It’s time to get cracking on your 2019 real estate marketing plan

What’s your 2019 real estate marketing plan? The end of the year is creeping up on us and with it comes the inevitable look-back on your real estate business. How’d you do?

If you didn’t get the results you were aiming for, your year-end business planning may require an overhaul of your real estate marketing plan.

Yeah, it’s boring stuff, but critical to your success in 2019.

Even if you slap together the basics of a real estate marketing plan, you’ll be a step ahead of most agents in your market.

Your 2019 real estate marketing plan takes money

It may sound like a “well, duh” statement, but a 2019 real estate marketing plan requires a marketing budget. Study 2018’s revenue numbers and commit to spending a specific percentage of 2019’s on marketing.

Earlier this year, Attom Data Solutions published the results of a survey of real estate agents, brokers, owners and marketers to determine where they are “spending their largest portion of marketing dollars” and which method brings the best results.

Thirty-five percent of agents spent the most on social media while 20 percent spent the most on buying leads. Why the study’s authors consider purchasing leads as “marketing” is curious, but there you have it.

Unfortunately, although the article promises to tell us where agents are “seeing the best results,” it fails to deliver. So, no tips for you there.

Regardless of how you spent your marketing dollars in 2018, the most important aspect of planning is that look-back to figure out what worked and what didn’t. Naturally, you’ll want to dump under-performing real estate marketing methods and amp up anything that worked for your 2019 real estate marketing plan.

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Chop your efforts into segments, such as:

• Lead generation
• Client retention
• Building your SOI (the cost of meeting new people)

Then, decide how much you’ll allocate for each in the budget. Naturally, you’ll want to spend the most on which effort brings you the best results. For some agents, client retention dollars result in the best ROI, while others may choose to go bigger on real estate lead gen.

Even if it’s just 2 percent of revenue, you’ll have enough money to engage and retain current clients “with simple tools and strategies,” according to Chris Beecher, president of thewholebraingroup.com.

Next, determine the strategies you’ll employ, such as social media, paid advertising, blogging, email and direct mail marketing, and allocate an amount of the budget to each.

Determine your 2019 clientele

If you live in a low- or no-tax state, recent studies will help you figure out your target market. Redfin, for instance, finds that their website users are fleeing high-tax, expensive-real estate cities for cities such as Las Vegas, Phoenix, Dallas and Indianapolis.

If you live in one of these cities, targeting the relocating homebuyer might be a good move. If you live in Orlando or Phoenix, you may want to target baby boomers who are “seeking a lower cost of living for their retirement,” Nat Kunes, at AppFolio, tells the Washington Post.

Unfortunately, there’s no real estate crystal ball to tell us what the market will be like next year, but the usual suspects are releasing their predictions.

The California Association of REALTORS® (C.A.R.) predicts that demand for homes will decrease notably next year. Eman Hamed at Mashvisor.com, a site devoted to selling products to real estate investors, claims the opposite.

“The strong economy and similarly strong job market should increase the demand from homebuyers,” he claims.

Because there are so many additional factors that impact the housing market, Hamed’s prediction is a bit simplistic.

If we agree with C.A.R.’s prediction, you won’t have as many buying clients next year and Fannie Mae’s Economic & Strategic Research Group predicts that the pool of first-time buyers will dry up significantly.

Build flexibility into your marketing plan if you’ll be using 2018’s client base as an assumption of who you will work with in 2019.

Fine-tune your message

Take a look at your USP (unique selling proposition). Does it clearly and succinctly state the value you offer to potential clients?

Kevin Ward, author of “The Book of Yes,” suggests that you focus on “what your clients really want, which is the value, which is the result.”

Need some help? Coach Tom Ferry walks you through the process of coming up with a USP in this video on his website.

How will you broadcast that message?

How you will market in 2019 depends a great deal on your budget but also those segments we mentioned earlier. Lead generation is costlier than client retention, so you may want to take a look at some of the less-expensive methods of you choose to focus on the former.

These might include beefing up your social media presence (by blogging more and posting to your preferred social media platforms), knocking on doors, etc.

Your budget will also dictate whether or not you’ll use newsletters, postcards, door hangers and other marketing materials. If you’re feeling really ambitious, consider attending some real estate conferences.

A calendar will help keep you on track

A calendar is a must if you hope to keep your marketing efforts on track all year. Business.com has a brilliant walk-through of the process.

You can use a standard calendar or create your own from an Excel worksheet (find templates and ideas here and here).

Although it’s important to create a 2019 real estate marketing plan for your real estate business, don’t become a slave to it. If something doesn’t appear to be working, replace it with something else. And, do consider ways of automating as much of your marketing as possible.

The key to success in real estate lead generation and client retention is consistency. Having a plan will ensure this.

Considering adding a LeadSite to your business plan? Get started today and be prepared for the new year.

Looking for new ways to market your business in 2019? We’ve got 200 strategies that are sure to work for any business.

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