At Curaytor, we live and breathe digital marketing. At this point, it's fair to call us digital marketing experts. You live and breathe real estate, making you the expert. Being great at what you do is the reason you're successful. Since you're not an expert at digital marketing, you need a plan. That's why we're going to show you exactly how we come up with our digital marketing plans at Curaytor - and how they work.
“A goal without a plan is just a wish.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupéry
What's the goal of your digital marketing plan?
It's time to break the vicious cycle. When you're not busy with real estate deals, you focus on marketing. Once that round of marketing works, you get busy... and don't have time to keep marketing. Once you're done with those deals, you're not busy and there aren't more leads ready to work with you, because you haven't been marketing.
It's time to break that cycle. Having a marketing plan that you can execute every single week is essential. Having a plan that only takes 10 minutes to execute will keep you from falling back into the vicious cycle. But what should that plan do? How do you know what to focus on? There are 4 core aspects every good marketing plan touches on to create predictable revenue.
“In the absence of a brand, the cheapest wins.” - Jimmy Mackin
Who's your target audience?
The first step of execution is who. Who are you actually targeting?
The key to this crucial first step is relevancy. You can provide relevant content by segmenting your audience. There are sellers who are serious about selling right now, there are sellers who will be selling in the next 8-12 months, and there are sellers who won't sell their home for another 2-5 years. The key is providing them with information relevant to their stage in the journey. The same idea goes for buyers.
Past Clients & Sphere
Buyers
Sellers
If your marketing message tries to appeal to everyone in your database, you'll be ignored.
A problem that exists in real estate marketing right now is the heavy focus on buyer content, but if you ask any real estate agent where most of their business comes from, they'll most likely say, "sellers and past clients." So why is 95% of your content focused on buyers? If you only go after buyers, your marketing is always going to suck, and you'll look desperate for business.
Get granular on the actual lists to build vs all when you actually do marketing consistently you do not have to spray and pray, you can use a scalpel and be a surgeon, attract don’t chase.
“Most real estate agents online are either invisible or cheesy.” - Chris Smith
Why should you market your real estate business?
126%
more lead growth is attributed to small businesses with blogs compared to small businesses without.
(Content Marketing Institute)
3X
more leads are generated through content marketing than traditional marketing.
(Demandmetric, 2016)
6X
higher conversion rates for companies and brands using content marketing than those that aren’t.
(Aberdeen Group)
Where should you post your marketing content?
In a word? Everywhere. Omnichannel marketing works. But only if you do it right.
You can market the same thing, but tailoring your message for each social channel is what will make it successful. For example: what makes a great tweet doesn't make a great LinkedIn post.
So how do you make your content relevant on LinkedIn? You'll want to use a more researched-focused approach by including stats and data. What about Instagram and Twitter? Using hashtags and tagging brands or people you featured in the post are ways to increase engagement on those platforms.
Pro-Tip: One of the biggest mistakes right now is that people are playing too much on their spokes, and not enough on their hub.
At Curaytor, we work exclusively with the best agents and teams in North America to help them get their marketing done right so that they can attract more listings. Schedule a quick 1:1 with our sales team to find out if we have availability in your market.
“Long-form blog posts generate nine times more leads than short-form blog posts.”
(Curata)
Blog post
Facebook profile & page
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email drip & blast
instagram Story & Post
How often?
When it comes to marketing, momentum matters. The perfect digital marketing plan includes weekly content, plus listing promotions for all life cycles (coming soon, just listed, open house, just sold).
At Curaytor, we follow the Bill Belichick mentality: no weeks off. Consistency is essential! We do, however, encourage doubling down on the content you've created with an ICYMI (in case you missed it) email that reminds your existing database of all the great content they might have missed. Take the week to then add all that content into your drip campaigns to keep it fresh and updated.
“Those first few fans, followers, links, shares, whatever it is, pieces of content, they're incredibly hard to get going. But after that wheel starts turning, I push just as much as I pushed in the beginning, and the wheel goes much, much faster. It's self-reinforcing.” - Rand Fishkin "Whiteboard Friday"
What real estate content should you post?
Like we said before, the "perfect marketing month" consists of 3 out of 4 weeks targeting sellers or past clients and 1 out of 4 weeks targeting buyers, all the while promoting your listings. We encourage 1 buyer campaign each month since we know that real estate agents don't always have listings.
Pro-Tip: Sending seller related content to your buyer leads isn't a mistake. Most buyers in your area need to sell before they buy, so why not ask them that question? It will qualify them right away and you'll know what bucket they fall into.
Pro-Tip: Google Trends can help you nail the timing of holiday or event based marketing. For example, Father's Day is coming up. Type "father's day" into Google Trends and look at the past 5 years. There's a huge spike every year around the 15-25. You'd want to run your campaign the week before the spike to maximize these results.
The Listing Life Cycle
We recommend targeting sellers or past clients & sphere for 3 out of 4 weeks of the month. In addition to these campaigns, you should also be marketing every single listing you get, for each stage in the listing life cycle.
Coming Soon Listing Posts
Before you even list the home for sale, you can build a buzz with a "coming soon" campaign, since everyone wants to be the first to know about anything, especially a potential new home. Giving your email database first access might even get the home sold before listing, and can start a conversation about what potential buyers in your database are looking for. Your database will also be thankful for the chance to get a sneak peek.
Just Listed Promotions
As soon as the home is on the market, you can start the "just listed" campaign.
Price Reduction & Open House
After the home is listed, there are still ways to market the same property. Price reductions are extremely common and let's face it, everyone loves a sale. Campaigning your open houses on Facebook can boost the event and get more eyes on the home.
Just Sold
The last step in the life cycle is a "just sold campaign", which is an extremely effective way to showcase how you sold the property, what made this listing sell so quick, and a testimonial from the sellers about their successful home sale with your brand. Show the sweat without bragging about your marketing and let the results speak for themselves.
What other content should your marketing plan include?
Your plan will never include campaigns that are all home runs. Our marketing plan runs on three proven successful campaigns and one that we're praying on. In order for your marketing to evolve, you have to take some chances. Every campaign that works started as an idea that wasn't certain.
For example, our marketing plan included a campaign focused around the Game of Thrones castles as listings. We were crossing our fingers that this would take off, and it did! Our clients were being called "marketing geniuses" from their followers. Taking a relevant topic (Game of Thrones) and incorporating it into your area of expertise (real estate) is co-branding at it's finest.
We also include other campaigns that we knew are home runs. The "What can $900,000 get you Mississauga" and "The difference between a $500K, $600K, and $800K home in Boston" (inspired by Wistia's One, Ten, One Hundred Documentary) campaigns spark natural curiosity from anyone, no matter the stage of their customer journey.
Another home run angle is a listicle. Taking a highly sought after amenity (beautiful kitchens) and coupling it with an appealing price point ($300,000), this campaign appeals to potential buyers everywhere. Listicles can be used for any amenity, price point, and location.
A marketing tactic that works when done right is taking a contrarian point of view or exposing your competition (without being bitter!) "Is Selling Your Home Right Now A Mistake" takes real-life scenarios that sellers think about and addresses them head-on. "The Hidden Costs of Selling Your Home The Silicon Valley Way" and an article from GeekWire about Zillow's CEO, takes a similar angle while exposing their competition in the open with statistics and real quotes from these company's past clients. The answer of who to choose becomes obvious through the tactic "show me don't tell me"
Showing off your local expertise is one of the best ways to gain trust and establish yourself as an expert with your past client and sphere. Our campaign "The 5 Most Instagrammable Places in Roanoke" combines the local market with Instagram, and even gives you the opportunity to highlight local businesses or hot spots that could repost.
Pro-Tip: Google Trends can help you nail the timing of holiday or event based marketing. For example, Father's Day is coming up. Type "father's day" into Google Trends and look at the past 5 years. There's a huge spike every year around the 15-25. You'd want to run your campaign the week before the spike to maximize these results. Los Angeles Canyon Living took a similar approach with their Mother's Day Weekend Guide.
“I have missed more than 9,000 shots in my career. I have lost almost 300 games. On 26 occasions I have been entrusted to take the game winning shot... and I missed. I have failed over and over and over again in my life. And that's precisely why I succeed.” - Michael Jordan
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Where do we get our marketing ideas?
1. Analytics
Take a look at the most popular articles, tweets, or videos you've posted. Reusing old content like a popular tweet, your most watched video, most noteworthy listings, etc. can spark creativity and give you an idea of what your audience wants to see.
2. You (& your team's) Brains
At Curaytor, we brainstorm for hours every week. We empower our employees to share their ideas in our slack channel called #thebraintrust. Chances are there will be some ideas that we don't use, but they almost always inspire us and get the brainstorm session started.
3. Buzzsumo
This is one of the most powerful tools for community and local posts. BuzzSumo allows you to see the most viral articles on social media about any keyword.
Protip: if you're looking for the most popular articles on a certain site, type that website into the keywords (example: boston.com)
“A CRM without great marketing is a phone book” - Jimmy Mackin
