It’s not always easy to think of creative ways to market yourself. This is especially true if you don’t have an educational or professional background in marketing or communications. In this post I’m going to discuss three excellent marketing ideas for real estate agents that you can very easily apply to your business and get some great results.
1. Special email offers
Send out periodic emails to your prospects with valuable offers or content. Offers can include a free home value consultation, a free market report, a free home staging appointment, IDX listings in a particular area and price range, or anything else you can provide to incentivize real estate leads to call you.
Make sure your emails have a call to action (CTA) that clearly specifies your offer and how people can take advantage of it. Check out this blog post to see examples of what good CTAs look like.
As well, if you come across great pieces of content that you think would be relevant and interesting to your database, send an email sharing it with them (a link to the content would be fine). Include a CTA asking people to give you a call or send you an email if they have any questions.
If you use a customer relationship management (CRM) platform that has email campaign reporting functionality, be sure to track who is clicking on any links or CTAs you’ve included in the email. This way, you can get a sense of who’s interested in what you’ve sent — potentially hot leads!
2. Events and sponsorship
Loyalty-building events like client appreciation nights and home expert seminars are fantastic real estate marketing ideas that are both very unique and memorable.
A home expert seminar is when you invite a “home expert,” such as an interior designer, hardwood flooring specialist or contractor, to come in and provide tips to a group of your prospects and clients that you’ve invited to the event.
When you invite your clients, encourage them to bring friends and family members. This way you’ll meet new leads that you can add to your Realtor CRM. You’ll probably find that you’ll get a lot of people showing up to these events because they’ll be getting free tips and tricks (a wealth of great information). And the “home expert” you selected will likely be more than happy to lead the seminar, as you’re providing him or her with a great source of potential new clients.
When it comes to providing value to your sphere over time and getting new leads, home expert seminars can prove highly valuable.
With sponsorship, get a sense of what teams or events your clients or their children are involved with to get an idea of good sponsorship opportunities for you. Sponsorship is a great way to get your name out in the community, build loyalty with your clientele, and foster goodwill. It’s a unique marketing approach for Realtors that can work tremendously well.
3. Integrate social media into your email marketing and website
Include clickable social media icons in your email header that go to your social media pages. And give people the option to share your emails with their network on the social media site of their choice. You can add in social media share buttons to your emails automatically with a good real estate contact management system.
And don’t forget your website. Many Realtors still aren’t highlighting their social media properties on their website. There are many areas on your site where you can do this, such as the website header, footer or sidebar.
If you want to build up your social media channels and connect with your clients and prospects there, your website can be a big help from a promotion standpoint. You might be surprised at how many people visit your website at one point in time, follow you on Facebook or Twitter, and then eventually call you up because they’ve been seeing your status updates or tweets for months or even years.
I hope you found these real estate marketing ideas helpful. As a Realtor, you need to also think of yourself as strategic marketer. If you’re not doing as much as you can from a marketing and communications standpoint, you might want to start implementing the ideas discussed in this article to give your business a boost.
Matthew Collis is the marketing manager at IXACT Contact, a real estate contact management and marketing system that helps Realtors keep in touch with past clients, and stay organized and in control.
