Real estate agents are the backbone of the housing market. They play a crucial role in helping buyers and sellers navigate the complex world of finding, buying, and selling homes. A world that—despite becoming more and more digital—still requires the skills, tact, and expertise of a real human to help shepherd the process along. However, being a successful real estate agent requires more than just local market knowledge and industry expertise. It requires an effective marketing strategy that allows you to stand out from the competition and attract potential clients.
Below, we’ll explore why real estate agents need to be marketing themselves, how to create a real estate marketing plan, and the channels you should be testing and using in your marketing plan. In this ultimate guide to real estate agent marketing, agents will be armed with the information to build their own marketing plan and get started on nurturing and winning clients each and every day.
Why do Real Estate Agents Need a Marketing Plan?
Marketing is essential for any business, and real estate is no exception. According to research from the National Association of Realtors (NAR), 86% of buyers purchase a home through a realtor. With the majority of people using a realtor in their lifetime—the question is not “Will you use a realtor”, but in fact, “Which realtor will you use”?
When it comes to finding a real estate agent, marketing is one of the surest ways to position your brand, expand your sphere of influence, and make yourself known. After all, successful marketing is what sets the top agents apart from the rest. Sure you may be able to get your first few clients through friends and family but without active marketing, your brand reach will end there. Clients are essential to any agent’s success and if your brand isn’t visible, you’ll be unlikely to scale your business.
Here are the primary reasons why real estate agents need to focus on marketing:
Increase Brand Visibility
We are living in a digital-first world. And when it comes to real estate that means people are starting their search—for homes and for agents—online. A digital presence is akin to your calling card. Without a social media profile, website, or reviews, potential clients aren’t able to gather enough information about you to make a decision. In an industry as saturated as real estate, if you make information about you scarce, there will be ten other agents with strong digital profiles that clients will turn to instead. With a purchase as significant and personal as a home, clients want to make sure their agent is someone they like and trust. By having a strong online presence, you can increase your visibility and make it easier for potential clients to find you.
Build Trust Among Potential Clients
Marketing is one of the best ways to help you build trust with potential clients. Not only are you able to showcase your expertise, but you’re able to show clients your authentic self. People like working with people they can relate to and understand. By positioning yourself as knowledgeable, trustworthy, and relatable, you’re already way ahead of the curve.
Differentiate Yourself From Competitors
As an agent, your brand is one of your biggest tools to differentiate yourself and help you stand out from the competition. You do this by doubling down on a niche and hammering home that message so that it’s front and center. For example, do you exclusively service first-time homebuyers? Specialize in Downtown Brooklyn? Donate a portion of sales from every home to a specific charity? Have you represented and sold more new developments than your average agent? Whatever it is that you excel in, use it in your marketing and make sure your clients know exactly what it is and why. Doing so will allow you to grow credibility in your niche and attract clients who are looking for a specialist.
Generate More Business
Last, but certainly not least, when used consistently and strategically, marketing helps you generate and nurture leads and grow your client base. By building a relatable brand and using targeted marketing techniques, you will reach clients consistently which will allow you to build and nurture that relationship until the time is right and your client is ready to buy or sell.
Creating a Real Estate Marketing Plan
Now that we understand why marketing is essential to your real estate business, let’s dive into how to craft a marketing strategy that will set you up for success. A strategy is not about selling properties—although that can be a content pillar and tactic that drives your marketing strategy—but about building a strong, lasting brand and establishing yourself as an expert in the industry.
A well-crafted marketing plan helps you reach your target audience, generate leads, and increase sales. Below we share the steps to take in order to create a real estate agent marketing plan that will help you achieve your business goals.
Determine your Unique Selling Proposition
A unique selling proposition (or USP in marketing-speak) is a statement that outlines how your brand differs from your competitors. The success of many brands can often be traced back to this simple statement. Take some time and think about what your skills are and how they differ from other agents in your markets. Your USP should be compelling and communicate the value you bring to your clients. Ultimately, it should allow you to differentiate yourself from the competition and attract a certain set of clients.
Define your Target Audience
Anyone savvy marketer will tell you that understanding your target audience is one of the most important things you can do when crafting a marketing plan. Real estate agents tend to cast a wide-audience net, typically targeting “anyone who is looking to buy or sell their home”. The problem with this is that by connecting with everyone, you end up connecting with no one. Who are the people you want to reach? What is their age, race, job, and salary? What are their pain points, fears, and desires? Where do they live and what are their interests and behaviors? How does your USP bring value to them? By carefully identifying who your target audience is, what they like, and how they act, you can begin to craft a content strategy that resonates with them directly.
Develop your Brand Identity
Your brand identity is more than just your logo and color scheme. It’s the way you present yourself to the world and it should be consistent across all your marketing channels. Develop a brand voice and tone that speaks to your target audience and creates a sense of authenticity and professionalism. Then, most importantly, tell your story—one that ladders back to your USP. Make sure your story is personal and emotional. Consider some of the top agents in your market. What is their story? Often, you’ll be able to bring it to mind immediately. That’s because humans are wired to engage with stories. Whether it’s a rags-to-riches story, a life setback that leads you to where you are today, or simply the community you represent, stories enable others to connect, empathize with you, and root for your success.
Create a Real Estate Content Marketing Strategy
We consider content as the ‘Northstar’ or guiding light of any marketing strategy. An effective way to establish yourself as an expert in the real estate industry, a content marketing strategy involves mapping out the themes you’ll be creating content around, the format of the content, the channels, and the cadence. An impactful content marketing strategy takes into account your personal brand and USP as well as topical, relevant events and crafts a strategy that weaves the two together. Content is promoted across many channels (listed below) and in many formats (such as blogs, videos, podcasts, social posst, etc).
Track & Measure Your Efforts
Your marketing strategy is only as successful as your top-performing content. Put simply: in order to get better, you have to measure your efforts and draw conclusions about why something performed better or worse than something else. When drawing up your strategy make note of your KPIs—Key Performance Indicators—that you plan to track. For example, if engaging with email marketing, your KPIs would be open rate and click-through rate. You want to know if people are opening your email and when they do open it, what links are most appealing to them. Once you send a few emails you can begin to better understand the type of content your audience enjoys and iterate upon your strategy from there.
What Channels Should Real Estate Agents Use for Marketing?
Now that we’ve established why marketing is important for real estate agents let’s dive into the different channels agents can use to market themselves. It’s important to note that there are many channels and many of them offer the opportunity to be successful so long as you use them consistently. The key here is to pick three channels below and double down on them. With limited resources, the best thing an agent can do is focus their time and energy on a few channels and do them well, versus dabbling in everything inconsistently. If you’d like an expert opinion on which marketing channels make the most sense for your real estate business model, schedule a free consultation to learn more about our team and services.
Website
A lot of agents rely on their brokerage agent page, Realtor.com, or Zillow agent profile in lieu of a dedicated website. While a page on these websites is well and good, in today’s digital world, having a professional website is imperative to telling your brand story and showing clients you are serious about your craft. Your website should include an “About Me” section, links to your social media, a list of services, client testimonials, current and past listings, links to any press coverage, your contact information, and any relevant downloadable resources or tools like buyers or seller’s guides or a home valuation calculator. Luxury Presence and Agent Image are two vendors that offer IDX integration into agent websites.
Social Media
Social media is a powerful marketing tool that can help authentically and organically build your brand. A lot of agents don’t know where to start when it comes to social media as it can be a large time investment that requires consistency week after week and month after month. The trick here is not to reinvent the wheel—follow 20 real estate agents in your market (if you don’t already), audit what they’re posting, and adopt their strategy with your own unique twist. Just remember: don’t be shy about injecting your own personality and personal flair into your content.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of our favorite ways to reach customers. Whether your audience list is 50 people or 5,000, email is a direct line of communication with past and future clients and it lands directly in their inbox. We recommend a monthly newsletter that updates your audience on market trends, new listings, local happenings, and industry news. Email marketing is one of the simplest and low-cost ways to stay top-of-mind among your target audiences. And it pays in dividends.
Blogging
Blogging can serve you in countless ways. Let us count them: first of all, blogs greatly help to enhance website SEO, which leads to more organic eyeballs on your website. Secondly, blogging allows you to deep-dive into a certain topic, meaning you can establish your expertise and show off your knowledge to readers. Thirdly, blogs can be endlessly repurposed—they can be cut into smaller form videos and shared on social media, shared on LinkedIn or promoted via Google My Business, and condensed into an eblast. Lastly, blog posts that address evergreen topics have an endless shelf life. If well-written and in practice with SEO, these posts can earn you views while you sleep years after they’ve been written, making them far more robust than social media content.
Direct Mail
Long before Facebook and Instagram, agents relied exclusively on direct mail to send postcards, flyers, and reports to homeowners in their geo farm. Such content works to establish top-of-mind awareness and position your name as the dedicated expert of that neighborhood. Today, direct mail remains a viable marketing channel to complement your digital tactics. It’s relatively low-cost and when implemented strategically, can provide a strong ROI. The trick here is to lean heavily on the visuals and included content that residents find helpful—so that your postcard ends up on the fridge, instead of the trash. Consider sharing the trash/recycle schedule, giving a $5 coupon to a local coffee shop (only eligible for redemption if you’re there), or sharing a digestible trend overview of the current market data.
In-Person Events & Local Partnerships
Hosting in-person events, such as a fundraiser, community workshop, or panel can help you connect with potential clients and demonstrate your expertise. You can also consider partnering with a local business expert such as an interior designer or mortgage broker. By providing valuable information and resources, you can build trust and credibility while also spending time talking to clients face-to-face. At the end of the day, nothing beats an in-person interaction or referral and this facetime with potential clients increases the likelihood of them choosing you as their real estate agent tenfold.
Networking
We’ll keep this one short and sweet: networking is an essential part of being a real estate agent. Attend industry events, join local business groups, and connect with other professionals in your area. Doing so will allow you to build relationships, foster connections in your field, and expand your client base. Being a successful agent means playing the long game; it may take years before these connections morph into tangible business (if ever), but if you invest in these relationships now, they will help your business down the road.
Get Help With Your Real Estate Agent Marketing Plan
Marketing is essential for real estate agents who want to grow their business and stand out from the competition. It’s also the X-Factor for what sets successful real estate agents apart from the rest. If you need expert help with your real estate marketing plan—whether it’s planning out your content strategy or identifying the channels that drive the best results, get in touch with Neon Wolf Consulting today.
By using a combination of online and offline marketing channels, and implementing some of the concrete ideas we’ve shared, you can build a strong marketing plan that helps you attract and convert more clients. Just remember to focus on providing value to your audience and showcasing your expertise—the results will happen in time.
