These days there are more ways than ever to advertise. As a real estate agent how do you know what is right for you?
Introduction
Over the course of my career I’ve worked on hundreds of campaigns. Hopefully what I share with you will help you to avoid some of the mistakes I’ve made and to educate you on how to spot effective advertising channels.
Essentially, you will learn the fundamentals behind real estate marketing that gets attention and results.
I used to think that all marketing mediums worked in much the same way. The formula went as follows: Choose any ad location + Make an attractive ad + provide a clear offer + display an obvious next step + track results = leads.
But, if that were the case then retargeted ads would work as well as embedded posts. Yet they don’t.
It turns out that there’s a big difference between promotional advertising and lead generating advertising. Not only with the style of the ad, but also with where the ad is placed.
In other words, choosing where to advertise is crucial to the success of your campaign. Knowing what you want from your advertising will help you choose where to advertise.
A billboard or bus sign, for example, can be great at creating awareness. However, if you want to grow your business you need leads. And a billboard has a terrible ROI when it comes to lead generation.
By the end of this article you will have a good idea of the two types of marketing available to you, how to turn ads into leads, and where to place those ads.
3 Marketing Truths
Without further adieu, here’s what I’ve learned about advertising and how it relates to your Real Estate marketing.
- Marketing’s primary purpose is to increase demand for your product or service.
- Marketing does not create leads naturally. Think Awareness versus Lead Generation.
- All channels are not created equal.
Let’s start from the top.
The Two Types of Marketing
Marketing campaigns either drive awareness or they drive lead generation. When you flip through the pages of a magazine you can easily spot the difference. Car advertisements are designed to create desire and awareness.
Whereas mail order products are designed to generate inquiries and leads. It’s vital that you know the exact outcome you want from your marketing efforts.
Lance Schafer, a talented entrepreneur and mentor, once told me this invaluable lesson that he learned from growing his web design business in the mid 90’s. He would book meetings with businesses.
By the end of the meetings the companies were convinced that they needed a presence on the internet. Remember, this was early days of the web. Yet, Lance noticed, these businesses weren’t choosing his company to build their websites.
Lance had spent so much energy in his presentation educating his clients on the power of the web, that he had forgotten to mention why his company was the best at providing the service.
He had sold the website but not his company.
Lance had inadvertently created an “awareness” campaign and not a “lead generation” campaign. The problem with stopping at awareness is that the choice of who to work with is still up in the air.
How to Turn Advertisements Into Leads
Realtors tend to follow a similar trajectory in their first couple years in the business. (I know this is a generalization but bear with me). Initially they sell homes for their friends and family.
They set up their office, a website, and purchase a nice car. However, it doesn’t take long before their friends and family deals dry up. This is the point where some agents keep growing and others putter out.
At some point every real estate agent realizes they need to get deals from beyond their sphere of influence. Ideally, all new business would come from referrals. Referrals are a tremendous strategy to grow your business. Generating referrals is as simple as asking each happy client if they know of anyone else that is thinking of buying or selling.
But it’s not realistic that referrals will provide enough deal-flow to grow your business beyond a one person band. Furthermore, eventually one runs out of people to ask, and waiting for unexpected referrals is not reliable enough to grow a business with.
So, like any smart business professional, agents inevitably look to advertising and lead generation strategies to generate new business.
Some are lucky, they create the right kind of ads in the right kind of mediums and they start getting inquiries. Others are not as fortunate. They invest in banner ads, spend their time aimlessly on social media, and seem to be spending more money than they are making.
To turn an advertisement into a lead you need a clear call to action, a message that resonates with home sellers or buyers, and method to capture contact information.
But you also need to place that advertisement in the right location.
Where to Place Those Ads
To generate awareness choose ad locations that will have high visibility. To generate leads choose ad locations that will have high click-through rates.
Based on that criteria Billboards, TV advertisements, and Radio advertisements remain effective at generating awareness.
Whereas the best kind of advertising that generates leads today is on Facebook.
Specifically, Facebook ads that run within the newsfeed. This channel is more effective than Google Adwords, banner ads, mail-out campaigns, and billboards. The reason it’s perfect for lead generation is because it is natural for the users to click on the posts within their newsfeed. As an added benefit, Facebook does generate brand promotion and awareness as well.
Summary
When making a decision to advertise ask about the ROI. If the goal is to make more money than you spend on each advertisement that you run, then you will be able to reinvest in future ads and grow your revenue while doing so.
Secondly, find experts in the space. A lot of time and money can be lost while trying to find a method that works.
In Facebook, for example, you may know that it is possible to get a good ROI from it, but it may take a lot of experimentation and monetary investment in technology to get the same results.
As already mentioned, depending on the purpose marketing strategies differ for the companies. It is really important to understand what is the final result that is needed from the marketing campaign. There are more resources on real estate marketing that you can read and watch before creating your own strategy. Tom Ferry for example shares some more useful tips and insights on real estate marketing that will be really helpful if you need to understand where to start or you need more ideas.
One of our clients in LA was speechless when we started working together. They had spent countless hours and dollars to get clicks but had never got a single lead. Remarkably, we were able to get them a new lead in just the first day of working with us.
Thirdly, look for companies that provide value in the space. If a company provides value through resources and blogs it’s more than likely they will provide support and additional value when you are working with them.
Finally, working with experts that manage your advertising will free you up time to advance your business in other areas. Think about the benefits you could accrue if you have a team of experts working on generating you leads while you are doing the things you do best like converting the leads and selling real estate.
At StreetText we’re driven by the success of our clients. If you’re interested in learning how you can advance your business outside of repeats and referrals with lead generating marketing, please don’t hesitate to check out our website or reach out to use via email or in the comments below.
3 Responses
Yes, I agree with advertesing and putting ads. People nowadays are very popular on the internet this tip is very helpful to raise the popularity of the service. Thank you for sharing this information.
Whereas mailouts are designed to generate inquiries and leads. It’s vital that you know the exact outcome you want from your marketing efforts.
We agree. Start with the outcome and then work backwards to pick the right marketing channels and methods to achieve it.