If you're a real estate agent, you know that having a solid real estate marketing strategy is critical to your success. But what is the most effective approach?

Check out this template for developing a real estate marketing strategy! You'll have everything you need to get started with this guide.

So, what are you holding out for? Begin right away!

Establish Your Goals

You must first establish your goals when developing your real estate marketing strategy. What do you hope to accomplish with your marketing ideas? Do you want to increase your lead generation? Converting leads at a higher rate? Increase brand awareness?

Consider the big picture. What do you hope to achieve by establishing a specific goal? A goal must have the following characteristics in order to be effective:

• Specific – Don’t generalize a big idea. The more detailed a goal, the better.

• Measurable – You should be able to tell if you’re making progress towards your goal or not.

• Achievable – Make sure your goal is something you can achieve.

• End Date – Give your goal a timeframe so you can track your progress.

Whatever your objectives are, make a note of them so you can track and measure your progress. These objectives could look like this:

• Increase web traffic by 25% within six months

• Direct mail your farm area once per month for the next six months

• Increase conversion rate from lead to appointment from 1% to 3% this year

• Generate 500 leads in the next three months

• Add 100 subscribers to your email marketing list by the end of the year

• Increase social media followers by 20% by March

• Publish one blog post per week for the next quarter

• Create three real estate investor targeted videos this month

Key Performance Indicators and Goals

These objectives are then converted into Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) that can be tracked on a weekly, monthly, and quarterly basis. When setting your goals and Key Performance Indicators, it's critical to consider both lead and lag measures.

You take the initiative to achieve your goal (or lag measure). Increasing content marketing production by 25%, for example, is a first step toward increasing organic traffic.

Lag measurements are the outcomes of your lead measurements. In this case, if you increase content production by 25% and organic traffic increases by 30%, your lag measure outperforms your lead measure. That's always thrilling! In other words, you have control over your lead measures but must constantly monitor the effectiveness of your lag measures. While you may not always be able to control the results of your lag measures, you can bet that your lead measures will have an impact. If this is not the case and you are meeting your lead metrics, it may be time to shift your focus.

Once you've established your goals and key performance indicators, make sure to post them somewhere you'll see them on a regular basis (daily). Too many real estate agents write down goals only to lose sight of them.

These objectives must become your guiding light. Every daily action you take should be geared toward achieving your objectives (rather than getting distracted by the next shiny object).

Research Your Target Market

When you've decided what you want to accomplish, it's time to research your target market. Who exactly are they? What do they desire? How will you contact them?

Why You Should Define Your Target Market

You must define your target market to effectively maximize and eventually scale your real estate marketing ideas (or audience).

You will eliminate assumptions about your audience by defining your target market. It's easy to assume you know what your audience likes and who they are, but when you look at the data objectively versus your gut, you may discover that some of your assumptions were incorrect. Furthermore, when you define your target market, your marketing collateral will reach a higher percentage of those in your circle faster.

How To Research Your Target Audience

Looking at your current and previous clients is a great way to research your target market. What similarities do they have? What are their demographics?

You can also use social media data to get a sense of your target market. What platforms do they use? Take note of the type of content they share. What are their hobbies?

Surveying Or Interviewing Your Target Audience

To learn more, you can poll both your current and former clients. Finding out what's working (and what isn't) in your real estate marketing efforts by conducting surveys is a great way to get feedback.

In order to help you create a brief survey, ask yourself what the top three things are that you want to immediately learn about your audience.

To collect responses, use a survey platform such as SurveyMonkey, Google Forms, or Crowdsignal.

Spread the word about your survey via social media and email. Even consider a prize or reward for those that participate.

Interviewing those who have used you as a real estate agent is another excellent strategy. Interviewing previous clients will not only provide you with insight into why they chose you as their agent, but it will also provide you with content for future real estate business success stories.

Even a brief interview via Zoom can be an excellent way to collect these responses and testimonials!

What Types Of Target Markets Exist?

Often, the vast majority of your audience will fall into a few different categories, known as segments. It is critical to determine which segments are worth the majority of your efforts and to initially focus on only two to three segments.

These segments may be broken down as follows for a real estate agent:

• Age

• Gender

• Career

• Location

• Buyer

• Seller

• Niche

• Lifestyle

• Hobbies

When you clearly understand your target market, you can create content and messaging that resonates with them. You'll also have a better idea of where to direct your real estate marketing efforts.

While many real estate agents try to be a jack-of-all-trades on social media, focusing on one primary marketing channel at the start (where the majority of your audience is already) is far more effective.

Develop Your Real Estate Marketing Strategy

Now that you know who your target market is and what you want to accomplish, it's time to create a marketing strategy.

What platforms are you planning to use for your real estate business? What type of content marketing will you develop? How frequently will you post?

The answer to this question will depend on your target market and goals and cannot be generalized. However, the following advice will help you get going:

• Use a mix of paid and organic social media tactics

• Incorporate email marketing into your real estate marketing plan

• Create targeted content for each social media platform

• Use video, images, and text to create content

• Post at least twice a week on the social media channel of your choice

• Participate in discussion threads and answer questions

• Share interesting articles, images, and videos that are relevant to your real estate business

• Mix physical and digital marketing into your overall strategy

• Engage with your audience by answering questions and responding to comments

• Plan out your content calendar in advance

• Make sure your website is up-to-date and user-friendly

Play To Your Strengths

Another thing to think about when creating your marketing strategy is playing to your strengths. What do you already enjoy doing, or what do you find interesting in what others do for real estate marketing ideas?

If you're not sure where to begin, consider following a few different real estate agents to see whose style you like. It's also a good idea to find a real estate mentor or coach who can guide and support you.

It's not always necessary to pay a mentor or coach a monthly fee for their services. Over the years, I've had a lot of mentors and "coaches." I'm sure some of them have never heard of me or met me. I've observed them so intently that I can copy everything they do while maintaining my unique personality.

The Advantages Of Developing Your Marketing Strategy

Some of the advantages of developing your real estate marketing strategy include:

• Spending your money in the right place

• Attracting more leads and clients

• Building trust with a potential client

• Creating consistency with your branding

• It gives you a guiding light

Without a defined real estate marketing strategy, it’s not easy to know what you should be doing and when.

• Execute Your Real Estate Marketing Plan And Track Results

It's time to put your marketing plan into action once you've created it!

This will entail writing posts in advance, scheduling them, joining forums, etc.

It's crucial to monitor the outcomes of your efforts. There are various methods for doing this, including:

• Using Google Analytics to track website traffic

• Creating custom conversion tracking in Facebook Ads

• Tracking clicks on links in email marketing messages

• Measuring the reach and engagement of social media posts

• Comparing leads and sales generated from different real estate marketing channels

• Analyzing the results of your marketing efforts over time and making changes as needed

Here are five tips on executing your real estate marketing plan and tracking the results.

Start With A Clearly Defined Plan

The more work you put in ahead of time to clearly define your real estate marketing strategy, the easier it will be to execute. Determining your marketing strategy entails everything from identifying your target market to outlining your goals and strategy channels.

This clarity will also allow you to more effectively track the outcomes of your efforts.

Don’t Second Guess Yourself

For execution to occur, you must first create a plan and then work that plan. When you second-guess in the middle of a project, you rarely understand its true effectiveness until the project is completed.

Make a note of new things you want to try. After you've completed your original plan, put the new strategy into action.

This also demonstrates the importance of having shorter time frames rather than longer ones.

Visualize Your Goals

There are two parts to visualizing your goals. The first step is to create a vision board that depicts what you stand to gain from successfully implementing your real estate marketing strategy.

This is your motivation. When you visualize yourself making something happen, I believe you can make it happen.

Second, make a visual representation of your goals' progress. I know agents who print out a sheet of paper with drawings of the number of homes they want to sell and cross them off as each transaction is completed throughout the year.

You can do this with any goal you set for yourself. It’s motivating and allows you to stay focused on what’s important.

Gamify The Results

One way to keep yourself motivated and on track is to gamify the results of your real estate marketing efforts. 

This could involve setting a goal for the number of leads you want to generate in a month and giving yourself a point for every lead.

At the end of the month, add up your points and see how you did.

This could be applied to social media followers, website visitors, or any other metric you're tracking.

The key is to ensure that the game is both motivating and enjoyable for you.

Use An App

Stride, Coach. me, and Goals On Track are excellent apps for keeping you on track with your real estate marketing objectives.

They allow you to track and measure your progress, set reminders for important tasks, and get help and accountability.