If you’re a real estate investor that needs help marketing, you’re not alone. A dedicated real estate marketing plan allows real estate professionals to generate additional leads and revenue.
The world of real estate is highly competitive, so having an effective marketing plan to capture the attention of potential clients is important. Many real estate investors are twiddling their thumbs without a marketing plan because they can’t figure out how or where to start.
This article will review the top real estate marketing ideas or strategies investors should use to promote their businesses.
What Is Real Estate Marketing?
Real estate marketing, in a nutshell, involves the strategy and execution of marketing techniques to engage and convert a target audience. Most real estate professionals will do things like upping their social game, sending newsletters, and more.
For real estate investors, building a marketing presence gets their name out there in hopes that it will build credibility and, in turn, a backbone for trust and establishing relationships.
Let’s say that you are a real estate agent; the primary goal of an agent is to find prospective home buyers, sellers, or even tenants for properties. Through various techniques, a marketing plan aims to find, acquire and nurture real estate leads.
What’s Included in a Real Estate Marketing Plan?
A real estate marketing plan outlines a strategy for accomplishing a set amount of the company’s goals. In the real estate industry, these plans often include:
- Competitor research
- Buyer persona
- Budget
- Goals
- Timeline
A real estate marketing plan must be as detailed as possible because it will help set a clear path for you and your team to follow to reach your goals.
Why Real Estate Marketing Is Important for Investors
Now let’s look at it from a real estate investor’s point of view. With any real estate business, an investor needs to market just as much as, let’s say, a broker. As an investor, your primary goal, like many business owners, is to get highly-qualified leads.
In this case, a lead can be a seller actively looking for an investor to purchase their property or a seller who has kicked it around once or twice and is interested in learning more about the process, but not yet ready to sell.
Sometimes, homeowners, unfortunately, find themselves in a foreclosure or tax auction bind, so selling to an investor is a great option to get out of a pickle.
How To Market Your Real Estate Business
The evolution of technology changes the landscape of how to market a real estate business in 2023. Your real estate marketing plan is your answer to gaining more highly-qualified leads and driving real estate sales. Let’s dive into the top ways to market your real estate business.
1. Direct mail
Yes, this is the old-school method that even today’s most successful real estate professionals swear by. A direct mail campaign gives real estate investors, agents, other local businesses, brokers, or anyone else in the space, an opportunity to get their name out there without picking up the phone or sending out an email.
To this day, despite being in a whirlwind of technology, sending something via direct mail like a postcard is one of the most popular marketing methods to use. Other real estate marketing materials include business cards and flyers.
2. Billboards
Yes, this is still a thing. Just like a property, it’s important to keep in mind location, location, location. As an investor, it’s essential to find a billboard placement that is in a spot where hundreds, if not thousands, of people can see it every day.
Remember, the three things to avoid when creating a billboard ad are clutter, hard-to-read fonts, and too many numbers.
3. Email marketing
There are many email marketing systems out there. From MailChimp to ActiveCampaign to Hubspot, investors use email marketing campaigns to effectively keep in touch with a target audience, whether they’re actively seeking to sell or purchase a property.
An example of an email marketing campaign is a newsletter. Personally, I have multiple real estate agents from my area that send out email newsletters to remind me that they are there and ready and able to help if I ever want to sell or purchase a property.
4. Bandit signs
This is a perfect real estate marketing idea for a starter investor. Have you ever been at a traffic light and seen a sign that says something like “Jim buys houses,” hanging on the telephone pole?
Perhaps you don’t think of it as anything at that moment, but every day for the next six years, you see the same sign day in and day out. Years later, when you go to sell your home, you remember, “Jim buys houses.”
For those with a small budget and not enough time in the day, bandit signs are cost-effective for promoting brand awareness. Just ensure you check local regulations to see where these signs are allowed.
5. Cold calling
It’s funny how much word gets around. As an investor, I’ll drive around and ask neighbors about an abandoned home, a term coined as driving for dollars, to get the inside scoop on the property.
I’ll then skip trace to find the homeowner’s contact information to cold call them. Skip tracing is a term used in real estate to describe the process of obtaining information about a homeowner or property in hopes of finding useful information to make a potential investment.
6. Website
Do you have a real estate website? If the answer is no, you should get one. Why? More than 70% of businesses have a website in 2023. There are a variety of website builders out there, from WordPress to Squarespace, and plenty of tutorials if you have never built a website.
One of the most fundamental things to consider when building real estate websites is SEO. Sure, 44% of buyers start looking online for properties, but the chances of them finding your website just because it exists are slim to none. SEO is a huge component of marketing, especially in today’s world.
7. Networking
There are a ton of real estate networking events out there. From conferences to local meet-ups, the ability to meet with other real estate agents, investors, brokers, you name it, is readily available wherever you go.
A real estate investor goes to the events to get a conversation going, whether with potential buyers, sellers, agents, brokers, or more. Relationship building is an important part of any marketing plan because you never know when it could lead to a real estate investment deal.
8. Social media
Social media helps get your business name out there. But, this is two-fold. Some enjoy being on social media platforms, and some do not.
If you’re open to it, start posting on social platforms, sharing tips on investing in real estate or a day in an investor’s life.
For those who don’t enjoy being on socials, you can pre-schedule posts using software like Hootsuite or Sprout Social without logging into the platform. Pre-scheduling helps eliminate time spent on an app.
9. Advertising
Advertising your real estate business through local search ads or on the sidebar of the top real estate sites is a great idea for those investors looking to build their brand through online marketing.
As someone involved in real estate and marketing, advertising helps jumpstart your branding and marketing efforts and establish a solid flow of lead traffic.
10. Reviews
Social proof means so much to this world. Why? We thrive on technology. If you have not built up customer testimonials, now is the time. Remember, 95% of customers read online reviews before buying a product.
As an investor, the goal is to be trusted by buyers and sellers in the real estate market. If a client leaves a glowing review about your service on Google, it’s likely to help establish trust and credibility with a potential client.
You can also ask past clients to record video testimonials that you can use for your real estate website to help build credibility.
11. Content marketing
There’s this thing called thought leadership, and it’s a big deal. In the space, we’ve got Grant Cardone, Barbara Corcoran, and a ton of other big names that thrive on thought leadership. So, how do you compete with those people? Be yourself.
You are your own brand, so building credibility and trust with clients starts with you. Many real estate professionals produce thought leadership articles to help connect with their audience.
Related: Here are five tips for creating a content marketing plan for your real estate business.
12. Local SEO
If you’re a real estate professional, people interested in your services will likely google a local service near them. Investors need to build up their Google My Business profile to stand out locally.
A Google Business Profile is basically a second website displaying business reviews, ratings, contact information, business address, and hours.
What’s Your Go-To Real Estate Marketing Strategy?
Generating real estate marketing ideas is daunting for investors just starting out. Whether your goal is to become the next Grant Cardone or the go-to investor in your city, creating a real estate marketing strategy is essential to success.
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Note By BiggerPockets: These are opinions written by the author and do not necessarily represent the opinions of BiggerPockets.
