How to Market a Real Estate Business
The real estate business is a fiercely competitive market. For this reason, many people think of ways to gain more sales.
However, not all ideas are profitable to direct, and that is because it’s harder to win over customers.
Whether you’re a real estate agent or owner, there are ways to help you get the word out clearly, and gain more sales.
Getting the right ideas to implement in this business will allow you to sell faster and more efficiently than before.
Here are some ideas on how to market your real estate business:
1) What’s Your Target Market?
For a plethora of reasons, this is the first consideration realtors and agents should know.
Getting success when you set out to sell an estate, is possible when you know your target audience.
The fact is many real estate agents and businesses focus on a niche market and become experts in that market.
That will give you an idea about what’s driving the target market currently, the risks involved, and most importantly where the market is headed in the short and long term.
Learn
What you can do is learn the details about trending activities around and tailor your marketing strategy accordingly.
Here are other steps to help you:
- Know what target marketing is
- Identify your targets
- Get some market research resources and proceed
2) Budget for Marketing Expenses
Any marketing step you take has to be planned for. You don’t want a situation where you’re overwhelmed with expenses at the end of the day.
As such, you must develop a marketing budget to guide you.
Whether you’re spending the budget on webinars, email marketing, or other avenues, it’s important to do so within your means.
Further, what you spend is influenced by your target audience. Determine where they’re based, and how they love to be reached.
Note that budgets often fail for two main reasons: No accurate record of past spending; and a lack of well-defined achievable goals.
3) Create a Newsletter
Email marketing is one of the best ideas to implement when it comes to real estate marketing. Why? It’s ideal for building client relationships.
Get client emails from your website, local outreach, or any other methods out there.
Ensure your email subscribers get to see stuff they’re looking for.
Keep it Loaded but Simple
You can tell them about upcoming open houses, new houses on the market, and information about their areas.
Just make sure you segment your newsletter subscribers based on their location. That way they receive only relevant updates.
Generally, newsletters have a high open-rate.
For example, it was found that the likelihood of readers becoming paid subscribers increases the most when they read 5+ articles per month or give their email addresses.
4) Create an Awesome Website
Up to 50% of buyers find their new homes online. That shows that today’s consumers love to get a hang of things themselves online.
Many of them check out a lot of information such as where businesses are located, how they run, and how close they are to them.
For real estate, they will also look at photos, and even do a virtual tour of the place.
Make Your Website Easily Accessible
Make it easy for users to access all the necessary information on your website.
All the property pages you include should have great photos, virtual tours, and easy access to Google Maps and Google Earth.
Go ahead and list hot spots nearby. Besides that, you can indicate the walking distances, or how long a vehicle will get there.
Visitors to your website need to have a good experience. Get creative with the user experience and information architecture.
5) Become a Columnist in Local Magazines
Where you run your business from is your local community. Chances are that magazines and other publications exist there.
Try to get yourself in there with words about you and your real estate brand.
Write a column or feature for such magazines while subtly selling your business.
Of course, you don’t want to use a sales approach. However, you can showcase your knowledge of real estate by giving your opinion on the market.
You can write about the rising cost of houses, whether it’s the right time to invest or list reasons why your area has more to offer new homeowners.
6) Video Walk Through
About 51% of marketing professionals worldwide name video as the best content with the highest ROI.
Besides, marketers who use video grow revenue 49% faster than those who don’t.
Again, 64% of consumers purchase properties after watching branded social videos via different mediums.
More Insight and Cost-effective
Video walkthroughs will give people more insight into how a building is realistically represented.
Besides, it doesn’t have to be a professionally-shot video. That will cost you much.
All you need is a high-quality smartphone, drone, or camera. Whatever the case, this is a strategy that gives a better perspective to the buyer.
7) Distribute Business Cards
As someone in real estate, you don’t have to take marketing efforts too far.
To that extent, you can network with individuals in your community as a lead generation strategy.
To do that, make business cards you can share when you come across individuals in different lines of business.
There are many entrepreneurs around town and contacts to lead you to more sales. Just make sure you leave your business card with them.
8) Hire a Photographer
When it comes to real estate, photos are constantly getting more attention.
However, not as many owners and realtors understand just how important it is. Others do, though.
For example, 51.3% of realtors believe real estate photography is “crucial”. Another 31.0% of realtors hold that real estate photography is “important” to sellers.
The numbers keep getting better with 72.2% of participants agreeing that real estate photography helps them win more listings.
You’ll need a Professional
It’s great having a smartphone with a wonderful camera. However, it doesn’t make you an expert.
As such, it would make sense to hire someone to produce eye-catching photos.
All the angles and quality spaces will get coverage. What’s more, they make use of high tech equipment.
When you consider that 68.9% of realtors surveyed believe professional photography helps them brand their business, it becomes more important to hire a professional photographer.
9) Hire A Writer
They say “a picture is worth a thousand words.” However, today’s internet-powered and content-marketing world can do with a thousand words to match that picture.
The words used must tell stories engaging enough to make the prospective property buyer curious enough to get it.
Get Capable Hands
Many real estate agents are very open to hiring professionals to do their photography and videography.
However, they feel that they can write the listing themselves.
If that’s you, you’re making a mistake because writers are capable of telling a fact-based story that includes your brand and what your customers can expect.
Besides, they’re fairly inexpensive to hire. You can even add one to your payroll.
10) Host Free Seminars For Home Buyers
Get yourself out there with your knowledge of real estate available to the community. Do that by hosting a free seminar for intending home buyers.
Teach them the basics involved with home buying and mortgages.
They would appreciate the information you hand out, and the platform you’ve created to help them answer burning real estate questions.
If you can’t meet in a physical location, host a webinar.
Sure, it can take up a lot of time and effort, but you’d have built a lasting relationship with attendees. If they’re looking for a property, you’re the first port of call.
11) Build a Profile on Zillow
Everyone in the real estate industry knows how vital Zillow is to marketing.
Zillow is one of the primary resources that many buyers and sellers use to research the market and even search for prospective properties.
As such, you have to do what you can for a strong presence on Zillow.
Create a Profile
Create a profile on the platform and also ask for reviews after each successful transaction.
You’ll be amazed at just how much more traffic and contacts you’ll get through Zillow with a great profile.
You can run ads on Zillow as well, but you should only do this once you have a respectable profile.
Complete your Profile on other Real Estate sites
Along with Zillow, you can use other sites like Trulia for those who want a new property.
However, ensure your profiles on such sites are always accurate and up-to-date. Don’t just fill out your basic name and contact information.
Fill out every requirement so that you can share your unique value proposition with potential clients.
That way, your page is a marketing opportunity rather than just a formality.
12) Try Remarketing
Doing online research before going on to make buying decisions is a normal process.
However, what remarketing does is help you target the people who have already visited your listing or websites before.
That gives you a better chance to grab and maintain their attention later on when they’re ready to get started.
Many brands including Google and Facebook offer this option.
Further, it is worthwhile considering only 11% report negative feelings about remarketing. Don’t be a stalker, though.
13) Host an Event
Many realtors understand the value of hosting an open house.
However, if you want to get even more people involved, host local events that people can attend even if they don’t have a specific property in mind.
A good example is a happy hour event or a simple networking gathering. There, you can introduce yourself and business to potential buyers and sellers in a casual setting.
Go one better and hand out your card, or other branded information.
Find out how to market your business to your local community besides hosting an event.
Borrow a leaf from top Brands
There’s always a chance to grow. About 51% of brands surveyed employ between one and ten full-time event planning and management employees for such purposes.
On the flip side, 93% of marketers say their organizations place a priority on hosting events, and out of that stat, 57% give it a high priority.
You can key into this to market your real estate business.
14) Social Advertising
Go on to run Facebook, Instagram, and Facebook ads.
What these companies offer is highly-targeted ads that apply to the exact demographic a potential buyer may come from. Another platform you can use is YouTube.
Get started
Create a video on YouTube since it ranks higher on Google searches. That way, you’re videos are easy to find when a search is on for your name or a property address.
Proceed to upload the video to different social media platforms to promote the video towards chosen demographics.
With the demographic data these platforms offer, you’ll have a cost-effective marketing strategy.
15) Set up a Local Business Page on Google
Setting up a business page on Google for your real estate business is a great idea.
Not only is it effective, but with the right keywords on your business page, the sky is your limit.
For example, you can use words that would normally pop up in a search. That way, your page gets the traffic you want.
A Viable option
Getting a business page up and running is easy. Visit Google and click on the business page.
Fill out your business’s information starting with its location.
Once your business is established as a local business, you can begin to ask for reviews on Google
16) Try Virtual Staging
Staging a home will help clients visualize what it might be like to live in that space.
Staging by yourself can be beneficial, but the choices of decor you make might not appeal to every single person who comes through.
As such, virtual staging software will help you easily and affordably create different room layouts.
You can make do with various furniture and decor pieces, too. Also, you can help specific clients insert their style into a property.
17) Network – Take Advantage of Other People’s Businesses
Other people’s businesses can serve you well. All you have to do is use the network at your disposal.
Chances are that you have many friends who are talented artists in various fields. You can stage homes with their art so that you get to sell more property.
Besides, they can help you do a lot of advertising for your business, and still get to showcase what they do.
18) Perfect Presentability
Any property you want to sell, including homes, have to be prim and proper. Well, unless the home needs repairs and is being sold as-is.
Otherwise, it should be perfectly clean inside and out, with a groomed landscape and floors so clean you can it off.
The fact is first impressions matter, especially in the real estate industry.
Tune-up your act
Nothing turns prospective buyers or renters off more than having other people’s dirt and grime sputtered around.
That can be the case with kitchens and bathrooms. Further, there could be too landscaping to work on.
Well, no one wants to buy a haunted house so you better get your act together. You can:
- Use flowers and trees to spruce things up. Hire a landscape artist to keep things in order once in a while.
- Clean up properly with emphasis on places like bathrooms and kitchens.
19) Share Content from Other Local Businesses
Every content you post and share on your blog or social media platforms doesn’t have to come only from you.
Search the web for valuable blog posts and insights from other realtors, moving companies, and other incidental businesses in your area.
Share them with your audience.
Mutual and positive growth
What this idea gives you is an effective way to add value to your audience. Also, you get appreciation from those whose content you shared.
That’s a solid way to increase your reach in the long term.
20) Design Infographics
Infographics are very simple images that share statistics and other facts.
As a realtor or property owner, you can use them to promote cool features about properties in your area.
You can also share details about specific neighbourhoods. Go ahead to share them on your social media platforms and website with your audience.
The positives
Stats show that infographics can help boost the traffic to your site by up to 12%.
Further, articles with infographics generate about 178% more links than standard articles.
21) Reverse Prospect on MLS
Several online listing platforms allow real estate actors to search for other agents who have clients that want properties in particular areas.
What you can do is use the reverse prospect feature on multiple listing service or MLS.
That will help you find agents with clients who are looking for listings similar to those you have on your books.
Go ahead and contact those agents to let them know about your new listing, thus letting them easily share that information with their interested clients.
That makes the potential sale faster.
Conclusion
Implement a successful real estate idea requires input on many fronts. Remember to start with the basics before moving up to more complex ideas.
What you want is to appeal to clients first, and a close second being other real estate professionals.
These ideas will do a lot for your real estate business when you follow the process.
