A Full Slate of Marketing Tools for Real Estate Agents
by Josh Biggs in Marketing on 17th September 2020You are only as efficient as the tools you use, and that is particularly important when it comes to real estate marketing. Here are some apps you should consider, if you haven’t already, to make the most of your time and give you the best chance at success.
Zillow Premier Agent App
An app created specifically for real estate agents by one of the most successful, well-established real estate platforms on the Internet? You know you need whatever it’s offering. You are already using your phone as a constant business tool, this app will turbocharge its usefulness by keeping your relationships engaged and moving forward in a streamlined manner.
It will alert you the very instant you get a lead, so you can follow up no matter where you are. The My Agent feature will only show you, instead of a list of buyer’s agents, whenever clients look at property listings on Trulia or Zillow. That feature, all by itself, is worth its weight in gold. But the app will also make a significant impact on your time management efforts.
You can set reminders, update lead status, create tasks, and add notes to make for the most efficient and effective follow-ups. But the real powerhouse is the Premier Agent CRM feature. Not only do you have contact information and notes on your clients, but also data on the homes they’ve searched for, viewed and saved on Zillow and Trulia. You can then text recommendations and information to them directly from the app.
Visual platforms are made for real estate marketing, and Instagram is one of the most popular on the planet. By posting content consistently and frequently, you can build up a very nice following of potential buyers and sellers. You already have the photos, so you may as well use them to their fullest extent.
You can feature both properties and communities, properties for sale and those you’ve sold. Feature new developments or open houses, and introduce your team. This is one of the quickest and easiest ways to market your brand, there is literally no downside. Be sure to use effective hashtags, for the best results.
Most of the people you are trying to reach are already on Facebook, so it is extremely cost-effective to just go and find them there. At the very least, you need a page with contact info. But since you should have a blog, anyway, why not just put it on there? You can use all the same photos you use on Instagram, and add even greater detail.
Facebook Insights is a powerful analytic tool that can give you extremely useful data about anyone you’re interacting with – their location, gender, age and more. That’s an enormous help in pinpointing your target market. Facebook Groups is a great way to become a more personal part of your local community.
Those are all free, but if you are exploring different ways of marketing, you may want to try Facebook Ads. They can be very successful, but learn how to best employ them before spending any money.
Wise Pelican
Wise Pelican is a dedicated real estate marketing platform. It gives you eye-catching jumbo-sized postcards on heavy high-gloss stock, with full color on both sides and no minimum order. They are 70¢ each, but that includes printing, postage and mailing. You can import your own template, but they also have hundreds you can choose from, including ones with automated seller valuations featuring unique links that let people find out how much their homes are worth.
Wise Pelican has campaign tracking and list management tools, you can upload your own email list and filter it for each mailing, or the platform can help you build one. You can even pre-schedule mailings for consistency.
MailChimp
There are never enough hours in the day for a busy real estate agent to get to everything on a to-do list, so time management is a crucial skill. The key to getting more done in less time is to automate as many tasks as possible, and that’s where email marketing is a huge help. Capturing email addresses, building lists and databases and sending out automated email sequences are proven sales tools – but they are only as effective as users can make them.
MailChimp is one of the best known and most popular email marketing platforms available, and for good reason. It simplifies all of the tasks involved in capturing emails, building lists, filtering addresses into different categories and lists for the most effective campaigning and much more. Mail Chimp even offers landing pages, to make it easier to obtain opt in email addresses.
YouTube
YouTube is one of the easiest platforms to achieve effective SEO, because:
1. It’s owned by Google, so it gets searched early and efficiently.
2. More weight is given to videos by all search engine because they take more effort to produce.
3. Search engines can transcribe keywords from the video, as well as the title and description.
It’s well-established that people love video content, because it’s so easy to consume. It’s been an effective way to promote property for decades, already. But you can use it for even more than just in listings.
You should have an entire video channel with content that varies between current themes and evergreen information. These should also be embedded in your blog posts. For the best results, put a call to action at the end of every video. If it’s an offer for a free ebook or other material, the video can be used as a lead magnet, enticing viewers to opt in to your mailing list.
One downside to using videos is having to edit them, but that shouldn’t keep you from using them. There is very easy and cheap editing software available, or you can hire someone to edit for very little on platforms like Upwork and Fivrr.
Bottom Line
Instagram is the easiest to start with, because it’s visual platform is so well-suited to your purpose and it has practically no learning curve whatsoever. Zillow Premier Agent App can give you a big boost with very little effort, and there is really no excuse for not having at least a page on Facebook, especially given the data analytics you will get on every single person you interact with on that massive platform.
If you already do mailings, then you should definitely give Wise Pelican a shot, you will probably get a lot more bang for your buck. MailChimp has a bit of a learning curve, but is worth the effort just for the automated email sequences, although it has much more to offer. YouTube will probably take the most time and effort, but you will probably be amazed at the effect it can have when done right.