Quick question: How many leads do you want to get per month 1 year from now?
I'd bet that number is higher than your current lead count. Yet, often times we struggle to make time for the marketing activities that will help us hit those goals. One of the things I constantly hear from agents no matter the real estate marketing idea is “I don’t have time for that”.
And I get it.
But what if there were ways to invest a very small amount of time today into an activity that would boost business in the future?
…would you do it?
I think most of you would. So, today, I’m going to be breaking down an entire year’s worth of marketing activities that only take a few minutes each. The cool thing is if you follow along with the plan, you will have invested so many hours into your business by the end of the year. Just think about what that can do…
Why do small daily tasks ultimately win over focusing on large wins? Because marketing is best done over the long haul. It’s a long-term game.
This checklist will force you to make small but daily improvements instead of gunning for HUGE (probably unattainable) major wins.
Monday Activities: Traffic Generating Activities
The first thing every business needs is traffic. If you’re a Subway franchise, this probably means being located by a lot of car traffic. If you’re a Walmart in the 1980’s, you had to have a minimum county population of 5,000 people.And if you’re an agent, you need a substantial number of people to see your signs, postcards, websites, blogs, and more in order to survive. These 50 tips focus on generating traffic or awareness of your brand.
The Real Estate Marketing Ideas:
- Schedule a week’s worth of Facebook posts with Buffer
- Monitor Twitter for key buying/selling terms and reach out
- Host a fun event and have your sphere invite their friends
- Partner with local dog shelters to target other dog lovers (if you’re into dogs)
- Schedule a week’s worth of LinkedIn posts with Buffer
- Upload a listing presentation to SlideShare and share it to social media
- Create a quick YouTube Video explainer video about your specific listing marketing plan
- Schedule a weeks’ worth of Twitter posts with Buffer
- Get a postcard and do Every Door Direct Mail
- Buy coffee for the person behind you at Starbucks and start a conversation
- Schedule a week’s worth of Google Plus posts with Buffer
- Send a series of letters to FSBOs
- Reach out to a local business you’ve worked with in the past for mutual marketing opportunities
- Create a neighborhood board on Pinterest and invite neighbors to post on it
- Send a newsletter to your list
- Call 1 past client that you haven’t touched in awhile
- Buy 3 past clients $5 Starbucks cards and include a small CTA for referrals or testimonials
- Update or create your email signature
- Create a quick YouTube Video explainer video about a neighborhood you’re farming
- Boost a post on Facebook to get more people seeing your content
- Post an ad on Craigslist for a property you are listing
- Put together a market research survey using free Google Forms and send it to past clients
- Put together a research survey for people that didn’t hire you and send it out to them
- Write a quick 250 words of content on your website‘s neighborhood pages
- Create a quick YouTube Video explainer video about the perks you provide buyers
- Hire an admin or high schooler to delivery flyer’s door-to-door
- Setup a small Facebook Ad budget to get more Facebook likes
- Setup a small Facebook Ad budget to target seller leads
- Target some expired listings with listing letters
- Prospect expired listings on the phone with these scripts
- Target individuals going through divorce with Facebook Ads
- Purchase billboards and drive traffic to a lead converting website
- Car magnets can provide additional branding
- Reach out to the neighborhood associations and find ways to get involved in neighborhoods you want to sell real estate in
- Create or order quick pop-by gifts
- Offer free garage sale signs for additional marketing visibility
- Volunteer at an event in a niche you’d like to dominate
- Host a contest that generates contact information (preferably an email list) for your business
- Give away freebies at open houses
- Write 3 thank you notes for the past 3 people who’ve done a favor for you
- Create a calendar giveaway
- Start a home make over giveaway
- Start marketing online better with an Easy Agent Pro LeadSite
- Host seminars at local real estate investing meetings and give away advice
- Reach out to local college programs to find young potential team members
- Speak on a local radio show
- Canvas Neighborhoods with door flyers
- Door knock in neighborhoods you’re farming
- Send out holiday postcards
- Create a quick YouTube Video explainer video introducing your entire team
Tuesday: Sphere Conversion Optimization
After you’ve worked on getting more traffic, you need to work on building up your sphere of influence. Or your core group of business. These 50 tactics will help you generate more referrals and business from this section of your business.
Your sphere is probably the most important component to any business. These people need to be treated with care. If you pull this off successfully, a large number of your contacts will do business with you again.
The Real Estate Marketing Ideas To Curate A Profitable Sphere:
- Choose a CRM – This is a simple step. But you must take it. There is no way to be successful in this business without a CRM to manage your contacts.
- Decide on a followup schedule for your contacts and set reminders in your CRM
- Touch your inner circle of referral business at least once per month
- Schedule holiday postcards to go out in late November
- Take a close contact out to lunch
- Throw a party for your inner clients
- Ask for referrals through email
- Followup with clients after the sale – you can automate this through automated email providers and Google Forms
- Join groups that have a similar demographic of your inner circle like Chamber of Commerce Events
- Write a weekly or bi-weekly newsletter for your contacts
- Get past clients to leave you a review on Yelp
- Here’s a script:
Hi (name),It’s always my pleasure to email customers and thank them for their business because I realize that you could have chosen to do business with someone else. So again, thank you for giving me the opportunity to work with you.The other reason I’m writing you today is to ask for your feedback about your experience working with me. I generally use this feedback as a testimonial in my marketing material. Please take a few minutes to share your feedback so that I can improve as an agent. Simply visit (link to site) to leave your thoughts.Thanks again!Sincerely,
- Here’s a script:
- Get past clients to leave you a review on Google Places
- Hand out 10 business cards everyday.
- Partner with a mortgage banker to provide champagne and balloons upon closings
- Write handwritten notes to every client right after they move in
- Order HUGE thank you cards locally 2.5 FT by 4 FT and deliver them to clients a few weeks after the closing
- Setup your LinkedIn profile with all the proper job descriptions
- Invite all your past connections and friends to your LinkedIn page
- Post daily tips to your LinkedIn Account. These 3 items will really help the number of people that see you on LinkedIn
- Setup retargeting campaigns on Facebook for people on your email list
- Setup retargeting campaigns on Google for people that have visited your website
- Create a ‘look-alike’ audience on Facebook that is 1% similar to your re-targeting list and run ads to them
- Use this SEO system to rank on the first page of Google for your number #1 niche. If you like horses, a good niche would be “Horse properties in XYZ City”
- Write blogs on a weekly or bi-weekly basis that provide value to your inner circle
- Create YouTube Videos that explain every step of the buying and selling process so you can provide extra value to your clients
- Feature Great Images and Houses On Your Facebook Page
- Work on your scripts to perfect your listing presentation
- Hit your numbers daily for staying in touch with contacts
- Send text messages to your contacts with cell phones
- Use popups on your real estate website to get more people into your CRM
- Write a free buyer guide to give away in exchange for contact information
- Write a free seller guide to give away in exchange for contact information
- Use Free home valuation tools to generate more seller leads
- Send postcards to clients for birthdays
- Try hiring a real estate virtual assistant to manage client followup
- Send the ‘break up’ email to convert more deal leads into conversations
- Use Zillow’s “Make me move” feature to find listings in those competitive markets
- Use seller wanted ads on Facebook and social media to find listings in markets where you already have a buyers
- Look at FSBO listings when trying to find houses for your buyers
- Try using Google Ads on Keywords like “Zillow Austin” and “Trulia Austin” to find cheaper bids on keywords
- Target real estate keywords through with your website to get more traffic
- Have your real estate assistant (24/7 Digital Nomad) follow up with all past clients to get more reviews online
- Hold networking events for your business clients to meet each other
- Target investors through developing useful information online for them and providing value through helpful emails
- Attend networking events and generate 10-20 new business contacts
- Religiously add everyone you meet to your CRM and have a followup schedule
- Update the look of your listing presentations and buyer presentations with Keynotes
- Use DocuSign or DotLoop to provide a better transaction experience to your clients
- Install Google Analytics to understand where your website visitors and clients are coming from
- Start using an app like Mailbox or Google’s Inbox to get to inbox 0 more often.
Wednesday: System Building
Building Systems Is The Only Way To Get Your Real Estate Business To The Next Level
If you’re looking to earn above the average salary in real estate, you have to buy yourself more time through teams.
Here are 50 real estate marketing tips that will help you grow your team, get more done, and thus earn you more money:
- Write down exactly what you want to do on Facebook everyday
- Write out the top 10 negative emails or messages you get from clients. Then create a scripted response to them
- Create a formula that fits most of your blogging material and experiment with getting content created for you
- Get one of your neighborhood pages to rank on Page 1 of Google, document what it took to get there, and find people you help you reach page one for your other neighborhoods
- Define your followup system for inbound leads
- Setup automated followup and scheduling emails through your CRM to book more appointments
- Write down exactly what you want to do on Pinterest each day
- Define the way your team will answer the phone
- Set a blogging schedule and stick to it
- Define your method for real estate photography
- Create the followup system to get Yelp reviews
- Create another followup system to get reviews on Zillow
- Setup reminders to update all online profiles
- Create ‘scripts’ that can be used to easily create real estate videos
- Create a master growth plan that outlines when these systems will be created by you
- Establish a 3 year personnel chart that defines what positions you need to hire
- Write down the responsibilities for each position and how they interact with each other
- Schedule networking events on a weekly basis in your calendar
- Create a defined time to do cold FSBO prospecting
- Create a defined followup sequence for expireds in your area
- Once you master a task; find a way to have someone else do it within 2 weeks of mastery
- Set a goal of adding one new marketing method per month
- Find a mentor and use them to grow your business
- Create a marketing plan
- Develop a list of responses to common objections
- Set a schedule for making updates to your website
- Tweak your 30 second pitch for new leads
- Write down two sentence responses to common questions clients ask
- Memorize a list of restaurants to refer out for visiting clients
- Memorize your list of referrals for home improvement related partners
- Add local trade shows and networking events to your marketing calendar
- Make sure your business information is accurate online and offline
- Set a bi-annual reminder to check your business information
- Regularly reach out to new contacts and businesses for new partnership opportunities
- Make sure your CRM reminds you to have a major checkin with leads 1 month and 1 year after the transaction
- Develop a referral system
- Systemize the gifts you provide to clients upon closing
- Establish a clear listing marketing plan
- Write down how you’ll share listings on social media to get more attention to them
- Create standardized real estate listing copy that is modified for each listing to ensure you’re listings always have great copywriting
- Define what sponsorship opportunities your business will and will not support
- Systemize the on boarding process for new team-members
- Systemize the hiring and recruiting process for new team-members
- Challenge yourself to always learn by taking new courses
- Setup Google Drive, Evernote, or Dropbox with all the folders you need to keep yourself organized
- Figure out your real estate tax document tracking method with a professional
- Invest in a web lead generation system that helps you grow your business
- Setup a daily schedule that you can religiously follow
- Define the one number your business is going to track and set your goal for that number
- Challenge yourself to learn one new thing about real estate law, sales, marketing, or transactions per day.
Thursday: Setup For Online Success: 50 Ways To Improve Your Online Image
When it comes to online marketing in real estate, the first step is getting everything setup correctly and attracting your first followers. This means getting 100 people to like your Facebook Page. Or uploading your first 20 videos to YouTube and getting 20 views on each of them.
These are first steps for a lot of agents. But they can also get established agents a bigger book of business. It really just depends what type of real estate marketing ideas you need right now.
If you’re looking to grow what you’re doing online, these ideas are for you.
If you’re already strong online, these ideas are probably already done in your case.
Let’s get into these online profiles you need to setup:
- Setup a Facebook Page and invite your friends
- Setup your Zillow Profile
- Optimize your Google Places Profile like this
- Create a quick local guide to the restaurants out-of-towners should visit
- Reach out to the restaurants in your guide and seek co-marketing opportunities
- Have a brand that matches your domain or URL online
- Join 5 Facebook Groups Locally and post useful information in them once per week
- Join all local groups on LinkedIn and post thoughtful articles in them
- Create a Twitter Account: be sure to include your websites URL
- Setup stock shareable graphics on Canva to use on social posts
- Get your first 100 followers on Twitter
- Setup your Instagram page
- Setup your Pinterest profile
- Join 2 group boards on Pinterest and start contributing to them
- Setup your Google Plus profile
- Create a YouTube Channel for your explainer videos you’ll be making
- Get a website that has your listings, a blog, neighborhood pages, landing pages, and plenty of calls to actions
- Create a Realtor.com profile if applicable
- Setup your business on Yelp
- Optimize your LinkedIn profile to high light your experience
- Create a landing page for Seller CMAs
- Create a landing page for scheduling appointments with you
- Create a landing page for free buyer guides
- Create a landing page for your testimonials
- Setup a standard retargeting Facebook campaign to get traffic back to your website
- Setup email response templates in Gmail with Streak or Hubspot’s SideKick to optimize response time
- Create an email signature that specializes in getting referrals
- Implement popups on your real estate website to start growing your email list
- Setup Hootsuite, Buffer, or Social Sprout to start managing your social media campaigns better
- Consider moving your real estate team over to Slack for better communication instead of using email, text, and phone as much
- Setup a listings board on Pinterest
- Create a ‘waiting list’ email list for your most popular neighborhoods of people who’d like to live in that neighborhood eventually
- Research some basic SEO tips and setup a sitemap on your website for easy indexing
- Add testimonials to your social media accounts
- Setup custom images on social media.
- Create a list of Keywords that are relevant to you
- Find the top realtors who use your marketing methods and reach out to them for more ideas on how to market better
- Write a definitive guide for buying homes in your area
- Write a definitive sellers guide
- Create a blog content creation schedule
- Add social sharing buttons to your website
- Get your first 10,000 real estate website visitors
- Order a video intro to use on all your Youtube videos
- Create a PDF that clearly defines the value of doing business with you
- Invest in a quality microphone that you can use to create Youtube videos
- Invest in a quality headset that makes you sound good on the phone
- Get your first 10 backlinks to your website from associations with websites that you frequently work with
- Get your first 100 Fans on Facebook
- Upload 10 Youtube videos and get them over 20 views each
- Write over 300 words of content on all your neighborhood pages
Friday: Online Marketing 2.0
- Touch up your Zillow Profile
- Create an About.me profile
- Setup IFTTT to send you a text every time you get an email lead
- Set a goal to grow your traffic by 20% this month through promoting your blog posts
- Write 25 blog articles that address the common issues in real estate
- Write neighborhood pages that actually give people a sense of the community
- Get a guest blog published on a national site like Inman or RIS Media
- Partner with a mortgage banker on a content creation schedule for your website
- Create infographics with information about market updates
- Write a roundup post that mentions top real estate related bloggers online to gain more exposure.
- Comment on popular posts on social media with your insight to a particular blog post
- Comment on other real estate agents blogs
- Contribute occasionally to Active Rain
- Write the occasional long-form post on LinkedIn
- Create blog content that helps agents get started in real estate to help recruit more agents to your team
- Educate sellers through blogs, video, and social as to why FSBO may not be the way to go
- Create calls to action on the side of your blog that link to lead capturing landing pages
- Create inspirational social media images of amazing places to live and amazing homes to look at
- Create a SEO Pinterest Board that will rank highly on Google for SEO Terms
- Partner with the local experts on real estate investing to get more investor clients
- Claim and occasionally post content to sites like Storify, Bundlr, and Medium where you can create useful resources that then link back to your original resource.
- Setup Google Ads for seller keywords in your farming neighborhoods
- Setup Google Ads for buyers that link to your lead capture IDX pages
- Create a “Best of the Area” award blog post that you award each year. You can then get the winners to share your website and link back to you
- Invest a percentage of each commission check into real estate marketing ideas that are producing leads for you
- Comment on the top agent estate blog posts daily
- Share articles daily on Google Plus that you learned something from
- Connect with all past clients, new leads, and other agents on LinkedIn
- Produce one YouTube video per week and include calls to action to your website
- Use tools like SpyFu to see what PPC ads your competitors are running
- And a tool like Moz Open Site Explorer to see what backlinks your competitors have
- Signup for a image program like Big Stock that lets you download images for cheap everyday
- Curate lists of popular or useful articles on your website to get the attention of publishers and help your visitors learn more
- Install and monitor your Google Analytics
- Use a tool like Agency Analytics to monitor your SEO rankings
- Integrate text message notifications when you receive a lead
- Streamline CRM followup with marketing automation
- Track all texts, emails, and calls in one CRM
- Created dedicated blog posts or pages that high light your listings in a certain area
- Update your social media bios to really represent your brand
- Study copywriting and then review the past 15 emails you’ve sent to leads. Are they attractive?
- Monitor open and click rates in your emails with SideKick
- Get an auto scheduling application like ScheduleOnce to help you automatically book more appointments
- Signup for Meetup and start attending local group meetups
- Use Google Forms or another survey tool to get feedback about your services
- Consider buying leads from a 3rd party source if you have proper followup systems in place
- Hire a cold caller to generate leads for you
- Create client testimonial videos
- Consider using the Bing Ad network for cheaper clicks
- Partner with an agent in a different state to mutually promote each other online
Saturday: Defining Your Brand – What is your marketing trying to convey?
- Get your logo redesigned (or get a logo)
- Get a professional headshot
- Define your brand identity
- Get giveaways printed with your branding
- Find a real estate slogan you can stand behind
- Get reviews that directly backup your slogan
- Be techy if your brand is techy
- Make sure your website matches your brand and makes you hirable
- Have niche pages on your website that define your brand
- Have niche related video content on your website that is unique to your brand
- Specialize in one thing over a long period of time to make your branding permanent
- Repeat your branding on every piece of content you produce
- Buy personalized cards
- Invest in your personal appearance and clothing
- Get partner logos on your website and social media platform for relationships that build your brand
- Develop a personal guarantee that resonates with the type of client you want to represent
- Repeat your branding message once a week on all social media platforms
- Create consistent brand imaging on all social media sites
- Invest in stationary that properly represents your brands image
- Walk your clients out of your office to their car
- Invest in unique real estate signs that sets your brand apart.
- Sponsor a fundraiser and gracefully put your branding on various materials there
- Find cheap local newsletters to display your branding in
- Get business cards designed that represent your brand better
- Come up with a real estate team name, logo, slogan, and business card that are all in line with each other
- Keep the same real estate domain name for the duration of your business
- Include your branding material in your email signature
- Make sure your logos and colors match on all flyers you send out.
- Strive to be interviewed on podcasts, YouTube channels, so that you can develop a brand that is bigger than yourself online
- Take any local or industry specific speaking opportunity you can acquire
- Separate your brand from your brokerage as much as possible
- Repeat the same branding message on everything from pens, pencils, to balloons you have at open houses
- Use custom banners and balloons at your open houses
- Host free seminars to help out home buyers at community centers
- Take local sponsorship to the next level by partnering with everyone from coffee shops to local farmers markets
- Separate your flyers from others by using a higher quality of paper or using odd paper sizes
- Ensure that everyone on your team uses the same style of your logo
- Create brand specific flyer templates that separate your listings marketing presentation
- Speak at local high schools to spread the word of your brand
- Invent a real estate term and use it in several blogs. You’ll start showing up on the first page of Google for it
- Struggling to stand out? Create a branded term for that service and define how you do it differently
- Invest in high quality graphic design from day 1
- Monitor mentions of your brand’s name with Google Alerts and reply quickly
- Use the same headshot in every article, guest post, and social platform you signup for
- Choose the 1 thing you want your brand to be known for and only focus on being the expert on that one thing
- In your videos and blogs, develop an insiders only language that starts to create a community
- Tie your brand to the type of clients you already like working with
- Don’t change your branding frequently (or at all)
- Invest in unique content as much as possible online to get the word out about your brand
- Mention your brand’s message at the end of every blog post you write to keep your branding front of mind
Sunday: Establishing Frequency Of Sale & Continuing Education
Finally, you need to always be improving yourself as an agent to boost your business. These tips will help you stay relevant, and thus increase your frequency of sale. Here are some real estate marketing ideas that will help you get smarter as an agent.
- Read a real estate marketing article about something you don’t understand.
- Research and truly understand the ins-&-outs of your market
- Take this course on getting your first 10,000 real estate website visitors
- Take this free course on setting up Google Ads
- Learn from Google’s Online Marketing university
- Study Inbound Marketing with Hubspot for Free
- Take CopyBloggers awesome course on Lead Generation
- Learn from AppSumo how to get your first 1 Million Visitors
- Study the in-depth workings of SEO from Udemy
- Take a video lesson in about online marketing by Quicksprout University
- Learn more about graphic design from Canva
- Want more referrals? Check out Tyler Smith’s blog
- Do you not take enough action to see success? Try watching Tom Ferry’s training videos
- Want more tips for getting SEO backlinks? Check out Backlinko
- Need advanced digital marketing advice? Digital Marketer has great content!
- Want to get better overtime? Track your time with TimeDoctor. You’ll be shocked what you do
- Are you struggling to get to the next level? Try journaling to find activities and reoccurring feelings. These might be the things holding you back
Let’s wrap this up…
If you haven’t figured this out by now, the point of this post is simple.There is massive opportunity in real estate. And there are only so many things you can do to market yourself as an agent.
Know what that means?
There aren’t any secrets. If you want to make millions in this industry or if you want to make an above average salary, the route to success is through massive execution.
What are you going to do first?
These marketing ideas are sometimes easy and other times challenging. Are you going to take the energy to execute on them today?
Let me know in the comments below!
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