Real estate marketing can be pretty challenging, but there are plenty of tools to help you succeed. The key is knowing the most effective ways to use them. Here are some quick tips that will help you take advantage of those tools to their full potential.
1. Maintain your social media pages. Often I find that social media pages are abandoned if they don't lead to instant success, or that they are less frequently used. But the truth about social media is that it takes patience and dedication. The payoff for maintaining a strong real estate marketing presence, however, can be huge. Prime real estate even, pardon the joke.
2. Make changes to your marketing newsletters for seasons or holidays, and try to personalize them where possible. Target newsletters based on area, or use merge tags to insert lead's names into the real estate newsletter. Adding the personal touch makes you feel a lot more approachable, friendly, and dedicated to helping them achieve their end goals. This is important for a real estate agency who makes a living finding "home" for people. It's also a smart marketing move since they're likely to see you as friendlier than most of the competition.
3. Optimize your website. Any business, but especially a real estate agency, should and likely does have a web page. However, often that site doesn't turn up in a search unless someone specifically searches for that business name. By using search engine optimization (SEO) you can figure out how to boost your web page's presence, thereby funneling more traffic through it, and potentially getting a larger lead base following your newsletter. This leads to more people paying attention to your external documents and tips, as well as growing your client base. It's a subtle but effective marketing change.
4. Do more with your email newsletter. A newsletter is a great way to keep people informed as to what you've been up to, and what your new products and fun contests are, but you want to do even more with it. For example, imagine being able to send out targeted emails to leads looking to buy a new home based on the areas they're interested in, telling them when a new listing is available. Or how about offering educational resources through email to prospective seller leads? Both of those are powerful bonuses you can offer through the same campaigning you already do, just with different purposes. Through the power of automation, it's simple.
5. Ask customers who enjoy your services to share their experiences. With an online service like Yelp or MerchantCircle, customer reviews with positive experiences are valuable and powerful marketing tools. Even word of mouth through video or audio endorsements that you can embed to your site are incredibly useful in driving the idea that you are customer-oriented and want to help them succeed by being the best in your field. Often you won't get customer reviews not because you don't do good work, but because customers don't know how to go about it. Giving them an outlet to tell people about your company will increase your presence online, and also to help convince new potential customers that your company is the one to go with.
6. Get out into the global community. Regardless of if you're online, at an event in your industry or even talking with a customer on the phone, the world is your community now. Sure, there are smaller communities within that, and your local market is different from your district and national markets. But the fact is that you need to engage people online, in your community, and at events you go to. This will help build relationships on every level, professional contacts and leads alike. For example, run a trivia game or some small contests through your social media page. Ask people about their favorite memories of home. What style of house did they grow up in, or what was the neighborhood like? When a local festival or celebration is announced in the news, make sure you're a part of it. Get out into your community, whatever it is, and interact with people. Take blank business cards to events and personalize your messages when someone doesn't have a card to give you. You'll be more memorable. Little things like that will make a big difference.
There are dozens of other little marketing tips and tricks that make your real estate marketing tools more effective. So do yourself a favor and don't stop here. Find dozens of other ways that marketing automation and going the extra mile can help you grow your business and your services.
