Want to know every option out there for you to do real estate marketing? This guide will illuminate all the potential sources of leads for you! Learn how..
Real Estate Marketing is all about trust, authority, and your brand. People buy and sell real estate all the time. But you only get to be their Realtor if you provide them with value.
This blog will show you how several experts in the field are doing their real estate marketing effectively.
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Marketing is broadly defined as: “the activities that are involved in making people aware of a company’s products, making sure that the products are available to be bought, etc.” by Merriam-Webster. I don’t often bring up definitions here on Easy Agent Pro, but this definition seems oddly eye opening.
I find myself gravitating towards the newest or sexiest marketing tactic out there. For example, I love this Free Twitter Lead Generation Strategy. But if it’s not better than hiring someone to wave a sign for your business on a busy street, does it really matter?
Marketing, to me, is all about the ROI (Return On Investment) for you. What follows is a discussion covering all the important marketing tactics I would recommend for a Realtor, but don’t mistake this for an end-all-be-all list. If hiring a sign-twirler works for you, do it! After all, your business really only needs 3-5 marketing activities in order to thrive. Hopefully, the definition if marketing helps you think more broadly about what you can do to market your business.
Now, let’s get into some time-tested real estate marketing tools:
Your business must have its own identity. This means you need a name, slogan, brand, and logo that help define your public image. When you’re starting out, this can be you. You can be the person that everyone interacts with, but when your business grows, you’ll slowly need to turn the business into something larger than yourself.
This is where your brand plays a big role. Your brand needs to have a unique selling proposition to offer buyers and sellers. The value proposition that you provide to your customers will help inform the tone for your name, slogan, brand, and logo. Thus, it’s really crucial to spend time considering what your business does for clients at the beginning of your career. Much of the success of the following real estate marketing items will depend on how you position yourself.
Blogging does several things for your real estate business. Firstly, creating quality content is the only way to properly do SEO these days. You used to be able to hack your way to the top of Google with links and other tricks. But this rarely works now. Secondly, blogging gives you a unique value proposition to your readers. Not only do you get to prove your value and expertise online, but clients tend to think of you higher when they encounter your content online. The content makes you an expert. This completely changes the type of leads you get off the internet.
Now, you aren’t one Realtor out of 10 calling the prospect who submitted their info via a portal. They’re contacting you because they appreciate the value you’ve given them through your blog.
1) Neighborhood Details to Consider When Buying a Home – By Bill Gassett
2) Top Reasons To Have A Home Inspection When Buying A Home – Keith Hiscock & Kyle Hiscock
These two articles are informative, helpful, and about things the average person doesn’t know. These types of posts help your website in many ways! They get qualified buyers and sellers respecting you before they’re ready to buy. They help your SEO and social media. I really can’t recommend blogging enough as a real estate marketing tool! You’ll be viewed as an expert in no time. Here is a list of real estate blog ideas for you to get started.
Your website is starting to become the primary line of defense for your business. Almost all real estate marketing opportunity is tied directly to it. So, I think the core component of your website should be lead capture. When you mail out flyers or post cards, they should always include your URL. You should stress the lead capture component of your website over almost everything else. Here are some real estate marketing ideas for your website:
The welcome gate is a lead capture tool that can be quickly deployed and can easily capture up to 3-10% more leads from your website. What’s a welcome gate? Well, it is a landing page that is only shown to first time visitors of your website. It asks them for their contact information in exchange for a value proposition. And offers direct links to key areas of the website.
You can now get seller, buyer, and rental leads from the first page on your website without your visitors having to click around. Additionally, you don’t annoy other visitors to your website. Traffic that clicks on a link directly to a listing or blog page still goes directly to that webpage. Only traffic that was going to land on your homepage sees the welcome gate. Here’s an example of one:
Here’s how to install one:
Active lead capture takes the form of pop-ups or slide-ins on your website. This helps your brand in several ways. You can offer additional content in exchange for more contact information. Key examples of this are eBooks, cheatsheets, and top 10 tips downloads. In exchange for the contact information, you can give even more value to people on your website!
Here’s a video showing you one way of accomplishing this:
This approach is mainly for the non-bloggers out there. If you’re interested in SEO but don’t want a full-time blog, I recommend you target farmed geographic areas through SEO’d squeeze pages. This strategy relies on you producing content once and making it very strategically placed on your website.
To do this, you first need access to producing squeeze pages. I suggest using Leadpages because they are simple to use and integrate necessary SEO tags. You simply create a landing page for a farming area. This has to be a VERY small area. For example, a Realtor in Dallas could use: “Horse Farms 45 minutes away from Dallas” as a keyword. This type of keyword is typed in very rarely on Google. But because it’s so rare, you can easily rank on Page #1 in no time. This page will also start showing up for all types of equally rare related searches near Dallas. Now, you place these Landing pages on your website and link the together using the Keyword as the link’s anchor text.
This will rank you highly and you’ll start to convert leads. You also appear to be an expert to these leads so they typically convert a lot higher than other types of web leads.
Read more about this strategy and real estate farming here.
Cold calling is still a viable option for real estate marketing. There is ever-growing access to cell phone numbers and prospecting FSBO’s can be profitable. I recommend sticking to a script whenever you do cold calling as this helps monitor your conversion ratios. Mike Ferry has done a great job of outlining a FSBO script here. You can find our write up on FSBO scripts here.
Honestly, the best way to do this type of marketing is through consistent practice. Just like blogging and social media, doing it once is next to useless. You need to consistently call and prospect in order to perfect your script and maximize business. Here is a great example of how
This talk with Brian Icenhower will also explain some of the benefits of prospecting FSBO’s through calling:
Real Estate marketing through cold calling can be a highly effective way to generate business. It gets you in front of the right people at the right time. However, it’s not for everyone. I suggest trying cold calling at least for 2 months before giving up on it. There is so much business to be generated from this method.
Direct mail has the potential to re-engage old leads and stay in touch with past clients. You also have the opportunity to canvas neighborhoods. The key with direct mail, and any of these real estate marketing tips, is to followup with the mailing. For example, did you send a newsletter to all your contacts in January? Great, now send them all a mailer in February. Are you farming a very specific neighborhood through your website? Awesome, now send that neighborhood a direct mail piece with your URL on it.
The key to success in direct mail is in the message. You have to find a message that resonates directly with people. That’s why I suggest going hyper-local with your mailers. You can be the realtor for just their neighborhood and send them updates on the market very easily. Did you just sell a property for a great price nearby? Send the neighborhood a mailer about it! You’re more likely to shake a listing out of the mailing when you have recently sold a listing for an above average price in the neighborhood.
Specifics matter more than ever in real estate. If you can be the specific Realtor for that location through your real estate marketing, you will win the battle for the listing.
Social media is a gold mine for Realtors looking for leads. The networks are still largely free to market on, and this gives you such access to potential clients. Real estate marketing through social media is best done in a give-to-get manner. You want to be the Realtor giving away to most free information to get the most leads. This will grow you larger social networks and drive more traffic to your lead converting website we built earlier. Here are some specifics on using social media for real estate marketing:
Facebook marketing through content is quite profitable for Realtors. The key here is finding the bridge between what people are talking about locally and real estate. For example, if there is a group of mom’s on Facebook, write a blog article that applies to them. This can be anything DIY or home related. Now you have something that you can share in that local group. You can also use Facebook’s advertising platform to grow your reach. While it used to be slightly more affordable, it still can produce great results if you tie it directly to a landing page.
Twitter is great for two things. 1) You can reach out directly to anyone and start a conversation. This gives you the ability to reach out to people tweeting about moving or buying real estate. You can easily start conversations with them on Twitter. 2) You can share any content you create and share others content as well. This helps establish you as a knowledgeable Realtor on Twitter. And gives you the unique value proposition to your sellers that you have a huge online following. You can always bring up the size of your social media following to sellers during the presentation.
Pinterest is a great platform for Realtors! You have the potential to get more traffic from this platform currently. That means you should always share your images on Pinterest after you publish content. I also suggest pinning images directly to landing pages. You can offer your sellers and buyers a free ebook on your landing page. Then you can create a pin that summarizes that offer and links to the landing page. Here’s a link describing how to get leads off of Pinterest in real estate.
Finally, LinkedIn is a powerful lead generation source. There are several tactics I outline here for Realtors looking to get leads from LinkedIn. This social network is primarily for connecting. So the lead generation tasks are centered around finding key individuals and starting relationships with them. If you haven’t read that post, you really should. I talk about some interesting ways to generate more leads for Realtors with LinkedIn.
Real estate marketing shouldn’t always be about securing new leads. In fact, unless you convert the leads you already have, you shouldn’t worry about new leads at all! These ideas: client appreciation parties, holiday gifts, and birthday cards all help keep you front of mind with your current contacts. You should be sure to setup a followup schedule and have a marketing plan in place. These two things will help you make your marketing more directional. You’ll know that you need to have cards ready for December before December comes. And you can also plan you appreciation parties well in advance. I highly recommend setting aside some time this week to plan exactly how you’ll followup with every type of lead you get. Not every lead is ready to be closed now, so be sure you have a plan for everything!
Finally, real estate marketing would not be complete without landing pages and PPC. These methods of lead generation and marketing involve placing your ads and landing pages directly in front of your targeted audience online. Typically, you pay every time someone clicks your ad. When using these methods, you can either set them up following a guide. Or you can hire a firm like mine to do it. The key with this lead generation and marketing strategy is to marry it with your other online activities. People now need to see your business about 7 times before they contact you. This means it’s a lot more feasible to do pay per click advertising if the potential clients are seeing you on social media and through SEO a few times before they see your advertisements.
If you’re interested in PPC and landing pages, read the following posts:
How To Steal Leads From Trulia
2 Landing Pages Every Realtor Needs
What real estate marketing tactic are you going to use today? How will it help your business? What questions do you still have about real estate marketing?
Let me know in the comments below!
I wish you the best of luck with all your marketing efforts. If you ever have questions, be sure to ask them in the comments and I’ll answer them.
-Tyler
Let’s boost your lead gen.
Connect your local MLS to Facebook to promote all properties in your MLS or create any specific niche catalog of listing you want to sell using dynamic Facebook ads. Here are just some of the ways you can use these new types of ads to stand apart from the competition: