Your main goal as a real estate agent is to grow your business. Marketing is the most effective tool by which you can do so. Whether you are just getting started on your real estate career, or are looking to inject new ideas into your business, fresh marketing strategies can help you find prospects and keep your pipeline busy.
Read more to find out how you can bring unique marketing ideas into your real estate business.
Real Estate Marketing: The Basics
From print ads to door knocking, there are a variety of ways to use real estate marketing ideas to get listings. However, some take longer than others and can be costly. This blog is here to help you decide what works best for your business by seeing the full list and what’s involved for each. Chances are it will be a combination of traditional marketing and new techniques.
However, there are two real estate marketing strategies that you can probably leave in the past:
- Business cards: in a COVID world and with social media at everyone’s fingertips business cards may soon be a thing of the past.
- Buying leads online: as always, if buying leads works for you then keep it up but if you find it costly without much impact on your business you can consider a new way.
A community-minded approach to your real estate marketing puts you in front of the residents and other business owners in your neighborhood. It’s an effective marketing strategy that results in high-quality referral-based leads.
Like all strategies, it’s important to find out what works for you before you commit. To decide how to market real estate, consider identifying the marketing strategy that best suits your personality type. Chances are by focusing on your personality type, you’ll find a sustainable and enjoyable way to market and run your business.
Here’s a quick summary of few different personality types and the best approaches for them:
- Creator: Creators have many unique and interesting ideas, but may need support to help implement them. For example, if you love the concept of community based marketing that relies heavily on referral lead generation you’ll probably find the most success if you work with a referral-generating platform to help you implement your exciting community outreach marketing ideas.
- Star: Stars shine in front of groups of people, and should use their strengths to appeal to prospective buyers. This means traditional methods like door knocking or cold calling could suit you best. Alternatively, getting yourself in front of the camera might be the right video marketing strategy too. Consider taking your social media followers on a tour of the neighborhood and feature popular businesses.
- Networker: Networkers like to connect with people and find solutions to solve their problems. A referral based marketing system will play right into a networker’s strengths because at the heart of referral based marketing is connecting with the people in your community.
- Dealmaker: Dealmakers always have an iron in the fire and can close several deals on the same day. Easy, repeatable marketing systems probably work best for your busy schedule.
Whether your personality type is a Creator, a Dealmaker, or even a Networker, a community-minded and referral generating marketing platform will likely show you the most success.
Creating Fun and Enticing Real Estate Marketing Content
Real estate marketing is not easy. And neither is creating clickable content. These tips should help to boost your online presence and help increase web traffic.
Turn the Lens to Your Community for Real Estate Video Marketing
Coming up with real estate video marketing ideas that showcase the businesses in your neighborhood, shows how connected you are to your community. Show off your neighborhood and the businesses in your community to build your brand as a hyper-local expert and encourage more referrals.
To create the best real estate marketing videos make sure your video content is what your clients want to see. Of course, that includes your listings, and as stated above, what the neighborhood has to offer. Appealing video content can also be:
- Funny and entertaining: consider sharing clips of all of your outtakes and video fails
- Inspiring: showcase the local business that has risen above adversity to succeed
- Informative: don’t be shy to go live or hold AMAs (ask me anything)
But most importantly, video and all marketing content should be: useful. Ensure your content has purpose and answers a question or solves a problem for your audience.
If you don’t love being in front of the camera but want to create real estate marketing content that attracts and helps your community you might be asking yourself: Should I start a podcast? Let’s answer that question below.
Are Podcasts and Social Media Marketing Worth It?
Building a strong network is essential to the success of your real estate marketing. A podcast and a strong social media presence are great tools to help.
Podcasts will:
- establish you as an expert on the topics you discuss
- be convenient for your audience and cost-effective for your marketing budget
- build community and relationships through the guests you have on and through the listeners who tune in
Getting the equipment you need and attracting a following for a podcast might seem daunting. But the community value is well worth it. Like podcasting, social media can seem overwhelming at first between the number of social media platforms available and the expectations from your audience. But social media marketing made easy doesn’t have to be a pipe dream.
Remember that social media that allows you to showcase your listings and community will give you the most success. Here are some quick social media tips:
- You don’t have to sign up for every platform, just the ones that work best for your listings and network.
- Social media is a great tool to build community, especially during a pandemic when being face to face isn’t always possible.
- Your marketing efforts should never take over your whole day. Create a content calendar to help you manage your schedule and don’t be afraid to utilize platforms that allow you to schedule posts, like Hubspot, Buffer, or HootSuite. Many social media platforms are also making the switch to scheduled posts internally as well!
Regardless of the platforms you use, some of the best times to post social media content is during the change of seasons. Let’s assess seasonal marketing strategies.
Seasonal Real Estate Marketing Strategies
With each change of season comes new challenges for home owners and buyers and for real estate agents.
Consider injecting a community approach to your marketing efforts around the turn of the season. For example, using fall real estate marketing ideas to showcase local businesses on your website and social media (or podcast) shows that you’re an agent who cares by connecting residents to companies they may need at this time of year in particular. Your community will benefit from your expertise and dedication and want to work with you.
Business doesn’t stop just because “winter is coming”. Winter can be a slow time for a lot of businesses but your marketing strategies don’t have to get frosty. Unique winter real estate marketing ideas like the following will build your business through referrals and help your and other businesses thrive through until spring:
- Partner with a local snow removal company to remove snow from clients’ drives
- Feature local childrens’ clothing stores on your website, social media, and blog. Annual winter clothes shopping is a necessity for anyone with kids.
- Partner with a local tree farm to provide Christmas trees or wreaths to all of your clients, past and present, who celebrate
We’ve provided a lot of ideas for how to market your real estate business but you may be wondering if there are certain strategies that are worth it.
Is Converting FSBO Listings and Zillow Worth It?
- Converting FSBO to Listings: A FSBO listing in your might seem like a lost cause but you know that FSBO can bring a lot of risks for buyers and sellers. Using community-minded marketing strategies can show homeowners that you provide support and are an ally to their neighborhood. A community-minded approach to your marketing and business can help convert FSBO to listings.
- Zillow: You may have already tried Zillow as a way to get your face in front of your target audience. There are many benefits to Zillow but there are other platforms, like Parkbench, that can help you become a leader in your community. Better, Parkbench works exclusively with one agent per area so you’re never competing against colleagues.
Learn more about the exclusive system that makes a community-minded approach to real estate marketing easy. Parkbench is a referral and relationship-based platform that can help you keep your pipeline full, your community thriving, and have you feeling like you are making a difference. Win-win-win!
