The best way to start your marketing strategy is to keep it simple and from there you can build on it to create something truly unique to you that sets you apart from your competition.
This article will go through 8 basic steps for you to organise, create and launch your marketing strategy.
Well, we listened, and I am here to give you some tips on marketing basics. While there are so many areas to dive into from scheduling to aesthetics, I’ll pick my top 5 that tend to be overlooked.
1. Organise your database
Depending on how your agency has been set up you should get constant leads or contact form submissions to you either from your agencies site or property sites such as Realestate.com.au or Domain.
Take these leads and then add it to your existing list of buyers, sellers or open home attendees. Use these contacts to start your mail list and sort them by first name, last name, partner’s first name, partner’s last name, email, phone number and lastly allocate these contacts a tag (potential buyer, seller, etc.).
With this setup, you can then start segment these contacts and creating separate lists of your buyers and sellers for a later step. While some of your sellers might also be buyers, its best to have these into people in your seller’s list, after all, you want them to get them to sell. For those who are feeling adventurous, separate these segments further into Potential Tenants, Tenants, First Home Buyer, Next Home Buyer and Investor as each can reach unique messaging and content.
2. Creating A Blog
There are 100 ways blogs can be beneficial to you and your business.
- An active website that is regularly updated ranks higher on Google.
- It demonstrates that you are a real estate expert and that people should trust you as an authority on the subject.
- It keeps you active and continually learning. By researching and writing you will gain more knowledge about the real estate industry, therefore making you a better real estate agent
There are more, but those three should have convinced you.
Now your blog can consist of a variety of posts, from industry related articles to updates on your listings. It can be anything you see can as useful to your current and prospective clients. Some examples can be your city’s hottest suburbs for investment properties, a list of must-haves for first buyers or a property you have just listed, or sold.
In an email you want to grab the viewers attention so keep the article segment short and sweet but highlighting the essential parts in 100 – 200 words. The blog on your website can vary in length, and you will be hard pressed to go into enough detail to explain the topic in with less than 500 words.
3. Segmented content
In step 1 we created separate lists of buyers and sellers so that we could send them different messages and content. Buyers and sellers require different content, and if you broke your lists down further, then you can get even more relevant content to your database.
The more specific the content, the more your contacts will engage, they will soon see you as an authority in real estate, which will lead to them trusting you and eventually popping the question of “will you sell my home”.
4. Correct Grammar and Punctuation
As a result of the growth of social media and digital communication, we now primarily communicate via written messages. Which now means there is an increased need for proficient writing skills to attract and keep readers.
Not only this but using proper grammar and punctuation secures the authority mentioned in our previous point you worked hard to achieve as it reflects on the writer and the business he/she is representing. You want to make sure you come across as a professional, and any new reader needs to have an excellent first impression of you.
As for return readers, they are more likely to trust some who continually communicates clearly and correctly. You don’t want to create confusion and leave your audience guessing what you are trying to say due to grammatical mistakes.
5. Schedule your marketing
While people schedule their day, it’s rare we schedule our marketing the same way. Instead, we tend to say “it will be sent sometime this week” and often enough that becomes “it will be sent sometime next week”.
We all know how important it is to stay in touch with our vendors and potential clients and to remain at the forefront of their mind. Having a successful blog is no different, and you should schedule 2 blogs a week. The more blogs you do, the better, but with that, you want to make sure your prospecting time isn’t suffering.
Look at your week and pick two-time slots to publish and stick to it. People like to follow people who are consistent and communicate regularly.
The best way to stick to this schedule is to use your digital or physical calendar and write down exactly when and what topics you will send for the next month. Schedule reminders to write your content, I write mine every fortnight that way it is relevant, and I am not rushing to write the content the day before or the morning of sending an article.
6. Use Emailing Services and Templates
There are a couple of platforms out there that allow you to send marketing emails to the database we created in step 1, in one go. Some of the top ones for starting are MailChimp, Campaign Monitor and Active Campaign.
Using one of these services is essential for anyone serious about their marketing. They allow you to manage your mailing list, create good looking emails through their email creators, add personalisation through tags and simple tracking and analytics.
Most importantly they aid in making sure your emails don’t end up as spam. Becoming flagged as spam occurs when you repeatedly send bulk emails from your yahoo, google and outlook accounts. You could then have your email address shut down by your email or internet service provider for spamming practices.
As you can guess, that would be bad for business.
I would suggest getting started with MailChimp as they offer a free plan that allows you to send 12,000 to 2,000 subscribers in a month. They provide support via email, live chat and a knowledge database of videos and how-to-does to get you started.
7. Using Social Media
Email is not the only form of communication. Social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook and Instagram can extend the range of your reach. Each has its own advertising platform and unique strategies and tone, LinkedIn focusing on professional content and networking while Instagram has a more personal, behind the curtains feel to its content.
If you are finding specific posts are working better than others, consider boosting them and creating similar style posts in the future and boosting those as well. Try testing with audiences, demographics and behaviours to see which produces the best results.
Similar to email, there are a variety of different platforms and tools to make posting easier such as Hootsuite, Buffer and Sendible to name a few.
8. Result driven marketing
Now that you have published your blogs, sent them via email, posted them on your socials you will then have to gauge the results. There is no reason to continue a task for the sake of doing it. You want to spend time on tasks that produce results.
Keep track of the subject line, email content, audience delivered to, opens, clicks (in particular the clicks per open), conversions, unsubscribes and complaints. Here are some common pairs and what they mean.
- High opens, low clicks = your subject line is excellent, however your content is irrelevant or lacks a compelling call to action
- Low opens, high clicks = Your subject line wasn’t eye-catching enough, however the content itself was perfect
- High clicks, low conversion = While your email is excellent, wherever your button is taking them to isn’t engaging them to go further.
- Unsubscribes or complaints = Usually means your content is either spamming, irrelevant or offensive in some way.
To make the most of your emails try a/b testing. Test out two different subject lines to find out which generates the most opens. Alternatively, change a section of your email, call to action or layout to see which produces the most clicks.
No marketing method is proven 100% effective. Every audience is different, and each platform can play a part in generating results. Marketing is all about trial and error, continue to develop and a/b test your content and strategies to find what has the best cost per conversion. Even then tactics that didn’t work six months ago could all of a sudden work tomorrow.
Once you find the strategies that work for you don’t forget to up your budget. If something has consistently returned you $2 after spending $1, then see if spending $10 gets you $20.