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Realtor Jason Soprovich Takes DIY Marketing to a Whole New Level

Jason Soprovich paved his road to success by taking risks, and developing and executing his own marketing plans

The journey of a realtor often mimics that of an entrepreneur. It’s filled with long hours, moments of inspiration and a lot of heavy lifting. And when there’s finally a taste of success, that’s when the real hard work begins. 
 
When Jason Soprovich was getting started as a realtor in the early ’90s, he wanted his name to be synonymous with real estate. 
 
He had always paid a lot of attention to his public image. He would study fashion magazines, borrowing ideas like Donna Karan’s font from her advertisements. But it was his own creative marketing efforts that first brought him attention, and then business. His first major coup was to negotiate his own ad on the back of the Yellow Pages, which was delivered to 120,000 homes on the North Shore. That one ad brought him 400 calls in a two-week period, and while the attention included many requests for dates, it ultimately turned out to be very positive. “It was crazy,” he recalls. “It had never been done before.”
 

DID YOU KNOW?

The sales-to-active-listings ratio in April 2015 was 33.6 per cent . This is the highest that this ratio has been in Metro Vancouver since June 2007.

*Source: Real Estate Board of Greater Vancouver (REBGV)

He took his friend’s advice and started to build a website, and he saw the wisdom in making pertinent information on his listings accessible to people abroad. But he needed people to look it up. One day, he was sitting in his idling car on the Lions Gate Bridge during the refurbishment project, staring at the bus in front of him. “I thought, ‘My gosh that’s perfect!” He bought an ad, which read www.soprovich.com in white letters on a black background, to appear on the backs of buses. The traffic to his website multiplied astronomically. 
 
“These little jumps of creativity ended up catapulting me into the market that I’m in today,” he says. “Beyond that, I would take out huge ads in local magazines, advertising people’s properties to a degree that was far superior to a lot of agents that didn’t want to spend the money. Along with providing sound advice and keeping my promises, I gained peoples’ respect. The reality is that in a service-oriented business, you need trust.” After a lot of 100-hour weeks, the business took off.
 
Now, Soprovich’s website sees between 60,000 and 70,000 unique visits a month, and features professional photographs, video tours and user-friendly information to help buyers make decisions. With the help of a small staff, he handles between 50 and 60 listings regularly for properties on the North Shore, downtown and in the west side of Vancouver. In all aspects of his business, he has continued to pay a lot of attention to detail. “I was always focused on providing the highest calibre of quality,” he reflects. “It doesn’t matter if it is a $100,000 condo or a $25-million home, everybody gets equal marketing efforts and certainly equal attention. Because everybody’s home is their castle.”