Whether you want to build a website, drive traffic, boost leads, improve client communication or just print better flyers, we found 11 real estate marketing tools that can help you. Many are free, though even the paid tools are suitable for a small business budget.
Our Top Real Estate Marketing Tools
Zillow
The mother of all real estate listing databases needs no introduction. A free account gets your name posted next to your listings, along with several other agents. A subscription to Zillow Premier Agent, however, knocks the competition off your listings and gives you the opportunity to advertise on other local listings. Pricing can be high, especially in competitive neighborhoods. But for now, Zillow remains a must-have for real estate agents. If you’re not familiar with Zillow, check out this guide to How Zillow Premier Agent Works.
Insightly
Most realtors use CRMs to centralize their leads and client contact information, keep track of correspondence and set reminders to follow up. Insightly lets you do all this on a simple, web-based platform. What’s more is project management tools that you can personalize to manage your transactions step-by-step. It’s free to use for up to 2 users and only $12/month thereafter.
MailChimp
Perfect for the casual newsletter writer. Mailchimp lets you design rich emails and mas send to up to 2,000 subscribers on a free account. You can also get analytics on how your newsletters are performing, such as how many people click each email and, once inside, what links they are clicking.
Zoho CRM
A step up from Insightly and MailChimp, Zoho is a CRM with some strong marketing and automation tools. You can build web forms that capture leads from your website or Facebook. You can mass email your contacts and create automated drip campaigns, which places contacts in different groups and sends them pre-written emails over a period of time. Zoho is also free to use, though with limited functionality. The most popular version is $20/month.
Want to take some of the hassle of using your CRM? Might want to learn How to Import Real Estate Leads from Zillow into Any CRM.
Market Leader
If you want to capture web browsing prospects, Market Leader will build you a personalized website that includes an interactive map showing local listings for only $99/month. You can log into the back-end to view your leads and draft emails from templates. Their marketing center features over 4,000 templates, including newsletters, flyers, calendars, postcards, sport schedules, doorhangers and more.
Top Producer
A real estate-focused CRM, Top Producer excels at client communication. Their “Follow-up Coach” scans your contact book and correspondence history and makes suggestions on who you should engage with. You can send messages from a template with one click, or write personalized notes. Like Market Leader, Top Producer also has an excellent marketing center with templates for web and snail mail flyers, newsletters and more.
Hatchbuck
For realtors who want to get to know their leads, Hatchbuck is a CRM that builds detailed profiles about their clients. By tracking their browsing behavior on your website and noting which links they click in your newsletter, Hatchbuck builds a portrait of their interests: Are they looking for 2-bedroom or 4-bedroom homes? Do they prefer North or West Side neighborhoods? Are public schools or entertainment a bigger priority? You can use this information for targeted email campaigns, or just to improve your face-to-face interaction.
Fiverr
Sometimes the best marketing strategies are the simplest, like a touch up on your logo or revamped Facebook page. With Fiverr, you can find specialized expertise for as little as $5. You may be apprehensive about quality, but the large number of customer reviews makes it easy to find real experts. There’s some vendors who specialize in real estate, like designing logos or creating monthly newsletters. Others offer more general help, like creating Facebooks pages and starting a targeted marketing campaign. All start at just $5 and typically go no higher than $40.
Themify
Blogging is not for every real estate agent. Being an extremely competitive market, it can be tough to generate content that ranks well in search engine results. The exception are those in niche markets. For example, we heard from an office space realtor who’s found a great ROI writing articles about commercial real estate.
If you have specialized knowledge to share, then blogging can be a great way to brand yourself an expert and generate leads. With Themify you can design and build a professional Wordpress website without any programming knowledge. Wordpress is not only one of the best blogging platforms, but it’s great from an SEO standpoint as well.
WebCEO
So you have a website and you want it to start ranking better? WebCEO is a DIY tool that can can improve your search engine placement for a fraction of the cost of an SEO firm. The software first scans your website and finds areas of improvement, such as what titles and descriptions to change. They suggest over 100 places to submit your site for link building and give you simple tools to send it in and track where it’s been listed. WebCEO can also track your overall progress, monitoring your site’s historical rankings for up to 100 keywords.
Zurple
Zurple is a great platform for generating real estate leads. It’s a full-featured marketing platform that will set up an IDX-enabled listings site, launch Google Ad campaigns to drive traffic to your site, send targeted emails to leads that browse your site, and organize your leads into serious buyers and those who are still on the fence. The whole idea behind Zurple is to automate your marketing. You set it up to draw in and reach out to leads and watch it go. It also has a system called Conversations that can import your leads straight to Zillow or Trulia. For more tips on using Zurple, check out this guide on How to Use Zurple to Generate Real Estate Leads.
This post was written by Jeremy Marsan a small business writer and analyst.
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