Tip 1: Create 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 industry expert and people need you and your knowledge to buy their first home or to sell their current home.
- 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 3 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 just sold.
Keep these articles short and sweet, 100 – 200 words is a good target. Otherwise, people will see them as too long and not even read them. If you removed the introduction, this article is 225 words and looks a little long right?
Tip 2: 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”.
Yet we all know how important it is to stay in touch with our clients and to remain at the forefront of their mind. The best way to do this is to set yourself a schedule of at least 3 touch points a week.
Use the articles in your blog as your 3 touch points.
Look at your week and pick three-time slots to publish and stick to it. You will notice our newsletter and tip series are sent at the same time on a particular day.
The best way to stick to this schedule is either use your email/digital or physical calendar and write down exactly when you will send your articles for the next month. On top of that 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 day before or the morning of sending an article.
But don’t just send this via email, post the article on your LinkedIn and Facebook page that way you get the most amount of interaction for the effort you’ve put in.
Tip 3: Use an Emailing Services and Templates
There are a couple of platforms out there that allow you to send marketing emails to a database of emails, in one go. Some of the top ones for starting out 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, personalization through tags and simple tracking and analytics.
Most importantly they aid in making sure your emails don’t end up as spam. This happens 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 offer support via email, live chat and a knowledge database of videos and how-to-does to get you started.
Tip 4: Creating an email database
You’d already have a list of buyers, sellers or people who have attended your open home. 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 set up you can segment these contacts and, for example, send buyers one email and sellers another, each with specific contact relevant to them.
To further build this list, continually add contacts you encounter, create a form on your website for subscribers, add a share button to emails and a link on social media posts to this form.
Tip 5: 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 is important 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 a good 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.
It’s the difference between “Let’s eat grandma!” and “Let’s eat, grandma!”. Punctuation saves lives!