A lot of brokers do not believe marketing is necessary, especially those who are in commercial real estate. Yet, everyone needs logos, websites, email marketing, property set ups, SEO, brochures, billboards, business cards, and print advertising. Right?
You have two options: you can pretend it’s not happening, keep playing it old school, and keep thinking that marketing is a waste of money. Or, you can approach Marketing as an investment.
I am amazed to still see how poorly real estate brokerages are marketing themselves and their listings, and in particular, commercial brokerages. This is definitely not going to cut it anymore. Real Estate has always been a laggard in adopting new technology, making brokerages with strong brand recognition very rare unless they are multimillion-dollar companies (Compass, Douglas Elliman, CBRE).
So where does this leave all the small and medium real estate brokerages? Struggling. I see too many cheap logos done with Word and PowerPoint, terrible newsletters both in terms of look and content, and outdated websites that are not very user-friendly. Does this sound like you? Do not worry, it's understandable. When do you get the time to take care of your marketing when, as a broker, you never have enough hours during the day?
Time is Money.
Branding, mailers, logos, videos, letterhead, business cards, email marketing, newsletters, Facebook ads, slogans, print ads, and press releases - the list goes on and on. It’s a lot of stuff to know, understand, and maintain. And I bet you already have all of this on your to-do list.
If you are in the same situation as many real estate agents and brokers, you cannot afford a traditional real estate advertising agency. It is too expensive and too time consuming. When do you have the time to interview 5 or 6 of them just to know which one to hire, and then after that manage and supervise the work? So you probably end up doing most of these petty tasks yourself or internally. Unless you have an extravagant marketing payroll with a full-time team, your brand is not performing and generating more revenue (read: finding new clients, keeping current ones and closing fast enough).
Your Time is Valuable.
Of course, you can try to do it yourself (maybe). But for that, not only do you have to spend time learning new programs and software, but also need to spend several hours actually creating and designing the image or graphic. The time you spend prospecting, calling, following up with contacts, and working with active clients is all value-added time. It drops revenue straight to the bottom line. So make sure you consider the cost and the value of your time when determining whether or not to do something by yourself.
For instance, let’s say that you are on a quest to create a new web banner and hired somebody to do the job for $300. It probably would have taken you 15-20 hours to produce a marginal result. At a cost of $300, that means those 15-20 hours of your time would have been worth $15/hour. But isn’t your time worth WAY more than $15 an hour?
It only makes sense to hire an expert when you need help with marketing.
It saves you time and consequently money. Think of the cost benefit before you sink your valuable time doing something that you could delegate to professionals.