As a real estate agent you help your client sell or buy homes. Your client could be a first-time homebuyer or an investor who is looking to invest in their next property. It could be someone who is looking to buy a house vs renting one. Perhaps it is an international buyer from a particular background with a wife and two kids or a college graduate who recently got his first job in a new city. Maybe your target audience is a senior citizen looking to sell their homes because they want to move into someplace smaller or a millennial looking for an eco-friendly neighbourhood who is very active on social media.

Why defining who your Real Estate target audience is important?

Defining your real estate target audience becomes vital while coming up with online marketing strategy. It is 2020, digital/online marketing is essential. There are big players out there like Zillow, Redfin, Trulia, Keller Williams e.t.c with huge advertising budgets and they, too, define their target audience. Why? because no one wants to waste money selling to someone who isn’t interested. By defining your target audience you can create a profile of your client. Chances are, 9 out of 10, that majority of your clients fall in that category. Knowing who your target audience helps you decide how to target them. For instance a senior citizen is most likely not searching for a real estate agent online to help them sell their home. Similarly an international buyer will not be coming to your open house to view the property while they are half way across the world.

How to define your Real Estate target audience

While considering your target audience the first thing that usually comes to mind is Demographics. What is your target audience’s demographics. And I agree, it is important to define the demographics of your target audience but that is only the tip of the iceberg. In order for you to really get to know your target audience, in 2020, you need to also consider psychographics. You may have or have not heard of this term; psychographics. Regardless, psychographics are an important metric to consider while defining your real estate target audience

Let’s discuss Demographics vs Psychographics. What are they & what is the difference between them?

If Demographics defines who your target audience is then Psychographics defines what drives or motivates and influences your target audience to make their decisions.

Demographics define population based on the following criteria: age, gender, ethnicity, marital Status, # of children, occupation, annual income , education level. For example:

• Male
• Aged 45-65
• Married, with children
• Household income $100K+

Psychographics define the population based on the following: interests, motivations, online behaviour, personality traits, principles, activities, lifestyle. For example:

• Concerned with current political affairs
• Follows an active lifestyle by visiting the gym 5x/week
• Very active in online groups about sustainable living vs urbanization
• Finds fulfillment in his job and family
• Wishes he had more time to spend with his friends

How to discover your target audience’s psychographics

There are primarily two ways of determining your real estate target audience psychographics.

1. By interviewing few of your past customers and learning more about their likes/dislikes, interests, motivational factors e.t.c. You can ask them questions like: What gym do they workout at? Have they seen any good movies lately? What is their favourite restaurant in the neighbourhood?
2. By analyzing and evaluating collected data from your personal website or company page on social media. For instance: what pages on your website are the visitors spending most time on? What amenities are do they most value in a property? Which one of your advertising brought generated the most leads and why? How was that advertising or blog or neighbourhood different from the rest?

Key questions to ask yourself to help you narrow down your target audience

Let’s face the fact and acknowledge the competition that is out there. There are plenty of Real Estate agents and they all help their clients sell or buy real estate, correct? Here is a list of questions that you may want to ask yourself to help you determine your real estate target audience:

• What type of properties are you focusing on and why? is it Apartment Buildings and Condos, Single-Family Detached Homes or Luxury Residences
• From your customer’s point of view what problems do you solve for them? Perhaps it is your in-depth knowledge of a particular neighbourhood or town. Maybe one of your strengths is your negotiation skills. This helps you narrow down the personality trait that has brought you majority of your past clients.
• How do you stand out from your competitors in the market? Are you offering any services that your competitors aren’t. For example: your expertise on interior designing or your passion for cabin and cottages
• What is their ethnic background? Are they Caucasians, Hispanics, Asians, Africans.
• What are their family dynamics or marital status?
• How active are they online? Which social media platform are they most active on?
• Who is your ideal customer? Are they a seller or a buyer? First-time home owner or an investor?

Benefits

Although it may seem that the benefits are quite transparent of defining who is your target audience, from the point of view of your website this may not be as obvious but is still very important. Your target audience will determine the tone, the visuals, and the overall experience that your website needs to be planned around. From an advertising perspective this will help you target the right audience by defining who the advertisement should be shown to or not shown to. And as far as brand identity goes, when you know your target audience it makes it easier to clearly define your vision and values, develop trust and confidence, as well as build an ideal public image for your brand identity.

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