Although you might not have guessed it, real estate professionals have a lot of trouble reaching a consensus on a wide variety of issues. There are dozens of contentious, ongoing debates that touch on everything from commercial real estate sales strategies to long term regional market analyses and what car a real estate agent should drive.
There’s one thing, however, that just about every real estate professional can agree on: the importance of marketing. Marketing can have an immense impact on how your clients see you, as well as your effectiveness as a real estate professional. Marketing is your line of communication between you and the people you want to sell to and for.
If you’re a listing agent, then you’re likely well aware of the importance of marketing. If you’ve achieved any measure of success, you’ve probably used some marketing tools for listings. Whether you were leaving lawn signs at intersections or running digital ad campaigns on social media, using effective marketing tools is an essential part of any listing agent’s professional life.
Of course, the last few decades have opened up a wide range of marketing strategies to the general public and by extension, you. With the aid of technology, you can utilize marketing tools to reach a previously unfathomable number of people. But should you? And will it be effective? That’s what we’re here to find out today!
In this article, we’ll be covering some of the most effective marketing tools in the world of real estate, and discussing how to use each of them to their fullest potential. We’re not going to be writing off conventional marketing tactics either; the age of digital marketing may have convinced some that conventional marketing is obsolete, but this just isn’t the case. With that out of the way, let’s look at some of the most effective marketing tools for listing agents!
Tools and toolboxes
When it comes to effective marketing tools, any successful listing agent will soon realize that these marketing tools are a lot like those you’ll find in a normal contractor’s toolbox. A contractor uses his hammer a lot, but they probably won’t use one to check if a window sill is level. When wiring up a fuse box, a contractor will use a wire stripper, but that wire stripper isn’t going to see much use if the task of the day is putting a new roof on a home.
Our point is that you can’t rely solely on a single marketing tool as your entire marketing strategy. Almost every tool has roles in which it’s highly effective, and roles in which it isn’t. We’ll do our best to explore ideal and less-than-ideal uses for each of these marketing tools, but it’s up to you to decide how to best use the marketing tools in your listing agent’s toolbox. That being said, let’s jump in!
Social media marketing
In the digital age, social media is where the vast majority of the population spends most of their time. Whether they’re sharing vacation pictures on Instagram, making painfully unfunny jokes on Twitter or just scrolling through Facebook, Social Media reaches just about everyone. Vacantly staring at the TV for hours on end is out and thoughtlessly double-tapping is in.
In this age of complacent social media scrolling, social media marketing is readily apparent and easily accessible to even the most technologically inept businesspeople. Setting up a social media marketing campaign is easy, simple and straightforward, and can net incredible results when done properly. It sounds like the perfect marketing tool, right?
Unfortunately, social media marketing falls short of being the perfect marketing tool for listing agents. While this tool will certainly provide you with almost limitless reach, actual engagement with potential customers is probably going to be limited. With the help of an ad agency you can improve your odds of reaching potential clients, but the simple fact is that most people aren’t going to make a decision as important as buying a home because they saw an ad on Facebook.
This isn’t to say it’s useless; with careful planning, diligent research and a well defined target demographic, social media marketing can be a very effective tool. The most important part of the equation is tailoring your ads to connect with your target audience in a meaningful way, rather than just annoying them by showing an ad in their news feed.
Online advertising
When people aren’t on social media, chances are they’re on the rest of the internet. The internet is a big place, filled with all kinds of websites peddling all kinds of wares. If you need an extremely niche or obscure item, service or piece of information, your best bet at finding it is the world wide web. There’s another thing it excels at, though; marketing.
To a great extent, the internet is paid for by advertising. Advertising offers websites, platforms and services the ability to remain financially independent without charging their users a subscription fee or cover charge. Sure, they can be annoying, but ads help keep sites and services free of charge and easily accessible.
As a listing agent, using these virtual advertising spaces can be a lot more tricky than the streamlined, intuitive option presented by social media marketing. If you can get it right, online advertising as a marketing tool for listing agents offers a chance to reach a highly specific audience that can be narrowed down to an exacting degree of precision.
Perhaps the most effective way to use online marketing is with Google’s ad services. With the suite of tools available from this service, you can tailor things like what sites your ads appear on, who your ads are shown to and what regions your ads show up in. This can be used to target individuals who are already searching for homes by showing your ads on real estate websites, listing platforms and real estate agent directories.
Conventional marketing
Even though we’re quickly entering the digital age, not everyone has arrived yet. While you can certainly reach a lot of people with online and social media marketing, there are plenty of people who for one reason or another just aren’t online. Whether they don’t have access to internet coverage or they don’t have the technical know-how to be effectively reached by online marketing, these individuals aren’t a great target market for digital marketing.
In order to reach these individuals, you’re going to need to break out the old-fashioned tools. If digital marketing is the high-tech power tool in your toolbox, conventional marketing is the simple, reliable and consistent conventional counterpart. It might not achieve the same exposure and reach that the previous two entries on this list will, but if you’re looking for something guaranteed to work, this is the way to go.
Now, the term “conventional marketing” encompasses a wide range of different marketing strategies and tools. In this category, you’ll find everything from lawn signs to billboards to aerial advertising and direct mail marketing. The common denominator with this tool, as you may have guessed, is connecting with potential customers and clients on a personal level.
The thing about conventional marketing and advertising is its ability to project a personal, grounded image for you and your brokerage. While online marketing tools may have superior reach, it lacks the personal, local feel of direct mail marketing, lawn signs or print advertisements. Conventional marketing makes you and your brokerage seem like a local grassroots business instead of a large unfeeling corporation.
Conclusion
When you’re working as a listing agent, it’s nearly impossible to overstate the importance of good marketing tools. As someone who’s entire professional career revolves around facilitating the sale of real estate, getting your listings out there for people to see when they’re trying to find a real estate agent is of the utmost importance.
With this article, we hope we’ve given you a better idea of what marketing tools are effective for listing agents and how to best make use of them. Each of these tools have their own unique upsides and downsides, and there’s no single ideal tool for all your listing agent needs. The good news is that, with time, you can figure out what’s best for you. We wish you luck!
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