Creating a marketing plan and need some new real estate marketing ideas? We put together the ultimate list of great marketing advice from top producing agents from all over the country. From virtual open houses to marketing for millennials, you’ll find everything you need here to kick start your marketing campaign.
Here are 53 of the best real estate marketing ideas the pros use.
2. Write Listings that Sell
3. Learn the Lead Generation Ideas the Pros Use
We interviewed dozens of top real estate marketing experts and asked them for their best tip on how realtors can generate the most leads for their business. Read what they told us.
4. Make a Viral Real Estate Video
Viral videos are still all the rage. If you can capture someone’s attention with a funny or insightful clip, you can reach a wider audience through the power of social shares. Everyone loves sharing entertaining videos on Twitter and with family. Even if the audience isn’t your target, they may send the video to someone who is.
7. Master Google Adwords
8. Use This Handy SEO Checklist For Your Real Estate Website
One of the best ways to market your business is through your real estate website. But, in order to get your website seen, it has to show up when local home buyers search Google, Bing, and other online search engines. Follow this 25 step checklist to ensure your site is up to speed.
9. Optimize Your Facebook Page to Show off Your Brand
With millions of daily users, you’d be remiss not to utilize Facebook as a marketing tool these days. Download this free eBook from Matterport to learn about some of the biggest improvements you can make to your business Facebook page, how to set up paid campaigns, and many other helpful tips. They’ll also discuss how to convert these leads to actual sales. Get started today.
10. Find the Best Keywords to Build Traffic to Your Website
Check out the in-depth guide on the best 150 real estate keywords to drive traffic to your site. We also cover keyword research on a shoestring budget and insightful general SEO tips from the pros. Still looking for more keywords? Check out Marketing Artfully’s Tara Jacobsen’s list of the best SEO keywords to use on your website.
Looking for a turnkey solution? Check out our buyer’s guides on the top real estate website builders, or best real estate lead generation websites.
13. Use a Service Like REDX or Intelius to Get Correct FSBO and Expired Contact Info
Services like REDX and Intellius do all the hard work of digging up correct contact info for expired and FSBO listings. Sure, you can probably find all this information yourself, but is that really an effective use of your time?
Don’t have your FSBO game down yet? Check out Jeff Glover’s amazing and 100% free FSBO script.
In this edition of Beverly Hills superstar broker Peter Lorimer’s (amazing) Magic Minute series, he walks you through the process.
18. Use Instagram Stories to Market Your Listings
Los Angeles luxury brokerage Partners Trust has a great writeup of how you can use Instagram Stories to market your listings or personal brand. The key is to use Instagram Stories to give your audience a look at your day to day life as an agent as well as focusing on your listings. Believe it or not, lots of people are curious about what the heck real estate agents do all day!
21. Learn How to Get 10,000 Views of Your Listing
If viral content has taught us anything, it’s that there’s no predicting what an audience will find fascinating. Sometimes a home’s price or its location in a hot market draws the views, and sometimes it’s just been on the market for a long time. In this guide, Nancy Robbers looks at many different Zillow listings that have 10,000 views or more and compares what they all have in common.
25. Social Media for Real Estate Agents: 21 Tips
This is the holy grail of social media tips for your real estate business. Follow this guide’s advice on how to use different tools in social media.
28. Learn Video Marketing From the Pros
We discussed earlier how video marketing is so effective to successful conversion. This article discusses the 5 best types of videos to use in your marketing campaign.
30. Follow these 10 Real Estate Banner Advertising Dos and Don’ts
Of course, billboards aren’t illegal (at least, not that we know of). This article from Trulia shares 10 dos and don’ts for your banner campaign.
Opendoor is currently working with Realtors in Phoenix and Dallas-Forth Worth and will open soon in Las Vegas.
34. Create a Client Testimonial Packet
“When it comes to landing more deals than my competition, one of the aces up my sleeve is effectively using testimonials to help earn the trust of my potential clients. Nothing is more positive than a third party account of your performance from someone who has done business with you previously. Sometimes this is all it takes to push someone over the edge to work with you and sign the contract.”
35. Learn the Elements of Great Real Estate Newsletters
So, now that you understand the need for a drip email campaign, check out Travis’ article on how to create killer email newsletters. Having a strong subject line for your email is definitely a can’t miss step. Another one is to include a call-to-action that prompts engagement.
36. Create Viral Infographics to Share on Social Media
Infographics take useful data and present them in an attractive and easy to read format. If you’re on any Pinterest or Facebook real estate groups, you’ve likely seen (and shared) dozens of infographics already. At Fit Small Business, we use a tool called Venngage to create great looking infographics.
37. Choose the Right Farm Area
Choosing the right farm area can mean the difference between becoming a local expert and closing a ton of deals and struggling. To help you get started, we put together this highly detailed guide to choosing and dominating the right farm area.
38. Invest in Your Community to Generate Strong, Top-of-Mind Referrals.
Anneamarie du LeBohn, Community Engagement Strategist, TNG Real Estate
My favorite marketing advice is to embrace community engagement. For example, in May and June we’ll host two free community paper shred events. One will be in Los Alamitos, CA and the other in Brea, CA. The event reduces paper in the landfill and it helps people reduce identity theft. To help spread the word, our agents farm various neighborhoods with flyers and door hangers. People can shred up to five boxes of paper for free (it’s about a $100 savings).
39. Try Sending Handwritten Notes to Stand out From the Competition.
Danielle Procopio, CSC | Real Estate Broker, Certified Home Staging Consultant
I would say that my favorite marketing advice is –write thank you notes! I thought going the high-tech route when contacting people would be the way to go. I was wrong. People are very receptive to receiving handwritten letters and thank you notes. It sounds silly and simple but this old school technique seems to set me apart from my competition. Not many people are doing this anymore. And in real estate, you need any advantage you can get!
If you’re like me and your handwriting is as bad as your doctor, check out services like Bond.co who create fonts from your handwriting and automate the process.
40. Build Your Personal Brand by Mastering these 26 Real Estate Branding Tips
Are you paying enough attention to your personal brand? The hard truth is, when you don’t work on your personal brand, that becomes your personal brand. Instead of leaving it up to chance, every top producing agent I’ve interviewed (hundreds) recommends taking a more active role in building your brand. This quick, actionable and social media friendly infographic will teach you the ropes.
43. Set Up Local Community Pages
Ryan Fitzgerald, Owner, Raleigh Realty
One way we are able to generate 5+ new leads daily is with our local community pages. What makes this such an effective marketing idea is the fact you are reverse engineering attention to generate real estate leads. Once you put the work in up front, these leads are continuous.
44. Make your house memorable with one stand-out item that buyers can’t forget.
Heather W. Leikin, Realtor, The House Agents/Partners Trust
Have one really quirky item in the house. So when a buyer is talking about it, they can say, “the house with the giant buddha or the orange rug house.” Have something that stays in their mind about the style or design.
Sometimes a perfectly nice normal house can be forgotten about if it is the middle house in 6 houses seen.
46. Send Postcards that are “Fridge-Worthy”
Karen Wachtel, PorchLight Real Estate Group
When you send out a batch of postcards, you never know if a recipient is interested right now or 6 months down the line. In order to give your postcards staying power, Wachtel recommends using “fridge-worthy” subjects “like best metro area hikes, a great go-to recipe for guacamole, a guide to what the NFL referee signals mean, or a table for timing your Thanksgiving meal perfectly.” As she explains, “we regularly hear from clients—and even prospective agents—who end up calling us or their agent directly based on a postcard that had been hanging on their refrigerator or memo board for months on end.”
47. Create a Blog that Answers Client’s Questions.
Ameet Khabra, Search Engine Strategist
My advice would be to create quality content around the questions of my potential clients. Am I experienced with new home buyers? If so, what questions do they usually have that I can answer through content on my site or blog? The same goes with clients that buyer homes often or are looking for a bigger home for their growing family! There will always be a question and the sooner you answer those questions, the quicker the client will trust you which will lead to a sale down the line.
48. Master the Subject Line (for Email Marketing)
Sacha Ferrandi, Source Capital Funding
With emails, the most important aspect is the email subject line. They are key to get the recipient to open and read the email. Now, this means crafting a subject that is essentially a call to action but doesn’t give away too much information about the email and shows that you are not a spammer. It is sort of a ‘Goldilocks Scenario’ where you have to convince the reader that the information is good enough, without being too specific.
- Bad – Learn About an Amazing Property (Address) In the Bay Park Area
- Good – Updated Information Regarding Your Neighborhood Property Values
49. If They Can’t Come to the Open House, Bring the Open House to Them.
Reba Miller, Founder, RP Miller Realty Group
Using a proprietary technology, I hosted a virtual open house which used proprietary technology to offer 360-degree immersive panoramic photography. The result? A person attending the open house could feel like he/she was in the apartment doing an in-person walkthrough. To make it more attractive, I also attached a contest to the virtual open house. Anyone who walked through five of the seven rooms was automatically entered into a raffle for the chance to win an iPad. The unit sold in a matter of days.click here
51. Use Retargeting Campaigns to Drive Traffic Back to Your Site
Ira Chopovska, Marketing Manager, Agent Drive
A powerful way to enhance your marketing is to set up retargeting campaigns. The idea is to craft a great ad copy that directs people to a dedicated landing page (or a single-property website with the listing you’re marketing).
The ad follows your site visitors across the web and social media helping you redirect the traffic back to your site when they’re more ready to reach out.
Want to learn more about retargeting? Check out our Facebook advertising guide.
53: Create Micro Neighborhood & Subdivision Pages on Your Website
Anita Clark, Warners Robin Real Estate
While you may not be able to compete with Zillow for search terms like “houses for sale in _______”,
you might be able to rank on Google for more niche search terms for micro neighborhoods, pretty streets, or subdivisions. With photos, video, a market snapshot, school districts, and pertinent information about the subdivision/area, they are a great way to build organic traffic to your website.
Bonus: Utilize the Latest in Social Media
Dustin Brohm, Search Salt Lake
Facebook is great, and should continue to be a big part of your online presence, but it’s old news. Snapchat is the social network of the future. Everyone using Snapchat for real estate right now is just the early adopters. Soon, it will be just as common to use Snapchat for real estate as it is for Realtors to have a Facebook Pag
Over to You
Whew! That was a long list. Have a great real estate marketing idea we missed? Let us know in the comments.
Roger & Nella Colby
Emile, great article! So many new ideas we can implement into our real estate marketing strategy.
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Hey Roger and Nella,
Glad you liked the article and best of luck with the busy season!
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Sara Ruhl
Excellent content, and some great ideas. I had a lightbulb moment with Tip No.53 – creating pages for the micro areas, and perhaps even popular streets. You are so right, most of the time it’s too difficult to compete with the big guns for keyword phrases surrounding your main location. Another advantage, I believe, of using micro areas is the fact that clients that find their way to these pages should potentially be a lot more serious buyers. For example, here in Spain, homes for sale Spain < homes for sale Alicante < homes for sale Calpe Alicante < homes for sale La cometa Calpe. I know I would much rather prefer a lead generated from the keyword phrase "homes for sale La cometa Calpe" than "homes for sale Spain". The time you need to spend educating the clients (generated from the various search terms) will vastly differ as the search phrase becomes more targeted. Surely the narrower the focus the better the client 'quality'? Yes, you won't get as many leads as the main area search term, but that low hanging fruit looks good 🙂
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Matthew Trim
Thanks for advice.
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Hey Matthew,
Glad you found the article useful and thanks for stopping by.
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Michal
Thanks for this article. Tons of valuable knowledge.
Still the best strategy is the conection of personal brand and
website analytics.
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Thanks for dropping in!
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Michal
When I was t the beggining of my real estate career 8 years ago I meet very
expirineced sales-guy. I asked him him: how do you advertise is Your company
and acquire new clients. He said: I do not make this. My company is a brand.
Clients want to work with me. In that time I thought It’s a joke.
Funny moment – today I got similar situation.
In the time of SEO, PPC, SEM, CPM etc… people in sale forget that
the strongest power is Your word, surname, skills and quality of service (in that order).
Of course it takes time to build personal brand but believe me. It is worth!
Good luck realtors in 2018 😉
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Hey Michal,
I couldn’t agree more. Branding is one of the most overlooked elements of starting a successful real estate career. It’s also pretty difficult to do properly, and involves a bit of a roll of the dice as well. That said, when you do finally nail it, it will transform your business overnight.
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Shilo Zitting
I think that most businesses could make use of these ideas. One idea that has been particularly effective for my social media posts is to find keywords with a lot of search volume in Google Keyword Planner and then using that as an idea generator for my blog posts. I then promote these blog posts organically to my followers or even sometimes sponsor these to an audience that I think will be interested in it. So far it has been very successful in driving traffic to my websites. This way you can incorporate the benefits of SEO and social media at the same time. There are examples on my websites, http://www.stgeorgelender.com or http://www.parkcitylender.com
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Hey Shilo,
Promoting articles on social and other channels is a great way to increase traffic to your site. Thanks for stopping by.
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