6 TOP REAL ESTATE MARKETING STRATEGIES FOR AGENTS

Being a successful real estate agent relies heavily on your marketing strategy. Without a top-notch real estate marketing strategy, you’ll never generate enough qualified leads to grow your business.

There are plenty of great marketing ideas out there, but what are the top strategies that every agent should be using? We’ve put together a list of 6 strategies that have proven to be effective for many top agents in the US housing market. Take a look:

#1 Marketing for Active Listings

Your real estate marketing strategy for active listings should include a two-point approach- visuals and content. One of the most common marketing tips for real estate agents is to use professional photography to advertise and market active listings. Hiring a photographer, investing in virtual/3D tours and even drone photography can really amplify your marketing strategy.

While this is a good tip, something that is so often overlooked is the actual content in the listing. In fact, when NAR looked at profiles of homebuyers on their site, 87% of online property buyers said the images were helpful in their purchase and 85% found the detailed description to be useful. So it’s true that images of a property attract potential buyers and without them, you can lose qualified leads who are ready to buy property this instant. But after looking at the images, a serious property buyer is going to be looking at the content as well and deems it equally important.

While the facts- square footage, number of bedrooms/bathrooms, etc.- need to be listed clearly and plainly in real estate ads, you should also work to create a story within your listing. Don’t just list features but try to be a bit more creative to allow potential clients to envision themselves living in the home. This is, of course, if your target client is a homebuyer. However, even if you’re looking for real estate investors, they too will look to the description to make sure it will attract future tenants and rake in rental income.

It’s not easy to get creative with real estate ads. The first step you can take is to look to other listings. You’ll find most of them follow the same formula, but sifting through enough listings of top real estate agents in your area, you’re likely to find the ones that stand out creatively. Take note of what these agents are doing differently for this aspect of their real estate marketing strategy and try to apply it to your unique listings.

#2 Content Marketing

Did you know that content marketing can generate 3 times the amount of leads that paid promotions can? Take advantage of this fact by producing content. Here are two ways to use this strategy:

Create a Blog on Your Real Estate Agent Website

One of the best real estate marketing strategies revolves around producing content. And your listing’s content is not enough. Having a real estate blog on your website can be a great resource for online lead generation.

It comes back to your pipeline that starts with real estate leads that aren’t ready for buying, selling, or investing in property just yet. These leads are just starting their journey; they’re only toying with the idea of buying a property. These leads get no value from active listings. Instead, they’re looking to learn about the buying process or the real estate market in general. With valuable content, you nurture them and may even push them into the next stage in your pipeline.

Not only do you help your real estate lead generation with this marketing strategy, but you also market your expertise. Sharing blogs with helpful tips or important updates on the market with your insider knowledge will imprint you in the reader’s mind as a local expert and that’s exactly what you need. When this reader is finally ready to make a move and work with a real estate agent, you’re more likely to be on their mind.

While valuable content is key to this real estate marketing strategy, you’ll also have to learn a little about SEO and how to optimize your content for Google. However, taking this step, even if it’s complicated at first, will surely boost your real estate agent career.

Send Out a Newsletter

Another key form of content is a newsletter. While blog posts can reach out to leads in that first stage of the pipeline, a newsletter can have even further reach. Maintaining relationships with past clients in hopes they’ll bring repeat business or real estate referrals can be done through this marketing strategy. Sending listings, sharing content unique to the newsletter, informing your email list about local market trends and updates, and even sharing the content of others (while crediting sources) can help nurture these relationships. Don’t forget to use images and make your newsletter visually appealing to invite leads to read and reach out for further engagement.

#3 Automated Email Marketing

Creating valuable content in its different forms and posting it to your website is one element of real estate marketing. As mentioned with your newsletter, you need to be sending this content out to your email list to ensure it reaches the greatest audience and is effective in generating leads.

Not only should you be sharing content through email, but with an organized email list, you can send all sorts of updates and information automatically. For example, when someone first registers on your real estate agent website, they should receive a short and friendly welcome email. Next in the email campaign can come a kind of “get to know you” email with a few basic questions to learn about this real estate lead. Eventually, things will move from automation to actual conversations with the lead. This is an effective tactic for your lead generation strategy that saves a lot of time thanks to templates and automation.

#4 Social Media Marketing

We’re not too far off from 2019 so if you haven’t incorporated social media as one of your key real estate marketing strategies, get on it. It’s not enough to set up profiles on the different platforms and just post listings from time to time. For invaluable online lead generation through social media marketing, you need to use these platforms effectively. Here are a few tips to get the most out of your social media marketing:

Tip #1: Use videos often. In a study done for video marketing, it was found that product videos help 90% of consumers with their purchasing decisions. An easy, go-to “product” video idea is real estate client testimonials. Have clients talk about the success they found with your services. Instead of waiting for real estate referrals, this will be a different way to get “referrals” from a much larger audience on social media websites. Be sure to have the client highlight how you were able to match them with the best property for them. Not only will videos help generate more leads, but they were found to get 1200% more social shares than just text and images!

Looking for the best way to match properties to real estate clients? Mashvisor’s agent dashboard and property finder can help you achieve this. To learn more, schedule a demo.

Tip #2: Join local real estate groups on Facebook. This can be a great real estate marketing strategy if you’re active within the group. Answer questions of curious homeowners about the market, share listings when prompted, and provide value when the opportunity comes up. You will be generating leads and referrals in no time.

Tip #3: Don’t forget to share your content to be sure that leads who don’t land on your site organically find it through social media. Respond to any comments and inquiries on your posts. Sharing the content of others can also be useful as well. Even engaging on posts from other pages can help with real estate lead generation. The bottom line- be active.

Tip #4: Consider paying for Facebook Ads or Instagram Promotions. These will help you reach a wider audience on social media beyond your followers and typically can have a good ROI if done right.

Of course, your social media marketing strategy won’t end there. Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn- be sure you’re hitting all the sites and using their unique features to market your real estate agent services.

#5 PR Marketing Strategy

It’s one thing to post your own content and claim to be a real estate expert. It’s another when an external media outlet is quoting you as one. When you work on your PR marketing strategy by reaching out to different blogs and real estate websites, it’s much more effective in building your reputation as an expert to boost lead generation.

A lot of websites cater to homebuyers and real estate investors looking to buy/sell property. While they typically have their own experts on hand, most won’t turn away a quote from a real estate agent on the subject. Not only does it make their information look more reliable, but it markets you to a wider audience. When they share it on their social media, you get even more exposure. And when you share it on yours, you look better and better in the eyes of potential real estate clients and prospects.

This real estate marketing strategy will take some work as you will have to figure out which sites want your help and reach out to them. Your networking skills will come in handy, no doubt. But an easy way is to sign up to a site like HARO, which allows you to submit answers to different questions. When you’re quotes are selected, the media source will link back to your site as well. This is also great for helping with Google ranks for your site, a key part of real estate marketing for agents.

Bonus Strategy: #6 Free Online Marketing

If you work on your PR or social media marketing strategy, it can essentially be free online marketing. But there are other free options to explore as well that you may have missed. Mashvisor offers agents free profiles to use as one of their real estate market strategies. When you visit Mashvisor and claim your free agent profile, you have a place to post valuable content, and an SEO-friendly page that will be found easily by leads when they are searching for agents online. This is crucial to your marketing strategy when your website doesn’t hold any weight with Google if it’s too new or you aren’t versed in SEO.

To claim your free agent profile at Mashvisor, click here.

Learn More: Advertising Real Estate Agents for Free- The Best Online Tool

The Best Tip for Your Real Estate Marketing Strategies

Track your different real estate marketing strategies. You want to know what is working and effective in generating more leads and what is not, especially for those that you are paying for. While tracking might not always be easy when it comes to using different tools like Google Analytics and the like, it is a must for a real estate agent.

It will require testing, but incorporating variations of the 5 real estate marketing strategies listed above are a sure-fire way to always have incoming leads for your business. If you’re still wondering how to grow your business, and you’re not using one of them, then you now know what to do.