In real estate, as with any business, you need to have a well-thought-out marketing plan or you might as well be standing in the unemployment line. While your marketing plan is only one element of success, it is a crucial one. There’s any number of strategies that might work but before you decide on one you need to consider the psychology behind your plan. Think about these key elements as you formulate your strategy:

• Who is your client?
• Where is your client?
• What does your client want?
• Why is your client in the market for a house?

Who is your client?

Before you start selling houses, you need to know who’s going to be buying them. “But,” you may say, “I want to sell to everyone.” I’m sure you do – we all do – but it’s just not possible, especially at first. If you consider your own personality, you’ll find the key to your niche market. You might target first-time buyers, corporate executives, the military market, single people, or some other large group. The key is to be specific but not overly so. You wouldn’t, for example, want to work solely with retired single soldiers. There just aren’t enough of them around to support your business. On the other hand, if you live near a military base you might want to build your business around the military transferees. And you might want to work exclusively with buyers or with sellers – two very different markets.

That’s not to say you can’t work with someone from a different group if the opportunity presents itself, just that you should focus your marketing time and resources on one particular group.

I handle a lot of corporate relocations so a big part of my marketing effort is geared toward company executives and human resource departments.

Where is your client?

Once you decide who you’re going to serve, you need to be able to find them. Continuing with our military example, the sellers are obviously going to work on the base so you should advertise in the local base newspaper among other things. But the buyers are going to be on other military bases around the world, right? So you’ll have to devise a strategy to reach them. Just knowing where your clients are is another huge step toward success.

Because my clients come from all over the country, newspaper advertising alone is not enough for me. My single most important marketing medium is my web site.

Why is your client in the market for a house?

They might want a bigger house or a smaller one. They might have recently been married or divorced. Perhaps a baby was born or a spouse died. It might be relocation. Knowing the answer to this question for each individual client will help set the tone of the transaction as well as determine where to look and what to look for. The idea is to listen closely to what your clients say and really understand their needs. Listen to what they say as well as what they don’t say. Watch their body language. Knowing what signs to look for can really help you understand your clients. That’s why I think it’s a good idea to do some reading or take a class in psychology, particularly body language.

What does your client want?

A house of course. But what kind of house? In which neighborhood? Near which schools? In what price range? Figure out the answers to these questions and then start acquiring an intimate knowledge of the neighborhoods that fit the needs of your clients. Do you see how knowing the answer to this question can jump-start your business? If you tried to serve the needs of everyone in town, you’d need to know everything about every neighborhood in town. But once you find your niche market, you empower yourself to become an expert in your chosen area by greatly narrowing the playing field.

But beyond the actual product your clients want, what kind of behavior do they expect from you? Everyone expects his or her calls to be returned on time. And everyone wants to be treated like a very special client. But a person purchasing a half-million dollar house is going to have different expectations than someone wanting a ninety thousand dollar house. It’s your job to find out what it takes to make your clients feel special. Let’s say you show primarily lake houses – a boat tour of the lake for all your clients might do the trick.

My clients tend to be professionals in their 30s and 40s, so I focus on technology, information, and superior customer service. They are well educated and trained to process huge amounts of information, so that’s what I give them. They also are comfortable with technology so by providing the latest technological tools I say to them, “I understand you and I am just like you.” In a sense, it’s like making a friend. People will chose a Realtor whom in other circumstances they might have chosen as a friend – someone they like and are comfortable with. And of course superior customer service is something every client expects. That should be a given for every Realtor, but unfortunately it isn’t.

Formulating a viable marketing plan is not hard to do. It requires thought, large doses of common sense, and a little training in psychology, but more importantly an understanding of people. I often hear the saying that one must have a lot of product knowledge to be successful. I fully believe product knowledge is important but not nearly as important as people knowledge.