Real estate can be a competitive field. After all, there is only a limited number of properties for sale at any given time, with thousands of real estate agencies and over a million realtors working in the industry.
For this reason, real estate agents and professionals could significantly benefit from implementing advertising and marketing campaigns for their services. It's an excellent way to stand out from competitors and reach more people who could turn into new clients.
While all forms of advertising aim to promote your real estate business, you can also get creative with the methods you choose to employ.
This post will delve into the ins and outs of real estate advertising, its benefits, and how you can strategize your advertising and marketing campaigns.
Key Takeaways
Advertising is a centuries-old practice, with its earliest examples tracing back to medieval times through word of mouth. Modern advertising had its origins in the 15th and 16th centuries with the invention of printing.
Businesses and organizations throughout various industries and points in history have used advertising to achieve their goals. Here are some key benefits your real estate agency could enjoy with implementing an advertising strategy.
Lead generation is a common advertising goal across various industries. In real estate, lead generation involves getting the contact information of your prospects and engaging them into entering your sales funnel.
Advertising is an excellent way to achieve this goal. Personalized, well-crafted real estate ads with a solid call to action (CTA) can catch the attention of your target audience. As a result, you can turn these prospects into leads.
Your prospects could include real estate investors, people planning to buy or sell a home, or people interested in learning more about real estate and the services you offer.
Real estate lead generation through effective advertising helps minimize the effort you put into energy-intensive tasks like cold calling. Well-crafted and personalized real estate ad campaigns could also be less intrusive to your prospects.
One of advertising's primary objectives is to increase sales and boost revenue. Creating and properly implementing an advertising strategy can help you achieve these goals.
Advertising will come with its costs. However, the business and clients it brings in can easily offset the expenses and help increase real estate sales.
When used with other marketing strategies and intelligent decision-making, your real estate ad campaigns can be incredibly effective at helping you achieve revenue objectives.
Real estate deals with localities, whether it be a city, community, or neighborhood. For this reason, it's crucial to ensure you reach the right people in the areas where you base your operations.
Part of creating an advertising or marketing strategy is identifying and reaching your target audience. Several advertising formats allow you to do this. Whether you implement online or offline ads, you can tweak their execution to ensure they reach the right people.
For example, many social media advertising platforms have features to help you target specific demographics or locations. These tools make it easier for you to communicate with people more likely to do business with your real estate agency and clinch them as clients.
Advertising strategies and campaigns emphasize personalization and targeting. Through this approach, you can find potential clients that match the services your real estate business provides.
Good advertising helps you initiate connections with your prospects, which can turn into client relationships when nurtured.
Part of any comprehensive advertising strategy is setting key performance indicators (KPIs) and metrics you can use to measure your progress. Having measurable results helps you have an objective view of the success of your advertising campaigns.
Several advertising platforms, such as social media and online ads, come with analytics. You can use these figures and metrics (i.e., views, engagement, clicks, and conversions) to see if your strategies are working.
Aside from increasing your sales and attracting new clients, a well-crafted and executed real estate ad campaign can do wonders for brand recognition.
Brand recognition and strong brand identity are essential in real estate, as this industry dramatically benefits from client trust. Launching advertising and marketing campaigns that build a positive and trustworthy reputation can increase your chances of working with prospective clients.
A good ad campaign has striking visuals, powerful CTAs, and strong branding. When combined with elements that resonate with your target audience, these factors make for impactful ads that help your reputation and increase recognition.
Advertising and marketing are some aspects of business management where real estate professionals could get creative. Real estate marketers could explore dozens of platforms, methods, and formats to get their message across and speak to their audiences.
Here are some ideas to inspire you when planning and launching your next real estate marketing or advertising campaign:
Launching real estate advertising campaigns could bring in some clients. But having a website could make these campaigns more effective.
A real estate website serves as your brokerage or agency's online headquarters. It contains your vision, mission, and the services you offer. It can also provide ways for interested parties to contact you.
A 2022 study by the National Association of Realtors found that 41 percent of home buyers first looked online to find properties for sale.
Establishing a website for your real estate services and listings helps put your business at the forefront of these online searches. You can increase your visibility on these online searches by implementing search engine optimization (SEO) techniques.
Online ad campaigns like banner ads on websites or social media advertisements could also be more effective if you can lead audiences to your website. If someone finds your ad compelling or intriguing, they could click on it and see what you have to offer through your website.
In connection with the previous point, you can also start a blog discussing your services and various real estate topics. While some audiences use online searches to find properties to buy or sell, others want to educate themselves on real estate.
You can start a real estate blog and publish your articles on your website. This way, audiences won't have to look far if they decide to contact you for your services.
It's essential to do your research to create high-quality and engaging real estate content. Choosing the right topics helps you write blogs that resonate with your target audience.
Keyword research tools can help you in this task. Talk to existing clients and the community around you for blog ideas. Schedule your content and publish consistently to maintain people's attention.
While it can take time to set up a real estate blog and gain an audience, its benefits could last in the long term. Aside from attracting potential clients and closing sales, it also helps establish your real estate business' authority among your peers.
Email marketing is a relatively older digital marketing method. However, it remains just as effective in drawing in real estate prospects.
Nearly every person who uses the internet has an email address. There are currently more than 4.3 billion email users worldwide. These figures show the vast number of people you can potentially reach out to and turn into clients.
Email seems more traditional than other marketing and advertising methods like social media and chatbots. Still, the ubiquity and simplicity of email services make it a straightforward method to clinch prospects and bring them into your sales funnel.
Your marketing team doesn't have to manually write and send emails, which can be incredibly time-consuming, especially if you work in a larger area. Several email marketing tools provide email templates and have automation features to ease your schedules and improve your campaign's efficiency.
It is common knowledge that social media is one of the best ways for marketers to reach their target audience, particularly in real estate. In April 2023, there were over 4.8 billion social media users worldwide.
Social media's capacity for interaction and engagement makes it unique from other marketing channels. Its users are no strangers to interacting with brands and other users that share their interests.
Facebook, LinkedIn, and Instagram, alongside other social media platforms, have tools and features allowing businesses to launch advertising campaigns.
One of their key features is the ability to target specific demographics and locations, which can be incredibly helpful for real estate advertising. These business tools also include analytics to help you monitor views, engagement, conversion rates, and other relevant advertising metrics.
Aside from launching social media ad campaigns, it's also essential to maintain an active social media presence for your real estate business. Social media can be an excellent space for marketing your services at a lower cost compared to advertising.
You can launch social media marketing campaigns highlighting your services, client testimonials, business practices, and other relevant content.
Aside from publishing posts, responding to your audience's comments and messages is also important. These posts and interactions can be excellent conversation starters, encouraging potential clients to contact you.
Your agents can also join local Facebook groups to interact with people within your target cities or communities. These groups are excellent places to promote your real estate listings and services.
Consistently working on your social media presence can improve brand awareness and recognition. The more engagement you get, the more social media algorithms can push your content organically toward your target audience.
Zillow is one of the most well-known online marketplaces for real estate listings. With over 226 million average monthly users, it's an excellent place for your real estate business to establish a presence.
Creating a profile on Zillow allows you to publish your current listings and attract real estate buyers and investors. Potential sellers could also reach out to you for your services.
There's no need to spend a lot of money on Zillow. Setting up your profile is straightforward and completely free.
Digital marketing and online advertising methods have gained popularity in recent years. They can be cost-effective and powerful in attracting Internet users interested in your real estate services.
However, the popularity and effectiveness of online advertising methods do not negate the necessity of offline or traditional advertising in real estate. Offline advertising could strengthen your marketing and promotional campaigns.
Examples of traditional advertising platforms your real estate firm could explore include the following:
Why is traditional advertising still effective? It’s mainly because real estate is location-based.
Online advertising can still help you reach your target cities and communities. However, offline ads do the same and could be more tangible. It's easier to remind people of your real estate services if they see your ads regularly in their homes and neighborhoods.
Video and audiovisual content can be powerful advertising tools. You can do a lot with video content. You can make them long or short and publish them on various ad platforms. They allow for an immersive advertising and marketing experience for your audience.
This advertising content format can be incredibly flexible. You can use videos in your marketing emails, post them on social media, play them on TV, introduce them as ads on video streaming sites, and many more.
Examples of video ideas you could produce and publish include the following:
Video is an excellent way to showcase your agency's values and personality. It helps humanize your real estate operations and connect with potential clients more personally.
Advertising and marketing don't have to be overly intrusive in language and packaging. Sometimes, the best way to get people to avail of your services and do business with you is by helping them.
Creating a city, town, or community guide can be a good way to achieve this goal. These guides could be beneficial for people new to town. Aside from informing them about the city or community they are visiting, it's also an excellent way to convince them to make real estate purchases in the area.
Your community or city guide must include information people find relevant or interesting when planning to invest in real estate. It could contain information about local schools, tourist attractions, hospitals, government offices, businesses, organizations, etc.
Still, it's also vital to showcase your real estate services in this guide. You can include a section on housing and business that highlight any property listings you may have in the area.
You can publish your city or community guide on various platforms, such as your social media profiles, online ads, website, or blog.
Printing them out is also an excellent way to distribute your guides. You can hand them out during community events and other places where they may be relevant.
While podcasts are a familiar media format, they are relatively underexplored when it comes to real estate advertising. After all, creating and launching a real estate podcast takes a lot of effort. You must also work to build an audience.
However, podcasts can also be an effective advertising and marketing tool to help establish your authority and attract potential clients. You can talk about your real estate operations and other topics that may be relevant to your target audience.
Aside from helping you find clients, running a podcast can also build your agency's reputation among your peers. This authority can help you clinch partnerships and collaborations with other businesses and organizations.
Real estate deals with people in specific locations. For this reason, working with established businesses, organizations, and institutions in your target cities and communities is a good idea.
There are several ways to do this. You could sponsor a community event, hand out business cards, or ask local businesses and organizations to showcase your promotional content. During open houses, you could also partner with local flower shops, furniture stores, caterers, or interior designers.
Established local entities offer several benefits to your real estate operations, especially if you're new to a particular area. They likely already have a good grasp of the local community's culture and can help you gain exposure, expand your network, and build positive relationships within the community.
Launching a real estate advertising campaign should come after careful planning. The success of any ad or marketing campaign depends on how well your real estate marketing team has planned its execution.
Seasoned real estate agents or businesses may already have established planning practices that work for their teams. However, here are some critical steps that may guide newer real estate marketing teams in developing a comprehensive marketing plan:
A comprehensive marketing campaign should align with your real estate firm's brand identity and overall vision. An agency's vision does not only influence one advertising or marketing campaign. Instead, it encompasses the values and long-term goals a company stands for and practices.
For example, your core values could include transparency, service, empathy, community building, and others in the same vein. Your long-term mission statement could be providing people with safe, livable homes in good neighborhoods.
Keeping this vision in mind when creating a marketing strategy helps ensure consistency in your marketing and advertising campaigns. It also helps build client trust and improve your relationships with them.
Marketing strategies work best with a target audience in mind, especially in real estate. You're working with properties in specific locations, after all. You would want to reach people more likely to buy or sell property in those locations.
An excellent way to identify your targets is by creating audience personas. These personas are imaginary people with characteristics present in the people you want your marketing strategies to reach.
An audience persona often consists of the following elements:
Audience personas help you segment your target audience in a more specific manner. As a result, you can craft personalized marketing and advertising strategies to cater to each group.
After identifying and understanding your audience, it's time to set specific goals for your marketing or advertising campaign. Do you want more sales? New clients? More listings?
Aside from your vision statement, your campaign goals will guide the rest of your strategy from planning to execution. Each of the following steps will help you achieve the objectives you set in this step.
It's also important to establish concrete metrics that will help you measure the progress or success of your marketing efforts. These key performance indicators (KPIs) allow you to identify your campaign's strengths and points for improvement.
You are creating a marketing plan for your real estate business, so it's vital you focus more on what you can do. However, it's also essential to look at the current real estate market and see what your competitors are doing.
Check their various marketing channels and platforms to see their strategies. Competitor analysis allows you to better understand what works with your target audience.
Looking at your competitors could offer valuable insights to help your marketing strategy. Your team could draw from your competitor's strengths and weaknesses to create more effective campaigns.
After looking externally, it's time to further identify and develop your own strengths. Your real estate agency's unique selling proposition refers to the things that differentiate it from other agents or firms in the market.
When developing your unique selling proposition, you can answer the following questions:
Knowing what makes your real estate business unique makes it easier to craft compelling marketing materials that resonate with your target audience.
To make your marketing and advertising campaign execution easier, you must find and use the right tools. Choose the marketing or advertising ideas you want to explore and identify the tools required to implement them.
For example, if you want to launch a social media advertising or marketing campaign, you may want to look into the following tools:
The tools you need may differ depending on the marketing or advertising platform you want to use. Timely and consistent communication with your marketing team is essential to ensure you have everything necessary to execute each strategy.
After identifying the tools and resources you need for your campaigns, it's time to calculate your budget. How much would each tool or advertising platform cost to achieve your goals? Create an itemized list.
If you have limited resources, you may need to communicate back and forth with the marketing team to make compromises.
A real estate marketing plan will require a timeline to guide everyone involved and ensure all deliverables get done on time. It helps ensure everyone in the management and marketing team is on the same page.
Milestones are also crucial in each marketing plan. You can set milestones for particular campaign launches or when the marketing materials for each campaign get finalized.
Making each step a milestone and celebrating them can boost and sustain people's morale, especially as campaign implementations could take a while.
The last step of any marketing or advertising cycle is assessment. Make sure you have access to your advertising and marketing metrics. These figures can help you identify the areas where you are most successful, as well as your pain points.
Alongside these metrics, you can also return to the KPIs you set earlier in the planning stage. How well has your marketing plan performed regarding the objectives you set?
Taking time to assess your campaign's performance helps you make the necessary adjustments to improve your execution.
Launching real estate ad campaigns involves many moving parts, especially if you plan to use multiple platforms. In a highly competitive field like real estate, efficiency is essential in all aspects, including advertising and marketing.
Software tools can be incredibly valuable in helping you execute ad campaigns efficiently. They can automate specific tasks, easing the process and giving your team more time to focus on other priorities.
Here are some software tools your real estate marketing team can use throughout your campaign's planning and execution:
Letter writing is a popular offline marketing method real estate professionals use in their operations.
Addressable helps ease the process through AI-powered tools allowing users to build, launch, and monitor effective and personalized letter-writing and other marketing campaigns.
Clients can pay $1.25 for each handwritten card. For more expansive campaigns, Addressable also allows users to target larger territories like their local market. This plan costs $10 monthly for a 26-acre area.
For your social media needs, Hootsuite is one of your best choices. This social media marketing and management tool allows teams to manage social media accounts to maintain a solid presence or launch marketing campaigns.
Hootsuite allows users to schedule posts and monitor social media analytics, helping your real estate team comprehensively manage your social media presence.
Hootsuite's paid plans start at $99 a month.
Mailchimp is one of your best bets when launching email marketing campaigns. Its user-friendly and feature-rich interface allows you to create professionally-designed emails and send them to your prospects.
Users can start with a free plan. For more features, their paid plans start at $6.50 a month.
Trello helps with project management and allows your real estate team to monitor and manage the progress of different campaigns. You can divide campaigns into specific tasks that you can edit, assign, and tick off when necessary. This tool can also be helpful in your team's daily operations.
Trello offers a free plan for all users. Their paid plans start at $5 a month if you plan to upgrade.
OnePageCRM is a customer relationship management tool that allows for automatic follow-ups. It helps you create a comprehensive and dynamic database of existing and potential clients, buyers, and sellers.
This tool's paid plans start at $9.95 per user per month.
Advertising and marketing campaigns require visuals to attract audiences. Canva is a free, easy-to-use graphic design tool that helps teams create eye-catching visual content for social media, presentations, and short-form videos.
Users can access Canva for free. For more features, their paid plans start at $14.99 a month.
Did you know? A 2022 study by the National Association of Realtors (NAR) found that 53 percent of property sellers worked with the same agent to buy and sell their homes.
Advertising is essential to running a successful real estate business. It helps put your name out, attract potential clients, and build your company's reputation within the industry.
Aside from a solid strategy, the right tools can increase the effectiveness and efficiency of each real estate advertising campaign. If you plan to use handwritten letters in your ad strategies, Addressable is your best bet.
Addressable allows real estate professionals to create and send handwritten cards and letters to prospective clients. This platform also helps marketing teams monitor each campaign's progress through comprehensive analytics.
Each advertising platform has its strengths and weaknesses. Some of the strongest contenders include social media, online banner ads, and offline ad platforms like letters, flyers, radio, and TV.
It's best to use multiple advertising platforms to ensure your real estate company reaches the right people.
You may not need to work with an external agency if you have an internal marketing team. However, you might want to consider hiring an external real estate advertising agency for the following reasons:
Yes. While advertising can be very effective in helping increase sales, lower property prices can boost this effectiveness.
