How to Create a Real Estate Marketing System That Delivers Leads

Having a marketing system is key to your success. It’s not just to make your brand stand out. It’s not just to do what everyone else is doing. A powerful real estate marketing system becomes a business tool, allowing you to drive leads and boost sales from all marketing channels.

It should be your number one weapon to cut through the noise and rise above your competitors. For example, 53 percent of agents said social media was one of their most powerful technology tools, third only to eSignature tools and local MLS apps.

However, social media is only one part of your marketing system—email, referrals, and your website and blog are all powerful marketing tools that are part of your system and that you can use to build your business.

If you have big goals, you can’t ignore marketing any longer. Use these tips and strategies to create a real estate marketing system that delivers leads and sales for your business.

Keep Reading: 5 Ways an eNewsletter Can Help Your Real Estate Business

Start With Your Ideal Client

The first step to creating a powerful marketing system is to know who you’re trying to market to. You must be as specific as possible when it comes to knowing who your ideal client actually is. To get a clear understanding of that person, ask yourself these questions:

How old is my ideal client?
Is my ideal client a female, a male, or is it both?
Where is my ideal client located?
How much does my ideal client make?
What is my ideal client interested in?
What are my ideal client’s motives?
What are the pain points of my ideal client?

Once you have an answer to all of those questions, you can create a profile for your ideal client. For example, perhaps it’s a female in her late 30’s, located in the greater San Francisco area. She loves going to the park with her dogs, working at a job she loves, and spending time with her friends. Her goal is to buy her first house but she’s not sure where to start, so she needs honesty, guidance, and support.

Writing blog content or social media posts is so much easier when you know this. You can tailor everything you do to speak to that ideal audience, which in turn, drives leads..

Focus On the Right Channel and Content

After determining your ideal client, you can decide which channel is best suited to reach them. For example, data shows that only 40 percent of adults over 65 use social media. So if you’re marketing to seniors and retirees, social media is probably not a primary channel for you to focus on.

If your ideal client is part of the 18 to 49 age group that heavily uses social media, social media would be a great channel. For example, adults under 30 use Instagram, Snapchat, and Tiktok the most.

While you don’t need to ignore other platforms, you do need to put your focus and efforts on the channels that will be most effective to drive leads. For example, you may send four marketing emails each month and only post on social media two times per week because email marketing is a better way to reach your ideal client.

Don’t forget to focus on the content that works best. Should you be doing videos? Do you need better images of your listings? Determine the content that you need to reach that ideal client so you can add value, build trust, and then turn them into a lead.

Set Your Goals

How do you know your marketing system is working if you don’t set goals? You don’t. That’s why it’s critical to get clear on the ideal outcome of your marketing before you get started.

When setting goals, remember to be clear and specific so you can actually track the success of your marketing efforts. For example, “get new clients” wouldn’t be a good goal. How many new clients? When do you want to get them by? Which platform will they come from?

Better goals would be:

Drive 5 leads from Instagram next quarter
Earn 1 new client from email marketing this month
Increase website traffic to 500 visits by EOY

With specific goals like this, you can easily track whether you were successful or not. You also give yourself a roadmap to work from. If you know that you want to get five leads from Instagram, you can then decide what you need to do to make that happen.

Perhaps you then make a plan to do two Instagram lives, post three times each week, and follow up with three people you spoke with last month.

Keep Reading: How to Get 10 Listings in 30 Days

Keep It Consistent

Marketing is not a set it and forget it process. Your lead flow won’t skyrocket just a couple of days after creating your social media pages. The key is consistency. You may not be getting a lot of engagement and following at first, but if you appeal to your ideal client, all you need is time.

Think about consistency in two ways:

Frequency: You need to post, share and email consistently to stay top of mind and remind your ideal clients that you’re there for them. This helps build credibility and reliability, which makes your brand more memorable. Ideally, when it comes time to hire an agent, the people in your funnel and on your social media will think of you.
Brand: You need to maintain consistency between the content you post and your brand identity. If the content on your social media is totally different from what’s on your website, potential clients will be confused. Why is she saying this here and that there? This leads to lack of trust.

Put It Into a Marketing System

When you know who you’re talking to, the right platforms and content you need to focus on, and the goals you want to achieve, you can create a marketing system that works for you. To create your system, focus on what, when, where, and how:

What you share. Videos? Images?
Where you share it. Which platforms and channels?
When you share it. For example, you post on Instagram on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday and send an email marketing campaign every Sunday.
How you create the content and when it gets done. For example, on Sunday afternoons you create content for the week.

Finally, check in at the end of the month to answer the question: Is it working? Use monthly reporting to check back on the goals you set and leads earned.

Get Your System Right

Use these steps to create a marketing system that works for you and helps you earn more leads. The goal is to create a system that works for your audience and your schedule. Finally, don’t forget to keep at it. This will take time, but a strong foundation will continue driving leads if you stick with it.