Snowpocalypse. Snowmageddon. Possibly the biggest blizzard in the history of New York City.
It didn’t look like I was going to make it to Inman’s Real Estate Connect NYC this year. But as my flight approached, my hopes of interacting with the best and brightest agents and brokers hadn’t been buried in snow quite yet. Sure enough, a 3 AM wakeup, a few delays, and lots of Starbucks later, I was careening through Manhattan streets with my lead-footed cab driver Leonid at the wheel. (Right after I hopped in, his wife called and needed to be picked up, so he may have had a little extra motivation to drive…expeditiously.)
Once I arrived and got our kiosk set up, I quickly realized this was exactly the kind of event I thought it would be. These weren’t your average real estate practitioners. One by one, I met top-producing agents and brokers from not only the biggest markets in the US, but from Germany, France, and even Botswana (Yes, I had to bust out Google Maps for that one.)
Speaking with so many successful real estate pros definitely made for some interesting conversations about marketing. I love hearing what the best of the best are doing. As I mentioned before, these people are on top of their game, but as the interactions continued, I learned that no one had it all figured out. Maybe they were happy with the look of their website, but it wasn’t delivering the leads they need. Some had leads pouring in, but weren’t sure what happened to them. Was their team following up with every lead? How quickly? Which source was giving them the best ROI? Some knew what they should be doing to improve their marketing strategies, but just weren’t sure how to do it. Whether it was social media, SEO, blogging, or anything else, they knew there were certain parts they were either missing or weren’t executing well. I was happy to give them some ideas and show how Pipeline ROI could help.
My point is this: Even the top performers have areas of their marketing that could be improved. The good news is, there are resources available to help you do exactly that. Whether it’s a paid product, free marketing content and templates, or just a blog with ideas and advice, you can (and should) be constantly learning and improving.
Many of the great speakers at ICNY talked about innovation, growth, risk-taking, continual learning, testing and analyzing, building on success, and more. When you boil it down, that’s really what we’re all trying to do, isn’t it? Be better today than we were yesterday? Taking that ‘one-day-at-a-time’ approach will keep you from being overwhelmed. You don’t have to overhaul your entire marketing strategy at once. The key is to just get started, then build on it.
Here are a few ideas you can quickly accomplish to start your journey to better real estate marketing:
1. Start Tweeting! Twitter is a great way to quickly share content and reach potential clients where they’re most active. Not sure what to tweet? Here are 100 real estate related tweets to get you started.
2. Ask a client for a testimonial. Testimonials are often the most effective piece of marketing content you can provide for a potential client. Getting them shouldn’t be tough, you just have to remember to ask. Need a pre-written e-mail template asking for testimonials? Here you go.
3. Add a lead-generating landing page to your website. A landing page is a page on your site with a single, specific purpose. A landing page offering a free eBook download or market report is a great way to capture leads, while delivering real value to potential clients.
4. Share a helpful infographic on your blog and/or social media accounts. Infographics are the best way to deliver information visually. They’re much quicker and easier to digest than written articles. We’ve created two you can download here, or try Piktochart to make your own.
5. Write a blog post (for real this time). You’ve probably thought about blogging, but that’s as far as it went. Make up your mind to get started by actually posting to your blog today. Not sure what to write about? We put together 50 real estate blog ideas to give you a serious jumpstart.