You’ve just begun your real estate business and maybe, just maybe, you don’t have a lot of money to allocate to marketing. What to do? Cultivate good, local, useful content specific to your market and deliver a consistent message with a consistent voice so that people want you.
Here are 9 tips to maximize your marketing efforts without spending money you may or may not have.
1. First and foremost, build a great website. Make your website more than a digital storefront for your online listings. Feature warm introductions and stories about your market clients, neighborhoods and schools.
2. Create a unique email newsletter that is informative, useful, and enjoyable/interesting to read.
3. Tell “home” stories. People like to read about what other people are doing in their homes, in their neighborhoods, so they can visualize themselves doing similar things in those same homes and neighborhoods. Look to your buying and selling clients to highlight their experiences in your specific market.
4. Tell “community” stories. People like to read about others out and about in community businesses, schools, organizations, clubs, sports/recreation groups, etc. Look to people outside of real estate with whom you can partner for unique projects and events that give back to and move forward your specific community market.
5. Make your open houses enjoyable as well as worthwhile. Perhaps a wine tasting during your open house, a performance from a local music group from the high school. And make sure you have a guest book every person attending to sign with their name and contact information. If your specific open house on that particular day is not that person’s house, perhaps another house in your market area is. And remember, when your open house is closed for the day, make sure you write a thank you note to every person who attended it that very same evening.
6. Create reciprocal partnerships with other businesses for referrals. Set up referral links on each other’s websites. Every business, agency, organization needs referrals and this is a no cost way to generate them.
7. Research the neighborhood. Just like every person has a story, every neighborhood has a story…a distinct history, a distinct architectural style, a distinct vibration.
8. Target prospective buyers with targeted direct mail. This is a great way to introduce prospects who have visited your website to the various neighborhoods within your specific market. You’ve already done the research…use that research via targeted vehicles and channels.
9. Build your social media naturally and personally. Know that quality social media is about effectiveness, not about the number of clicks. Your voice provides advantageous, suitable, valuable information and engagement that is specific to you and your customer services. Make sure your social media connections identify with you specifically, not some other real estate agent saying the same hackneyed things in the same old way.
Bottom line…be you in all your marketing efforts.
