Posted by: Kaplan Real Estate Education
Published: July 9, 2019
Implementing basic marketing techniques can dramatically increase leads and sales for your real estate business. Even if you have top-notch listings, you won’t draw the attention of potential buyers unless your marketing is effective. Knowing how to market your real estate business will give you a leg up on the competition and help you grow a steady base of leads.
No experience with marketing? No problem. This guide will walk you through the exact steps you’ll need to take to make your real estate business flourish.
A marketing plan is a big outline of who you are as a business, what you want to accomplish, and how you will do that. Your plan will guide all of your marketing efforts, so it’s important to spend some time writing it out because you will refer back to it often. Start your marketing plan by identifying your business’s short-term and long-term goals. These goals should be specific and measurable. Your mission statement, personal brand, value proposition, and target audience will all service and support your short-term and long-term goals.
The first impression you make on prospective leads is often through your website. Your brokerage might offer resources for building a website, or you may want to look into a user-friendly website and content management system like WordPress. Make sure it’s mobile-friendly, easy to navigate, and embodies your mission statement and personal brand. You might consider consulting with a graphic designer or UX (short for user experience) designer to make sure that your website is engaging and effective.
To capture the new leads you bring in, you should set up forms on your website to gather basic information, so you can follow up with those leads later. Make it very easy for users to quickly navigate to your contact information and your form.
Last but not least, make sure that you are running Google Analytics on your website. This helpful tool will track and measure how many new users you are bringing and where they’re coming from, and identify which pages of your website are the most popular and which ones need more work.
Having amazing visuals on your website and other real estate sites like Zillow can make a big impact. Your prospective buyers want to be able to see everything about your listings online, and 3D tours and virtual staging will give them the complete picture. Virtual staging is also a lot less expensive than staging the property itself and can let prospective buyers imagine multiple staging scenarios.
Make sure you show up where your prospective buyers are browsing. Your website alone isn’t enough web presence. You should be active on popular real estate listing sites, like Zillow, so users become familiar with seeing your listings wherever they are searching.
A local business page adds legitimacy to your business, and it also cements your presence in your community.
Are you gathering leads without a clear idea of how to stay in contact with them? Use an email marketing service, like Mailchimp, to set up an email campaign for your new leads. Learn more about how to put together an email marketing campaign here.
Reach out to local businesses that would be a good fit to partner with, and see if you can come to a mutually beneficial agreement. Establishing partnerships with other local businesses will help you root yourself in your community as a recognizable figure in addition to getting your name out among a wider group of people.
Putting up flyers and handing out business cards may seem a thing of the past, but grassroots efforts can separate you from the crowd and help build brand awareness. Try putting up flyers in places where your target audience frequents, like grocery stores or coffee shops.
Hosting fun offline events in your community can go a long way towards building long-lasting and memorable relationships with your target audience. Even if attendees aren’t looking to buy right now, they may think of you when they are ready. You might even be able to throw an event with the local businesses you’ve partnered with which would help you reach more attendees than just your own connections. You could host educational happy hours for first-time buyers, movie nights at a park, or activities that give back to your community, like beach or roadside cleanups. Make sure to request names and email addresses of attendees so you can follow up later.
Your social media presence should be casual and fun, just like the platform itself. You can use Instagram to share photos of events you host, your listings, and fun facts about your community. All of these things will help solidify your reputation as a local expert as well as a friendly and approachable real estate agent.
To see how successful your marketing has been, it’s important to be able to track and measure the results of the efforts you put forth. Check in with your data on a monthly basis, so you can identify areas of improvement and continue refining what you are already doing well. If you are bringing in many more leads than before but seeing low engagement and sales, maybe your focus should be on nurturing those leads better. If you are not getting as many leads as you’d like on a monthly basis, take a look at what lead generating practices you have in place and determine if they small tweaks or if your entire program needs to be overhauled.
-----------
Marketing plays a big part in the success of your real estate business. In addition to boosting sales, marketing your business to your local community helps potential buyers find the information they’re looking for quickly. Your target audience has lots of questions, and if you are marketing effectively, you’ll be the smart choice to provide the answers.
Strong negotiation skills are essential to success as a real estate salesperson. Knowing all of the factors that affect how you negotiate can create additional value for your buyers and sellers, and also lead to a bigger commission payday for you. Polish your skills with this 17-tip guide to successful real estate negotiation.
