Let’s face it, if you’re in real estate, you work in a very competitive industry, and one where it seems everyone is using the same real estate marketing strategies and tool. If you’re repeating what everyone else does, it’ll be hard for you to stand out.
In this article, we’ll first cover some of the more conventional things you should be doing, but then also give you a few powerful real estate marketing ideas that are less often used by realtors, but work incredibly well.
Conventional Real Estate Marketing Strategies:
Everyone is glued to doing research online nowadays, which means you have no choice but to build an online presence. This includes having:
- Your own website
- A lead capture form, CRM and email marketing set up
- Social media presence
These are the fundamental marketing components every realtor should have.
Here are a few bonus tips for building your social media presence: post before and after photos, pictures of happy buyers moving in, video testimonials and more to showcase what you can do and more important, the results you can get. Also be sure to add social media share buttons to any blog posts you write and any listings you put up. Anyone sharing properties for you is pure bonus!
Now that you have the basics, let’s dig in deeper into the powerful digital marketing strategies fewer real estate agents are using, but work extremely well in bringing in and converting those leads.
Real Estate Marketing Strategy #1: Create And Promote A Webinar
Now, before you run and hide at the thought of hosting a webinar, consider this. If you are doing live events or seminars, webinars are easier PLUS you can reach a much larger audience. You can do this! Also, consider that there are likely a few of your competitors doing webinars☺. A webinar is a fantastic way to showcase your areas of expertise and let the right people feel like they are connecting with you.
Provide some valuable tips to home buyers and then, why not get creative and host the webinar out of one of the houses you are trying to sell? You can use the home to show your examples and in the meantime, you are showing off a beautiful property someone watching could be prime for!
The great thing about webinars is you can record and re-use them, so you are only doing the work once. If you need some help promoting your webinar, let us know!
Real Estate Marketing Strategy #2: “Dynamic” Email Marketing
Although it may be easier to send everyone the exact same newsletter at the exact time once a month, this is not a very effective strategy and again, is something every other realtor is likely doing.
What works better is to send emails based on potential customer actions, or, in other words, taking a much more dynamic approach to your email marketing.
For example, if someone attends your open house, you can send them information about other open houses or houses for sale in the same area.
If someone attends a seminar on investing, send them an email on buys with large ROI potential plus you can extend the geographic area for investors, so send them a broader scope of potential large ROI listings.
If you meet someone who is a first time home buyer, send them emails on government programs that can help with their first purchase, and listing more catered to those starting out.
If you target your emails to the information people want, the better your overall results will be. Luckily, many CRMs offer ways to build and executive email campaigns automatically. You should also look into CRMS with AI capability to help with the automation and even alert you when buyers are likely ready to buy!
Real Estate Marketing Strategy #3: Google My Business
Unless you have a brick and mortar business, most people don’t know you can still create a Google My Business listing for your business. If you prefer to hide your address (especially if it’s a home address), simply list your home address to register and then indicate that you deliver services to people at their locations, and Google won’t list your provided address on the listing. Be sure to fill out all the sections requested and absolutely be sure to add pictures and videos. You also want to get as many reviews as possible on your Google My Business listing.
The benefits of having a Google My Business listing are many, but one of the top reasons to do so is because in having an optimized Google My Business listing you actually have a chance of appearing on the first page of Google in their “Local 3 Pack” – and who doesn’t want that? It’s one of the few ways you can Google outrank your competitors and the dominant forces in real estate such as the large brokerage firms or Zolo.
Real Estate Marketing Strategy #4: PPC Ads or Facebook Advertising:
Both options work extremely well for agents and it’s a surprise more agents are not using these methods for bringing in prospects and leads, and bringing them in quickly!
PPC ads are fantastic for getting in front of current buyers actively typing things such as “houses for sale in (geographic area).”
Facebook ads, on the other hand, work extremely well for getting in front of your targeted audiences. Fortunately, you can target quite well in Facebook, such as using keywords in Facebook such as homeowners, first time home buyers, likely to move, etc. PLUS you can add the specific KMS outside of a specified location (i.e. the house you are trying to sell). You can also target “Zolo” or the name of a brokerage, and even do some ethical Facebook ad spying to see how they are using Facebook ads to target (and if you ask us nicely, we will forward a 2 min. video that shows you how!).
Real Estate Marketing Strategy #5: Lead Magnets
Lead magnets are vital to you as an agent as if you offer something attractive to your target audience, you can more easily get their precious email address and begin your email campaigns.
Some popular lead magnets for real estate agents might be things like mortgage calculators or free home evaluation offers. These are popular and they do work well as homeowners and sellers value the knowledge.
To stand out though, we suggest trying things like cheat sheets or guides to home buying, moving checklists, market reports for specific geographic areas, and so on, or create something that shows off your uniqueness such as a list of the top areas to live that have the best parks for walking your dog.
If you are not sure which lead magnet could work best, you’re in luck because people on social media love sharing their opinion for free! So simply create A/B images and ask people which they would prefer. You could always just let each lead magnet run for a specific amount of time and measure which does best by how many people sign up for your email list. The point with this, and any good marketing is to split test until you find a winner, and if a winner is something different than what your competitors are doing, that’s just an added bonus!
