How to Write a Real Estate Marketing Plan (More sales!)

If you are looking for a real estate marketing plan, you have come to the right place.

Like in any business, you should have a real estate marketing plan for your real estate business.

How to write a real estate marketing plan
A real estate marketing plan is the structure for your marketing activities, including your customer demographics, budget and calendar. Your plan is composed of the marketing mix; property, place, price, promotion.

In this brief tutorial we teach you how to write a real estate marketing plan.

How to write your real estate marketing plan

A detailed marketing plan should outline your marketing plans, sales goals and objectives, budget, target audience, and other business strategies.

The plan reinforces your unique value proposition and will help you identify actions that other real estate agents in the market haven’t realized.

Essentially, your real estate marketing plan should outline the following;

• Tools and messages to reach your audience
• Your business goals and objectives and how to achieve them
• How to serve your clients
• How to evaluate your marketing campaign

The success of your real estate business heavily relies on having the right marketing strategy and a marketing plan. Simply put, your real estate marketing plan answers “the how,” while a strategy answers “the why” to a marketing campaign. 

Let's now build your real estate marketing mix.

The 4 P’s of Marketing in Real Estate

Unlike before, the real estate market is currently very fragmented.

Current consumers have specific needs, making it necessary for agents to have unique strategies for fulfilling them. Without a superior marketing strategy for finding new clients, you will find it hard to find buyers. That said, below are the 4 Ps in real estate marketing that can give you a clear competitive edge.

1. Product in your real estate marketing plan

The product in the real estate business is more than the physical building or property. It is the specific characteristics that make the property appealing to potential buyers. Once you understand what makes the property unique, you can easily identify your ideal buyer. For instance, does the house have a perfect oceanfront view? Does it have a pool? Is it an ideal rental? Does it appeal to professionals? Students? Families? What other features differentiate it from other properties on the market?

While you should cater to many customers to succeed, you should be ready for tradeoffs. This means that you should identify your niche and serve the specific clientele. For instance, if you choose to focus on high-end properties, list the most premium houses on the market.

2. Price in your real estate marketing plan

Pricing your real estate listings optimally is very important, especially if you want the property to sell timely. Obviously, an overpriced property won’t be attractive to potential buyers. A common mistake made by real estate agents is using psychological pricing.

While pricing your properties psychologically, such as $249.97 instead of $250, works well in retail sales, it might not work in the real estate business as you may miss on buyers looking for properties by breakpoints. For instance, if a house is worth $400,000, and you psychologically price it at $399,999, you will miss out on buyers searching for properties from $400,000.

3. Promotion in your real estate marketing plan

The third P, Promotion, is important because realtors should promote their products to potential buyers. The basics of product promotion in the real estate business is communicating the unique features of the property through multiple channels that can reach your target customers.

To succeed in this, you should use multiple options of real estate marketing. This includes open houses, promoting your listings online on your website and social media pages, search engine optimization, search engine marketing, and other alternatives. Important questions to consider when marketing your property include;

• How do competitors market their listings?
• Which options are the best to get your marketing message out? It could be online platforms, television, print media, or radio.
• When should you promote your listing?

4. Positioning or placement in your real estate marketing plan

For your listings to be viewed by a large number of prospective buyers, you should position them in the right place. Choose high-traffic areas, pay close attention to the description, and highlight unique feature properties. Key questions to ask yourself when choosing the right place include;

• Where do buyers mostly look for such products?
• How can you connect the listing to potential customers? This could be through sales teams, trade shows, or online submissions.

You should market your listing to both prospective buyers and other potential distributors, such as upcoming real estate agents.

Here's How Can You Improve Your Real Estate Sales Because of Your Real Estate Marketing Plan

The real estate market is very crowded, with more than 2 million active agents in the U.S. With all these people looking to close sales, growing your real estate business might seem impossible. Apart from working on the 4Ps mentioned above, below are additional tips to increase real estate sales.

Define your target market

The first part of your marketing plan should define your buyer persona. Identifying who your potential customers are is a practical step to success in marketing. Focusing on one type of customer is better than pitching to multiple personas, especially if you are still starting or have limited marketing budgets.

However, identifying your ideal persona requires that you conduct proper research.It’s critical that you have these three required foundational marketing items worked out:

• Know exactly who your ideal customer is. You’ve probably heard this a million times. But it's true. Do your research. Find out where they live, how much money they make, are they male or female, find out how often they buy your product or service, and how they use it, what they read, where they go online and what groups they belong to.  For strategies go here.
• If you have a base of customers already, the marketing research never stops. Learn to survey them here and find out how to create promotions to attract more great customers like them. Discover why they buy from you and even why they stopped buying. Now is a good time revisit item #1, above.  And avoid this common mistake at all costs.
• Your customer value proposition is key to creating more value and gaining more customers. Go here to polish your unique selling proposition and your customer value proposition. 

Now that these are worked out, move on to these next marketing strategies and tactics:

• Ask for referrals

Referral marketing is another effective marketing method that can boost your sales. According to an Outbound Engine Survey, approximately 75% of real estate agents’ business is from word of mouth and referrals. Therefore, focus on collecting as many referrals from previous and current customers. Effective ways of driving referrals include

• Offering gifts and rewards
• Requesting for referrals
• Give out branded marketing materials

• Make use of social media platforms

With more than 2.8 billion people using various social media platforms, you can’t ignore marketing your listings on these platforms. Fortunately, more and more people are currently actively searching for properties online. Therefore, upload high-quality images, leave interesting captions on your post, and ensure that your listings can easily be found on various sites. You can also run paid ads, live video tours and engage with your followers through likes and comments.

• Watch your competition

You shouldn’t easily get satisfied with your small accomplishments. Other real estate agents can easily outperform you. Therefore, you should always take note of their marketing tactics, promotion techniques, and any other information that can help keep you ahead of them.

Example of Zillow: How to write a real estate marketing plan

A real estate marketing plan is a strategic document that outlines the objectives, activities, and tactics to be employed in order to promote a real estate property or development.

It serves as a roadmap for the marketing team to follow in order to effectively reach the target market and generate leads.

Before crafting a real estate marketing plan, it is important to consider the property’s unique characteristics and the target market’s needs.

Research should be conducted to identify the most effective channels, such as print, digital, or broadcast media, to reach the target market. Identifying specific, measurable goals is also key.

Examples of goals may include increasing website traffic, boosting brand awareness, or increasing leads and sales.

A real estate marketing plan should include a timeline for each activity, and should outline the budget, resources, and personnel needed to carry out the plan. It should also include a detailed analysis of the competition and the competitive advantages of the property being marketed.

An example of a successful real estate marketing plan is that of Zillow Group, the parent company of Zillow, Trulia, and StreetEasy.

Zillow Group’s marketing plan focused on expanding the company’s market share in the real estate industry by leveraging their existing online presence and investing in targeted digital advertising campaigns. By utilizing an innovative combination of targeted ads, content marketing, and search engine optimization, Zillow Group managed to increase website visits, inquiries, and sales.

A well-crafted real estate marketing plan is essential to the success of a property or development.

It provides a roadmap for the marketing team to follow and helps ensure that all the necessary activities are carried out in an efficient and cost-effective manner.

The Bottom Line

While selling properties isn’t easy, thanks to the fluctuating economy, creating a detailed real estate marketing plan shouldn’t be as challenging as most people perceive.

Start by identifying your target clients, determine your business goals and vision, create a unique selling proposition, analyze your competitors, and find ways of measuring performance. And as always, if you need assistance, Your Strategic Marketing Partner is happy to help!