11 Essential Real Estate Marketing Ideas for Agencies to Master the Market

In the bustling real estate market, standing out from the crowd is essential for success. With over 80% of agents failing within the first five years, largely due to insufficient lead generation, your marketing team's role becomes crucial.

As the navigators of the real estate marketing landscape, you are tasked with crafting customized lead generation, conversion, and referral marketing strategies. 

Your success enables theirs: helping clients buy or sell their homes seamlessly.

In this rapidly evolving industry, adapting to market changes and global events is a necessity. That's why we've compiled a list of real estate marketing ideas for agencies crafted to ensure your growth and resilience.

Let’s see how these ideas boost your agency’s real estate marketing strategy, help weather the storms of world events, and pinpoint the ideal target market at the right time.

1. Target a Real Estate Niche

Although it may be difficult to turn down potential clients, focusing your marketing team’s branding on a particular niche will help you stay top-of-mind to your target audience. After all, first-time home buyers and homeowners turn to real estate professionals because they are experts in their field. 

By niching down your real estate marketing plan for clients, a smaller group of prospective buyers (and sellers) will be attracted to your client’s brand. And when the time comes for them to buy or sell, these new leads looking for a real estate agent will go to your client. 

It is a lot easier to sell services when you pick a niche. You need to have really tailored content solutions for your clients because you need to know who you're speaking to. We realized we needed to make industry-specific content.

Lane Rizzardini, Co-Owner of Marion Relationship Marketing 

Being niche-focused also helps your agency dominate Google Maps and the search engines, but we’ll cover more on that later. 

Of course, you’ll need to balance your niche recommendations against a few critical criteria, including:

• Revenue potential: are there enough new homeowners and potential buyers within that niche?

• Average sale prices: Are potential clients selling houses in your client’s ideal price range? 

• Marketing turnover rate: Are your marketing efforts going to capture enough real estate leads to keep your agency happy?

• The competition: Is your client seen as an industry thought leader in outshining other local businesses in that niche? Hint: Do a competitor analysis.

Types of Real Estate Marketing Niches

Another great real estate marketing idea is to narrow down the real estate field beyond the obvious division between commercial and residential real estate.

• Geographic Niches

This is your most common type of real estate niche, as these realtors focus on a very specific local area. However, many real estate agents may dig a bit deeper into this space, and rather than covering a particular city, they could focus on a specific school district within the local community or even waterfront homes in the area. 

• Demographic Niches

Here, they are focusing on the buyers or sellers themselves. By targeting a specific type of client base–such as empty nesters, divorcing couples, military families, or newlyweds, your marketing team is able to use evocative words that touch the target audience and relate to their personal experiences. Crafting specific and unified messaging across all of your channels that speak directly to them will make them more likely to fill out lead capture forms.  

• Homestyle Niches

Who doesn’t love a Craftsman home? Surprisingly, plenty of people. Some people love Brownstones, others love Victorian architecture. For example, a niche focus on estate properties will likely drive fewer sales but of higher value. On the flip side (pun intended), a focus on fixer-upper homes could widen your client’s sales funnel with a larger volume of lower-cost homes. 

• Lifestyle Niches

Is the ideal customer a busy socialite or a family of four trying to make ends meet? Tie in your audience knowledge into your client’s personal brand. Understanding where the buyer is in their current life stage will help your real estate clients narrow down to what is most important for them. That could be nearby nightlife, great schools, shopping, or public transportation. 

• Feature & Function Niches

Some buyers will focus on what they can do with (or on) the property as much as they do the home itself. Hobby farmers, golf course homes, walkable communities, or eco-friendly homes are just a few of the feature and function niches you could explore for more real estate marketing ideas. 

2. Use Social Proof as Traction

People need to immediately see that a real estate agent is trustworthy when they visit their site or social media profiles. Their existing clients should also be prompted to send referrals. And one of the best ways to build trust and land new prospects is with social proof.

Oftentimes, video testimonials and reviews get sidelined for other marketing efforts. However, they are crucial to building your realtor client’s reputation, brand exposure, and getting more referrals. What's more, it's often the last step to convince potential buyers to choose your client's real estate business.

Case in point: A couple of years ago, a friend sold their home using a realtor in their area. They were so impressed with that agent’s real estate services that they referred four other clients to them over the next two years. In total, this agent generated over $2 million in real estate sales referred by that one person. And how did my friend find this agent? From a referral that he saw on Facebook. (Hello, free Facebook advertising!)  

• Have a referral system that encourages past clients to post on their social accounts, Facebook groups, and more. Not only does it boost engagement, but it also differentiates your agency as a thriving real estate business that's great at selling houses. Make it as easy as possible for your agency to get more customer reviews once they've closed a deal.

• Repurpose existing reviews and use them in your content marketing to get more qualified leads.

• Market your agency as a thought leader and create helpful content that will be more likely to be snapped up by a search engine.

• Manage your agency’s online reputation from one place to establish credibility for interested buyers and sellers

Keep a close eye on your reviews using reputation management reporting. Set them up in minutes. Try AgencyAnalytics free for 14 days. 

Another tool agencies use to improve their clients’ social proofing is HARO. It’s the latest PR service that helps spread the word about their business so that journalists easily source images and quotes. 

3. Make Your Agency's Website Hyper-Local

Local SEO and real estate marketing go hand in hand and this is why it gets position three in our real estate marketing ideas list.

Google Business Profile includes valuable insights you would want from any social profile, including website clicks and unique visitors to your profile. The most valuable data is the ability to view the search queries people use to find your business. This helps to influence keyword strategy across other platforms as well.

Valerie Jennings, CEO of Jennings Social Media & MarTech

You’ll want to put your agency on platforms where people search for local real estate agents like Google Maps. This includes social media platforms such as LinkedIn, Facebook, and Instagram, as well as making sure that their profiles on industry-specific sites like Realtor.com, MLS, and Zillow are top-notch. Public places where local services are checked include Google My Business and Yelp too, which specializes in local search! 

I would not tell any local business this, unless they don't want their business to succeed. Every local business should have a Google My Business profile, It will help with your brand trust, visibility and even SEO for your website.

Layne Sparks, Head of SEO at Kiwi Website Design

If your real estate agency is local, you want to market it as the best in your geographic area with a unique selling proposition. Tools like Parkbench are made for local realtors and allow them to become influencers in their area. This reduces a lot of the competition you’d encounter on the bigger search engines. 

Real estate agents also benefit from Google Local Services Ads, which make them a Google-certified business and show up only on the most direct and quality leads. 

Automatically create a Google Local Service Ad Listings Report to free up more billable hours. New to AgencyAnalytics? Try it free for 14 days.

4.  Follow Video-first Social Media Trends

A large part of a digital marketing strategy for realtors is having a social media strategy in place. In fact, over 30% of realtors closed a deal from their social media last year, and 60% of those surveyed said that their social media posts were more important than their real estate website. 

A recent study from the National Association of Realtors also showcased exactly how much social media has become a key ingredient to finding new clients and closing deals across the real estate industry. Its findings included the following data: 

• 77% of realtors actively use social media for real estate in some way, shape, or form

• 47% of real estate businesses note that social media results in the highest quality leads versus other sources

• 99% of millennials (and 90% of baby boomers) begin their home search online (as opposed to in-person referrals)

We see the best results from video on Facebook, Instagram, and YouTube! TikTok is a great platform for video marketing, no question - but it's not always a good fit for every business.

Michelle van Blerck, Communications Manager at Digital Freak Melbourne

It makes sense when you think about it. The real estate industry is all about relationship-building, and social media is indispensable to generate leads while building up your agency's reputation and community. Need more real estate marketing ideas? Consider setting up a YouTube channel and have your marketing team create YouTube videos to reach a wider audience, improve YouTube SEO, and drive more website visitors.

Besides, video content is king–and one of the best ways to highlight a home’s unique selling proposition or promote your agency’s real estate brand in an interactive way. However, realtors on platforms like Instagram face high competition. Use Instagram Stories to connect with your followers and Reels to cast a wider net and post content that’s friendly on mobile devices to increase Audience reach in your marketing campaigns. 

However, the challenge with a social media platform is how to remain locally relevant. You could generate hundreds, if not thousands, of views on a single Home Staging Tips TikTok, but if everyone who is viewing that post is from across the country or around the world, it will drive minimal client value. 

Here are some real estate marketing ideas for localized video content people love to watch:

• Local market updates – This is a high-intent topic and could prompt potential clients to take action sooner than planned.

• Property tours – This will help illustrate how well the agent showcases properties. Think of it as virtual tours of open houses.

• City highlights - Show off the highlights of the realtor’s town, which could be great for people thinking of moving to a new city or state.

• Neighborhood highlights – Get even more granular by digging deep into a specific neighborhood, including school districts and nearby shopping or dining options. Buyers will be looking for this, and bonus, it’s hyper-local! 

• First-time home buyer tips that are relevant to that city or state – Including things that a buyer from out of state may not be aware of. 

• The list goes on! And there’s nothing wrong with mixing in real estate lead gen content with some general real estate content, such as homeowner tax tips, to engage with potential clients.

Track your agency’s social media growth in a live social media dashboard that updates all your metrics in real-time. Start your free 14-day trial with AgencyAnalytics today.

5. Sell the Lifestyle, Not the House

Although your marketing team will not always be directly involved in developing property listings, it’s important that you help guide them to make sure that their messaging focuses on the underlying values and desires. They should be similar to those your agents promise to their clients when showing a home. The idea is to focus on things that stir emotion. For instance, people want:

• The perfect home

• Privacy

• A safe neighborhood

• A happy family

• A carefree life 

Consider creating a post format and best practices so that the realtor can quickly and easily describe the features that stand out the most. This could really make your agency stand out from the rest. Here are some real estate ad examples that convert like crazy. 

6. Go Old School

With the online market oversaturated with competition, contacting prospects on paper or in person can reach a highly targeted and different demographic. Some more tradition real estate marketing ideas include writing articles for community newspapers, creating direct-mail postcards, or using the tried and true door hanger. 

This is especially useful in smaller communities that are tight-knit, where word-of-mouth is the best way to get referrals. This also tends to reach an older demographic that is less tech-savvy but typically has more money to spend on real estate (and more value in their current homes). Alternatively, depending on their budget, your agency might want to invest in radio or TV advertising on local channels. 

Then there are the classic billboard ads. There’s a reason you see realtors dominating bus stops in every neighborhood: they work. Your creative team can create a killer layout and really craft your client’s core message to become a recognizable face, almost like a local celebrity. 

What’s a real estate brand without a great slogan?

This one is great because of the play on words, the trust the copywriting insinuates, as well as the phone number in bold. There’s no reference to a website: just a direct lead to their phone number. 

Always remember to go beyond the transactional nature of a real estate purchase. This is one of the largest investments that your customers will likely ever make, and it can be scary sometimes.

7. Network In the Wild

Think outside the B2C box. Get your agency’s name down in online directories, associations, alumni directories, and network, network, network! There are tons of professionals (aka, homeowners and people who have money to buy a house) that would like to use a real estate agent they’ve met in a professional environment.

Get those business cards ready and have your agency go to local events to meet up live and in person and hand out branded swag like T-shirts. Even host free seminars to create content for their professional website and get local sponsorships to build up their real estate brand.

Also, experiential marketing is still a thing. Your agency will want to take their clients out for dinners, wine tastings, charity events, or educational seminars to deepen their relationships further and spread their network. While your agents are out there schmoozing, your marketing team does the market research for events likely to have their target market and keeps an eye out for local events on social media that might go under the radar. Ensure your agency’s online presence and digital marketing persona matches their offline one.

And don’t forget that many real estate referrals come from other agents. If a potential client is selling in Michigan but buying in Florida, the selling agent might just refer your client to be the buying agent if they’ve established a connection. 

8. Keep Clients’ Websites In Tip Top Shape 

SEO is important for real estate websites–be it a blog or community information pages; ensure your agents have localized content and show their industry-leading expertise by publishing and updating the site regularly. (If you haven't already, check out the article on Real Estate SEO strategies to improve those conversion rates, generate more qualified leads, and build up your client's contacts database!)

Your focus here, of course, is on the agent and the city they service and less on the actual homes–as those searches will often be dominated by the larger players such as MLS and Zillow.

Here are 10 real estate marketing ideas to optimize your real estate websites:

• Start by using an SEO audit tool to identify any areas of immediate need of resuscitation

• Optimize for search–especially local search

• Optimize for mobile 

• Add their site to relevant local directories: Google My Business, and even local search engines like Yelp.

• Ensure their site is ADA-accessible – Read more: Why Website Accessibility Is a Smart Business Move for Your SEO Strategy

• Connect their social media accounts to build authority

• Publish compelling articles on their website

• Include videos on their website (like a Q&A and great virtually staged open houses)

• Use structured data that display rich snippets in search results.

• Use GLSA (Google Local Services Ads) to drive local leads.

And don’t rely purely on real estate portal sites to find homebuyers. Industry research has shown that while buyers and sellers actively use sites like MLS or Zillow to explore properties, they don’t use those same portals to choose their real estate agents. 

Instead, a majority of buyers and sellers find their agents through their network, a referral, or a local Google search. 

Read More: Top 10 SEO Trends To Put On Your Agency’s Radar

Showcase your agency's success with a dedicated SEO dashboard that highlights key marketing metrics. Try AgencyAnalytics free for 14 days.  

9. Work on a Seamless Brand Image

They say that selling real estate is all about three things: location, location, and location. But brand awareness can go a long way in the long term! In many ways, real estate marketing is also about branding, branding, and branding. 

Remember that your job is not to buy and sell houses but to sell the agent on their ability to buy and sell houses. And because this is one of the biggest purchases most people will make in their lifetimes, that all comes down to trust. 

Your agency might need some help with their branding: after all, their specialty is in marketing houses, not marketing themselves.

Focus on the most important decision-making criteria most buyers and sellers have when picking a real estate agent: 

• Market knowledge

• Engagement level

• Honesty

• Accessibility

And make sure to address the deal-breakers:

• Poor communication

• Lack of care or urgency

Simplify your workflow and stockpile social media templates for Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, business cards, and more. This way, each client has ready-made brand colors and formats waiting for their next post or appearance. 

Clients appreciate a similarly seamless experience with your agency. Take control of your branding with fully customizable white label reporting and dashboards. 

10. Write Copy With Heart

People buying or selling homes are stressed. They want to have their problems solved and fast. Your job as an agency is to position your agents as smart, honest, professional problem solvers that post valuable content.

Their prospects also want to see the humans behind them and not just profit-hungry brokers. Think short sentences: the kind of language that works best is the simplest and most direct, even if it's purely educational content.

Once you understand your client’s personal brand, values, and vision, carry this messaging to their email newsletter, web pages, and all their content marketing–whether it’s in Facebook groups, paid ads, and multiple other platforms to show the person behind the suit. Brainstorm real estate marketing ideas with your team to continually create relevant content that resonates.

11. Paint a Picture With Words–and VR

Agencies can offer - as part of their services - to review their team's real estate listings and advise them on the types of words to use. This also applies to your paid ads–is a particular home sunny, or is it sun-soaked? Just like when you give a tour of a home, marketing teams can paint a picture to jog the prospects’ imaginations. 

Have your agents use virtual staging software to show their local listings in different themes! One buyer might want a nursery, while another might be looking for a home office. Use different versions of your Facebook Messenger ads and Instagram Ads when targeting specific demographics. 

Image Source

How to Build Your Agency’s Successful Real Estate Marketing Plan

Now that you have plenty of ideas in your toolbox, it’s time to come up with a marketing plan to scalably apply to your real estate clients. Your plan should include:

• A proposal to grow your agency’s leads

• Live dashboards that keep track of all your agency’s most important marketing metrics. Track everything from social media metrics, to SEO and PPC combined, as well as reputation management, pure organic traffic metrics, and contact information from call tracking. All under one roof.

• Automated real estate marketing reporting to save your agency a ton of time and focus more on the creative aspects of your job

• A personalized, automated email referral system that prompts your agency’s clients to leave a positive review and refer them to friends and family

Want more information on how to create proposals that convert prospects into clients? Bookmark the following:

• How to Create a Winning SEO Proposal

• How To Write a PPC Proposal That Converts

• How to Write Winning Social Media Proposals

Use our marketing dashboards to create fully customized reports for your real estate clients. Once you customize the template for each of your team, their live metrics will populate on their own. What’s left is the marketing creative and writing up a simple executive summary before each report. 

Create a fully transparent, personalized approach with your agents, and save countless hours each month with automated reporting.

The Takeaway

In order to effectively enhance your real estate marketing strategy, it's important to approach it with a long-term perspective rather than attempting to implement everything on the list immediately. This list of real estate marketing ideas should help refine your marketing strategies and set clear goals to gain traction and achieve success over time. It's crucial to continuously monitor and analyze metrics to evaluate your progress and make necessary adjustments. Additionally, it's essential to recognize that what may have worked for one realtor in a specific location may not yield the same results for another realtor in a different area.

To maximize the time available for developing and executing your real estate marketing tactic, it's advisable to streamline the reporting process. Rather than relying on manual reporting, leverage your client meetings to brainstorm fresh ideas for their marketing campaigns, incorporating some of the aforementioned strategies. By providing actionable steps and suggestions, you actively contribute to the growth of your real estate businesses and prove your agency's worth.

Streamline your reporting today with an all-in-one client reporting tool that houses all your team's key metrics under one roof. Try AgencyAnalytics free for 14-days.

After finding AgencyAnalytics, not only did we save a significant amount in billable hours each month, but it also helped us maintain strong relationships and retain clients over the long run.

Raquel Baldelomar