Real Estate Marketing Guide for 2021 (part 2)
PART 2: Outsourcing & Technology
Marketing automation tools
Doing your best to close sales and satisfy customers, and at the same time try to juggle marketing efforts to generate more leads can often feel overwhelming.
Add to that planning out your marketing; creating large numbers of emails, campaigns, social media posts, and all the other content that you need to keep in touch with your clients, and quickly this becomes a time-management & productivity problem.
This is where marketing automation tools come in.
Using certain tools can save you time and help you keep in touch with your clients through email, social media, text, and more. Some of these tools will even integrate with the CRM software you’re already using to follow your clients’ journeys.
Choosing the right tool for you or your agency mainly depends on the price, ease-of-use, features, and integrations.
Let’s first see what’s your need.
Do you need a real estate company to leverage marketing? What are your needs?
1. SCENARIO #1
In the last few years, you were able to achieve growth for your business, and you increased its revenue and size. You feel good, but in the last few months, you feel like you stumbled upon a plateau, maybe even a slight decline. You want to go back into growth mode and keep scaling like but not really sure how.
Solution: As the person in charge, whether you’re a solopreneur or the head of a brokerage, you want to hire someone who can do your marketing for you. It could be an in-house person, an employee, or an outside hire, a contractor -- like a consultant.
2. SCENARIO #2
Your real estate business/career has grown steadily or even rapidly since starting up, and you have been doing everything marketing related so far. You also learned a lot about marketing in the process, like how to create social media campaigns, flyers, and even wrote a blog… but your marketing skills still hold you back, as it's not your main profession. If you’d have the time or will - you learn video editing and copywriting. But your time is limited and precious.
Solution: Hiring a real estate marketing agency will provide you with a professional team but can turn out to be very expensive, as you’re not just paying them for the services, but also for their employees, and for the rent of their fancy offices. A consultant can collaborate with you to create and execute a new marketing strategy that will give your brand the boost that it needs just as well.
3. SCENARIO #3
You’re an absolute green rookie to the real estate competition field, and you’re also aware of how ferocious it can get out there. You have no idea what you actually need to do in order to succeed out there, and you don’t really have the funds for a full-on marketing service to help you right now and want to focus on sales to make money - rather than learn marketing after you just finished learning real estate.
Solution: The cheapest bang for your buck is organic traffic that would yield results in the long term, and it’s mainly around SEO. You can write lots of content yourself, or hire a content strategist and/or content creator to help you with it while you hustle sales in the first 12 months. Then, a lead generation system would start kicking in, seeing the results of the SEO game coming to fruition.
What to look for in a consultant
When you’re searching for a marketing agency/consultant to partner with, there are several things that you want to consider before hiring.
1. VISION
The person or firm hired to support your vision must have the will and mindset to help you achieve it. You can’t have a $10 an hour consultant and expect him to understand your $1,000,000 dollars vision. This person/firm is going to create strategies that impact your brand and business, so you want to make sure they’re on the same page as you.
2. SERVICES & SKILLS
Before asking for outsourced help, you should see what areas you master, what areas you lack knowledge in, and what areas you don’t have time to develop and/or execute in. This could be done with your team, or self-reflection & analysis if done alone. Discuss which services your brand would benefit from and which skills your team needs help with. Once you’ve created a list of the services and skills most beneficial to you, look for a consultant that specializes in those areas.
3. GOOD FIT
Often overlooked, this crucial part will make or break your relationship with the agency or consultant you chose. It is vital you and who you pick to do your marketing for you have similar values, work ethic, and even culture. It is likely you will spend a lot of time together in the next year over the phone, zoom, and over email. A strained relationship not only will add tension to an already packed plate but will damage your ultimate results and goals.
4. FLEXIBILITY
The world is moving fast in general, and the real estate space specifically is changing constantly. The recent pandemic caused many showings to be completely online, and for 3D & 360 tours to take front stage. You want your marketing choice to be as adaptive as you, if not more.
5. EXPERIENCE
After you’ve discussed with your team (or wrote down for yourself) which services and skills you require from an agency/consultant, look at their past work. Does their portfolio show that they’ve exercised the skills and services you need? Actions speak louder than words, so pay close attention to the creative output and results they’ve achieved in the past. Not that the more experienced they will be, the more they will charge.
Onboarding the right consultant/agency is crucial, so if something feels off, make sure you ask enough questions to determine if it’s the right pick prior to signing with them. If you end up making the wrong choice, it would hold you back. Making the right one can propel you vastly.
Now let’s talk about tools that you can use to automate some of your daily attempts at marketing.
Real estate software for advertising & automating processes
Organizing advertising campaigns with your team takes tremendous effort. These softwares are designed to make that process easier and help you create incredible advertising. Each software offers different features that make each one unique.
Takes care of all the paperwork your agents have to handle during the buying process. It’s quick & easy, and it makes storing and searching through all that paperwork simple.
An online project management program that will help your agents collaborate closer to their real estate projects. You can assign tasks to your team members and watch their progress.
A messaging service that makes communicating with your agents a breeze, because everyone is connected across all of their devices.
Helps turn your phone into a video production agency. People want to see videos of the properties and areas they’re shopping. Create beautiful and professional-looking videos with this app to offer your clients a visual experience.
A 3D visualization tool that empowers you to create three-dimensional tours of the homes you’re selling. This will give buyers both near and far the opportunity to get to know the property before going inside.
A tool designed for beginner and intermediate real estate agents. This investment tool helps users find, fund, and sell properties and manage other real estate tasks.
A brand templating platform. You can design branded templates for professional-looking flyers, brochures, postcards, and any other marketing content your agents need. The lockable templates protect your brand from rogue designers and make sharing easy between listing coordinators and agents.
a powerful but complex design tool preferred by most professional graphic designers today. If you’re proficient with Photoshop, you can edit photos with a deep level of control and a wide variety of techniques.
Promotes your website with digital ads that pop up whenever potential buyers are searching for services similar to yours. It’s a great way to quickly boost traffic to your site and raise brand awareness.
Now, let’s talk a little bit about the future of the real estate.
While I can’t predict the future, and I don’t hold a crystal ball around, I do research both the finance and real estate markets relentlessly, and I do like to think outside the box.
Future of real estate technology
I know how sometimes it seems utterly impossibly to keep up with world trends, changing economies, and daily overdose of news.
Our world resembles one of the matrix movies more each day with AI advancements, tickets to space, facial recognition, and self-driving cars.
So, which technologies are already driving change in the real estate industry?
Cryptocurrency
Has already infiltrated the real estate industry, as more and more properties are being purchased with cryptocurrencies, and property records are being secured in blockchains.
Some of the most forward-thinking real estate brokerages are already working with cryptocurrencies and have been impressed with the ease and safety of the transactions.
Artificial intelligence
(AI) has been a hot topic this year, and many people are panicking about how AI will change the workforce.
Although AI is being used to advertise the right homes to the right people right now, most people would still rather have a personal relationship with their agent. You can take advantage of this by effectively combining your outreach with AI; for example, by using chatbots.
Chatbots can gather information from clients before they speak with you or your agents. The agent is more informed in less time, and the clients get faster better service.
Facial recognition technology
is not just for securing your phone or creating talking emojis.
This new technology can also be used in property management. A property rental company in China has implemented facial recognition in their security systems. Tenants, employees, agents, and security staff are all given access to the buildings with their faces instead of keys. Not only is this more secure for the property, but it’s also more convenient for tenants. (Yes, a bit creepy, I admit).
When you hear about technological developments in the real estate industry, don’t panic.
Throughout history, we have seen industries evolve with technology that makes work easier and more efficient for both sellers and buyers. Stay up to date on the latest changes, and be ready to adapt the best innovations. Better yet, have someone you trust to do it with you, or for you.
Next, we talk about Branding for your business. Click here to read part 3 of the guide. (coming soon)