5 Real Estate Marketing Ideas The Pros Use

5 Real Estate Marketing Ideas The Pros Use

There is no “one size fits all” in marketing. Marketing depends on your goals. Whether you are a commercial broker selling office buildings or a residential agent renting luxury penthouses, the way you want to be perceived by your clientele will vary. Your tone, your style, and your content need to be relevant to your target audience. Below are the essential marketing tools we believe a real estate agent/broker should have.

1. Real Estate Website: Brand yourself as a marketing machine

Brand yourself. Let clients find you online. Not only will it help you look professional, but it also shows your marketing capabilities. If you know how to brand yourself, it means you know how to market your listings as well. You can also showcase your recent closings and show your personality. Your website is your online resume. It is easy to put in place and is one of the first things I would do as a real estate professional.

2. LinkedIn Account: Rank on the first page of Google

LinkedIn is an incredibly powerful SEO tool and a great professional social media platform. Translation: You will pop up first on Google search via LinkedIn and look like a pro. It is a free resource that I find is often underutilized by agents. If you’re not much of a writer, hire someone to do it for you. A nice biography with all your credentials can only make you look more legit.

3. Email Newsletter: Stay in their minds; get referrals

Again, you don’t have to do it yourself. Newsletters are time-consuming, and you want to send relevant content to your audience. Hire someone to do it for you: Pick some topics, the frequency, and a design-and-feel for your email blasts, and that’s it. To do an excellent newsletter, you need to know your clients well. What do they want to read about? Newsletters are great for staying at the top of their minds. Consistency is king. It’s better to pick a lower frequency with quality content than to annoy with weekly emails having “meh” content.

4. Blog: Brand yourself as an authority

Whether you are in residential or commercial, you will want to appear as an authority in your field. Not only can your blog help you with search optimization, but it will also brand you as an expert. And we know that real estate is all about trust (and referrals!). Once again, you don’t have to do it yourself; hire someone to manage your blog for you.

5. Headshot: Professional photograph

Yes, it should be common sense, but it still looks as though it is not. I am amazed to see what the brokers I am working with are using: outdated headshots taken in the 90s or selfies taken with their iPhones. I think the worst is old photos: When you meet your real estate agent and discover that he/she is ten years older than the picture he/she has online, it’s just plain deceiving. Be genuine, and show your true colors!

Overall, if you’re not going to keep up with your marketing platforms and just keep a ghost blog, for instance, or send inconsistent newsletters once in a while, don’t do it. Marketing is all about frequency and consistency. Sometimes, less is better. Also, remember that you don’t have to do it yourself; you have plenty of resources to assist you with your marketing. Focus on closing deals, and let professional marketers handle your brand.  

4 Excellent Reasons to Redesign Your Real Estate Website

So you have the best team of brokers, and you just feel that marketing is “Meh.” You’ve built your site in 2012, 2013, and well, you think it’s good enough because marketing is just fluff. Or is it… Well, business owners are experts in their field but not website experts. And that’s why 95% of small businesses have outdated websites. A lot of small and medium brokerages either don’t think about their website much, or don’t realize that it’s outdated.  Here are some ways to know whether it’s time to revamp your site.

1. Your site looks outdated.

Websites have drastically changed over the last few years. Web design is leaning towards clearer, more minimalistic layouts and of course towards great user experience. Just a few years ago, you had to hire an ad agency to design a very simple website for $5,000. But those days are over, and real estate companies now have access to much more affordable solutions. It comes as no surprise, as studies have shown, that customers have more trust and are willing to spend more with businesses offering better-designed websites. 

2. Your site is not mobile friendly.

Your website looked great on a desktop five years ago, when you built it, but looks just odd on a mobile today. That’s okay. A website is a constant work in progress and has to evolve along with the company. Even if you did a great job just a few years ago, updating and improving your online presence is an absolute necessity. Most people are going to visit your website from a mobile, and you want to make a best first impression as possible. Responsive design is a new technology that makes your website work flawlessly on all devices by automatically adjusting to each device. 

 3. It’s hard to update

You need to be able to do these things without wasting money by hiring a web company to do it for you. So, either you are lucky and have an admin, or an office manager that knows how to use your old Wordpress template, or an IT guy who is kind enough to add your recent closings, or new listings to your website. However most likely, you don’t update your site often; your recent transactions are not up to date, your “team” section has brokers who no longer work for your company, and there is still that typo you hate on the home page. Most modern website builders have tools that make updating your site easy. I love Squarespace because of their beautiful design and their user-friendly experience for non-tech users.

4. Your competitors changed their site.

I know. You don’t need to give your site an overhaul every time one of your competitors changes theirs. But having said that, if they make substantial changes, improving their look and rankings, it also means they are pushing you down in searches. If you spend some time on a competitor’s site and realize “Wow it’s sexy” (= “they’re much more appealing than we are”), it’s time to roll-up your sleeves and get busy. It’s time to get cracking on a new design.