If you do a Google search for the term real estate marketing tools, you’ll find approximately 44.5 million results. It’s no wonder real estate agents get overwhelmed trying to choose the right tools to help them build a successful real estate career. If you’re a real estate agent who would like to focus on establishing a core set of real estate marketing tools, this post is for you.
Being a successful real estate agent isn’t really any different than running any other type of service business. There are no silver bullets, as some vendors might like you to believe. It takes organization, knowledge and a lot of hard work. These core tools will help you focus your efforts on marketing efforts that work.
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Real Estate Websites
You need a presence on the internet. Without a website, people won’t believe you’re a real professional. There are things you need to look for when you choose a real estate website. Your website should be the hub of your marketing plan because consumers spend a lot of time on the internet.
But, don’t assume that your website is going to provide you all the leads you’ll ever need. There’s a lot of competition in the search engines, and it will take a considerable amount of time and effort for your website to generate leads.
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Social Media Marketing
You also need a presence on social media sites. Choose the ones that your prospects and clients are most likely to use. Those platforms might be LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. However, if you’re targeting younger consumers, you might need to put more focus on Instagram and Snapchat.
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Regardless of where your leads come from, the most critical next step is to manage those leads using a real estate CRM. Many real estate agents find that they get leads, but they can’t seem to convert those leads into clients. The problem is usually that the agent doesn’t have a systematic way to make that conversion happen.
A CRM offers automation that can handle the mundane tasks that agents don’t want to do themselves in order to convert leads to clients. For example, the CRM will handle email marketing. It will also remind you when you need to place a phone call and let you know what you need to talk about.
Therefore, once the CRM is set up, a large number of the conversion tasks can be done automatically. After the initial set up, agents typically see an excellent return on that investment.
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Home Selling Tools
There are wide ranges of real estate marketing tools that make selling a listing more effective. Here are just a few you need to consider.
- Professional photos: Even if your phone takes excellent photos, hire a professional who is an expert is lighting and composition.
- Real estate showing software: You need to know what the market thinks of your listing. This software automates the process of getting showing feedback, which you can use to amend your price or marketing plan to sell homes faster.
- Video tours: Homebuyers are getting more sophisticated all the time. They expect to get all the information they need about listings while they’re cruising the internet. A video tour will grab a buyer’s attention, and if you can use 3D tours, that’s even more effective!
The thing to take away from this checklist is that you need to start by establishing a solid foundation for your real estate practice. There are an endless number of gadgets and slick apps that are focused on the real estate industry. Make sure you get these basic real estate marketing tools in place before you spend time evaluating the latest technology.