Real Estate Marketing (The Ultimate Guide) | Real Estate Skills

We all know what real estate is and some may know a thing or two about marketing, but what does it mean when they’re put together?

Well, it’s actually pretty simple. Luckily for you, this guide will teach you the ins and outs of real estate marketing and who knows, maybe it’ll end up piquing your interest in wanting to learn more about the real estate industry!

That being said, here is the Real Estate Marketing: The Ultimate Guide! Use the menu below to easily navigate from section to section:

• 1. What Is Real Estate Marketing?
• 2. Who Uses Real Estate Marketing?
• 3. What Is A Real Estate Marketing Agency?
• 4. How Does Real Estate Marketing Work?
• 5. What Are Some Real Estate Marketing Ideas?
• 6. How To Implement Real Estate Marketing On Social Media?
• 7. Types Of Real Estate Marketing Companies
• 8. What Are Some Marketing Strategies For Real Estate Agents?
• 9. What’s An Example Of A Good Real Estate Marketing Plan?
• 10. How To Identify A Target Market In Real Estate Marketing?
• 11. How Much Should A Real Estate Agent Spend On Marketing?
• 12. What Is The 80/20 Rule In Real Estate Marketing?
• 13. How To Do Real Estate Marketing Online?
• 14. What Does A Real Estate Marketing Coordinator Do?
• 15. What’s An Example Of A Real Estate Marketing Business Plan?
• 16. Final Thoughts On Real Estate Marketing

What Is Real Estate Marketing?

Real Estate Marketing is all about promoting your unique value proposition to the world in order to build a brand, attract clients, and close real estate transactions. While marketing is an essential component to nearly every business, real estate businesses are no exception. 

Let's boil it down. We all know that real estate is property that is bought and sold. Even if you’re a homeowner, then- News flash! You're involved in the real estate industry.

Now, the term “marketing” is something that may not come to mind when you’re asking an average Joe. In a nutshell, marketing is the action of selling products or services via advertising, promotion or by conducting market research.

Real estate marketing should be used by everyone in the industry, as long as you have something to offer. If you're an agent, broker, landlord, real estate investor, or anyone else in the real estate business, then using real estate marketing to grow your business is critical.

To be successful in real estate marketing is to generate leads. Generating leads means initiating consumer interest in your business's products or services in order to convert them into customers.

This interest often comes in the form of an "opt in" to your offer, such as someone sending you their email address and contact information to receive more information about your offer. 

Your real estate marketing offer could be a property for sale, apartment for rent, real estate agent services, leasing services, or property management, for example. 

In other words, real estate marketing is meant to gain the interest of customers in your business's products and services. 

We know what you’re probably thinking. My house isn’t a product, how can it be sold in the market? It’s not sold in a store, so how does this work? What kind of competition is there for real estate?

Well, this is what this guide is for! Now that you know the definition and the premise of real estate marketing, let’s move on to the next topic to find out more clues about how marketing is used efficiently within the real estate industry.

Who Uses Real Estate Marketing?

Now that we know what the tool is, next comes another question; Who uses real estate marketing? The answer to that question might be simpler than you think. Basically, anyone who operates and provides goods or services within the real estate industry will use real estate marketing.

Users of real estate marketing include:

• Real Estate Agents and Realtors
• Real Estate Brokers
• Property Managers
• Real Estate Investors
• Homeowners looking to rent their property out
• FSBO (For Sale By Owner) Home Sellers
• Landlords attracting tenants
• General Contractors
• Title Companies
• Local Businesses Serving The Real Estate Industry
• House Flippers
• Real Estate Wholesalers

What Is A Real Estate Marketing Agency?

Basically, a Real Estate Marketing Agency is a business, firm, or organization that is responsible for the research, analysis, strategy, branding, advertising, and promotion of services provided on behalf of a real estate company.

Many small real estate companies and entrepreneurs are able to handle their own marketing in the early stages of existence. As the business grows, or even if growth is non-existent, many real estate professionals will choose to outsource their marketing operations to a real estate marketing agency. 

Real estate marketing agencies help everyone from real estate sales agents, to small mom-and-pop real estate investment companies, to large commercial brokerages. 

With real estate being a very old-school business, most people who have created substantial wealth with long careers in real estate aren't adept to the new methods of digital marketing that have transformed the industry since the internet boom. 

While agencies can certainly help with real estate marketing strategies such as print media, postcards, mailers, billboards, and other traditional forms of marketing - most real estate marketing agencies these days are hired to help with social media platform marketing, website creation and maintenance, pay per click (PPC) advertising, creating landing pages, and more. 

As you can see, there are many bases to cover with real estate marketing! If you don't understand marketing in the modern age, it's quite easy to waste a lot of money without getting any positive results. 

Since it's hard for solo entrepreneurs and small business owners to do it all themselves, hiring real estate marketing agencies can be an excellent way to leverage a specialty firm in order to get the highest return on marketing dollars. 

Great real estate marketing agencies will have a team of specialists that can handle any your marketing needs, whereas a real estate marketing firm may be specialized in one or two particular aspect of marketing.

Now that we’ve cleared that up what a real estate marketing agency is, we still need to cover how exactly it works.

“Success in real estate starts when you believe you are worthy of it.” - Michael Ferrara

How Does Real Estate Marketing Work?

So, now that we know what real estate marketing is… how does it work?

Believe it or not, real estate marketing works the same as any other type of marketing. A big part of marketing has to do with using advertising as a goal to drive sales. The real estate industry is no stranger to this.

Real estate marketing is all about marketing funnels, which are the stages that take place from when a customer learns about your business to the purchasing stage.

The steps are as follows:

#1. Determine Your Purpose

• The person who is conducting the marketing needs a purpose. What is the objective of your marketing campaign? To get new listing appointments? To find motivated sellers

#2. Craft Your Message

• You must have an offer to communicate (e.g. I have a property for sale, property for rent, investment services, etc.). What is your offer in your marketing campaign?

#3. Select Marketing Channels

• Also known as a medium, these are the ways in which you reach your customers 
• Mediums include:  Social media, bandit signs, Zillow ads, website Search Engine Optimization (SEO), direct mail

#4. Generate Leads

• Leads are gained through efficient marketing through your channel. Intake your qualified leads and then proceed to follow up with them.

#5. Contact Your Leads

• Once you contact your leads, it advances into a sales process.

#6. Close The Deal

• The moment it all leads up to, fulfilling your objective! You seal the deal with the customer, whether that means buying a property, getting a tenant to lease a property, or signing a new listing agreement!

What Are Some Real Estate Marketing Ideas?

So, you want to get into real estate marketing but you’re not sure where to start? The following are four ideas of how you can get started using real estate marketing to achieve success:

Attend Local Events

Like any other business, it all starts with getting your name out there. In regard to real estate marketing, this could be accomplished by attending local events and joining local Meetup groups and associations to show others what you’re made of!

You got something impressive that you want to share with others in your local community? Perfect.

For example, it would be in your best interest to attend Real Estate Investors Association Meetings (REIA meetings!) These meetings will give you the opportunity to learn, grow, network and build relationships with different types of real estate professionals from local businesses within your market.

Acquire Marketing Materials

If you’re like me, you prefer something tangible as opposed to something intangible.

Getting marketing materials, such as flyers, brochures, and business cards, printed with your brand logo and brand name is a very efficient way to getting your name around. 

If you think flyers and brochures are played out, then you should think twice! When trying to get your name around within a setting filled with professionals, they’ll take note of the fact that you have something tangible you can hand them. It shows you take it more seriously.

In addition to that, business cards are one of the most efficient methods of getting your name out there. Cards include all of the vital information (name, number, email address, brand name, logo) and are very easy to keep with you! Updated contact information is essential.

The following video discusses 11 of the best types of marketing material:

Online Ads (Zillow, Facebook, Google)

Everyone spends more time than they’d like to admit using the internet! That’s perfectly fine, as long as we realize that most people's attention is on their screens these days.

Knowing this, utilizing websites such as Zillow, Facebook, Google and even Craigslist are great platforms for getting your name out there through advertising! 

• Zillow is an online real estate database company that allows the user to view and post listings of property that is available to buy, rent and sell. 
  • Zillow allows real estate agents and brokers to purchase 'Zillow Premier Agent' advertising packages in order to generate new buyer and seller leads.
  • Users of Zillow are likely the exact audience you're looking to connect with as a real estate agent, making it very effective. 
• Facebook allows business page owners to run advertisements using their industry leading targeting platform. Since Facebook has unmatched insights into it's user base, they allow marketers to target very specific audiences, which is great for real estate marketing. 
• Google ads also referred to as pay per click ads, are very effective in capturing leads. Google Ads can get expensive and are highly competitive, as a result of the real estate leads being so lucrative for real estate businesses!

Open House Signs

Now, we hope you saw this one coming! Open house signs are a staple when it comes to real estate marketing ideas.

Open house signs are a very prominent way of getting your name out there; not to mention the fact that these signs are posted outside of nearly every property that’s for sale!

You can even include some of the flyers that we’ve mentioned earlier for an extra effect! Open house signs are one of the traditional ways in which real estate agents conduct their advertising, and it doesn’t look like they're going away any time soon. It has become staple in most real estate brokerage marketing plans. 

How To Implement Real Estate Marketing On Social Media?

Where do we begin with social media? To start, social media is easily one of the biggest opportunities when it comes to marketing in today’s world.

Do you want to get your brand name out there to the world? Here's your chance.

Make an account for your brand on any social media platform, work the appropriate strategies, and it’ll get attention in no time. Billions of people use their mobile devices on a day to day basis, so your content can potentially reach millions of people with ease. 

The best part about advertising via social media? It’s free to start! Eventually down the road, you may consider investing a lot of money into running ads, creating professional content, and engaging with your audience once you begin to get serious with real estate marketing.

Now, that being said, we guarantee that you have at least one (if not all) of the following applications downloaded on your smart phone: Instagram, Twitter, Facebook and LinkedIn.

Do any of those sound familiar? We sure hope they do.

These nifty applications are examples of the most commonly used platforms for social media marketing, and real estate marketing is no stranger to this by any means. The following are examples of how each of the platforms stated above could benefit real estate marketing:

Instagram

Instagram is the main application for photos of the bunch. It’s incredibly easy to use. Just make sure to take some high quality pictures of some houses or any property you’re trying to get out there, come up with a clever description, and then you’re golden.

It doesn’t even need to have a description if you don’t want to put one. The app allows you to post up to 10 different photos on the same post, making the possibilities endless for what you plan to post on a given property.

You could also be even more creative with your content by posting photos, videos, and editing them on your Instagram stories. Instagram is an ideal platform for content marketers.

Twitter

Twitter is probably the most commonly used out of all the applications listed, at least by people in their early 20’s. The great thing about this application is that it functions like a grapevine.

For example, let’s say you post a tweet about real estate marketing strategies. Once the tweet is published, people will be able to see your post and repost or “retweet” it if they find your post to be favorable. This leads to an endless stream of your original tweet going from person to person.

Facebook

Facebook is likely the easiest application to pick up out of the four we have listed. If not Twitter, then we would also say that Facebook is probably the most widely used application of the bunch.

Something that sets Facebook apart from its contemporaries is the function of posting statuses, customizing your profile to great detail and most importantly, Facebook ads. Facebook ads are able to accomplish a lot in terms of getting your real estate marketing ideas out there.

As a matter of fact, marketing via Facebook ads is huge for real estate professionals. Successful social media marketers may end up spending thousands of dollars a month just on social media marketing with Facebook ads.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn is an excellent way of connecting with people or potential colleagues within the business field. It's certainly the most professional out of all the social media applications mentioned on this list.

A way in which real estate marketing is implemented via LinkedIn is through the use of blog posts. LinkedIn users are able to construct posts on a professional level in order for them to be seen by very important people within the real estate industry.

Overall, all companies should be exploiting social media platforms in order to succeed in today’s market.

Furthermore, while successfully running your paid ads through these very highly populated social media platforms, you commence in lead generation.

Lead generation is the initiation of customer interest into your products or services. This is a very effective way to attract potential customers that will eventually become your long-term clients.  

Types Of Real Estate Marketing Companies

With all sorts of real estate marketing companies providing services to cover all of your businesses' needs, we'll cover the different types here:

They include:

1. Digital Marketing Companies
   • They help run your pay-per-click and paid ads
     • Facebook and Google ads
   • Listing networks such as Zillow, Redfin, Trulia
     
     • Run ads directly to buyers and sellers
   • Website and search engine optimization (SEO) support
     • Set up your IDX-enabled website
     • Write blogs and creative content
2. Social Media Marketing Companies:
   • Manage and optimize your social media pages
   • Post consistent content on your pages
   • Advertise on social media platforms for you
3. Print Media Companies
   • Marketing companies develop and implement your print media strategy
   • Designs and produces open house signs, business cards, brochures, bandit signs, postcard mailers, or any type of printed marketing material
4. Call Centers
   • Helps you make cold calls or take incoming calls from your marketing campaigns
5. Commercial Real Estate Companies (CRE)
   • Consists of real estate brokers and agents who market commercial properties for purchase, sale, and rent
   • Deep industry experience and expertise in commercial properties, such as retail, office, and industrial uses
6. Residential Real Estate Companies
   • Consists of real estate brokers and agents who market properties for purchase, sale, and rent

What Are Some Marketing Strategies For Real Estate Agents?

Every successful real estate company needs great marketing strategies. There's no exception when it comes to real estate agents.

The following are 9 very essential real estate marketing strategies to expand your business:

1. Identify Your Target Market
2. Budget For Marketing Expenses
3. Create A Website And Use Social Media
4. Encourage Referrals And Word-of-Mouth
5. Respond Quickly
6. Publish A Real Estate Newsletter
7. Create a Youtube Channel To Speak To Potential Clients
8. Plan For Success
9. Develop Brand Awareness

Do you recognize some of these? Creating a website, using social media and developing brand awareness have all been mentioned thus far in the article.

This just goes to show that they are some of the key elements for developing a successful real estate marketing business. However, these same strategies can be used for any business as well.

In addition to the strategies mentioned above, the following are all great examples of real estate marketing strategies for real estate agents:

• Open house signs
• Flyers
• Websites
• Brochures
• Zillow ads
• Business cards
• Google and Facebook ads
• Craigslist
• Banners
• Bench Ads
• Billboards
• In-person events
• Real Estate Investors Association REIA meetings
• Canvassing (contacting many individuals in a certain area)

What’s An Example Of A Good Real Estate Marketing Plan?

Marketing plans are made so that you’ll stay motivated which will eventually help you accomplish reaching your real estate sales goals.

A good real estate marketing plan can be thoroughly developed with these 8 easy steps:

1. Define Your Goals And Objectives
2. Focus on A Targeted Audience
3. Differentiation: Stay Unique!
4. Refine Your Value Proposition
5. Determine The Best Media
6. Create Your Action Plan And Schedule
7. Prepare A Detailed Budget
8. Measure your results

This polished, thorough personal marketing plan should be able to help you be on your way to success.

Something that has been mentioned a few times already is a target market. What is it, exactly?

The following section will explain what a target market is and how it can be identified in terms of real estate marketing.

How To Identify A Target Market In Real Estate Marketing?

First off, a target market is exactly what it sounds like. In a nutshell, it is the type of customer you want to sell your product or service to. Watch this short clip on how to identify a target market:

You can’t make the mistake of trying to promote your real estate business to everyone, because that’ll leave you with a very unfocused marketing campaign. Creating a brand that appeals to everyone is way too overwhelming. Sometimes it’s good to stay simple.

A target market can be identified by:

1. Defining Your Target Market
2. Research
3. Creating a Marketing Plan
4. Measuring Success

These 4 steps will allow you to discover your niche market and figure out your strength and expertise to help determine what demographic to target.

Bottom line, the steps in defining a target market for the real estate industry works like any other industry. The big questions are:

Who’s your customer? Who are you trying to reach through your marketing efforts?

These two questions can be answered once you figure out the profile and demographic of prospects in your area. It also helps to figure out your unique traits and how they help you serve a certain segment of the market.

Now, we move on to a very important topic for many. This, of course, is how much a real estate agent should be spending on real estate marketing.

How Much Should A Real Estate Agent Spend On Marketing?

For real estate agents trying to decide how much they should spend on marketing, this may be the most important topic out of all of the ones that we’ll discuss. However, determining an exact budget many vary on many different conditions.

First of all, the amount spent on real estate marketing will depend entirely on your income and the resources you have at your disposal. Most agents suggest spending about 10% of your commissions on marketing.

You need to find the marketing budget that works for you. This leaves you to consider your average commission on sales, the average final sales price of the homes you sell and the volume of transactions conducted in each quarter and year.

You must also create your marketing strategy, which should result in determining all of your projected expenses represented in monthly numbers and total annual figures.

Finally, you also need to ensure that part of your marketing budget is set aside for events, printing expenses (such as business cards), and travel.

At the end of the day, you want to make sure that you’re spending a percentage of your commission in order to conduct successful marketing.

You have to spend money to make money.

Aside from figuring out how much you should be spending on real estate marketing, a very important principle used for real estate investing is the 80/20 rule. The following explains the details on this principle.

What Is The 80/20 Rule In Real Estate Marketing?

To put it simply, the 80/20 rule in real estate marketing works on a cause and effect basis. The 80/20 rule states that roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes.

This means that determining 20% of the tasks produces 80% of the desired results. It’s a general rule that can be used throughout your life as well as in real estate marketing.

If you apply the 80/20 rule to real estate marketing, for example, you'll see that nearly 80 percent of your business is achieved through 20 percent of your marketing efforts.

To break it down, this means that one of every five of the marketing efforts that you undertake will reward you with 80 percent of your results. It's safe to say that investing a lot into real estate marketing really pays off.

You'll learn through testing various real estate marketing strategies which ones are the 20 percent that makes the biggest difference in your business. 

Next, very similar to the topic on social media, however a bit more broad. I’ll be discussing how we can do real estate marketing online.

How To Do Real Estate Marketing Online?

Nowadays, utilizing the internet in order to promote and build brand awareness for your business is vital. Real estate marketing online is no exception for this.

Whether its email marketing, using social media platforms, marketing campaigns, creating blog posts and Facebook ads, or publishing your own real estate websites, you’re able to accomplish these very efficient methods of marketing online via the internet.

As stated previously, social media is an exceptional tool for online marketing.

It doesn’t just need to be limited to social media platforms, however.

Creating online blog posts and marketing campaigns have also proven to be very effective ways of gaining online traffic. Landing pages on real estate online articles could go a long way!

Listing networks mentioned previously, such as Zillow, Trulia and Redfin are also very commonly used websites for real estate marketing online.

Last but not least, search engine optimization (SEO), or optimizing your web presence to rank high in search engines, is one of the key methods of increasing traffic to your websites. It helps the quality and quantity of traffic grow by increasing the visibility of a website to online searchers.

Moving on from online marketing for real estate, haven’t you ever pondered the role of a real estate marketing coordinator?

What Does A Real Estate Marketing Coordinator Do?

First we learned about real estate marketing agencies, but what exactly is a real estate marketing coordinator and what do they do?

To start, real estate marketing coordinators serve as a very important part of a real estate marketing team. Their main role consists of building and executing multiple marketing campaigns to help expand the real estate brand.

They do so by strategizing, executing and managing a variety of ad campaigns to market new listings with help from public relations, operations and real estate agencies.

They conceptualize campaigns, develop and execute ads and analyze the performance results of ads. They are a very productive digital marketing team with various social media platforms, so they can ensure a consistent online presence.

That being said, real estate marketing coordinators mainly take care of the company’s online presence. This role is essential to any company that plans to make it big, as social media plays a huge role in how companies market themselves nowadays.

One of the most important pieces to the entire puzzle in terms of a real estate marketing business is developing a substantial real estate business plan. The following section illustrates the ultimate guidelines for creating a real estate business plan.

What’s An Example Of A Real Estate Marketing Business Plan? 

Like any other business, developing a marketing business plan is critical to forming a healthy and sustainable organization. It is an essential backbone for every successful company.

That being said, here we’re going to look at the steps that real estate professionals can take to outline, execute, and measure the performance of a business plan. The steps are divided into the following subcategories:

Start With A Solid Foundation

1. Write an executive summary that captures the vision
2. Write a detailed business description
3. Perform a SWOT analysis
4. List your #1 SMART goal

Defining Your Marketing Strategy

1. Identifying your market niche
2. Assess the viability of your niche market
3. Build a digital home base
4. Identifying your core marketing and lead generation channels

Creating A Financial Plan (What To Keep Track Of)

1. Expenses
2. Income
3. Transactions and leads

Action Plan

1. Creating a marketing plan
2. Making your goals tangible
3. Forming a lead nurturing strategy
4. Setting business best practices
5. Building a team

Evaluating And Revising Your Plan

1. Constantly reassess the market
2. Staying on track and measuring success
3. Reassess your business plan annually
4. Tailor the real estate plan with your growth stage

Ready. Set. Plan.

This is an ideal framework for a successful business plan. As long as your real estate marketing business plan follows similar guidelines, then you shouldn’t have anything to worry about. Your business will have a strong foundation to flourish. 

Final Thoughts On Real Estate Marketing

Though we've discussed various topics within the real estate marketing realm, in realty it's a very simple field to get started in to grow your business at any stage. 

We hope this information serves as a guide to reveal the top strategies anyone can pick up to learn and master real estate marketing for themselves. 

All of the steps we've mentioned - from digital marketing strategies for real estate agents to implementing real estate marketing through social media - share the same major principles.

By utilizing the principles of real estate marketing - to create awareness, interest, desire, and action by your prospects - you're sure to find results no matter which strategies you choose to implement in your business. 

We hope you've enjoyed this Ultimate Guide for real estate marketing! What's your favorite real estate marketing strategy? Leave us your thoughts in the comments below!