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I could spend all day, each day, carrying out marketing activities. I can always write another email or get a lead to follow up on. My digital ad can also be published or I can pitch a newspaper reporter. Real estate brokers generally don’t have enough time for every promotional activity under the sun.
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IN WHICH MARKETING ACTIVITIES I SHOULD INVEST?
There are a handful of tried-and-true marketing activities that should be on every agent’s list. It surely doesn’t matter, whether you’re a seasoned vet or just starting to dabble in promoting your business.
Email Marketing
Emails aren’t essential, and Gmail isn’t a choice (or AOL, Yahoo, etc.). Real estate brokers are running a business, and that business needs the ability to set up automated workflows that grow leads and send market updates, e-newsletters, open house schedules, and other valuable, local market content to their sphere.
Cloud-based email marketing software isn’t very expensive (unless I’m managing thousands of contacts). Probably, I will pay less than $1,000/year for my email service. Before I sign up, I’ll compare competitors and their marketing plans. Many offer a free base level that could sustain me for several months as I build an enriched email program. Then I may plan to upgrade to access additional tools or add more contacts that exceed my current limits.
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Online Presence
If leads and prospects can’t find me online, do I really exist in the world? To most online-savvy buyers and property sellers, who rely heavily on digital media, the answer is a resounding “no.”
Think about it: If I looked up the local Italian restaurant to look over its menu and it didn’t show up in my search results, wouldn’t I wonder if it had closed? The same goes for my real estate business. I clearly need a robust online presence to prove that I’m an active, successful agent and to build trust with those who are considering working with me.
With so many brokers in the industry, I don’t want to be unfindable online.
The two exceptional marketing activities to build my online presence are website maintenance and Google Business Profile management. All real estate brokers should use a webpage that is modern and responsive across all devices, has engaging and valuable content for buyers and sellers, and hosts lead capture pages for all my active listings.
I’ll make sure my webpage is optimized for search engines so that it shows up near the top of results when someone Googles my name.
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Digital Ads
There are many advantages of running digital ads on platforms like Google, Facebook, Instagram, and Waze. These include: expanding my reach, creating and building brand awareness, generating leads, and advertising my listings (active and coming soon), open houses, price cuts, and closed sales.
Digital ads should be the main part of how much real estate brokers spend on promotion. As such, my all-in costs could be as much as 50% of my available budget. This will clearly include actual marketing fees, as well as costs from designers and lead qualification services if I plan to outsource those functions.
Advertising fees can fluctuate every month, making the cost of this advertising activity a bit less predictable than the other tips I covered. My plan is to spend up to 50% of my real estate marketing budget on digital ads. What yours?
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What do you think, what is the good marketing budget for small real estate businesses?
I am sure you must have noticed that our calculations leave 20% of your budget remaining for other activities. You could spend this money on things like branded freebies, postcard prospecting, newspaper ads, etc. The money can also be reallocated to the tactics I’ve already mentioned if I need a boost in one of those areas in a given month or year.
Keep in mind that there is no silver bullet that will generate overnight success, and the same is true for real estate marketing. The return on investment will be high when I’m able to maintain the activities over months and years. Select your marketing tactics, budget, and third-party partners carefully, and then stick with your plan to see results.