Marketing for Real Estate Agents - Set Yourself Apart
Depending on where you live, the market for real estate professionals can be crowded. So when someone is looking for a real estate agent, how can you set yourself apart from the competition? The answer is marketing. Marketing for real estate allows you the opportunity to define your brand and flaunt the ways that you best serve your clients. With a little time and effort, marketing for real estate can increase your number of prospects, clients, and overall sales. Here are ten excellent real estate marketing ideas that you can use to give your business a boost.
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Pro Tip:
You don't have to do it all yourself! If there are any items on this list that you aren't familiar with, you can hire a professional. This way, you can make sure your real estate marketing ideas can come to fruition correctly, saving you time and making you more money in the long run.
Create a Website
Having a web presence is essential for any entrepreneur, including real estate professionals. Everyone is online nowadays, so placing your offering where people can find it allows your brand to become more visible to prospective clients and enables those clients to easily get in touch with you. In fact, nearly half of all buyers head online as their first step in the property-buying process. Creating a website is a great way to kickstart your digital marketing efforts and grow your real estate career.
Build a Social Media Presence
Your audience is likely already spending lots of time on social media sites like Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn, so you should be on those platforms too. Depending on the demographic you're trying to reach, you might want to diversify and hold accounts across different platforms. Facebook is a good place to start because it's easily the most popular social media platform, which means you'll be able to reach a wide audience. Instagram is also beginner-friendly because it has such a visual focus. You can really get people buzzing about some of your most gorgeous home photos, which is an easy real estate marketing idea.
Invest in Professional Real Estate Photography
Great-looking photos can make all the difference in real estate marketing. While you can take some nice photos with a smartphone, a professional photographer has all the necessary gear to make your listings pop. They also understand shot composition and how to paint your properties in the best possible light. Some professional photographers specialize in real estate photography, and partnering with one of these professionals can pay off when marketing for real estate, especially if you can maintain a relationship with them for the long term. Once you have a set of stunning property pictures, you post them on your website and your social media profiles.
Implement an SEO Strategy
SEO, or search engine optimization, is a marketing strategy used to get your website to rank highly on search engine results pages (SERPs). One of the most common ways to boost your SEO is by including keywords within the content of your website. Keywords are terms that people might be searching for on search engines, and if you have these terms on your site, the search engine will recognize that you have the content that people are looking for. For example, a prospective client may search for "real estate agent in Boise, Idaho," and if you include the sentence "I am a real estate agent in Boise, Idaho," on your bio page, search engines can match your content with that prospect and direct them to your site.
It's also important to make sure your website is mobile-friendly. With so many people browsing the internet on their phones, a site that isn't mobile-friendly won't get ranked very high. And including high-quality links to other websites can also help to boost your site's reputation.
Design Business Cards
Business cards are easy to carry with you wherever you go. If you run into someone who mentions that they're in the market for a new home, you can reach into your pocket or purse and hand them a business card. You can easily get a few hundred printed up at a local copy shop or design them online. Include your name, your title, your phone number, and your email address. People hold onto business cards, and they're easy to pass on and share, which makes them a great investment and a solid marketing tool.
Develop Email Marketing Campaigns
When you have a website up and running, use a form on your site to capture email addresses from people who may be interested in your services. Many email marketing providers like MailChimp or Constant Contact will help you build forms that plug right into your website. From there, you can get started by sending out email marketing campaigns. Segment your audiences into different lists like prospects, previous clients, current clients, etc. This way, you can easily send out different content to different lists.
Utilize Real Estate Marketplaces
There are tons of available real estate marketplaces online, including Zillow, Trulia, Redfin, and more. Having accounts on these sites to post your available properties can make your listings more visible. People often start their real estate search on these types of marketplaces, but people will only see what you have to offer if you list it there. These sites make marketing for real estate easier and help clients find what they're looking for.
Send Traditional Mailers
While many of today's marketing efforts often focus on the digital side of things, there's still substantial value in traditional marketing for real estate, especially if you're trying to reach an audience locally. Design a postcard or another type of mailer that includes some eye-catching colors or images of properties you have for sale and send it to prospects who are local to the area that you serve. With digital tools like email, you only have a few seconds to catch people before they either ignore your email or delete it. Print mailers, on the other hand, have a longer lifespan. People may hold onto them, tuck them away in a drawer, or post them on their fridge and come across them weeks or even months down the line.
Partner With Local Businesses
Partnering with local businesses is a great opportunity to build your network and reach a wider audience. But with which kind of businesses should you partner? Think about partners who may be able to provide value to your business. Where do your prospective clients spend their time and money? People who are hiring painters, roofers, or other contractors may be fixing up their home to sell it. Or, hang out in local networking groups to find other businesses looking to partner up.
Share Testimonials and Reviews
Social proof is gaining popularity in marketing based on the idea that people are more likely to make a purchase if they see trusted people within their life recommending the service or product, too. A great way to take advantage of this word-of-mouth marketing is by asking your happy clients to leave you positive reviews online. When you close a deal with a client and send them a thank you note, ask if they would be willing to post a review or write a quick testimonial for you. You can share these powerful bits of content on your website or on your social media profiles to show your prospects what sets you apart from the competition. And if you’re looking to take your word-of-mouth marketing to the next level, we recommend reading our free ebook on the topic.
With these ten real estate marketing ideas, you can go out into the world and better advertise who you are, what you do, and how you can serve your clients. If you’d like to get your career started in real estate, The CE Shop has all the Pre-Licensing education you need. And if you’re looking to pass your real estate exam on the first try, Exam Prep Edge can boost your test-day confidence. If you’re already a seasoned veteran of the industry, don’t worry - our Continuing Education courses were built to provide our students with the cutting edge needed to stand out in the world of real estate.
