Real Estate Marketing Begins With Your Growth Objectives
- How much do you want to grow your business? Is real estate a part time or full time focus for you? Do you want to reach the point where you have other agents working under you and an office, or do you prefer the flexibility of working independently?
- How many calls are you getting today from your website? What about your social media? How about from physical flyers and signage? Yes there is a way to measure this.
- If you’re a real estate agent, what marketing does your broker provide? Often brokers will give you a template web page but of course if you ever move on you’ll need to leave it behind. They are probably promoting their overall brand on social media, but not your personal brand. How are they distributing leads they receive from their website among agents?
- Does your real estate business have a focus? If a client is listing a property, they want an agent who is an expert on their property type and location.
Real Estate Marketing Fundamentals
- Adwords: It’s no secret that real estate is highly competitive. If you Google how you would like to be found and see your competitor’s ads then you’ll need to be there too.
- A Website That Converts: Your website needs to load in 2 seconds or less, look great on mobile and make it very obvious what you do and why you’re different from other realtors. Make it yours so if you invest in sending traffic there it will be your asset to keep.
- We assume you’re networking, but do you take full advantage of the handfuls of business cards you collect or do they sit on your desk? A CRM system is a perfect tool to automate nurturing those leads. Send customized emails that look like you fired them off from your account personally. Ask for referrals and testimonials, automate aspects of your new client onboarding. Follow up with past clients to see if they are ready to sell again. Send neighborhood specific reports.
- A Newsletter & Blog: Find a way to regularly connect with your clients, prospects and fellow realtors by sharing a weekly newsletter with your blog excerpt, open houses, recent sales, pictures of you in the community or with clients and tips. Remaining top of mind will help with professional referrals and being the realtor a prospect will call when they have a real estate need.
Next Level Real Estate Marketing
- Social Media Visibility: Do you have Realtor.com, Trulia (and other real estate collector websites) and LinkedIn profiles? Do they have positive reviews? Are you active daily on LinkedIn, Facebook, Google+, Instagram & Twitter?
- Social Media Engagement: Visibility is the first step but you want to network online the same way you network at events. Join realtor and community online groups, comment on posts, share and make connections. Out in the community? Share pictures! Post listings and share neighborhood events. Can you profile clients? Share testimonials?
- Local SEO: Your real estate company needs to be on the map in the areas you serve. This is accomplished by creating keyword rich listings in hundreds of online directories. It is one of the most cost effective and fastest ways to be found and should definitely be part of your strategy.
- On Page SEO: This involves optimizing the load speed of your real estate website (like an untuned car it will slow down over time), making changes to the code to be more search engine friendly and optimizing your content for target community and property type real estate keywords. A proper real estate SEO strategy will help your Adwords campaign to perform better and cost you less per click.
- Online Reviews: People really do care what others think, even when it comes to choosing an attorney. The more 5-star reviews you have on real estate websites, Facebook and Google, the more confident a client will be to hire you. Even if they find out about you elsewhere you can be certain they are checking you out online.
- Videos and Photos: You’re already taking professional photos of your property listings. On your website show professional photos of you working with clients. Shoot 1-2 minute videos for your website and social media of you providing buying and selling tips, neighborhood profiles, sharing a story of a client who did or didn’t do something that either saved them or caused issues, or of a client saying nice things about you. Visitors to your website or social media should get a feel for what it would be like to work with you.
