Tips for Creating a Real Estate Marketing Plan
Advice on how to develop your marketing plan from scratch.
Advice on how to develop your marketing plan from scratch.
Jacqueline Kyo Thomas
Creating a real estate marketing plan may not sound like an exciting way to spend the day, but you must do it. And the sooner you do it, the better. Your marketing plan will play an essential role in your first year as a real estate agent.
To be effective, your marketing plan needs to be carefully plotted out and not left to chance. It requires more thought than printing out business cards and setting up an account on Zillow.
In this post, we’ll discuss how to create an effective real estate marketing plan. But first, let’s take a closer look at why a real estate plan is necessary.
Does creating a real estate marketing plan seem like overkill? After all, you already possess the 12 qualities necessary to be a successful real estate agent. You’re a natural marketer and passionate about helping people accomplish their real estate goals.
While all of the above will certainly help you become a skillful agent, you also need a plan for how you’ll stand out from the crowd and promote your services to others. Here’s a look at the various benefits you gain with a real estate marketing plan:
Your marketing strategy plays an integral role in your overall business plan. Without a path of action, your business plan is just a series of platitudes. The marketing plan shows how you’re going to take the necessary steps to success.
Your marketing plan also lays out those steps to take from start to finish. It provides everything you need to do to accomplish your marketing goals. Armed with your marketing plan, you can make clear and logical decisions for the future of your real estate business.
When you write down your marketing plan, it’s easier to check your progress. You can use it as a checklist for determining what you’ve done so far and what you still need to accomplish in the near future. Keep in mind that you can also adjust your plan to align with your current goals.
Marketing plans aren’t just for big businesses. They’re also for single real estate agents who want to map out a clear path to success.
Now, let’s look at easy ways to create a marketing plan for your real estate business.
What would you like to accomplish, marketing-wise?
For example, let’s say you’d like to build an email list of prospective clients— a very worthy goal. With that goal in mind, ask yourself specific questions that will help you build an actionable marketing campaign, such as:
While an email list is a great way to market your business, it’s certainly not the only way. No matter which marketing channel you use (we’ll discuss different marketing options later in this post), remember to have both a purpose and a plan of action for each. You need to have a specific purpose behind every marketing move that you make, whether that’s to build your email list, increase your exposure, network with fellow industry professionals, or continue nurturing relationships with your current leads.
Make sure that you get specific with your purpose and plan of action in your marketing plan.
Before you pass go, before you collect $200, you need to do this one thing: Understand your ideal client. Who would benefit the most from your real estate services? This is one of the reasons why choosing a real estate niche is so crucial. Specializing helps you identify your ideal customer quickly and easily.
When creating your real estate marketing plan, be sure to define your ideal client based on key demographics, such as:
While you can’t discriminate and only serve a specific type of client, you can create an ideal client that you’d like to reach with your marketing. You might even create multiple client personas and tailor several marketing campaigns to each of those clients, rather than choosing just one ideal client type.
When setting up your real estate marketing plan, it’s important that you choose the right channel. When you first start out, don’t spread yourself too thin. Start with up to three marketing channels and then expand after you get comfortable. Here are a few marketing ideas to consider:
After deciding on which marketing channels you’ll use, make sure that you create a detailed plan of action for each. Set a marketing budget and then determine what tasks you need to do in order to satisfy your goals.
After creating your real estate marketing plan, it’s essential that you continue to measure your results. At the end of each month or designated milestone, you should ask yourself if you’ve made progress on your marketing goals. This is why you must get specific when listing out your marketing goals. How else will you know that your plan worked?
Here are a few ways to measure your marketing results:
Keep track of how leads find you. Whenever you get a call or email from a prospective client, ask them how they heard about you. Keep track of their responses in a simple spreadsheet so that you can determine which marketing effort brings in the greatest amount of leads.
Keep track of which leads turn into clients. Not all leads become clients. Some will become referral sources. Some will turn into ghosts. But there will be a blessed few who actually become clients. You need to know which methods produced actual clients and pour more of your resources into that part of your marketing strategy.
Calculate your cost per lead. How much do you pay for every lead? To figure this out, take a look at your budget for an advertising campaign. For example, if you spent $500 for Facebook marketing this month and receive 50 calls, your cost per lead is $10. Is that the right amount to pay for your real estate leads? It depends on the quality of those leads and how many eventually convert into client. While there’s no one-size-fits-all answer here, it is important to know how much you’re actually spending. This way, you can make adjustments to your marketing as necessary and abandon certain campaigns that aren’t producing the desired results.
Watch your website traffic. Determine how many visitors you’re receiving each month and your most popular pages. This helps you identify what your visitors are interested in.
This post goes hand in hand with How to Market Yourself as a Real Estate Agent. Be sure to check that one out for a practical guide on implementing your real estate marketing plan.
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