Real Estate Marketing Guide
Offline Marketing
Offline Marketing Overview
What about a bottle of wine or a social media photoshoot for your new homeowners? Or even a card congratulating them on 1 year in their new home? Never underestimate the power of referrals. Past clients are clients for life so treat them well! Being thoughtful means your prospects and past clients are more likely to mention you to their friends and family telling them about your thoughtful gestures. Sometimes you have to go offline to create the perfect experience to dazzle your clients.
While offline marketing is less trackable than online marketing, there’s still opportunity to get the attention of your audience. As 2021 unfolds, we hope to see the return of offline events such as conferences, workshops, networking events, and community events. Some of these tips may need to get adapted for the time being online, but there’s still opportunities today.
Don’t be afraid to step outside the box and do what your competitors aren’t doing or won't do.
Remember that billboards, park benches, grocery stores and shopping cart advertisements still exist, and still function as options to get your face and name out there as the local real estate expert. Sponsoring events and community organizations like local sports teams, and local charities help get your name out everywhere. Other ideas like sponsoring litter clean-ups help to show that you are literally cleaning up the community.
Buy ads in traditional media such as newspapers, local news media, community papers. Be sure to consider that advertising in print takes time. You should aim for at least 7 placements to ensure that you create enough exposure on your ads.
Attach custom URLs to your ads to create a way of tracking clicks from offline sources and measure effectiveness. Print ads are also a great way to show your sellers that you’re advertising for them and working hard to get their property sold.
When you’re not checking in with your digital channels and online listings, it’s best to spend your extra time being a face in the community, meeting people. One way might be to volunteer for community organizations, give back to your community. In addition to FaceTime, you’ll want to advertise your existence in offline media like yers, print ads, billboards, park benches, little league baseball eld banners, community event sponsorships, charity auctions, and offline advertising opportunities.
Obviously, calculating ROI on offline advertising works differently than the trackable world of digital advertising. Offline advertising is focused mostly on branding and requires repetition for people to begin to associate with your personal brand as familiar to them. Limit your offline advertising to as many free options as possible and scale up only when you have the extra money to spend offline building your brand recognition.
Networking
Become the face of your community by making it part of your job to network with the people who live and work around you.
All community events such as parades, races, farmer’s market, community garage sales, charity fundraising events, non-profit volunteer events, festivals, etc. make the perfect networking opportunity.
You can include your networking activities in your social media feeds. Be sure to tag local points of interest to increase your reach.
Host your own events. Come up with something fun for the community to be a part of. Maybe something related to your other interests. For example, a run or walk on the local trail, agree to offer water to participants.
Your business card and connecting online with people you network with is the key. Reach out the day you meet new people so you are fresh in their memory when connecting.
Professional Networking
Remember that professional development is key to your success. Networking with your peers provides an experience to learn best practices from other professionals and turn their success into your own. Also, conferences are also a way of sharing your best practices with others, which builds community and goodwill. Agents helping agents is one critical success factor because brainstorming and problem solving with others in your eld provides a strong support system.
Hosted events like meetups, seminars, or broker events are always popular, drawing people from across the spectrum of your industry, giving your properties much-needed exposure, and allowing you to meet new people. Whether virtual or in-person, hosting a professional event will connect you with other experts in your eld that you can learn from and potentially team up with. Building relationships with other agents allows you to have a support system with those who you don't compete with directly, perhaps in other markets.
Professional organizations
In addition to groups and events, another avenue for networking includes professional organizations in the real estate eld for which you can join and become a member.
Why should you join a professional real estate agent association? These types of memberships help establish your credibility in your industry as a thought leader and expert. These organizations also help open you up to new networking events you might not have had access to otherwise.
The most basic organization to join is the National Association of Realtors (NAR). Check out this list of other real estate organizations to join.
Event Marketing
Building your personal brand means putting a face to a name. It means people know who you are and what you stand for. Getting in front of people virtually and in-person is a multi-pronged approach to gain new leads and build more brand awareness. In fact, a recent study by the Event Marketing Institute found that 98% of consumers capture content (photos, videos) at live events, and 100% of those that do share it across social media.
Types of events include:
Open houses
Block parties
Meet and greet with brokers
Real estate seminars
Q&A sessions between industry experts and prospects Industry conferences
Consider making your own meetup group or online group to create a platform for exchanging tips and tricks. Plus, you can invite your prospects to your event. Being invited to something fun is much more friendly than being sold to and comes o as less threatening.
A few ideas for creating your own events:
Promote fun and interesting events you care about that your potential clients would care about
Microbrewery or winery happy hours
Sponsor an educational seminar on real estate buying and selling tips
Park cleanup
Home decorating course with an interior decorator partnership
Organize neighborhood sporting event
Organize neighborhood BBQ
Host virtual events
Zoom parties – are a great way of getting friends, neighbors, groups together virtually while people are staying home more often. You can do cooking lessons, cocktail mixes, book clubs, wine clubs, etc.
Invite your prospects to join a Zoom for a Q&A session or teach them ways virtually of adding value to their homes.
Also, consider sponsoring events at your local microbrewery or a real estate agent happy hour to build connections with other professionals. Also, consider a happy hour for your top clients. Inviting your clients and colleagues to social events shows you care about friendships and not only about deals. These types of events provide a stress free, relaxing way to network. When you’re in a good mood bringing people together, you never know what types of new clients you might attract.
Open houses
Promote yourself while promoting your listing. Open houses give you face to face time with people in the community, potential buyers and sellers, and other agents. Many agents hosting an open house often get leads by meeting new prospects that maybe aren't interested in your listing, but want you to act as their buyer's agent to select another property. Open houses are a great way for you to get your feet wet as a new agent. You can even offer to host an open house for another agent in your office if you don’t have a listing of your own yet.
Volunteer with charity events and organizations
Many successful market leader real estate agents are active in community involvement, including charitable causes. Charitable activities build goodwill with the community, and also gets you recognized as someone focused on doing good. This can help you stand out, and who knows you may even get press coverage. It’s also an opportunity to come together with other agents or buyers and sellers to unite for a good cause.
The key to getting the most leads and landing the most listings is to become the local expert in your target niche or local area. Being the local expert is akin to a waiter who is familiar with the restaurant’s menu cover to cover, and can offer the most customized recommendations to guests. Being the local expert means you’ve taken the time to acquire local community knowledge, you’re active in the community, you’re attending events, and you’ve taken the time to get to know the types of real estate in your area.
Some of becoming an expert comes from experience, but it all starts with being thoughtful and connecting with the people and places you seek to become the expert of. Agents that take the time to become the expert show prospective clients that they are in it for more than a sale or for the money, they’re in it because they love where they live and want to help people find their next home.
Volunteer and charity work is a win-win. A win for the cause and a win for meeting more people in your local community by working alongside them for good. Giving back shows you care and not just looking to close deals. Help others and build your personal brand in the process. Choosing a charity like Habitat for Humanity which is connected to your goal of helping people find homes makes good sense.
Attend conferences
The Real Estate industry is very community-oriented and supportive of each other. Going to conferences is a great way to gain new friends, new insights, new tactics, and new ideas to further your career. Conferences are engaging and a lot of fun! Unfortunately, most in 2020 have been canceled or gone virtual, but the concept remains the same. In-person conferences also offer a lot of opportunities to create new online content.
Direct Mail
Direct mail response rates outperform digital marketing by more than 700 percent, according to Data and Marketing Association’s 2017 Response Rate report. Use direct mail campaigns as a means for your readers to take action online, either with a lead form, content offer, or email list signup.
Publications and newsletters are ideal direct mail tools for multichannel content marketing. These long-form mailers provide space for both quality local articles and branding.
Consider creating a real estate agent newsletter that can be both physically mailed and emailed. According to Discover’s recent survey of its users: agents who consistently mail custom publications to farms of 3,000 or more homes report ROIs from 150 to 400 percent.
The average ROI for direct mail is 15-17%. 67% of US adults feel that direct mail is more personal than email.
Postcards with previously sold and upcoming properties can help keep your local prospects aware of all the moving and shaking you're doing, not to mention entice them into making a move soon. On your postcards, include a short bio and your photo to give prospects something personal to remember you by.
People still enjoy getting something in the mail. Holiday cards are another great way of showing your prospects and past clients that you are thinking about. Cards are a fantastic way to show your appreciation and remind them that you still exist and ready to help them when they might need you. Thoughtfulness goes a long way in getting people to keep you top of mind. Thoughtfulness helps you stand out as a distinguished agent that cares.
You can also coordinate a social media push before and after your direct mail campaign to booster brand awareness. By using a targeted direct mail list service, you can typically purchase email addresses alongside physical. You can use this email list to create targeted lists in Facebook, so they will see a Facebook add before and after they see something physical in the mail. This helps to create brand awareness for you and helps you stick in their minds.
Flyers
Canva is an awesome do it yourself free graphic design software.
Relationships with Local Businesses
One of the core tenants of online marketing is local business partnerships. Offer to host an event on home decorating tips, or a short info session on how to get top dollar when you sell your home. You can promote local businesses at your open houses with some freebie gifts for those visiting your open house. Local business partnership can also help you with content like creating local business reviews.
Create content about local establishments in a 10-20 mile radius around where you sell homes. Connecting with buyers and sellers through your knowledge of the local area will show you have invested time and effort into getting to know your community.
Partner with these type of local business to cross-promote and help each other find clients:
Home repair contractor
Home inspector
Stager
Local home repair store
Printshop
Coffee shop
Home cleaning service
Graphic designer
Perhaps even a marketing agency to help you focus your marketing efforts so you can focus on selling homes
Home mortgage lender
The idea is that you partner and act as a “preferred vendor” who can vouch for the other. You can use the ParkBench app to connect with local business owners.
Interview Longtime Residents
People select a home based on the community that surrounds it. It behooves you to be a local expert to lend your deep knowledge and expertise to new residents. Know where the attractions are, high crime areas, amenities, hidden gems, and best recreation spots.
Some additional offline marketing tips:
Join local business associations
Learn about HOA rules, schools, locations of all the top attractions including parks and popular businesses.
Tour homes and get a feel for what all neighborhoods have to offer in terms of home and community amenities