keys to real estate marketing: from defining needs to the secrets of a successful marketing campaign
To be sustainable, any activity must know how to adapt to changes in consumer behavior. Practicing marketing is not just about choosing a location and putting up an advertisement to catch the eye of passers-by. Marketing is not just the promotion, it is above all about generating prospects. Nothing is set in stone: new competitors are entering the market, consumers are changing habits, and the level of quality of your services may decline. If you are not able to maintain their interest throughout the customer journey, they will certainly be lost mandates. It is the link between the two approaches that ensures the success and sustainability of your real estate business.
1. Analyze your marketing needs
Your marketing strategy is necessarily born out of a need, and this need defines your positioning.
- What market are you positioned in? Typology of properties, price trends, but also the number of transactions and owner / tenant ratio are all data from which you can define your real estate marketing strategy.
- What competition are you up against? The idea is to draw the competitive landscape to better position yourself and explore your differentiation levers.
2. Analyze the needs of your customers
- Define personas. Understand: descriptions of your typical clients, taking the form of fictitious identities.
- Segment targets. Real estate marketing is characterized by a concern for personalization.
3. Define your marketing goals
Your marketing goals flow directly from your business goals: it’s by having a clear destination in mind that you can think about the best way to reach it through qualitative objectives and quantitative objectives.
4. Differentiate your real estate business
In a very competitive sector, every brand dreams of standing out from the crowd and sailing above the clouds. Several levers can be used to achieve this: enhancing the quality of the services offered, the originality of the approach, the demonstration of your expertise in your field.
5. Prepare your strategy
The best way to reach sellers and buyers alike is to show them that you have the right solution for them. a way to (re) place the customer at the heart of concerns.
6. Set up the right acquisition channels
• Prospecting in the field and by telephone;
• The use of print media ;
• The use of digital media ;
• The setting up of events related to the brand ;
• Other acquisition strategies
7. Combine prospecting and marketing
Real estate marketing focuses on communication and brand awareness. Aim to install your brand in the landscape, to develop communication actions, to create a brand identity, to create and use supports, resources and expertise. Powerful marketing makes it possible to forge relationships with several people at the same time (one-to-many) before moving towards more personalization (one-to-one).
8. Set up the follow-up of your prospects
Acquiring leads is good. But what to do once they are integrated into your database?
- The conversion tunnel (the path taken from first contact to conversion).
- Tracking tools (software solutions that allow you to organize your tracking, such as CRM, emailing tools or marketing automation tools).
- Performance indicators (the tags that record your results and that you consult to find out exactly what is happening with which prospects and when).
9. Events
Organizing events related to your real estate marketing strategy is an approach that has many advantages. They allow you to grab attention and make yourself known. Instead of going out to meet the inhabitants of the district (prospecting), you invite them to join you for a specific occasion (event).
You have many possibilities for events, depending on the calendar (holidays, end-of-year celebrations, back to school, etc.), special occasions (agency anniversary, legislative changes affecting individuals, etc.) or events that concern the general public (locally or nationally).
10. Use social networks
All the more so as social platforms provide professionals with a number of very valuable features and indicators from a real estate marketing perspective.
11. Convert your contacts to leads
Beyond real estate communication marketing, there is a whole lot of follow-up and conversion marketing. Once the first contact is made, it is essential to launch the marketing machine so that this seed planted in the soil of your business gives a plant, and for this plant to bear fruit. Converting your contacts into prospects means first of all making sure that the plant grows.
12. Convert your prospects into customers
The whole purpose of real estate marketing is to help your seller make the decision that will take them from prospect (why not sign?) To the client (I sign!). Converting your prospects into customers is all about coaxing your plant into producing tasty fruit – and giving it on a regular basis.
- Focus your efforts on convincing the other person that you are the best possible choice for them.
13. Retain and engage your customers
The power of your marketing doesn’t end with conversion. Marketing goes much further, since it goes beyond the sole action of selling or buying: A well-conducted real estate marketing allows you not only to obtain customers, but also to be able to count on ambassadors who will make you thrive in publicity.
14. Measure your performance
Your performance must be measured, evaluated against your own objectives and against the market. Therefore, select the right indicators, those that make sense in the context of your activity, and carry out regular checks to know if your communication, marketing and prospecting actions are bearing fruit .
In conclusion
Only you can decide if you want to invest time, means and resources (financial, human) in methods, levers and actions likely to bring you sales customers and to get you exclusive mandates. If you want your real estate business to be doing well, if you want to continue listing and running your business, or even developing your business (expansion, recruitment, expansion), you need to inject prospects with regularity. Otherwise, it would be like opening a restaurant on Monday, advertising on Tuesday, being very successful on Wednesday… and stopping everything on Thursday because you feel you have had enough customers!
