Taking an unplanned, shoot-from-the-hip approach to marketing your real estate business just doesn’t cut it these days. It’s like trying to build a house without a plan – you may have some success here and there, but it’s probably going to collapse in the end. The data bears this out, with research showing a 313% higher likelihood of success for marketers who document their marketing plan compared to those who wing it.
What is a marketing plan?
Firstly, it’s essential to establish that a marketing plan isn’t the same as a marketing strategy, and a real estate business needs both. A marketing strategy is a long-term vision and the big idea based on your region, position in the market, target market and other factors which can be determined through market research. A marketing plan, however, is the short- to medium-term game plan for the execution of your marketing strategy. It’s the “how” to your strategy’s “why”, covering your precise objectives, outlining your campaigns, and providing exact timelines.
A realtor should review their marketing plan annually (at least) and make adjustments according to market trends and budget changes. They should also refine their approach by doing more of whatever has been working and less of what hasn’t.
Why shouldn’t realtors be without a marketing plan?
While you could get lucky sometimes, more often than not working without a documented plan just leads to wasted time and resources. If you want to be sure that your marketing efforts will pay off, it’s important to have a plan in place so that you can track your progress and ensure that each individual component is working towards a greater goal.
A plan helps to remain consistent and avoid undermining your efforts with gaps in your campaigns or misaligned messaging. In short, it helps to ensure that your time and energy, and every cent of your marketing budget, is spent as purposefully as possible.
How to create a marketing plan?
No two marketing plans are exactly the same. Each should be tailored to fit a realtor’s individual goals for the specified period. If you have never made a marketing plan before, here is how you can get started.
Devise a communication strategy
For your marketing plans to have any real shot at success, you first need a communication strategy – a foundation rooted in a strategy that covers who your target audience is, who you’re competing against, your brand identity, and your messaging.
Establish a look and feel
To ensure your brand stands out from the crowd, you require a unique brand look. That means deciding on how best to make a visual impact with a compelling and easily recognizable logo, typography, cover images, color scheme and more.
Develop your marketing collateral
Once you’ve got the basics in place, you can begin to create the marketing material that will win over anyone looking to buy or sell a home in your area. You need to decide what kind of material is most likely to drive conversions and start producing it, creating a bank of material that you can draw as you require it.
Set up your social media
At this point, you should have a few elements that you can use to create a polished and professional presence on social media including a brand script, taglines, images, a logo, and information about where your target audience spends their time online. The first two steps in developing your plan will help to ensure your social media marketing efforts are consistent and effective.
Build your website
Any realtor needs to have a great website as it’s a key conversion tool. It must clearly convey what your real estate business is all about, what you can offer, and why prospects should choose to buy or sell a property through you. You will have to put this content together in a compelling way on a fully responsive, functional, and user-friendly site.
Optimize for search engines
The next step is to ensure that your site can easily be found by anyone looking for a realtor or to buy or sell a home in your area. To optimize your site for SEO, you need to do keyword research and get both the on-page and off-page SEO elements in place to boost your site’s visibility as much as possible.
Start direct marketing
At this point, you’ll be well on your way, and you can now focus on building your clientele. To begin engaging your database of prospects, first set up your Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system. Then you can start leveraging high-converting text or email marketing workflows.
Manage your reputation
Reputation management is an ongoing effort which requires proactive monitoring so that you can quickly respond to bad reviews in a polite and helpful way, asking happy clients to write a review on your preferred platform, and that any citations are accurate and up to date.
Track and analyze performance
Digital marketing is measurable, so take full advantage and track your performance. It’s essential to tap into the data to compare and analyze the performance of different pieces of organic content or paid ads, then use that information to guide your marketing efforts instead of flying blind.
Get a free marketing plan in minutes – here’s how
You don’t need to start from scratch to create a marketing plan for your real estate business. Instead, you can use our quick and easy-to-use marketing plan generator, which will give you a tailored plan based on your exact business goals.
Get a complete marketing plan in three simple steps.
- Step 1: Visit our free marketing plan generator and provide your basic business details
- Step 2: Click on “Build My Plan”
- Step 3: Review your plan and adjust timelines accordingly
Ready to get started on your roadmap to success?
