Every real estate agent I’ve met wants more clients and more exposure or cache for their brand. In order for that to happen they obviously need to market or advertise. Typically a marketing initiative’s success is judged by how many leads it generates. While this is absolutely a good place to start, many fail to consider how much money and time they spent on a business development venture. This can leave their business in worse shape than ever; with plenty of new leads but with a lot less working capital in addition to being mentally and physically exhausted. Certain advertising methods like TV commercials, printed flyers, and ads on popular websites are great at generating buzz but aren’t practical options unless you’re part of a large agency or already pretty succesful. With that in mind here’s a look at popular marketing strategies for real estate agents emphasizing return on investment as well as actual leads generated.
SEO
If you’re going to spend any money on marketing services, hire an SEO agency with a track record of success in your industry. Sure I’m a bit biased but numbers don’t lie. Reputable sources like Forbes have been pointing out for some time now that between 80 and 90% of customers in any industry begin their purchase with a search engine. This involves general research on what they’re going to buy, reading customer reviews of specific products or services, and looking up a company’s contact info. Search engine optimization can be understood as the ongoing process of tailoring your company’s digital presence to attract that vast majority of potential customers looking for companies like yours on Google. In other words neglecting SEO is comparable to giving up on 80-90% of potential new clients.
Hiring an agency will cost you some money. That’s okay because SEO has better ROI than any other marketing tactic. Besides directly addressing the 90% of customers using search engines to guide their purchases, SEO agencies will help you consolidate your other efforts towards more defined goals and actual leads. Increasing your asset’s (web site, social accounts, 3rd party reviews and listings) search visibility makes them all more efficient lead generation tools since potential customers don’t have to work as hard to find them. You save money since there is less of a need to buy ads when customers can easily find you in Google. This can be invaluable since people tend to trust companies they discover themselves a bit more than ones obviously soliciting in overt ads. SEO is a bit more of a long term play than other items on this list but undoubtedly the most cost effective way to grow a real estate business.
Social Media
Social media is free promotion. It’s a great way to interact directly with potential customers making it ideal for building a brand identity but less so for consistent sales leads. For most agents setting up and maintaining Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram or Pinterest pages only costs them time. Regularly updating their various feeds with new listing information relevant to that platform usually creates enough of a footprint to justify the time they spent running the accounts. You can pay a social agency to help cultivate a desired image or to take away the stress of managing the account but because social media is better at generating opinions than leads, the ROI from social spend is much less than SEO.
Personally I find social to be very difficult for real estate agents when it comes to lead generation. It’s amazing for establishing a brand but tough to generate new clients. Since most social platforms only allow you to communicate with people who are already following you and the majority of real estate accounts I’ve worked on are mostly followed by former clients, any listings you post are first being seen by someone who just bought a house. Especially in residential real estate, these people aren’t going to want another one so quickly. Social media does make it very easy for former clients to send you referral business and should never be ignored for brand development. That said, if money is tight I wouldn’t spend extra on professional social media services.
Classified Ads
There are plenty of real estate agents doing very well without their own websites. They build up a significant online presence with classified websites like Craigslist, loconato, and adlandpro; fellow Canadians use Kijiji and Aderk. These sites aggregate thousands of real estate listings and therefore will always rank very well in search engines for general terms like “3 bedroom apartment for sale” or “houses for sale in city name”. It’s fair to say in 2016, perspective buyers are trained to visit internet classifieds to browse real estate purchases, meaning the listings can lead to sales even without search engines. I always encourage real estate clients to make free classified ads on popular sites for every property they’re trying to sell, even if it’s already listed on their own web page. Most of these sites are free and remarkably easy to use. Creating these listings is about casting a wider net. Being in more places increases the chance of being noticed by the future buyer. As a bonus, links from classified sites will boost your own site’s profile long after those properties have been sold.
Ebooks
Like classified ads, ebooks are a great way to broaden your online presence without spending a dime or creating more content. This assumes your site already has a regular blog. All you need to do is collect your favourite or best received posts, create an ebook with a catchy title about how awesome you are at selling houses, and circulate. Where you submit these ebooks will depend on the type of posts you wrote and what kind of audience you’re hoping to build. Once an ebook is published, it can become a valuable marketing tool. Many agents use them as an incentive to encourage email list sign ups, increase their status as experts in their field, and some have made decent money selling them on Amazon.
Avoid Being Outside The Bus
This is about marketing efficiency and since a sizeable amount of agents I’ve worked with have mentioned they like ads on the outside of busses, I feel I have to caution against ads on the outside of busses. These ads are popular because they are glamourous. Lots of people see them and having one is a kind of status symbol of success. The logic behind these ads is “Ooooh that agent is on the number 23 bus, that must be expensive, they must be good at what they do, I'm going to call them about apartments for rent right now”. Yes, in some cases that might actually happen. Most of the time it doesn't. So, no matter your budget I’d strongly recommend buying a smaller ad inside the bus or subway car over the showy one on the outside. Not only do these ads costs a lot less, they reach a much more engaged audience than the ones outside. The reason transit ads are so popular is because they have lots of “impressions” which is marketer speak for views or people who see them. Here’s a secret, not all impressions are equal. In fact just because someone technically saw an ad does not guarantee they remember it or that it actually made an “impression”. You have to carefully consider the context potential clients will see your ads to really understand how or if your message will be received. More people will technically see the bigger ad outside the bus than the smaller one inside it but people stuck on a bus can’t help but read the ads around them, sometimes multiple times on long trips. Meanwhile the people who see the outside bus ad do so while it’s quickly driving past or stuck beside them in a traffic jam. In this case many of the impressions or people who see the ad are not in a position to pay attention and truly register what you’re trying to communicate. There are reasons to buy glamourous ads but return on investment is rarely one of them.
Real Estate Chat Software
Chat software is growing more common as a means to engage potential customers as soon as they arrive at a website. Good ones help facilitate the jump from visitor to customer while bad programs can end up funelling business to your comeptition. There are plenty of sophisticated and effective chat programs that are reasonably priced and easy to use. That said, I’d strongly recommend one designed specifically for real estate agents if you actually expect quality real estate leads. This goes for any industry. A program specific to the field is usually better equipped to handle the nuances of real estate conversation than something general and there is rarely a big difference in price. Since your website is only for one business there’s no point in installing a program that works every type of company imaginable when something specific to your needs exists.
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