Top 6 marketing strategies for small real estate teams

There are so many things real estate teams can do to build their brands, create awareness, and – most importantly – drive new business their way. However, many of these marketing strategies require gigantic budgets that small teams don’t have. Things like running an advertisement in the Super Bowl are unrealistic. At the same time, many of the strategies that are free to implement don’t really bring in high-quality business. It’s a conundrum that causes many teams to just throw in the towel before they get started. To help avoid this fate, we’ve pulled together some tried-and-true marketing strategies that are designed for small real estate teams.

Local Involvement

As a real estate team, your local involvement is what makes you or breaks you. Your clients will largely come from people who already live in your area, and most people prefer to work with people they have a personal connection to. Hence, you need to make yourself known to the people who live around you.

Community Groups

One of the best examples of local involvement is becoming a part of local organizations. Start by looking for local clubs that are genuinely of interest to your team members and begin attending introductory events. You don’t necessarily need to become a weekly attendee, but you should try to visit often enough that people start recognizing you. The important thing to avoid is only going to events or becoming part of organizations focused solely on business. These are valuable, but they don’t typically result in real connections.

Event Sponsorship

If you keep an eye out for them, you’ll quickly become aware of hundreds of local events going on around you. These aren’t just real estate events or big-ticket concerts, but an endless list of events that all have 30-to-60 people attending. Reach out to the organizers of these events and ask if they are accepting local sponsors – the answer will almost always be ‘yes.’ By focusing on events of this size – small enough where everyone will appreciate the sponsor but big enough to bring in a few leads – you’ll win over the attendees and make yourself known to a larger audience.

Speaking Engagements

A great way to create local connections is to volunteer to speak at offices and events. As a real estate team, you have local expertise that shouldn’t be ignored. Realize that you can speak on the nuances of local real estate, what the buyer and seller markets are like, and what people should be on the lookout for when searching for an agent. Whatever topic you land on, remember that when you have a captive audience that cares deeply about what you’re talking about, you’re in a great position to bring in new leads.

Simple Email Marketing

Email continues to be one of the most effective marketing channels available to teams

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of every size. Due to its flexibility and low-cost barrier to entry, even a team with two members can take full advantage of it. There are countless books, resources, guides, and hacks you can use to make email really work for you, but to begin with there are two projects you need to work on: email capture and drip campaigns.

Email Capture

At some point, every person you do business with will visit your website, whether to check out who you are, see who’s on your team, or simply look up your address. Regardless of the reason, people are going to show up on the main page after Googling your name. When these people visit, you need to make sure that you record – or ‘capture’ – their contact information. To do this, you simply put an email address entry field on your main landing page that signs your customers up for your email newsletter. Once you’ve got their email address, you can begin to communicate with them on a regular basis.

Drip Campaigns

Now, immediately after putting up the entry form on your website you shouldn’t expect a big increase in sales and the money to purchase an extra home in the Hamptons. Instead, you first need to figure out an incentive that will spur people to give up their contact info – just because the form is there doesn’t mean people are going to automatically fill it out. One of the most straightforward inducements is an educational drip campaign. This means that when they give you their email, you automatically send them an email every day for a week on an educational topic. This accomplishes two things. First, it gives you something to put on the email signup form that makes it appealing. For example, if your drip campaign focuses on the local intricacies of buying a home, you can advertise that when people give you their email that they’ll, “receive a free introductory course to buying a home in Chicago!” Secondly, a drip campaign enables you to keep leads warm over a number of days without manually sending emails.

Newsworthy Source

One marketing strategy that can build your local reputation is also one that very few people attempt.

If you’re trying to reach a specific community of people, you want to look for a place where people find their local news

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, become familiar with the local big shots, and stay up-to-date with what’s going on in their neighborhood. When you list out these criteria, you promptly realize that local newspapers and TV stations are the ideal channel.

The trick is figuring out how to get involved. As a small real estate team, you may not have the money to buy advertising space or employ an expensive public relations firm. Fortunately, there’s a free way to get into the news – becoming a source for a reporter. If you build up a professional relationship with local reporters that cover topics like real estate, gentrification, and community development, there’s a good chance that they’ll begin to use you as a source. If you make coherent, accurate, and attention-grabbing points and stand out in comparison to other real estate teams you’ll be well on your way to getting your name and face in front of thousands of potential leads.

Final Thoughts

Identifying reliable tactics that bring in high-quality leads is hard – there’s no doubt about it. However, just because you’re resource-constrained and your team lacks the experience of building up a dozen marketing channels doesn’t mean you should quit prematurely. Instead, by experimenting with the strategies listed above, you’ll be well on your way to an increase in both new leads and closed deals.

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