How to Build a Real Estate Marketing Plan that will Grow your Business by 10x

You are a real estate agent with a quality service to provide to homebuyers. Somewhere in your locality, there is a homebuyer searching for an ideal real estate agent who will match them with their dream home. Marketing will allow bridging the gap between you and the homebuyer and ensure you find each other. Creating a real estate marketing plan is crucial in growing your business. It will tell you what, why, and how you are going to do your business. A successful marketing plan for real estate will make your business well-known, liked, and trusted by your target market.

Here is how you go about building your plan.

This should be the number one step in creating a successful real estate marketing plan. Who is going to be your audience? Homebuyers? Sellers? Commercial property renters? It is essential to identify who you are marketing to, and chalk out how to sell to them. Tailor your marketing plan according to age, gender, education, location, income, etc. Using the above information, you can create fictional customer personas for your target group.

Example:

• Age: 25-35
• Gender: Male
• Education: College
• Location: Chicago
• Income: $90,000-$120,000
• Family size: Single
• Hobbies & Interests: Outdoor games, technology
  

The next step is to create a Unique Selling Proposition (USP) to distinguish your real estate business from your competitors. Your USP will give you an identity and summarize your value proposition. Next, jot down your mission and vision statement for your business in the long term. Such a statement can fuel you for success in the long run. Set practical objectives and goals for the upcoming business period. Your marketing strategy should take you one step closer to your goals. 

Example: 

Income Goals for 2021:

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To map out a marketing plan for real estate that will work, you need to look into your direct competitors and what is working/ not working for them. For example, if you are a real estate agent, look into the popular agents in your area, and if you are a real estate group, see what other realty groups are doing in the locality. 

Take notice of whose ads you are constantly seeing on social media, who holds the keys to the most listings, and go through the Zillow profiles of prominent agents in the neighborhood. Collect basic competitor information like:

• The average number of listings
• The average price of listings
• Market share percent
  

Also, look into competitor marketing efforts. Observe how they are using their website. Check the layout, structure, and lead-generating properties. Subscribe to their newsletter and learn how they are going about their email marketing campaign. Go through their listing images and descriptions on online real estate marketplaces like Zillow. Also, do swipe through their social media handles to see how they interact with their audience.

Next, decide on what distribution channels you are going to use to reach your target audience. Some real estate agents use old-school broadcasting methods like print, television, and radio. However, digital marketing is more popular and effective nowadays because it connects you to a broader range of audiences. It helps you target a niche group and analyze how many people saw your message and how they responded to it. Here are the most popular digital distribution channels:

• Website: As a real estate agent, you need a mobile-optimized website. Think about where you will look when you want to research about a business - the website. Hence, you need a domain that you own which can be the hub for all your online affairs. A lot of people surf the internet through their mobile devices now. So having a mobile-responsive website can attract clients, convert leads, and generate referrals. Ensure your website has the five essential pages - the homepage, about page, contact page, listings page, and blog.
  

• Email marketing: Billions of emails are sent every day, so email marketing is an effective way to convert leads into clients. Collect email addresses from website visitors and include them in your email marketing list. Also, 49% of consumers say they love receiving emails from businesses. So, send emails at every touchpoint of the client journey. Here are 5 types of emails real estate agents must send to grow their business.
  

• Social Media: While social media may seem overwhelming, using the right strategy and tools, it can generate leads, convert them, and move them down the marketing funnel. 47% of real estate businesses generate their highest quality leads through social media than any other platform. These effective social media strategies for Facebook and Instagram can elevate your social media game. You can use Pinterest to post attractive listing images. Twitter is where you can voice your quirky opinions, whereas LinkedIn can fetch you the highest business leads. Each channel is unique. Concentrate on one that identifies with your brand persona but be present across the board. Try to establish yourself as a thought leader in the industry. Establish yourself as a social media influencer and interact with fellow industry figures through Instagram lives and Twitter Chats. Create groups on Facebook and LinkedIn to connect with like-minded professionals and prospective clients.
  

• Zillow: United States’ most popular real estate website, Zillow Premier Agents, makes it easier for consumers to view properties, leave reviews, and look up agents. Register as a Zillow agent, ask clients to leave reviews and run Zillow ads to make the best use of the platform. In addition, Zillow assembles data about mortgage rates and housing prices. This data improves SEO for Zillow, thereby shooting up its rankings and creating more visibility of agents’ properties. 
  

• Advertising: Once you have laid the foundation for your organic marketing efforts, use paid advertising to reach a wider audience. Algorithms on social channels limit the access you have to your target group. Paid advertisements can accelerate your growth by making you visible on search results. While print and broadcast ads are still used today, digital ads are more economical and help you track how many people have seen and interacted with your advertisement. Following are the different digital ads:

• Google Ads
• Facebook Ads 
• Instagram Ads
• Twitter Ads
• LinkedIn Ads
• Pinterest Ads
• YouTube Ads
• Adwords Ads
  

• Blogs, YouTube, and Podcasts

To establish yourself as an industry leader and provide valuable content to your audience, starting a blog, YouTube channel, or create a Podcast would come in handy. Write blog articles about topics like ‘10 Things to Look out for During House Hunt’. If you consider yourself to be a better speaker than a writer, start a Youtube Channel or Podcast feeding regular industry updates, tips, and tricks to your followers.

An excellent real estate marketing plan must have a realistic budget to organize your spending but allocate enough money to each marketing section. Your pricing needs to be in line with the quality of your service and your target market. Luxury real estate marketing deserves a higher budget than commercial real estate. Create a budgeting plan listing out your expenses for marketing channels, vendors, and staffing. Then, calculate ROI to estimate how effective your budget will be.

Example:

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To ensure progress and zero wastage of time, break down your marketing plan for real estate, and set deadlines for yourself. Give yourself a time limit to finish a particular task, and record milestones as you reach them. This can motivate you and your team to go about your work consistently. 

The final but important step in your marketing journey is analyzing your real estate marketing plan and making adjustments accordingly. Real estate agents should track performance with numbers. Right from sales volume and website traffic to new clients, analyzing your marketing plan for real estate will tell you if the money and efforts you are putting in are generating results. For example, suppose your Twitter audience is not engaging with your content, therefore not converting into clients, whereas Pinterest is doing very well then it makes sense to spend more time and money on Pinterest. In that case, you can tweak your efforts more into the latter and try a different strategy with respect to time and type of posting on Twitter. This will increase the efficiency of your marketing and prevent wastage of resources.

A fine real estate marketing plan can propel your business forward and create leads that convert. Create a real estate marketing template to tailor a concrete plan that fits your business vision and calculate ROI on each service and product.