Do you need a foolproof way to create enough funds for a great marketing plan? We’ve got five easy steps for you to follow to create the perfect real estate marketing budget.
Given that the average small business is slated to spend $75,000 this year on digital marketing, creating a budget could be a stressful experience. Some of the costs for digital marketing, which you might have thought was free, could be astronomical and a waste if they’re not properly deployed.
Coming up with your real estate marketing plan budget takes careful consideration of what you plan to do and how you plan to do it.
If you’re wondering how much you should be spending on marketing this year, follow these 5 steps to get a feel for it.
1. Make Room for Social Media Spending
Social media is a great place to start with your real estate marketing budget because it’s both inexpensive and high impact. While you might not think you need to budget out how much you have to spend, you’ll have to budget for time.
You also need to determine what proportion of your business can be done on social media. Every other business will be competing for free advertising space.
If you decide to go full throttle on social media, you should hire an ad company to help you out. With the aid of a marketing agency, you can craft your communications to hit harder than your competitors. If your advertising efforts have a high-impact, you’ll still be saving money because of the inexpensive nature of advertising on social media.
Make sure that all of your profiles have a unique voice. Your Instagram engagement should sound different than your LinkedIn profile. You can post a ton of photos on a long Facebook post, but that won’t translate well to Instagram or Twitter.
2. Decide on Where To Place Ads
When you start thinking about where you want to advertise, you first need to think about where your audience is located. Advertising on a young and hip social media platform that doesn’t garner a lot of engagement from potential homeowners might be a waste of effort.
Figure out which sites your potential clients are using the most. People who are thinking about buying a home or getting into real estate will be looking at lots of lifestyle or home design magazines and sites. Be sure you’re advertising in the range of market you’re planning on dealing with.
If you’re advertising on a DIY site while having mostly high-end properties to offer, you could be barking up the wrong tree. It’s the same if you start thinking about advertising on apps.
Apps allow embedded and native advertisers to get in touch with their audience. While you might think this is a great move on your part, you need to think very carefully. You don’t necessarily know which apps your audiences use the most, so unless you can ferret this information out, hold onto your cash.
3. Video is Cheap and High Impact
In the coming years, video will comprise nearly 80% of all traffic online. While this is an exciting development for consumers and lovers of video online, it’s a big leap for lots of small- to medium-sized businesses. Creating videos isn’t everyone’s forte but you might not have a choice soon enough.
Now is the time to work out the kinks in creating videos for your real estate business. While you may have flirted with creating virtual tours and video walkthroughs in the past, now is the time to think differently.
You can show potential buyers what to look for using the homes you have available as a model. You can show the kinds of exchanges people in your local market may have to make. Let them know some basics like while some locations will offer a big backyard, you might have no front yard.
4. How Can You Take On Your Local Market?
The demographic of homeowners and business owners is changing. More of your customers will be spending more of their time online. Do you think you should focus on online marketing or should you still budget out for traditional print ads in local papers?
Depending on the market you’re in, the answer might surprise you.
Some regions still have a heavily read free print magazine. Small towns, college towns, and cities are still invested in creating free papers for all local residents. If your audience demographics fit with “potential homeowner” you might be in luck.
Coming up with print ads can be simple and cheap, depending on what the interest is. If you’re one of the only customers asking to advertise in your local paper, you could get a full-page ad for an extremely good price.
5. How Much Can Be Done In-House?
Much of your marketing content will cost money to produce. Whether it’s well-written blogs, high-quality photos, or tightly edited videos, professionals will probably do it all better than your staff. You might be in luck and have hired a receptionist with exceptional video chops.
However, this is rarely the case. You’ll have to have a mix of people working in-house and people hired through an agency. If you can bring someone on part-time to train your full-time staff, you could end up creating lots of good content that also feels sincere.
The voices of your staff and the people working for your company are important, even if they’re not professional marketers. Find a way to combine this with strong marketing deployment and you’ll make a splash in your local market.
Your Marketing Plan Budget Could Be Shoestring
Just because you’re competing in the high-stakes field of real estate, your marketing plan budget could be less than you think it needs to be.
A great marketing plan isn’t about how much you spend but how you do the work. With a strong deployment strategy and lots of clever ads, you could do a lot with very little money.
If you’re thinking about marketing with video, check out our guide to how it works.
