How a Leading U.S Real Estate Land Brokerage Grew Website Users 44%
Client Description
National Land Realty (NLR) is now one of America's largest and fastest-growing real estate land brokerages, ranking in Inc. 5000 for several years, with more than 400 agents and brokers in 45 states. The firm specializes in farm, ag, ranch, country estate, timber, commercial, and recreational land sales.
But in early 2020, National Land Realty needed to engage Razor Sharp PR to 1) help grow the company’s share-of-voice with buyers and sellers of land to increase sales, and 2) galvanize their employer brand to help them recruit new agents quickly.
Real Estate Challenges
National Land Realty and its executives were fighting an uphill battle to get noticed and trusted by prospective land buyers, sellers, and land brokers. The company’s proprietary technology, LandTour360, and LandBase, were not understood well by stakeholders, or were generally unaware of them.
Company leadership wanted to cut through the noise of competing land brokerages to become the leading voice and trusted leader in the land real estate industry. In short, the goal was to become the Zillow of land real estate.
Our Solution: Strategy
Razor Sharp PR designed and implemented a strategy that consisted of two pillars to tell compelling stories about National Land’s unique property listings, new technology affecting the land industry, company announcements, and industry trends:
Thought Leadership
One pillar focused on placing thought leadership content surrounding the needs of buyers, sellers, and even people who own land because every owner is a future seller or buyer.
Transacting land can be daunting for first buyers and sellers, even those who consider themselves proficient. However, through vendor-neutral content — offered as commentary or in the form of contributed articles — that speaks to the urgent needs of buyers and sellers who want to understand how they can best gauge investment opportunities (among other things), a real estate company can grow its brand and credibility. That is why Razor Sharp PR provided vendor-neutral content to our real estate media contacts, consisting of custom pitches wrapped around contributed articles, multi-media press releases, and data from broker surveys.
On a secondary track, Razor Sharp PR also had Jason Walter, CEO of National Land, and Jason Burbage, President of National Land, regularly comment on real estate market trends, both on national TV and radio networks, but also with critical real estate and other trade media like ag, farm, and commercial outlets. So this was yet another avenue through which Razor Sharp PR generated visibility in the media with existing and potential clients.
Employer Branding
The other pillar focused on placing content that could enthuse agents to apply at National Land Realty.
There are many different ways that any company can build and nurture its employer brand; for National Land Realty, Razor Sharp PR decided to focus on the proprietary technological capabilities that the company offers its agents to showcase land. In addition, Razor Sharp PR offered content in the form of contributed articles to trade media, where Razor Sharp PR shared advice with agents on topics with great appeals, such as how drones can be employed to make aerial shots of land. This helped build and nurture the company’s employer brand by bolstering its proprietary technology and benefits, eventually being named a Gold Badge Winner of the Top Workplaces in the US by Energage.
On an ancillary track, the company also shared corporate news with trade media whenever it met new essential growth milestones. As a result, companies showing growth will always attract more agents than other market players.
Our Solution: Tactics
Razor Sharp PR employed the following toolbox to help accomplish its goals of both growing the share-of-voice of the client and bolstering its employer brand.
Contributed articles: as mentioned already, contributed articles were an essential part of the effort to get the company’s vendor-neutral insights into the media.
Custom pitches: Razor Sharp PR sent tailored pitches to journalists promoting local or national stories where possible.
Multi-media press releases: where there was a need for it - especially when corporate news had to be communicated - Razor Sharp PR distributed multi-media press releases that provided crisp, ready-to-use copy and high-res imagery.
Available spokespersons: Razor Sharp PR made several spokespeople of National Land Realty available to the media, carefully casting leadership in the roles that fit them well to comment on hot topics in the land market. All spokespeople were media trained, briefed, and coached to help them get the most out of the opportunities offered
Surveying: thought leadership content thrives when unique data is available in abundance. Razor Sharp PR designed, ran, and communicated to the media on surveys with agents that spoke to many vital industry trends.
Razor Sharp PR also gave special attention to having the “earned” media track interact with the owned track, where any articles that ended up not being placed (less than 5%) were repurposed and optimized for the National Land Realty blog. Conversely, Razor Sharp PR kept a view on the client's owned media pipeline to be able to pitch something first as a contributed article or repurpose the content so Razor Sharp PR could pitch it to the media.
“A few weeks ago, we had a meeting where I relayed a request for a proactive approach to your content ideas. I wanted your team to feed us your thoughts and guide our approach. It’s safe to say that you’ve heard us loud and clear. The media pickups we’ve had in the past week have been driven by your thoughts and ideas, and you deserve credit for that. 100% thank you for your efforts, this is very cool. Let’s keep this monster rolling!”
— Mac Christian, CMO, National Land Realty
Outcomes Achieved
Since 2020, Razor Sharp PR has delivered an average of 153 pick-ups per year—12.75 per month—in print, online, and audiovisual media for National Land.
Highlights:
Worth, Realtor, RE Journals, Farm Progress, Real Trends, Globe St., Reuters, Bloomberg Tax, and the Mann Report regularly publish articles by National Land Realty leadership, agents, and brokers
National Land Realty leadership regularly appeared on RFD-TV, as well as Bloomberg TV & Radio, and CNBC
National Land Realty reached 181 million watchers, listeners, and readers in the fiscal year 2021 through the efforts of Razor Sharp PR.
Total website sessions increased by 34% from 2020. The second and third largest traffic sources were Organic and Direct, respectively.
Users went up by 44% in 2021 from the previous year.
Total website Page Views saw an increase of 69% from 2020.