A marketing plan is an advertising strategy that can help sell a service. A real estate agent needs a marketing plan to help recruit new clients and keep past and current clients knowledgeable about changes in the real estate industry.
In 1960, E. Jerome McCarthy simplified four ways to start a marketing plan. The original four areas in creating a marketing plan were People, Place, Price and Promotion. Later in 1981, Professors Bernard Booms and Mary Jo Bitner updated the original 4 P’s with an additional three words – Place, Packaging, and Positioning.
Product
Product is what you sell. A real estate agent would need to show real estate listings and reviews as a way to solicit new clients, manage current clients and promote themselves to future clients. A website can be a great place to show direct people who are interested in real estate. In addition, a website can be used for communication and referrals for a real estate agent.
Person
A person refers to who the target clients are. The agent may prefer to work with first-time home buyers, sellers, investors, or renters. As part of the marketing plan, it is important to decide how the client will be contacted.
Options for client contact include a phone call, text, or email to schedule a meeting to discuss the client’s needs and how the real estate agent can best meet the needs. Taking time to show clients potential properties to buy or invest in is a great way to establish a good rapport with your client and gain their trust as a good agent. These face-to-face meetings allow you to spend valuable time with the client, ask questions, and allow the client to express their needs and wants regarding real estate, which will help you as their agent to fine tune your service to them.
How about alerts? Do you provide a service to alert your clients of newly listed properties? Sometimes, a very short period of time is the difference between a sale or an opportunity missed. Make sure you are giving your client the best opportunity to succeed.
As a real estate agent, the most important way to increase your business is by gaining referrals from current and previous clients. Providing good communication and effective service to your clients will generate more referrals and help expand your clientele.
Plan
A real estate marketing plan should also include price and place. Price refers to the cost for the service and place is where the service is located. Being aware of competitors is also important. Most real-estate agents work on commission. How do your commission rates compare to your competitors? Do you have flexibility to adjust your rates for repeat clients who may be investors purchasing multiple properties? How about with first-time home buyers? Buying a home for the first time is, for some, overwhelming. Providing even a slight discount on commission to a first-time home buyer can provide some relief and will be sure to generate a referral or two.
The services that are provided are valuable and the pricing should reflect that. When comparing pricing, make sure to include features that separate you from others, like being available 24/7 to your clients to help close a deal, and also surrounding yourself with knowledgeable people to keep your clients informed of changes to the market or changes to their property.
Promotion
The most important item to include in a real estate marketing plan is promotion. Promotion includes blogs, videos, and social media. The public needs to be informed of the services provided to see if it meets their needs. Real estate agents utilize brochures, email marketing, flyers and brochures. What sets yours apart from the competition?
A newer form of marketing can utilize social media content to highlight properties available to rent or purchase with photographs and drone footage to attract buyers. The real estate agent’s marketing plan can provide a link from the digital media to a personal website as a great way to stimulate interest and promote a brand.
These digital referrals can be extremely valuable. Tracking your promotions is an important part of creating a real estate marketing plan as well to ensure success with each promotion so that goals can be revised as necessary.
Additional Tools
Another tool to help in planning a real estate agent’s marketing plan would be to use a SWOT analysis. This marketing plan is an acronym for Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunity and Threats.
Strengths are areas of the business that are going well, where weaknesses can create a disadvantage in a marketing campaign. Be humble enough and willing to improve your service enough to ask clients to complete a quick, electronic feedback form. Use this feedback to identify strengths and weaknesses that you may not be aware of.
Opportunity and threats can be out of the control of the business, however, they are still an important piece of information not to ignore when trying to increase the success of the business. What are you doing to keep yourself informed of changes in your local market? Is there a large business moving their operations to the area? That will draw additional workers who will need housing. Is there an increase in crime in a particular area? Be sure to steer your clients to safe, growing areas. Stay up-to-date to help your clients choose the perfect location.
Once the marketing goals have been identified, they can be executed and adjusted as needed. There can be multiple outcomes from the SWOT analysis. The SWOT analysis is a guide to help with the real estate agent’s marketing plan and it is recommended to revisit the analysis frequently to stay relevant on new threats and opportunities as well as re-evaluate to make a smart marketing plan.
Finally, while developing a marketing plan for business, it is important to consider the overall vision for the real estate agent. It is recommended to set realistic and achievable goals. Focus on the vision for the business with overall goals in these areas – business, strategic, tactical. Business goals are centered around growth, financials, employee development and customers. Strategic goals are specific and measurable objectives. Profitability objectives, market share objectives, promotional objectives and growth objectives can help create a sustainable advantage in the real estate market. Tactical goals include analyzing the goal, researching the goal, and lastly reviewing and revising the goals as needed.
Conclusion
A solid real estate marketing plan begins with a product and that is best showcased through a website. Utilizing The Whit Group’s experience and knowledge in web design and SEO services is a real estate agent’s first step towards a successful marketing plan.