Marketing

Getting used to presenting yourself as an expert is one of the first challenges any real estate agent faces. Self-promotion is something often looked down upon. Confidence might take a while to build, and you need to effectively project that confidence even before you have a track record of results.

Naturally, it gets easier and easier with experience. But nobody wants to feel like they're annoying their contacts and customers. The fear of being annoying can stop you from speaking up early in your career. And even once you're rolling along, it can still be a concern. That's especially true with digital marketing.

Good digital marketing should seem like a personal message from you to the recipient. But we all know the truth: You could be speaking to ten, a hundred, or a thousand people. Of all the names on your list, some of them are bound to get annoyed simply because they don't like marketing.

But if your communication turns off a noticeable portion of your audience, there's a bigger problem.

When you work hard to get leads on your list, only to lose them soon after, it burns your time and energy. So, it's crucial to be alert to the signs that your marketing isn't quite on track — and fix it.

Is Your Marketing Annoying? These Signs Can Tell You

It's a strange paradox that two of your most powerful digital marketing tools — email marketing and text message marketing — are among the ones most likely to get on a lead's bad side. Most leads won't come right out and say you're annoying, though. The signs are more subtle, and you've got to tune in.

Here are some of the key signals to be aware of:

• People Sign Up to Your Email List, Then Leave
  A small percentage of people will do this, anyway. It's one way to get a hold of your lead magnet — a piece of deeply researched, informative content — without having to get marketing messages. If it's frequently happening, check to make sure the lead magnet is truly valuable and compelling.
  
  
• Lots of Subscribers Bail After a Specific Message
  Every time you send a message out to your email subscribers, you will probably lose some of them. It's a fact of life. That may be one or two at the beginning or a handful for larger lists. An exodus that's much bigger than average suggests an annoying email. Check for a misleading subject line or other problems.
  
  
• No One Responds to Your Follow-Up Text Messages
  An old sales adage suggests you need to be ready to follow up 12-18 times, but what happens when no one is responding? The most likely issue is that your text simply isn't that interesting. To get responses, try ending with a question. If a lead goes cold and doesn't answer after three texts, simply move on.
  
  
• Leads Complain About Your Marketing
  While most people keep mum, you might find people complaining about your marketing. This is more likely if they consider your methods especially intrusive. Be sure to watch your Google and Yelp Reviews. You can sometimes get negative reviews removed if the person has never actually used your services.

Maximize the Impact of Your Digital Marketing

Even if you run into a few setbacks, that's no reason to give up or slow down your digital marketing. For any one email or social media post, there's always a good chance a big part of your following won't see it, so you should never shy away from posting frequently.

Here's how to get your marketing back on track:

• Verify Your Content Is Tailored to User Interest
  Problems with email marketing often come down to list segmentation. Buyers should be getting content relevant to them, sellers likewise, and past clients should receive helpful homeownership tips. Double-check your message targeting and be sure buyers only get emails with listings that match their needs.
  
  
• Work on Your Email Subject Lines
  Subject lines are the part of an email most likely to agitate people. Bait and switch subject lines are the worst: Things like "My lawyer wants to talk to you," for example. Email marketing automation provides easy tools to test subject lines against each other and enhance read and response rates.
  
  
• Upgrade Your Content Quality
  Good content is useful and informative. It helps people answer a question or solve a problem so they can make the right move in today's market. DeltaNET equips you with tools like Market Watch Reports that more of your buyers are likely to appreciate and respond positively to.

Above all, keep going. The more content you share, the more likely you are to land on something that resonates with your audience. Contact us to discover how AI-driven automation can help.

Marketing is one of the most important parts of real estate, and it can also be challenging for agents to come to grips with. Once you've learned the knowledge and skills you need to serve clients, marketing should be your next priority.

Having a marketing plan is essential to your overall success!

Marketing is indispensable because the majority of your future clients will find you online. These days, most home searches begin there. As more Millennials turn to the market and the eldest of Gen Z find their way into it for the first time, this trend will continue.

A marketing plan helps you identify where your audience is, how to connect, and the best ways to do so over the time it takes them to launch their home search. From the high-level plan you develop, you can work backward to understand what you need to do every quarter, month, and week.

The concept may seem intimidating at first, but it is worthwhile.

Marketing is the central piece in pivoting from finding new business through in-person methods versus drawing qualified leads directly to your website with minimal effort. This transition has the potential to save you thousands of hours a year, but it relies on having the right marketing assets in place.

What Does a Real Estate Marketing Plan Include?

A real estate marketing plan is a top-level strategic roadmap you develop once and review quarterly based on your evolving goals and the success of your marketing initiatives. It is built around Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as leads generated and transactions completed.

How Do You Write a Real Estate Marketing Plan?

There are seven components to a marketing plan for real estate.

While some may prove challenging, each element builds on the ones before. If you do not have the time or resources to conduct a deep market analysis, you can leverage the wisdom of your colleagues and mentors to start with some basic assumptions that you then verify with experience.

The elements of a real estate marketing plan include:

• Target Market
  Who are your ideal customers? What are their biggest concerns as they enter the market? What venues do they use for their research — who do they trust, and how can you use those patterns of behavior to get in touch with them? Write out everything you know about the clients you want.
  
  
• Market Research
  With your target market identified, you can go broad. What volume of buying or selling in your area can be attributed to customers like these? For buyers, what is their typical budget? For sellers, what is their typical sales price? What is their next move once they've finished their transaction?
  
  
• Positioning
  Positioning refers to your overall brand and how you use it. If you've been around for a while, then it will start with how customers see you, both positive and negative. If you are new, then you should answer how you will frame your brand so it is the natural source of expert advice for your target customers.
  
  
• Competitive Analysis
  How many competitors are in your market? This is especially significant in real estate because you can use what your competitors do right as a jumping-off point to develop your own tactics. You may not want to go head-to-head with a large agency, but you can choose to be where they aren't.
  
  
• Market Strategy
  The question here is: "How will I find and attract my ideal customers?" DeltaNET 6® is the real estate all-in-one solution that enables you to automate your social media, promote listings, post blogs, and manage your email marketing, among many more, from a centralized, "all in one" marketing command center.
  
  
• Budget
  Your budget is a month-by-month breakdown of what you intend to spend on marketing. For most digital marketing, your major KPI will be website visitors generated, so keeping an eye on this will tell you if your investments have been cost-effective — use data analytics tools to monitor each channel.
  
  
• Metrics
  It is up to your website to do the "heavy lifting" of converting visitors to customers by offering them resources and answering their questions. In addition to visitors generated from your marketing, closely monitor conversions — both to customers and to email subscribers who may later become customers.

Turning Your Marketing Plan into Reality

To achieve your goals, you may find you need more tools or training. Upfront investments are common in the first few years of the real estate journey. Be sure you understand how much you're spending, why, and a timeline for a) first value and b) return on investment, including recouping the initial spend. From there, review your analytics data monthly to track trends and prepare for a quarterly plan update.

Contact us to find out more about digital marketing for real estate.

The longer a home is on the market, the less likely it will sell for list price.

Weeks on the market directly impact final sales price, with homes that take 12 weeks or longer consistently facing the lowest prices. While there are many reasons for this, buyer skepticism — the feeling that "something must be wrong" with a property that stays on the market so long — is a major factor.

Lingering on the market creates "anti-momentum" as buyers can (and do!) negotiate harder.

By contrast, homes have better odds of selling for above listing price if they go right away.

With that in mind, many real estate agents launch proactive plans to drum up buzz for a listing before it even goes live online. With the right strategy, you can channel the wave of enthusiasm among proactive buyers to exceed your customer's wildest expectations for their listing's performance.

Put First Things First to Position a Listing for Maximum Buzz

You can raise the visibility of virtually any listing by unleashing a concerted effort to draw the right buyers in.

However, you're much more likely to achieve a smashing success if a few preliminaries are taken care of.

To win the most local buzz, a property must:

• Be correctly priced to sell
• Be shown in its best light

Finding the appropriate price for a property is one of the most important services you can provide to any seller. Make sure you have found the right comps for the job. Explain the data and methodology to the seller to win buy-in. This is especially crucial when a seller's sentimental value is out of line with true market value.

If you need to get the process done faster or simply want to double-check your figures, you have options. The DeltaNET 6 all-in-one solution helps you by drawing in estimates from five trusted sources using the latest data. You never need to worry that while you're hunting down comps, the market is changing around you.

And, of course, a home should look its best before you start to publicize in earnest.

Work with your seller to ensure that any renovations, remodels, or repairs will be done in time for your buzz campaign. Then partner with a home staging professional to put on the finishing touches: that usually includes cleaning, decluttering, and redecorating to accentuate the positive in every space.

Then, you're ready to attract the right buyer like a magnet! Here's how:

• Lay the Groundwork for Spectacular Open Houses
  Digital marketing is crucial for sales success, but many real estate agents have gotten great results mailing hand-written invitations for an exclusive open house to potential buyers throughout the neighborhood. The invite can link to a custom landing page where you collect registrant info with ease using Open House Connector.
  
  
• Theme Your Open Houses and Make Them Exclusive
  What's the secret to making an open house even more enticing? First, it should be exclusive to the invitees you selected. Later on, you can capitalize on Fear of Missing Out. Second, pick a theme. Whether it's something simple like wine and cheese or you invite a local food truck, think of a creative hook buyers will find compelling.
  
  
• Follow Exclusive Open Houses with Public Ones
  A well-planned open house might yield the perfect offer right away. If it doesn't, you can follow up with another open house, this one encouraging walk-ins. With this dual approach, you'll have buyers who have been thinking about the property for weeks as they hear about your exclusive event over and over.
  
  
• Set Up Virtual Tours for Those Who Miss the Events
  Naturally, not everyone will be able to make even two or three events. Both your attendees and latecomers will benefit when you post a virtual walk-through or video tour. Buyers who are interested, but haven't put in an offer, may simply need one more reminder about what made a property special.
  
  
• Use Email Marketing Throughout the Process
  Once sign-ups start rolling in, be sure attendees are on your email list to get reminders about the upcoming event. Follow up with anyone who fails to attend and let them know about pending events, if any. Would-be attendees who never show up could still turn into leads later on — simply follow up with them and find out.
  
  
• Hype Your Listings on Social Media Platforms
  DeltaNET 6 customers can use Facebook Connector and LinkedIn Connector to post news and updates about any listing automatically. Instagram is another outstanding opportunity, especially if you have terrific photos. Last but not least, don't forget about the option of using online advertising to help a new listing gain traction.

Buzz makes listings take off like a rocket, getting you and your clients better results. For more on how digital marketing can help, contact us.

Digital marketing might sound complicated, but it doesn't have to be.

Today's digital marketing is inbound, meaning it attracts leads the moment they are most in need of your services. With that in mind, every piece of online marketing you do should help your target buyers or sellers reach their goals. Understand this and you're halfway to success.

What can give digital marketing a feeling of complexity is the wide variety of techniques involved. However, it's not necessary to be everything to everyone. You can focus in on a smaller selection of marketing methods you perform consistently. Plus, real estate marketing automation lets you do more faster. When you dig a little deeper, you discover digital marketing can be easy.

Digital marketing approaches usually fall into one of two categories:

• You can do them in a few minutes to make a little bit of progress every day; OR
• They take a little bit longer, but offer long-term returns through higher visibility

Knowing that, marketing's dual nature becomes obvious: marketing itself is a marathon, but it can be broken down into a series of sprints. Those sprints, in turn, are easier to stick with and produce real results. As you gain more momentum, marketing develops into a series of habits.

Let's cut through the clutter and look at some effective digital marketing methods:

• Accurate, Detailed Customer Profiles
  Every piece of marketing is "for" someone. Before you can even start working on a marketing campaign, you should zoom in on precisely who your ideal customer is. What are their pain points? What level have they reached in their career, education, and family goals? As you meet more clients, add more details to your customer profile. Soon, you will have a character who effectively represents most of your target audience.
  
  
• A Modern Real Estate Website
  A website is imperative in any business these days, but it's especially important in real estate. The majority of your future customers will find you online, and the number of buyers who start their search that way is only growing. A real estate website needs to be visually compelling, simple to use, and designed for smartphone compatibility. From there, the sky's the limit on expressing your brand creatively through the digital medium.
  
  
• Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
  Your website is your foundation. Once you have it, you need to build! The way is Search Engine Optimization. SEO consists of a number of valuable best practices in website design, but the one real estate agents should know best is keyword research. Keywords reflect the actual search queries your future customers use. Knowing and using these phrases throughout your website and content elevates your search engine visibility.
  
  
• Email Marketing Drip Campaigns
  Email marketing has the potential to deliver the highest ROI of any individual marketing tactic. To set up a drip campaign, you first entice visitors to join your email list – by offering them a local market report in exchange for their email, for example – then send helpful, informative email messages every week. This cultivates a long-term relationship and positions you as a trusted adviser. You can set it up in minutes through DeltaNet 6.
  
  
• Blogging and Content Marketing
  Blogging every week may be the most powerful way to raise your online visibility and get noticed when people search for topics related to your expertise. Yes, every blog you write should be imbued with the right keywords, reflecting relevant, high-traffic search topics. Just as crucial is your ability to communicate actionable advice about navigating the real estate market tailor-made for the concerns in your customer profile.
• Text Message Marketing
  Text message marketing for real estate has signs of being the next big thing. The average person reads more than 90% of all texts directed to them and is much more likely to respond to a text than an email. Since texting is a more personal form of communication, it lets you get into a real conversation with your leads. It's especially notable for its ability to warm up cold and lapsed leads, motivating them to move forward sooner.
  
  
• Consistent, Relevant Social Media
  Social media stands apart from the rest. Many people imagine that to master it, they need to be everywhere at once. Not so with the right digital marketing automation tools. Facebook Connector and LinkedIn Connector allow you to update your social media instantly when newsworthy events happen: new listings, updates, open houses, and much more. You can get all the benefits of social media without scrolling your feed all day long!

Marketing has many moving parts — but with the right technology, most of them can "move" themselves.

Delta Media Group makes the best in marketing automation accessible to everyone, from solo entrepreneurs to nationwide brokerages. To learn more, contact us.

There are more tools available than ever before to market your real estate business, but finding the right marketing mix doesn't always feel easy. In order to generate the best ROI with your real estate marketing, it's important to understand both the tools available and how each tool fits with your audience. It also requires a willingness to set goals, and a commitment to tracking results. We'll cover it all, with a closer look at how to generate great ROI with your real estate marketing.

• Set and Track Your Marketing Goals
  Whether you track ROI down to the decimal or take a more general approach, there's no doubt that setting goals is crucial to both identifying what you want to improve and achieving what you set out to accomplish with your real estate marketing.
  
  While general goals like becoming the go-to source of real estate information are helpful, the most effective goals will be more specific to different types of marketing. Do you want to earn more website traffic, generate more social media engagement, or increase the success rate of your email campaigns? Set specific goals for those areas, and track your results over time to discover what works best for your business.
  
  
• Know Your Audience and How to Reach Them
  In order to achieve your marketing goals, you need to understand the target audience you're trying to reach. A small, boutique real estate firm that caters to luxury buyers seeking a second home will naturally have a different marketing approach than a brand that aims to pair first-time buyers with the ideal starter home. Of course, some real estate businesses cater to a wide range of clients, and that's okay too! With a powerful real estate all-in-one solution like DeltaNET 6, you can gain a better understanding of your existing clientele, segment your audience, and discover the data that you need to make informed decisions about your marketing.
  
  
• Create Content That Speaks to the Needs and Interests of Your Audience
  Generating engagement with your real estate blog and social media pages starts with understanding the needs of your audience. The best real estate content informs, educates, and inspires your audience, so ROI with content depends on a deep understanding of what your audience wants to see. With custom content creation from Delta Media Group and all of the data you accumulate, you can deliver content that positions your real estate team as local experts that your clients can trust.
  
  
• Tailor Your Email Marketing to Specific Segment of Your Audience
  One of the biggest challenges for generating ROI with your email marketing is simply getting people to open your emails, and tailoring your email content to specific segments of your audience is a reliable way to get them to click. A buyer, seller, or someone who's just looking will all be seeking different content to help them make important decisions. Our AI-driven email newsletters and targeted email marketing campaigns make it so much easier to reach each client with the most relevant information.
  
  
• Make SEO a Priority
  Most real estate prospects start their search for a real estate business online, and search engine optimization (SEO) is critical for making sure that they find your business first when they visit their favorite search engine with real estate questions. Local SEO integration is a dependable way to stand out within your markets, increase traffic to your website, and position your business as the go-to source for real estate needs in the places that matter most to your brand. Generating great ROI with SEO starts with having a plan. With custom website design, custom content, and a deep understanding of local SEO, Delta Media Group can help you achieve your SEO goals.
  
  
• Make the Most of Paid Online Advertising
  SEO and content creation can help you attract clients organically, but reaching some members of your target audience will require a more direct approach. Paid advertising is a great supplement to your other marketing tools, allowing you to reach more potential clients through ads targeted to specific demographics on search engines and social media. Setting goals and tracking results are especially important for improving paid advertising ROI, which is why DeltaNET 6 makes it easier when planning paid advertising campaigns.

Generating great ROI with your marketing is virtually seamless when you have the right team on your side, and we'd love to help you achieve your marketing goals. With all of the tools in DeltaNET 6 and the help of an experienced real estate marketing team, you can accomplish your goals while making the most of your marketing budget. Contact us today to learn more.

What's moving your business forward?

In the old days, there was virtually no way to know. Real estate agents relied almost exclusively on face-to-face contact, attending events in the community, and handing out business cards or fridge magnets. After that initial conversation, it could be months before they heard from a prospect again — if ever.

Today, we have the benefit of a wealth of data and plenty of ways to use it.

Every time someone visits your website, they generate a vast treasure trove of useful information. Each session tells you where someone first found your website and what they did once they got there. That includes every page they looked at and how long they spent at each step in the journey.

Once you master your data, you can consistently improve your website, making it a better experience for all your visitors. Improvements of 2%-3% a month gradually turn into competitive advantages in your local market. But where do you start the process of becoming fluent with your data?

When your digital marketing is handled through an all-in-one, AI-driven solution like DeltaNET 6, you'll enjoy an amazingly granular view of your data. Still, it takes time to see how it all fits together. Here are some pieces of the puzzle you'll want to get familiar with first:

• Total Website Visits
  Also known as "traffic," total website visits are the ultimate metric for the top of your marketing funnel. More visits mean more leads, so getting initial traffic to your site will be your focus in the early stages of your practice. Ideally, you should see some growth in your website visits with every passing month. Dig deeper into the trend to find out what your major traffic sources are: Google search, social media, referrals from other websites?
  
  
• Visitor-to-Lead Conversion Rate
  Unless visitors turn into leads, traffic is sheer overhead. There may be several different "conversion events" on any website, but most real estate agents build their funnel so that visitors who sign up for a weekly email are considered leads. Leads can also be people who express interest in one of your listings or signed up for an open house. Optimizing your conversion rate moves people closer to a transaction that much faster.
  
  
• Cost Per Lead
  Almost all marketing activities will cost money. After all, even the simplest flier isn't free to print. With Cost Per Lead, you connect your marketing investment with results in the form of a crucial question: "If I spend X on my real estate marketing, how many leads will I generate?" In general, Cost Per Lead will go down as you launch more inbound marketing initiatives that pay long-term dividends, such as SEO and blogging.

Continuous Monitoring Helps You Turn Data into Actionable Insights

New data is generated every day, but that doesn't mean it always has new things to tell you. Get into the habit of putting aside one or two days at the same time each month to do a deep dive into fresh data. That's long enough to see which way trends are pointing, short enough to tie causes to effects.

With DeltaNET 6, key digital marketing features like search engine optimization and social media marketing are built right in, ready for you to customize or automate as you see fit. You can even automate entire Facebook and Instagram advertising campaigns with AdWizard. ROI on all your initiatives is easier to measure than ever.

Managing your data has a learning curve, but it equips you to supercharge your real estate marketing. To find out more, contact us.

Celebrate Thanksgiving with Five Delicious Real Estate Marketing Ideas

There are so many things to look forward to during Thanksgiving weekend, and we're not just talking about your delicious dinner. Thanksgiving is also one of the best times for real estate marketing because you can show your thanks to the clients and communities that help make your real estate success possible.

Whether you're giving a gift, raising money for a good cause, or just letting clients know that you care, now is the time to start thinking about Thanksgiving marketing. Get started with our five delicious Thanksgiving marketing ideas, cooked to perfection for the start of the holiday season.

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Using the right real estate marketing tools and tactics can give you an edge over the competition, but what do you do if you really want to stand out in a unique, unexpected way? If you truly want to stand out from the average real estate business, sometimes you need to take a leap of marketing faith. Agents who are willing to go outside the norm, try something ambitious, and risk looking silly in the process can make massive marketing gains with creative, quirky tactics that other agents aren't willing to try. Grab some outside-the-box marketing inspiration with our look at seven outrageous real estate marketing ideas...that actually worked!

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The start of a new year is the perfect time to both look back on what worked for your business in the previous year, and look forward to what you can do to build an even better real estate business in the year to come. Planning is an essential part of success in all aspects of the real estate industry, and that's certainly true when it comes to making the most of your opportunities in 2019. From uncovering new lead generation opportunities to retaining current clients, now is the time to start planning ahead for the New Year. Get started with our guide to preparing your real estate business for a successful year in 2019.

New Year, New Opportunities

Determine Your Marketing Priorities & Budget for the New Year

Creating an effective plan for the coming year is much easier when you know what you have to spend on marketing, and what you hope to accomplish with your real estate marketing this year. Are you looking to attract new clients from specific demographics, expand your influence into new areas, or find new, exciting ways to keep existing clients on board? Setting goals and knowing how much you can invest to achieve them will help you find success in 2019.

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It's not an exaggeration to say that real estate marketing is an industry, and like any industry, there are plenty of secrets for success that you can learn from people who have been there before. There may not be one big secret that will guarantee success, but there are indeed plenty of smaller ones that will add up, making life much easier as you market your real estate business. Our team is here to pull back the curtain and let you in on five key secrets that will help you take your real estate marketing to the next level.

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