When asked why they don’t use content marketing to promote their businesses, real estate agents have all kinds of explanations. They say they’re too busy, or they tried it and it didn’t work, or their market is too competitive. But Katrina Benton is here to debunk all these excuses, and then some.
Some people are too busy to ever be successful.
— KATRINA BENTON
A lifelong resident of Anchorage, Alaska, Katrina comes from a long line of real estate professionals. But unlike her father and grandparents, Katrina has invested heavily in digital marketing. “I know when I started, my grandma and my dad were like, ‘What are you doing? You’re wasting all your time,’” Katrina told us. Nevertheless, Katrina’s investment paid off, helping her build a sustainable year-round practice in a highly seasonal market.
Now, Katrina is taking her show on the road, helping Keller Williams agents in Texas, California, and Colorado use her content and tools to grow their own businesses. For Katrina, success isn’t just about working hard: it’s about following through. “I time block for implementation,” she told us. “If I invest an hour in watching [a webinar on] how to do something, I should at least invest another hour and test it out.”
Unfortunately, Katrina points out, “some people are too busy to ever be successful.” Take, for instance, content marketing. “[Agents] think they have to sit down and write something really creative,” Katrina said. But without following a proven, long-term strategy that’s rooted in search optimization, that brilliant piece of content will only result in wasted effort. Instead, Katrina says, agents need to set aside time to learn and develop a repeatable system that will deliver results.
Katrina’s marketing systems have helped dozens of real estate professionals break through and achieve results on the web. But there’s one technique that’s conspicuously absent from Katrina’s toolkit: online advertising. “I don’t think you should pay for leads,” Katrina suggested. “I think that if you can’t do the content yourself, pay to have it built. Build something evergreen that just feeds you.”
In this interview, Katrina Benton describes how agents can turn their content and tools into a full-fledged marketing system, and explains why being busy isn’t the same as being successful.
– Seth