He who fails to plan is planning to fail.
-Winston Churchill
No matter how far along you are in your career—whether you’re a real estate newbie or a seasoned veteran—you won’t succeed without a well thought out plan.
And when we talk about a marketing plan, we’re not talking about your ideas to write a blog whenever inspiration hits, or to create videos when you have time (if your plans are only in your head, they are little more than pipe dreams).
We're talking about a detailed plan to jumpstart your business through specific actions.
A marketing plan is:
a document that details you or your company’s marketing goals for a specific timeline, including a detailed step-by-step framework for achieving those goals.
Think of it as the blueprint you’ll use to guide the construction of your real estate career—your process for promoting your services.
Some quick tips for getting started:
- Allot a significant amount of time preparing the plan
- All goals within the plan should be reachable (with specific steps for reaching them)
- Keep it easily accessible for reference
- Share with the necessary people who can help enact the plan
- Refer to it regularly (say every quarter)
- Be willing to adjust it
How to Create Your Marketing Plan
Without clearly defined goals, your time and money with both be spent inefficiently.
Whether you're an agent, home inspector, mortgage loan originator, appraiser, or notary public, just joining a team or setting up your office is not enough to attract customers.
You need to find them through marketing.
Although the details of marketing plans may vary, there are still some universal elements that every plan needs.
1. Clearly define your goals
Every subsequent step is based on this one, so it must be right. Maybe you have one specific goal or several—whether it's driving more traffic to your website, increasing your number of clients, or reaching a higher revenue point—you won’t accomplish any of it without writing it down first.
2. Find your niche
What separates you from your competitors?
The answer to this question will help guide you to discovering your niche in the market.
Do you have superior customer service?
Do you specialize in a specific kind of property?
Do you have better images and videos than anyone else in your market?
Once you discover your niche, that knowledge will drive the tone of your marketing plan.
3. Find your target market
You cannot reach everybody.
Trying to reach every person is the same as attempting to reach nobody. Because time and money and effort are finite resources, you must necessarily exclude some potential customers in your marketing plan in order to more directly reach your target clients. (This comment is called "Hiding in Infinity." Read more about it here.)
4. What’s your message?
Here’s where you get to have a little more fun.
What do you want to say to your audience and how do you want to say it?
Are your marketing materials going to be playful, professional—maybe a little bit of both?
Without a game plan going into it, your tone will be inconsistent.
Take a mountaintop view of your marketing plan and imagine how your brand will appear across various mediums and social media platforms.
5. What's your budget?
How much are you going to spend on your marketing plan every month, quarter, or year?
It’s possible that the amount you spend could be zero—it’s possible (at least as far as money is concerned). However...
Remember that your budget includes time, as well.
Defining a budget helps you cap expenditures before you get ahead of yourself trying to reach goals that may not be within reach yet given your revenue.
You may hate crunching the numbers, but it's a necessary step, otherwise you may find yourself with a plan that has no financial backing.
6. Specify your outreach
How much time are you going to spend on digital marketing efforts?
What about traditional marketing like magazine and newspaper ads, direct mail, and perhaps even billboards?
You don’t necessarily need to be everywhere, but you do need to think of the best channels through which to reach your audience.
Where do your potential clients?
Where do they spend their time?
You need to be right there with them.
7. Cultivate a content expertise
Try adding a blog to your website to share and post original content. Contribute to other real estate websites. Stay consistent and, over time, if you are adding value to people's lives, you will be seen as a market expert.
People will begin to trust you.
Google will begin to trust you.
Your website and related content will rise in Google’s search results.
More clients will come to you.
8. Delegate
Your team (if you have one) needs to know about your marketing plan in order for it to come to fruition.
Get their buy-in from the beginning and set the plan into motion.
To sign up for classes with Larson Educational Services, visit our website, LarsonEd.com, or give us a call at 239-344-7510.
About Larson Educational Services:
Utilizing 40 years of real estate training and professional education experience, Florida real estate school Larson Educational Services is the premier provider of Florida real estate licensing, exam preparation, post-licensing, CAM licensing, mortgage loan originator licensing, and continuing education in Southwest Florida. Classes are available in Fort Myers, Naples, Sarasota, and online. We are an approved Florida Real Estate School (License #ZH1002299), Florida CAM School (License #PRE31), Florida Insurance School (License # 370501) and NMLS Approved Course Provider.
Larson Educational Services
1400 Colonial Blvd. #44,
Fort Myers, Florida
33907
239-344-7510
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