Real Estate
The secret to successful real estate marketing is...shhh, come a little closer, we don't want everyone to hear it! Anyway, the secret to real estate marketing is...well, it's really no secret at all. Cheap cop out, we know, but when it comes to marketing your real estate business you need to know one main maxim: all the marketing you do should be for the purpose of generating real estate leads.
If your real estate marketing doesn't cultivate leads, it is most likely a waste. A waste of time, a waste of money, maybe even a waste of a good idea that with a few tweaks actually COULD generate leads. Whether you're at the beginning of your career or half way through it, if you're not making the kind of income you want, it is most likely time to start beefing up your marketing.
The one thing about real estate marketing is that you shouldn't ever stop (with VERY few exceptions). Many agents stop once they feel they have enough leads coming in - that is the wrong way to go about things.
As a matter of fact, a slow period is exactly the time to start beefing up your marketing. After all, it means you don't have enough leads to convert into a steady stream of clients and income.
Therefore you must make sure your real estate marketing is in full gear so that you will always have a full pipeline of leads to follow up with and convert into actual clients. Most agents today have a website, so you can start with focusing some real estate marketing in that direction. After all, your website is one of the easiest ways to generate leads, since about 80% of people do some type of real estate research on the web first before speaking with a real estate agent.
That is why you need to make sure your site is easily found and it has a call to action that will make people leave you their contact information.
You can dream up nearly an infinite amount of ways to use your website to get leads. One of the most popular things to offer a visitor in exchange for their contact information is a free comparative market analysis and home value. After all, besides an agent, only a professional (and costly) appraiser can give someone an accurate value of their home.
Think of other information a potential buyer or seller may need that you can provide, and offer it on your website in exchange for contact information, and you've got a lead! Your website is just one type of real estate marketing you can do to generate yourself more leads. You can also pay for an online lead generation service to supplement your own lead generating tactics. This can save you time and the hassle of setting up various forms of lead generation online.
One pitfall of these services however is that some lead generation services are giving your lead out to other agents as well, so you may be competing for the same client with three other agents. If the internet isn't really your cup of tea, there are still many traditional real estate marketing tactics that attract leads. While many agents hate it, cold calling for a few hours every other day is a prime source for new, and often hot, real estate leads.
Advertising your listings in local real estate magazines is also a great lead generating tactic. The only thing is, you have to make sure you leave OUT the price and MLS number of the home, or else interested buyers have no reason to contact you for more information! There are plenty of relatively easy ways to market yourself as a real estate professional and generate leads.
It is simply a matter of being willing to do some things you may not like, such as cold calling or manning open houses as well as working hard at the things you do enjoy about the process, such as helping a client to find a new home or walking a client through the selling process. The main thing is to always remember that the purpose of all your real estate marketing techniques should be to generate more leads for your business.
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