”
When a client hears the term “business,” they’re typically thinking of a money-making entity out for their own profit. Referring to your own company as a “practice” associates you with services that typically look out for the best interest of the client, such as medical professionals. Treat yourself as one who serves your community, as opposed to just another business out to make money.
Your client’s perception of you as a professional as opposed to simply a business will do much to improve overall customer trust in your advice as well as final negotiations.
2. Flyer vs. Brochure
Offering “brochures” instead of “flyers” to potential buyers gives them the impression that something exciting, even exotic, awaits in their future. Flyers are synonymous with advertisement, whereas brochures are a resource detailing options for a luxurious vacation, or, in your case, displaying luxury homes for the next chapter of your customers’ lives.
3. “I’ve sold at this price point” vs. “Yes, I can sell this neighborhood”
When you radiate a mindset of selling neighborhoods, this gives a home buyer the impression that you’ve likely sold other homes in their future neighborhood, and that those already living there are probably just like them, preemptively giving them the security of already “fitting in” with their potential new neighbors.
Focusing on yourself more as a community builder and less as someone who solely sells high-end homes will only help build trust with potential clients. Building yourself up as client-focused, rather than sales-obsessed, will help shift how potential clients perceive you.
4. Commission vs. Professional Fees
The word “commission” comes with the self-interested money-making mentality which might make some clients suspicious of why you chose a particular amount or percentage as opposed to another. Instead, “professional fee” underlines your dignity as a professional providing a quality service that surely must be compensated for.
This simple vocabulary shift establishes your relationship with your client as one of service as opposed to merely transactional, therefore generally improving the perceived value of your service based on the impression of your client relationships.
5. “I sold” vs. “I negotiated”
The idea of negotiating implies you worked closely and likely very long hours with your client, finding the best property for the whole gamut of their interests and within the boundaries of their budget. This language shift especially focuses on the personal relationship between you and your client, as opposed to the sale of the property.
Remember, you’re not providing your professional services to a house, you’re providing them to a person.
It’s time to do away with worn out real estate terms of the past. Begin with these small, yet effective vocabulary-shift examples to help better position yourself as a trusted luxury real estate professional. Before you know it, you’ll see for yourself how the power of word choice affects your clients’ perceived value of your services.
Is Growing Your Luxury Real Estate Practice a Priority for You In 2022?
The Institute’s in-person Luxury Live events are back and—for the first time ever—we’ve introduced a Member Happy Hour to give you even more time to network with other luxury real estate professionals (or aspiring luxury real estate professionals).
The curriculum for these exciting two-day events is based on our proven 7-Step Luxury Marketing Blueprint to help you break into luxury real estate or reach the next level in your luxury real estate career.
To learn more and see when Luxury Live is coming to your city, click here.
Diane Hartley is the president of the Institute for Luxury Home Marketing, a premier independent authority in training and designation for real estate agents working in the upper-tier residential market. Hartley brings her passion for luxury marketing and more than 20 years of experience growing and leading businesses to her role as president of the Institute.
