Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Effective marketing is critical to the success of any business, including real estate companies. Whether you’re focused on building your portfolio of properties or looking to achieve 100% occupancy in the buildings you already own, you’ll need these top marketing strategies for real estate investors.
Your goal is to get your target audience to seek more information about your business and what you can offer them. Consider whether you’re leasing single-family homes or starter apartments, and think about what demographic might prefer the types of property you own. Homeowners have different motivations and require different types of communication than do prospective tenants, so you’ll want to modify your approach appropriately when initiating a conversation about purchasing property. Research how your target audience prefers to receive information.
Whatever your target audience, they probably have multiple social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and/or Instagram. Set up your own social media accounts and use them to establish yourself as a friendly but authoritative voice in the real estate sphere. Maintain professionalism on LinkedIn, keeping your posts relevant to your business and your network. On other social media sites, be careful about overselling. Announcements of new acquisitions or properties available for rent are okay, but most of the time, you should provide more general, helpful information for homeowners and tenants. Too many flat-out promotions of your properties will turn off your audience.
Keep up with others in your industry. Networking builds relationships that can be mutually beneficial in the future. From attorneys to real estate agents and from appraisers to inspectors to other investors, having conversations with other people in the industry will expand your knowledge and reveal investment opportunities you may want to pursue.
If you’ve decided to use direct mail or other forms of individual contact, do the research: public records often provide the names of property owners. Take the time to personalize your communication. “Dear Mrs. Smith” is more effective and more respectful than “Dear Homeowner.”
Are your properties in an area with large local employers or companies that offer relocation to their workforces? Make yourself useful as a source of information and as a resource for employee housing and for transfers who are new to the area.
All your marketing efforts may be fruitless if you don’t have a follow-up plan. You may get only dozens of phone calls from thousands of mailers, but those calls are gold. Have a detailed plan for your next steps and a set of criteria for qualifying these leads. Are they looking for immediate housing? Are they casually exploring selling their property, or are they motivated to sell? Have a system in place for tracking all contacts with prospective sellers or tenants.
If you have a website and a blog (and you should), you need to know where your clicks are coming from. Likewise, if you’re using direct mail and social media, analyze the interactions with each mailing and post to determine the more effective method. You can even create two different mailers and track which one gets more responses. Whatever tactic you use, it’s critical to track your results and to understand what does and doesn’t work.
