General Business Tweaks

1. Optimize your “about me” page

Every page on your real estate website should include a call to action, and that includes one you might have neglected because it’s “not that important.”

If you’re not happy with your current headshot, then find a photographer who can take one you like and upload it. Write the story of how you got into real estate and share what you love about it.

Then invite your visitor to take some kind of action, whether that’s sign up for a newsletter or follow you on Facebook.

2. Install browser extensions

Many web browsers offer customizable “extras” these days, from tools that can capture an entire browser window in one image to project-management software add-ons. There are grammar-checkers, article-savers and even tools that will help you schedule emails in advance.

Make an audit of your current marketing strategy and start finding plugins based on your biggest pain points.

3. Order one-of-a-kind business cards

From fabric to metal to cards that fold into miniature pieces of furniture, there’s a lot happening on the business card front.

You don’t need to go crazy — perhaps you just want to experiment with a square card instead of the old faithful rectangle — but consider at least adding some foil or a bit of texture to your real estate business card.

4. Spice up your signature link

Just as your website should invite visitors to contact you, so should your email address invite recipients to take an action (join your mailing list, perhaps). Better yet, include a link to some kind of bonus material — a checklist or a guide they can’t find anywhere else — in exchange for their sign-up.

5. Automate content sourcing and marketing

When you’ve got buyers and sellers alike breathing down your neck, one of the first things to fall by the wayside is your content marketing plan. But come the less intense fall and winter months, and you’ll be sorry (again) that you let it slip.

If you have a decent content marketing plan but haven’t figured out automation yet, that could be a turning point for your business. It will allow you to regularly publish high-interest content no matter how busy you get.

Email Ideas

6. Revamp your email strategy

Perhaps you’ve got no email strategy to speak of, and if not, that’s step one: Start collecting addresses and sending people valuable information — and you’ll probably need some kind of real estate CRM to keep track of it all.

If you’re already doing that, then it’s time to figure out where you need to level up. Have you segmented your list yet, and are there further segments you could explore? Are you getting equal response from all your list segments? Figure out where you’re falling short and shore it up.

7. Grow your email list

You can have the most amazing real estate drip email campaign ever crafted, but if your list is minuscule, it won’t matter.

One high-return option: Create a valuable resource for the people you hope to add to your list (infographics, checklists, guides and short ebooks can work well — more on that later) and then create a landing page that gives visitors access to the resource in exchange for their contact information.

 

You can use the signature link trick above or try another tactic — guest posting on another website, a Facebook promotion — to drive traffic to the landing page.

8. Use gifs in email

Gif files were created in 1987 (really!) and yet people still haven’t tired of snarky video snippets overlaid with text 30 years later, so why not take advantage of technology to sneak a gif or two into a newsletter or just an email exchange?

Social Media Tactics

9. Experiment with Hyperlapse on Instagram

Did you know you can create time-lapse videos on Instagram? Install the app and see if this doesn’t solve all your Instagram listing-video woes.

10. Boost your Facebook posts

There’s a ton you can do with Facebook advertising, but to start with, try boosting one of your posts. We’d suggest something other than a listing or open house post (though those are always options) — this would be an excellent tactic to use in conjunction with growing your email list

11. Create a SlideShare presentation

SlideShare is a web hosting service for presentations that’s owned by LinkedIn. You can share presentations on anything; you might consider loading up a market report or an explanatory presentation on appraisals or homeowners’ insurance. You never know what prospects might be looking up, so experiment — a presentation about what a newcomer to your area should know, maybe?

12. Capitalize on memes

If you’ve found success with your gif experiments, then you could be a strong candidate for creating real estate memes that get shared around the country. Whether you’re targeting real estate agents or buyers, sellers or investors, a skilled meme-maker can create something that resonates for weeks.

Video and Photo Star Power

13. Rejuvenate your video marketing

When so many real estate videos are essentially just a slide show of images set to music, it’s really not hard to make something that sets your listing apart. Create a vignette of your sellers setting off for the day or coming home from work, or follow their dog through the house with a drone.

You can always hire out the creativity, but you don’t necessarily need to spend a lot of money to make a video that people will remember.

14. Film an explainer video about your agency

Do you have a one-of-a-kind office downtown, or is your team fully remote? Tell your clients who you are with an explainer video that outlines the key players in your business, what each of you do, how you work and what it’s like.

Don’t be afraid to think outside the box and get weird. Better a little strange than outright boring!

15. Put your pet in your listing photos

Every real estate photo is better with an animal; it’s just a fact. If your clients are OK with it, consider making your pet a signature part of your listing photos — either in just one or in several or even all of them.

This tactic has the advantage of potentially making your pet semi-famous in your area if he or she appears in several listings’ worth of photos. You might be pleasantly surprised by how often you get stopped in the street by fans!

16. Create a how-to or question-and-answer webinar

Maybe it’s “how to maximize your listing ROI” or perhaps you’re seeking sellers and want to run a Q-and-A with a local appraiser who can talk about the reality of home values in your area.

Whatever the case, a webinar can be a high-return way to showcase your value. Hype it up on social media and via your mailing list beforehand, and you should also ask attendees to register so you’re capturing their contact information.

Killer Content Options

17. Graphs, guides, charts and maps

Visually interesting graphics that explain the home sales process or your city through a clear, compelling layout are highly shareable. Put together a chart every month that explains how the change in mortgage interest rates has actually affected the average mortgage payment, or start creating infographics about how a home’s value is appraised.

If you start sharing your creations regularly on social media, you’ll very likely start seeing more followers and more action on your other posts, too.

18. Publish a local market quiz

This is an excellent option for agents or teams who have been active in an area for years — many of your clients and colleagues might be newer to the area, so this is a chance to show off your skills.

Create a quiz about your local area. Make it as difficult or as easy as you like, and make sure you tag any local businesses you’re referencing, too; then publish a selection of the results on your website and share them on social media.

19. Create a survey and publish the results

A survey is a quiz’s more serious older sibling. Instead of testing respondents on local trivia, you’ll be asking them demographic, income and possibly opinion questions to try to get a feel for who lives in your neighborhood.

If you get a high enough response rate and are scientific about analyzing the results, it might even be possible to get local news media interested in your survey results. Leave at least one field open for comments — you’ll probably get a wealth of content ideas from it.

20. Write a blog post about area restaurants and entertainment

There’s one long street in Denver that has the best Vietnamese and Mexican food in the city — but there are so many restaurants right next to each other that it’s nearly impossible for a newbie to pick a top eatery out of the crowd.

Your audience probably wants similar information, so share it with them, whether it’s the best kid-friendly spots for barbecue or a full list of every single place you can sit down for a bite in your area.

And if restaurants are overdone, then think dog parks, hiking trails, theaters or skeet-shooting ranges.

21. Devise a game to accompany awards shows or other events

If you’re a movie, music, pop culture or a political buff, this might be something to try: When the Oscars, Grammys, a Presidential candidate debate or another big event is taking place, turn it into a game.

You can award points for every time a starlet cries or a candidate slams a fist on a podium. Lay out the game rules in a PDF that’s branded with your information and offer it as a free download to fellow fans of the game target.

22. Create a resource guide

When a parent is looking for information about schools for the oldest child in the family, or a recent college graduate is wondering how to start saving up to buy a home, they typically turn to the internet for answers.

You could be on the other end of that search if you offered a guide for them. Local-specific guides are especially powerful for showcasing how well you know your sales area, but more general guides on refinancing or preparing a home for inspection are also good ways to showcase your knowledge.

23. Answer questions for buyers/sellers and homeowners on Reddit or Quora

Two underused but popular social media platforms are Reddit and Quora; Reddit has been around for a long time, and Quora is relatively new.

They serve very different purposes. On Reddit, you’ll want to find the group or “subreddit” that best applies to you — maybe it’s about real estate or homeownership or it’s an area-specific subreddit — and on Quora, you’ll want to subscribe to relevant topics.

The key to success on both is to provide valuable information without outright asking for referrals or in any other way behaving like a salesperson. Answer questions thoughtfully and thoroughly, and feel free to let your own sense of humor and personality shine through — both sites’ participants appreciate that.

24. Start a podcast

This does not have to be a real estate-specific podcast — in fact, you’ll most likely get more listeners if you decide to focus your podcast on educating them about something local. Maybe that’s microbreweries in your city, or perhaps the best restaurants in town. Whatever the case, publish consistently (at least twice a month) and offer fans an avenue to suggest future podcast topics.

25. Host a contest

This could be a listing-specific contest — a “golden ticket” that buyers can find in one of five high-end open houses, perhaps? — or something with a wider range. You could ask kids at the local elementary school to design pages for a calendar, try something similar with adults and photography or maybe offer a prize for the person who best expresses local pride in a specific way, such as the best recipe for green chiles.

If this sounds like a lot, consider sponsoring a race or a contest at your local city or county fair as a jumping-off point — but creating a contest that locals are fighting to win can only help your brand, so you should seriously consider staking that claim on the neighborhood delicacy if no one else has done it yet!

If your real estate marketing plan has fallen flat since January, then there’s no time like the present to get back on track.

Start by giving your current real estate marketing strategy a full and honest audit. Ask yourself how many of your resources are being dedicated to your email, social media, video and photo, content creation and general marketing maintenance plans.

If you’re loading up on email but neglecting social media and video/photo marketing, pick a few items from those lists to implement. Focus on the parts of your plan that are the most heavily neglected and then move on to the next, considering how you can leverage your content in your email and your videos and photos in your social media all the while.

Do this consistently throughout the year — reassessing your strategy once every couple of months and focusing on the neglected marketing stepchildren to revive it — and you’ll have a real estate marketing plan that’s the envy of your competitors.