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.
In fact, if you’re low on money, it is because you don’t have enough clients to generate an income. And if you don’t have enough clients, it’s generally because you don’t have enough leads in your pipeline to convert to clients. And if you don’t have many leads well…that means you haven’t been doing enough real estate marketing! If money is getting tight, it is time to up your marketing budget and start generating more leads.
Since 80% of consumers start researching real estate online before contacting an agent, your website is probably a great place to start. Is your website easily found online for visitors in your area? More importantly, if it is, does it have any kind of offer or call to action that will make visitors leave their contact information in exchange for free info?
There are several ways to generate leads on your website. You can offer a free service, such as a “free home value report” or an in depth article that guides a consumer through the buying or selling process. All the visitor needs to do is fill out a simple form to get this information. This way they get what they want, and you get a fresh lead in the form of contact information gathered from your website.
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.
Not everybody searches for information online. Some people still do it the good old fashioned way, by visiting open houses, or searching through local real estate magazines. That’s why it is important to still utilize more traditional real estate marketing tactics. For example, simply by leaving prices and MLS numbers out of your magazine ads, you can wind up garnering more calls for one ad than you did in the previous 6 months of ads. As long as you’re always leaving out some piece of valuable information, you can always give potential leads a reason to get in contact with you.
There are plenty of other real estate marketing tactics you can use both online and off. Cold calling, for example, is still a great way to generate leads. The problem is, many agents hate to do it, so they don’t. If you want to be as successful as possibly at real estate, you have to be willing to do the things others don’t want to have to do, including cold calls. Remember, as long as your real estate marketing is generating you leads, it won’t be a waste of money or time.
Tags: Internet marketing, Marketing, real estate, real estate marketing