30 Winning Real Estate Marketing Ideas

Marketing as a real estate agent should be a mission critical initiative.

Even if you’re getting a steady stream of clients, you should always be pursuing your ideal customers. These are the people who you work the best with and get you to where you want to be. For you, this could be the family looking to move the suburbs or the family looking to upgrade to that high-echelon neighborhood.

The bottom line, however, is this—if you don’t have a constant stream of leads, you don’t get much choice in who you work with.

Some Ideas to Help You Reach Your Ideal Clients

We’ve brainstormed, searched and refined a list of 30 super effective marketing ideas. They’re broken down by category.

Your goal shouldn’t be to look at this and suddenly implement everything. Start with the essentials and move on from there. Compile these ideas in a way that makes sense, make them your own and break them down into bite-sized pieces to conquer over time.

Ready? Let’s dive in! 

Essential Real Estate Marketing Objectives

These are marketing initiatives that deserve your immediate attention. They are the building blocks that everything else will rely on.

Personal Branding

Want to hear something amazing?

According to data from the National Association of Realtors, only about three percent of buyers and four percent of sellers report considering an agent’s association with a real estate firm to be an important factor when hiring them.

This means that your personal brand is the true superpower at work. Here are some ideas to get a hold of your brand:

1.) Look the Part

Everything has to start with the way you present yourself to the public.

[bctt tweet=””You are your most powerful brand ambassador.””]

Make sure that you’re presenting your most authentic and polished self possible. Keep yourself well groomed, taken care of and if your wardrobe could use a makeover then make the investment.

As a real estate agent, you’re number one mission should be to make a great first impression. Looking the part is a great way to do that.

2.) Develop Your Story As a Real Estate Agent 

What is your unique value proposition to your clients? What makes you stand out as an agent? Why should someone pick you over a competitor? What are your specialties?

Cultivate these elements—and who you are—into a compelling biography. Also be sure that you have set versions for each platform including your website, social media and your marketing materials.

3.) Refine Your Pitch

If you were talking to a stranger, how would you communicate who you are, what you do and why you’re different in 30 seconds? Take some time to create your pitch.

It doesn’t have to be delivered exactly as it’s written. Rather, use this as your guideline and allow natural conversation to carry you to success.

4.) Get/Update Your Professional Headshot

No—that picture from 15 years ago doesn’t cut it any longer. Invest in a high-quality headshot that reflects your most authentic self. Don’t bring props into the equation, and be aware of your body language. For an agent, your headshot is worth its weight in gold. It also could equal winning a new client or losing them to a competitor with a better headshot.

5.) Translate Your Story into a Visual Identity

Related Awesomeness:
Should You Hire a Real Estate Branding Agency? If So, Who?

Allow the story you’ve developed to influence the way your visual identity takes shape. You have to do that in order to knock your visual identity out of the park.

With it to guide you, invest in brand-specific fonts, colors, logo and material templates. If you can do this well, you’ll stand out from 90% of the agents out there.

6.) Invest in High-Quality Materials

The quality of your materials say a lot about you. What kind of impression will you deliver with lackluster material choices?

Instead of getting the cheapest letterhead and business cards, make a point to get the best. With a powerful visual identity driven home by high-caliber materials, you’ll quickly rise to the top of the list.

7.) Finish Strong with a Website

The modern-day buyer or seller’s research process is driven by online research. What will happen if someone enters your name?

Your online reputation should be solidified by a website. Use it as an attractive destination to attract strangers and convert them into prospective clients. This is an amazing opportunity to tell your story and solidify your expertise.

Once you have it, attach it to everywhere your online brand is showcased. Draw those prospects in and encourage them to kick their feet up and stay a while!

As you’ll also see later, your website is going to be key to several other tactics.

Basic Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Ranking high in search engines is more important than ever nowadays. Here are some tips to boost your rankings:

8.) Make Your Contact Listings Consistent Everywhere

RELATED AWESOMENESS:
7 Proven SEO Tips for Real Estate Agents

Every place that your name, company, number, email and website are listed should be consistent. Make an effort to centralize what you want listed everywhere and spread that change to every listing of your name you can find.

9.) Spread Your Contact Listing Everywhere 

The more you can get your contact information out there, the better for your SEO power.

You already have your information centralized from the above idea, so use that to get yourself on every listing site you can.

The best way to do this is to leverage a premium service like Moz Local. For $84/year, you can spread your information across the interwebs from a centralized platform. It’s easy as pie to implement as well.

10.) Cultivate Reviews

As a real estate agent, reviews are gold. Outside of the SEO conversation, you should be gathering these from everyone you serve.

The other side of this coin is that online reviews are gold for SEO as well.

Have your clients leave you reviews on Zillow, first and foremost, and then the following sites:

• LinkedIn
• Google+
• Facebook
• Yelp

Of course, it might take a little incentive for your clients to hit all five of those places. Make it worth their while by offering a $20 gift card for doing so. It’ll be the best $20 investment you’ve ever made—I promise.

11.) Mobile Optimize Your Website

Your website absolutely must be mobile optimized.

Here’s why this must be a priority:

1. Mobile-friendly sites rank higher
2. 80% of consumers research from their phones

12.) Start Blogging Regularly

Your website should be a living place that’s packed with fresh content.

The easiest way to start blogging is to write on what you know. Answer the questions that you’re hearing from prospects and clients.

Here are some qualitative tips to keep in mind:

• Make sure your posts hit 300 words at the bare minimum
• Include a relevant picture
• Create a title that aligns with what people might be searching for on the internet

These are also great articles to forward to prospects evaluating who they’d like to work with. Most people prefer to work with a thought leader with good ideas and solutions.

Show them that you’re that person with your content.

13.) Dedicate Website Pages to Markets You Serve

Dedicating website pages to the markets you serve is a great way to not only showcase your expertise, but to rank for them as well.

Be sure to go in depth on each location—300 words minimum. Think of these pages through the eyes of a buyer.

What kind of information would you want to know if you were looking for a place to set down your roots? Amenities, restaurants and shops in the area is a great place to start.

14.) Guest Blog on Other Sites

Guest blogs build your authority and send traffic back your way.

Do some research on blogs that your ideal customers are reading. This could be anything from something your local news channel puts on or an independent.

Get on Top of Your Listings

15.) Write Convincing Listing Copy

Your listing’s success is riding on the copy associated with it. Don’t skimp on the details here—go in-depth on what’s being offered and what’s best about each listing. Also, break down your information in bite-sized chunks that people can quickly skim and digest.

If you need help here, don’t be afraid to bring in a professional copywriter.

16.) Make Your Listings Look Good

Taking those property photos on your phone? It’s time to upgrade to a professional.

If your budget is maxed out then ask around your circles. There may be a young talent looking for experience and portfolio pieces.

Advanced Real Estate Marketing Objectives

These are marketing initiatives that should happen after you’ve completed the branding section above. By pursuing these, you’re starting to build a critical mass around who you are and what you do.

Advanced SEO

17.) Regularly Produce Relevant Blog Content

Again—think back to the questions you’re answering here to generate content ideas. If you want to optimize your SEO presence, blogging twice a week is a non-negotiable marketing objective to add to your list.

Blogging to blog isn’t enough though—make sure that every post you’re creating is targeting a specific keyword phrase.

• A keyword phrase is a search term that your ideal customers are entering into Google. An example could be: “Pittsburgh Real Estate Agent.”

18.) Optimize Your Site Pages for Targeted Keywords

Your stream of blog posts aren’t the only things that should be optimized for keywords. Go back through your existing website pages give each the following:

• An optimized page title (the main title that appears on Google search and on the top of someone’s browser)
• A compelling meta description (the snippet associated with the page)

Once you have those assigned to each page, look for relevant and natural ways to plug that keyword phrase into the page content. This is also a great time to bulk up each page to a minimum of 300 words and to add relevant photos.

19.) Submit Your Sitemap to Google

This is a multi-step, but vital process:

1. Locate your sitemap. If you’re using WordPress, there are plenty of plugins to generate this. Check with whoever developed your website to find this. If you used a DIY builder, Google how to locate your sitemap on the platform.
2. Set up a Google Search Console account with your website
3. Validate your site
4. Submit your sitemap

For more on this, check this out.

Pump up Your Listings

20.) Add in Local Keywords

Optimize your listings with relevant local keywords. Make sure the address is properly formatted and your images are the right size.

Back on your website, have these listings on dedicated pages with your copy and an image showcase.

21.) Consider a Pay-Per-Click Boost

After you’ve created that persuasive page on your website—with your copy, images and an optimized page title (address and location)—consider boosting it further with a pay-per-click campaign.

With this, you’ll be taking your page to the top of search engines (if it isn’t there already).

The more specific you can get with your Adwords here the better. Don’t just utilize the address of the place—research some relevant search phrase buyers are using.

• Example: Two bedroom house in Wexford, PA.

Advanced Marketing Processes

22.) Create Relevant Guides and eBooks

This really comes down to knowing your ideal clients. What are content pieces that prospects would be interested in downloading?

This could be an eBook (like the one attached at the bottom of this post) on how the home buying process works, or how to secure a mortgage.

Write this guide and really make it useful. Package it up in an attractive design and then offer it on your website in exchange for the visitors name and email.

This will help you begin to generate leads through your website.

23.) Build Landing Pages

Landing pages are specially designed pages on a website with one goal—gathering someone’s information.

If you’ve built a guide, you can create a landing page for it. This page should be dedicated to setting the stage for the content offer, talking about what someone will get from it and then presenting a way to get it.

Always end your landing page with a form. In order to get your offer, someone must give you their information.

• Pro Tip: Also make your contact page in landing page format. This will drive more conversions through your website.

24.) Follow Up with Content, Not a Sales Pitch

So, someone downloads that eBook you put together. What’s next?

The next email they get from you shouldn’t be a sales pitch. Instead, offer them another piece of content that makes sense. Send over a blog post related to the home buying process.

Your goal at this stage should be to guide them along the journey as much as you can. Coming off too salesy will put a bad taste in the mouth of a lead who’s in the research stage.

25.)  Write a Blog Series Promoting Your Content Offers

For every content offer you create, you should be able to pull somewhere between 12-24 blog post ideas from it.

Write these blog posts and include a call-to-action at the end of each one linking to your ultimate content offer. What you’re accomplishing here is a lead-generation process:

1. Writing optimized blog posts to get discovered and to attract leads
2. Converting them with a relevant content offer
3. Nurturing them with more helpful content through email
4. Building trust so that when they’re ready, they’ll pick you

Top-Notch Agent Real Estate Marketing Objectives

These are marketing initiatives that should happen after you’ve completed the branding section above. By pursuing these, you’re starting to build a critical mass around who you are and what you do.

Ultimate Listings

26.) Virtual Video Tours

Take your listings to the next level with virtual video tours. Any major videography company should be able to compose this for you.

This gives prospects the inside look at your clients’ listings.

Full-Funnel Marketing Processes

27.) Fully Refine Your Buyer Personas

Buyer Personas are fictional representations of your ideal customers. Each Buyer Persona represents a specific target audience with unique beliefs, values and challenges. These help you visualize your marketing efforts.

Three-to-four Buyer Personas are ideal.

28.) Scope out the Buyer’s Journeys

The Buyer’s Journey includes:

1. Awareness. I have symptoms of a problem.
2. Consideration. I have named my problem! What’s a solution?
3. Decision. I know my solution—now I need a list of solutions/providers.

For each one of your Buyer Personas, research and explore every stage. Outline the questions and challenges that occur at each stage.

• A great way to gather intel on each stage is to interview former customers. Select several that reflect your Buyer Personas.

29.) Create Content for Every Stage of the Buyer’s Journey

Now that you have your Buyer Personas, and their Buyer’s Journeys, create content for every stage.

Ask yourself, what Awareness level offer can take my Buyer Personas to Consider? Then, what content will take them from Consideration to Decision? Finally, what will take them from Decision to Customer?

30.) Activate Your Marketing Machine

As you noted earlier, for every content offer you:

• Set up a landing page to encourage downloads
• Create 12-24 blog posts to promote it—ending each post with a call-to-action pointing to the content offer
• Upon download, the downloader receives a series of emails

For you, set up lead-nurturing email workflows:

1. For someone who downloads an Awareness-level offer, your goal should be to send them content guiding them to downloading a Consideration-level offer.
2. For someone who downloads a Consideration-level offer, your goal should be to send them content guiding them to downloading a Decision-level offer.
3. Finally, for someone who downloads a Decision-level offer, your goal should be to send them content guiding them to becoming a Customer.