Creating an effective real estate marketing plan is important to acquire leads, advertise property listings and generate more sales.
In this article:
- Situation Analysis
- Define Your Target Audience
- Define Your Goals and Objectives
- Design Marketing Strategies to Achieve Your Goals
- Monitor and Measure Results
Build to Success: How to Create the Best CRE Marketing Plan
1. Situation Analysis
The first step in creating a commercial real estate marketing plan is to do an analysis of your business. Having a breakdown of your strengths and weaknesses will help identify your USP.
Unique Selling Proposition (USP) is a factor that sets you apart from your competitors. To find your USP, assess your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats first.
SWOT Analysis
SWOT analysis is a powerful tool that helps identify opportunities using your strengths. It can also help companies minimize, if not eliminate, threats in the industry.
Internal Factors: Strengths and Weaknesses
Strengths
- What advantage does your company have against a competitor?
- What do you do well?
- Are you a pioneer in the market?
- What internal sources, like a well-trained staff, do you have?
- How fast can you respond to clients?
- Do you have the most competitive product listing in the market?
- What makes your customers keep coming back to you?
Weaknesses
- What things or characteristics do you lack?
- What does your competitor have that you don’t?
- Are there limitations to your resources?
- Do you lack proper training?
- Which aspects can your company improve on?
- Do you spend most of your time outside or inside the office?
- How often does your pipeline eventually result in a sale?
External Factors: Opportunities and Threats
Opportunities
- What customer need can you address further?
- What factors, political or economic, can positively influence your growth?
- Are there emerging trends in the market that you can take advantage of?
- What is the latest technology you can use for your business?
Threats
- What factors hinder your success?
- What factors, political or economic, can negatively influence your growth?
- Is there a new regulation in the market?
TOWS Analysis
SWOT Analysis gives insight on your USP and how you can use it to your advantage. Then, you can use TOWS analysis to develop a real estate marketing plan.
- Strength-Opportunity Strategies. You can use your strengths to maximize the opportunities available in the market. If you have competitive CRE agents, you can use this to support the growing demand for CRE agents.
- Weakness-Opportunity Strategies. On the other hand, these are strategies that minimize your weaknesses using the opportunities you identified.
- Strength-Threat Strategies. You can also use your strengths to minimize threats you previously identified. For example, you can minimize the threat of the growing number of competitors if you train more.
- Weakness-Threat Strategies. These marketing strategies minimize weaknesses to avoid identified threats. If your weakness is following up clients, you can create a plan of action to eliminate this. For instance, you can hire an assistant who will follow up clients in your stead.
2. Define Your Target Audience
Your real estate marketing plan should target a specific audience. Do you want to target young entrepreneurs or seasoned executives? Is there a specific industry you specialize in?
Remember, you are spending your budget on your ideal clients. Furthermore, you will still need to entertain clients outside of your target customers.
3. Define Your Goals and Objectives
What are your specific goals in mind that lead you to develop a marketing plan? Do you want a 20% increase in sales? Is your objective a 10% increase in prospect clients? Your goals and objectives in mind should be SMART.
SMART Goals
Specific. Your marketing goals should be clear and specific. This will help you focus your effort to reach these goals. To write a specific goal, answer the following to help you clarify the specific goal.
- What do you want to accomplish?
- Why is it important to achieve?
- Who are the people involved in the plan?
- Where is it located?
- Which resources will be used for the plan?
Measurable. Measurable goals keep real estate agents motivated. They can clearly see and track their progress and even improve on gaps in the marketing plan.
Achievable. At the same time, your goals should be realistic and achievable to be effective. You will need to assess your resources and up to what extent these can help you in reaching your goals. Listing down an unachievable goal will also lead to loss of motivation for your agents.
Relevant. Similarly, your goals should be significant to your business such as generating leads, prospecting clients, and closing deals.
Time-based. Lastly, your real estate marketing plan should have a specific time frame.
4. Design Marketing Strategies to Achieve Your Goals
The next step in creating your real estate marketing plan is designing effective marketing strategies. Your marketing strategy is critical in achieving your goals while keeping within budget.
Online Marketing Strategies
- Website development. Create a website that will allow potential customers to find key information. Make sure that your website is informative, visual, and user-friendly for any device.
- Individual property websites. Individual property websites engage visitors in the specific property. This can help convert visitors to buyers effectively.
- Targeted email campaigns. Your email content should be relevant to the target customer. Include important information about the property or about the industry as well. Do not forget to link your content to your website and social media pages.
- Create useful content. Create relevant, useful or entertaining content for your website, blog post or video. You can also share industry insights that help customers make better decisions for their next purchase.
- Use social media. Social media is a powerful tool in real estate marketing. In particular, you can use social media to connect and interact with potential customers. Furthermore, you can hire a social media manager who can post, update, and answer inquiries on your account.
- Outreach influencers. Bloggers, journalists, and influencers can affect how potential clients will perceive you. Their comment or review on your service can positively influence growth.
- Paid advertisements. You can advertise on commercial real estate portals, social media pages, and search engines. This will generate visibility to target customers who are looking for their next commercial property.
- Digital brochures and listings. Sending regular digital brochures and property listing will keep your audience informed. Additionally, it will constantly remind the client of your presence, creating a strong brand awareness in the long term.
On Ground Marketing Strategies
- Print collaterals. This includes brochures, flyers, signage, and the like. Your print collaterals should capture customer attention within three (3) seconds. It should also observe your branding.
- Events. There are broker events you can attend to connect with prospective clients.
- Direct mail. Mail content should be creative and relevant to be effective. You should also create a targeted list for your direct mail.
However, keep in mind that you need to identify the ideal mix of strategies to reach your goals. Identify first which of these strategies are effective for your target clients. Do they often go to Facebook or LinkedIn? Do they often go abroad or not? Knowing the behavior of your customers will help you streamline the best strategies to connect with them.
5. Monitor and Measure Results
Lastly, you should measure and track the results of your real estate marketing plan. Identify key metrics to determine if your marketing plan is effective or not.
Here are some examples of key metrics.
- Number of website views and visits
- Number of leads generated
Have a monthly or quarterly report regarding these key metrics to track progress. Aside from this, key metrics will help you make relevant decisions on your real estate marketing plan.
Having a marketing plan which highlights your strength will help you build a more sustainable strategy as a CRE agent. It will help you define your goals, track your progress, and achieve overall success.
Get known, connect instantly, and win more business! In this webinar session, Bo Barron will show you how presence, a great value proposition, and a targeted prospecting campaign can grow your business without chaos! You can watch the webinar here.
