If your marketing effort has been filled with big ideas and good intentions, but little tangible results, you aren’t alone. Real Estate Agents who have good ideas but a scattershot approach to marketing need to understand how to implement a consistent marketing process in order to position themselves and their teams for success.
Here are five easy steps you can use to market yourself and your real estate practice. No matter what your budget, they will help you grow your business and increase your revenue, while eliminating the need to chase after clients.
Step One: Determine a Target Niche Market
No matter how versatile your realty practice, focused marketing is key. Identify one core group, and then develop language, materials, and messaging to target that particular market. Start by evaluating previous clients. Are they empty nesters looking to downsize? Young couples in search of starter homes? Affluent buyers seeking vacation or investment properties? Choose one group and keep them in mind for each step.
Step Two: Create a Compelling Free Offer
A free offer or incentive is an incredibly productive way to engage the previously identified key market, and creating this offer is usually quite easy. In fact, many real estate agents already have something to offer potential clients without even realizing it. This could be a free report on local schools or price per square foot in a variety of communities, an exclusive video about home staging, a workbook to guide buyers through the process of obtaining the most cost effective mortgage, or something similar. With such a report, video or guidebook as the basis, you can put an offer together in less than a day.
Step Three: Develop a Landing Page
A simple, one-page website is just the thing real estate agents need to promote free offers and capture contact information. The Internet has vastly changed in the last decade and almost anyone can easily create a landing page, with the help of a few resources such as WordPress, GoDaddy, and Mailchimp. Or, if you already have a website, simply create a new page within it.
Step Four: Market to a Growing Email List
As people sign up for the free offer, they become part of a master list that you should regularly contact and market to. It’s simple to send out automatic and consistent messages (through services such as Mailchimp, mentioned above) to a growing list, with the goal of eventually converting a contact into a client. What’s more, the people on your email list are receiving valuable information through your messages, so it remains a mutually beneficial relationship.
Step Five: Drive Traffic to the Landing Page
Through basic advertising on sites such as Facebook, Google, LinkedIn, Bing, and others, even the smallest budget (less than $100) can drive traffic to a newly created landing page or website to increase views and grow that contact list. By incorporating simple SEO (search engine optimization), social media marketing, video marketing, joint ventures (partnering with like-minded companies and individuals such as contractors or decorators), you can amplify your advertising and marketing.
What’s more, if you have a higher budget, you can outsource nearly all of the activities in step five through services such as elance.com, guru.com, and fiverr.com. For every activity that can increase website traffic, there’s an expert who will be eager to assist.
This five-step strategy to increase your clients and revenue is straightforward, but the benefits will be vast, no matter what the focus of your real estate practice.
To read more about these five steps, pick up Mark Satterfield’s book The One Week Marketing Plan (August 2014; BenBella Books).
Mark Satterfield is the founder and CEO of Gentle Rain Marketing, Inc and author of THE ONE WEEK MARKETING PLAN (BenBella Books; August 2014). He specializes in working with consultants, advisers, and small businesses on how to get consistent streams of new business. Since 1992, he has helped clients in financial services, insurance, health care, consulting, real estate, advertising, training, recruiting, and more than 75 niche industries grow their businesses without cold calling or hard selling. Visit www.gentlerainmarketing.com
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