Being a real estate agent can be challenging and this is why I wanted to create a free marketing strategy for real estate agents.
The best marketing strategy for real estate agents is a layered omnichannel marketing approach. This approach starts off by focusing on one primary marketing platform. After this platform is optimized another platform is introduced. This is done until all marketing platforms such as Google, YouTube, Facebook, Linkedin, Instagram are optimized.
In this post, you will discover how to implement a layered omnichannel marketing strategy for your services as a real estate agent. According to NAR there are 1,373,931 active members, this information will give you the guide to help you stand out from the competition and make more commissions as a real estate agent today.
Further down we will discuss the following valuable topics:
- Why real estate agents use the layered omnichannel marketing strategy
- What are the best marketing platforms for real estate agents?
- What marketing tool does every real estate agent need to have?
- Why do real estate agents need a personal website?
- What keywords should a real estate agent use?
- Is marketing worth it for real estate agents?
Why real estate agents use the layered omnichannel marketing strategy
The layered omnichannel marketing strategy is an effective marketing strategy for any business but especially for real estate agents. As a real estate agent, you have competition and you will have to use every weapon possible to win. Planning out your marketing plan will give you a needed advantage.
Let us break down what the layered omnichannel marketing strategy is.
This marketing strategy is when you focus on the best marketing platform for your situation. Everyone has different goals. Everyone’s financial situation is different so you will have to learn the pros and cons of every marketing platform and then you will have to decide what is the best marketing platform for you.
There are many different marketing platforms and you may want to test a few out before you focus on one.
Many marketing professionals say to focus on one and not to spend time on other marketing platforms when starting out.
My strategy and recommendation are different. It is better to test multiple marketing platforms before focusing on one.
When you focus on the one you will have to invest money into this platform. You will have to invest time in this platform. If you have not tested a few different marketing platforms you may choose one that you do not like the way it works.
The interface may be annoying and difficult to manage. The lead quality maybe not what you really want.
The cost associated with the marketing platform maybe not what you are prepared to invest in. Every platform has a different cost associated with it and knowing how much the platform costs will help you in this decision.
Once you have a good idea of how a few marketing platforms work you should then decide on one. Focus all your efforts on this one marketing platform.
Your marketing budget and time investment should be on this one platform. After this platform has been optimized for your brand you then can move over to another marketing platform.
This is why this marketing strategy is called the layered omnichannel marketing strategy. Once you have one marketing channel optimized you then add a second marketing channel.
After you optimized the second marketing layer you add a third marketing layer. This is why is it called the omnichannel marketing strategy. Because you eventually will have multiple optimized marketing platforms.
All driving traffic to your brand or services.
Trying to use multiple channels for your marketing will cause issues without a marketing company doing it for you. Each marketing platform will need to be tested and ad creatives and ad copy will need to be done.
This will take time to do and if you are working and doing this work yourself you will not have enough time in the day to do all this work.
It also will cost a lot of money to test ad campaigns on every platform. If you do not have a large marketing budget I would not do this. You will lose your money because your budget did not allow the data to come in for you to optimize your marketing campaign.
This is why I recommend to briefly test multiple marketing platforms and then focus on one. The test is just for you to find what you want to focus on.
Now that you are familiar with why a layered omnichannel marketing strategy is best for real estate agents let us look at what are the different marketing platforms that a real estate agent can use to market their business and or services.
What are the best marketing platforms for real estate agents?
The best marketing platforms for real estate agents are ones that the customer is looking for your services and not the other way around. Search engines are a great source of high-quality leads. This is because these leads are for people who are searching for a real estate agent.
1. Search engine marketing platforms (Google & Bing)
Search engines get a lot of traffic every day and if you can tap into this traffic you can increase your listing and closings rapidly.
When someone takes the time to type into their search bar a term like “real estate agent in Miami” this more than likely means that they are looking to sell their home or they want to buy a home in Miami.
With the amount of search traffic that marketing platforms like Google and Bing get how can you not at least try to tap into it.
Why would you not want to have an ad show up when they search a term like that? This is the best way to get clients that are ready to sign.
Think of internet traffic as it was a river of water, a river of customers.
Your business is a bucket and you need to fill it with water from the river every day to stay open.
In other words, you need to fill your business with customers.
You could walk to the river every day to fill it but having a pipe that connects from the river to your where you have your bucket placed under the open end of the pipe would be more efficient.
This is exactly what having a website will do for your business.
You turn on an ad on a search platform like Google and when your bucket is filled up you stop the ad.
Your website connects your business to searches and potential clients.
- River = Internet traffic
- Pipe = Website
- Bucket = your business
- Faucet handle = Ad on the internet
Besides the business opportunity that search traffic generates it also brings clients to you and this changes your business model. You still want to continue reaching out to potential clients but at least you will have leads coming in that are from people who want to hear from you.
Having the client contact you versus the other way around is going to completely change your business. Spending time researching for sale by owner properties and contacting one after another can be draining.
In the United States here are over 1 million people who search for the term “homes for sale” a month.
There are 110,000 searches for real estate agents a month.
This much traffic should not be ignored because every day that passes without your services being shown to these people is another day of lost commission opportunities.
You just need a small portion of this traffic for it to propel your earnings to pass your goals.
When I research real estate agents on Google or Bing I hardly ever see any that are actually paying for ads themselves.
When I search for a real estate agent in any town I normally see companies advertising to connect you to a real estate agent or I see a few brokers advertising their brand. At times I will find a real estate agent marketing on search engines and I have no doubt that those real estate agents doing this are the ones that are making serious money.
These companies that spending money to market on search engines are not doing this to lose money. They invest in marketing because they turn around and sell the leads to real estate agents just like you. The company makes a commission that more than makes up for its cost.
So why would a real estate agent pay these companies when they can do exactly what they are doing to get the lead themselves.
These lead agencies would go out of business and real estate agents would make more money.
They will be more willing to agree to sign a contract with you if they were searching for a real estate agent and they saw your ad appear on the search results for the town that they are living in.
Search engines are great because often times people will start their search on Realtor.com or Zillow.com and once they have a good idea of what they want and in what area they will type into Google “real estate agent in Miami”.
Once they reach that level of commitment of actually looking at homes or ready to list the home this is what most people will do.
This is why I recommend search engine marketing to anyone first starting.
Search engine traffic is not cheap on Google and this may be a reason why you do not choose this strategy but it is worth testing. Invest $50 in a campaign for your local area and get a feel for what your price per click is and the search volume. I would run the campaign from Thursday to Sunday.
These days are the days with the most traffic and you may get better results from a campaign that is ran on those days of the week.
Bing is going to be a lot more affordable but you will have a lot less traffic. This is definitely worth testing if you are really low on money but want to test and learn how creating an ad on a search engine would be.
Depending on the keyword that your target the cost will be different but in my experience you are going to pay 3x less for a keyword on Bing versus Google.
This is about how much you can expect to pay for keywords targeted in a decent size city. Once you set up your campaign on Google or Bing you will be able to get an estimate on what your cost will be.
If you do choose to use search as your primary marketing platform try to be as targeted as possible and grow from there.
Start with no more than 5 keywords that are targeted for a specific area.
Do not target your state or even your county. Try to target your town.
For example, if you live in Miami do not target “real estate agent in Miami”.
Target more specific areas for example:
- “real estate agent in Hialeah”
- “sell my home in Hialeah”
- “Foreclosures in Hialeah”
- “Realtor in Hialeah”
2. YouTube ads
The best part about advertising on Youtube is that the potential client gets to see you. Nothing converts better than video advertising. You will be putting a face to your name and once you do that it becomes more personal and real. This will increase conversions dramatically.
The way Youtube ads work is that it is tied to the person’s Google search bar. So if a person searches for realtors on their search bar and later on they get on Youtube to look at the latest funny cat video your ad will appear before the cat video plays.
Your ad will play for the first 6 seconds and then they can skip it. You pay if they watch passed 30 seconds of your video. You will pay higher rates if your video gets a lot of impressions but a low rate of 30-second views.
The power of this platform is huge and the best part is that your competition is not using it. This is untapped and you can totally grab this platform now while there is no competition.
The fact that a person types into their search bay a term like “homes for sale in Hialeah” and they look at houses for a few minutes and they go about the day. Later that day or the next they jump on Youtube for something not related to homes for sale and your video comes up.
You have 6 seconds to convenience them to watch the video and in those 6 seconds you say “I am a real estate agent in Hialeah and in this short video you will discover how to find the best home deals in Hialeah”!
They will watch and because of this curiosity you have put in your ad copy your watch rate will be through the roof. This will bring the ad cost down and this will bring up impressions.
You should keep your video short and should be informative.
If the viewer sees the video and feels like it was helpful and that you present a service that can help them they will contact you.
Make sure to have a call to action for the viewers. The call to action can be for them to click the advertisement.
This ad will take them to a landing page where you have another video that goes more in-depth on the services that you provide.
On your landing page, you should have an email submit option. Many people are on their cell phones when they first see your ad and they are in places that they can’t listen to your video or call you.
Having an email submit option will be a better way to ensure that you get in contact with more of your visitors.
3. Social media
Social media is a great marketing platform to take advantage of. You can post for free and you can build a following.
Unfortunately, social media does not have the free organic reach that it once had. When Facebook first started you could reach a much larger audience organically.
But social media soon realized that they could monetize this and now you will have to pay for ads in order to reach a large group of people on the platform.
The cost for social media ad impressions is growing but they still are underpriced for what it is.
I would not spend a lot of time posting free content on social media. I would spend some time posting but more time spent on paid ads on the platform.
This is because the reach you will get is minimal. It is free so it is obviously worth doing but you will get more out of your time if you spend it creating ads for paid campaigns.
The advantage that marketing campaigns on Facebook and Instagram have is the hyper-specific targeting options you have.
Your targeting on Facebook or Instagram can look like this:
- Women in Miami
- Ages 55-65
- Speak Spanish
- Employed
- Above-average household income
- Who shows interest in wine
- With kids
- Divorced
- With a birthday coming up
With specific audience targeting like this you can drill down on an audience. This will help you convert your audience into commission checks.
Imagine targeting potential snowbirds or recent retirees in cold winter states. If you are located in a warm winter state this strategy can be effective.
The downside to social media marketing is that this is cold traffic. You are searching for them and not the other way around. It is a lot easier to convince someone that already has plans to move to list their house with you versus targeting people who are on social media looking at pictures of their friends and family.
They are not in the buying mode. You will have to intercept what they are doing and get their attention. Then you have to hope that they were already thinking about moving.
You could target renters and have your ads target a pain point about renting. Usually, rental leases are renewed once a year so if someone is within the last quarter of their lease they may click on the ad.
Social media marketing can be effective but it is a different strategy because you are reaching out to them and the marketing angle needs to change because of that.
What marketing tool does every real estate agent need to have?
As a real estate agent, you will need to have a personal website to take advantage of these marketing platforms. The traffic needs to be directed from the marketing platform over to a platform that you own and control.
If you need a website created for you and for a personalized marketing plan that you can implement with your website you can contact LGM Marketing Group.
Discover the power of a website and a marketing plan today!
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