The 10 Dos and Don’ts of Marketing Your Real Estate Business

Whether you’re looking to get new clients or sell your listings more effectively, there are plenty of opportunities to improve your marketing techniques as a real estate agent. If you’re wondering where to start, though, look no further than this list of 10 Dos and Don’ts of marketing your real estate business.

Advertising in Any Business

Some people are so passionate about their business that it’s too hard for them to look at things from the other person’s perspective. Your reader doesn’t yet care about your business, even though do. Not everyone is interested in hearing about what their company thinks they need even though they may sincerely believe that they have the 100 greatest products and services available. A lot of these real estate investors and individual business owners have the right motivation but they lack the knowledge to make their marketing accomplish meaningful results.

A motivated seller doesn’t need to call you until they see that something about your ad is beneficial for themselves.

I use these companies frequently as examples to emphasize my point. Coca Cola and McDonalds are leaders in their respective fields. There are actually not a lot of people who love McDonalds as their favorite restaurant or there are not a lot of people who love Coke as their favorite drink when you actually compare it with their market share. They have huge market share without having insanely passionate customers about their products. However, they still sell the most of their product in their respective fields. The key to their success is their world class marketing machines rather than the products themselves. If you have a great business in every aspect but marketing, then you don’t have a business at all.

The single biggest determining factor in long term success in real estate investing is marketing. When you learn to be a successful real estate marketer, you’ll be able to make almost any business successful even without detailed financial or product knowledge.

Your business is like a tropical island where marketing builds the bridges, roads and airports that enable people to discover your island. Without those inlets, your island doesn’t exist to the rest of the world. Would you build a great website and then never send it any traffic? I doubt it. So why do so many investors learn techniques to apply to sellers but then don’t generate sellers to use those techniques on? Probably because they undervalue what is most important to their business.

With this in mind, here are some of the things you should and shouldn’t do within your advertisements in any business. Yes I understand that some of these may be obvious points but look at various advertisements. Although they are obvious, they are often not adhered to.

Do

• Have an enticing offer
• Get the reader’s attention immediately
• try multiple mediums–including non-traditional ones
• Target your specific product for a specific audience only
• Avoid deception by clearly stating what the offer is
• Create demand by advertising even when you don’t need the business. Develop a waiting list
• Be unique and catchy with your advertisement. Be identifiable where others are not.
• Provide incentives for customers to join with or refer your company
• Have joint ventures and partnerships with outside businesses that provide useful related services to your clients.
• Test your marketing strategies in small niche markets before launching a large scale campaign
• Get employee input to get valuable ideas before putting the advertisement out.
• Promote what you’re willing to do for your customers. Make yourself the obvious choice.
• Have specific goals for your marketing targets. Put your ads out there and see what happens. Stir up natural curiosity about your company and its products/services. Figuratively, show all the cards you have so that the client can make a purchasing decision without meeting you. Demonstrate why your service is the best.
• Continually commit time and effort to successful marketing.
• Provide a thank you to past customers. It is word of mouth marketing gold.

Don’t

• List all 250 products/services you offer.
• Design your ad so that they must see the whole ad to fully understand the offer
• Advertise using only the same mediums that everyone else uses.
• Make your marketing try and appeal to everyone at once (i.e. jack of all trades, master of none)
• Have fine print or subject to clauses. This only works for corporations like utility companies that have minimal competition in the marketplace
• Advertise only during the slow periods of your business.
• Look to everyone else for what they do. Most businesses are terrible at marketing, are you going to copy that?
• Provide negative consequences for customers to leave your business
• Take on the world yourself by not leveraging your time with other established businesses.
• Spend your advertising budget on something big before testing it to see that it even works.
• Decide you know what’s best and don’t consider other sources of input
• Slander the competition as a means to provide an alternative. Politicians do this and none of them are perceived to be any good. This is not coincidence
• State that your product is the best without demonstrating it. Which will come across as insincere.
• try it a few times and see if you get a response. If you don’t, quit and don’t re-evaluate.
• Forget to market to your already existing customer database.

If you’re going to be the marketing leader in your field, you’re going to have to stop copying what everyone else does because most businesses don’t correctly comprehend marketing. Instead, look to their ideas to further build on them. It’s going to take consistent effort in the beginning to build a strong marketing campaign.

However, when it’s all said and done, you’ll have an automated stream of steady business that does not take your active participation. The concept of a successful business and successful marketing simply must co-exist.

Develop some marketing goals and find a way to hit those targets. Remember, this is meant as a guide to build on not the 10 commandments of advertising. Grab the good ideas and build on them. Real life works when you make your own marketing objectives and you set the guidelines.

If you’re willing to become a master at marketing, your success in your real estate business is inevitable.