Millennial home buyers have entered the housing market in a big way. Surpassing Baby Boomers as the largest generational group in America, they now make up the largest group of home buyers. As a real estate agent, marketing to Millennials should be among your top priorities.
Understanding millennial homebuyers
Sometimes labeled “Generation Y,” Millennials are people born between the early 1980s and late 1990s. They have surpassed 72.1 million people as a group in 2020, according to Pew Research Center. With the core group of Millennials between 26 to 41 years old, many of them (or at least those who can afford to do so) are beginning to buy their first homes and invest in real estate for the first time.
How to connect with millennial real estate prospects
Millennials love their technology. They grew up with high-tech gadgets, desktop computers, and smart devices. When marketing to Millennials, know that they are more likely to respond to online marketing and communication efforts as opposed to newspaper ads, flyers, and postcards. Although you may have a physical office at your brokerage firm or at home, don’t forget to take advantage of an online virtual office, too. This will allow you to interact with prospective Millennial home buyers online—whether through social media, email, Skype, text alerts, or other means.
Some of the most effective options for targeting Millennial home buyers (and others) are shareable blog posts and short videos. Many agents today are writing their own blogs and posting videos from their smartphones onto social media sites that can be seen worldwide. As more people “like” their video tours of home listings or share them on Facebook, Twitter, TikTok, or Instagram, the potential growth rate of viewers is almost limitless.
Sales technique for marketing to millennials
Tech-savvy Millennials also tend to have very short attention spans. The famous AICDC (Attention, Interest, Conviction, Desire, and Close) sales technique—first developed by the Dale Carnegie Professional Sales Course several decades ago—still applies when marketing to Millennials. Try using the following AICDC sales strategy on Millennial real estate prospects, keeping in mind that the very first step may be the most important.
- Attention: First, you must grab or capture your prospect’s attention as quickly as possible.
- Interest: Once you’ve sparked their attention, kindle their interest by asking them lots of probing questions to uncover their primary needs and interests before offering them solutions.
- Conviction: Next, gain the customer’s conviction, or strong favorable opinions, by offering them evidence supporting beneficial claims, such as testimonials from past clients or exceptional housing price comps.
- Desire: Then continue fueling the client’s “fire” (or desire) by showing them solid housing data numbers, inspiring videos, or beautiful open houses that support your claims.
- Close: A high percentage of sales professionals are hesitant to ask for the close from the customer. But if you don’t ask, then the client can’t give you a very favorable “Yes” response after showing their significant interest, desire, and conviction in the product or service that you’re offering.
Marketing to Millennials may be challenging, but it’s worth the effort. To successfully grow your business, remember to focus at least some of your real estate advertising efforts toward this powerful target market.
McKissock Learning is the nation’s premier online real estate school, providing continuing education courses and professional development to hundreds of thousands of real estate agents across the country. As part of the Colibri Real Estate family of premier education brands, McKissock Learning, along with its sister schools Real Estate Express, Superior School of Real Estate, Allied Schools, The Institute for Luxury Home Marketing, Gold Coast Schools, The Rockwell Institute and Hondros Education Group, helps real estate professionals achieve sustainable success throughout each stage of their real estate career. Learn more at mckissock.com/real-estate.
