If you are a real estate professional (such as a real estate agent, real estate investor, or mortgage broker), you work in a highly competitive marketplace. You probably need to do some sort of marketing in order to generate leads and sell more.

Unfortunately, many real estate professionals approach marketing in a haphazard way. That is, they just jump on a couple different marketing channels and run with them. There isn\’t any thought given to a real estate marketing strategy of any kind. They\’ll create a blog and then start tweeting. Unfortunately, the end result is almost always the same: They\’ll be active for a while but there won\’t seem to be any real value to it so they\’ll stop. The initial effort will have been wasted and they\’ll write off all online marketing as a waste of time.

It doesn\’t have to be that way. Real estate professionals can have a compelling and effective online presence that richly rewards them with qualified leads (without requiring a lot of time or effort or money to build this online presence). The one key element is a real estate marketing strategy. That should be your starting place. Once you build that strategy, the rest of your online real estate marketing will improve.

So, how do you create a real estate marketing strategy? Here are four steps.

The first step in developing a real estate marketing strategy is to write down your sales funnel. You probably already know what your sales funnel is but now it just needs to be written down. Here\’s a simple example sales funnel for a real estate agent: First, the agent generates leads of local homeowners who want to sell. The agent builds a relationship with the homeowner and then the homeowner contacts the agent to set up an appointment. The agent meets with the homeowner to determine a selling price and to start the selling process. Then the agent sells the home. Then the agent maintains their relationship with the client for the next time they need to sell a home.

The second step in developing a real estate marketing strategy is to identify a few marketing channels. Let\’s use the Twitter and blog examples that were mentioned above. Now here\’s the part that many real estate professionals skip: You need to decide where these channels fit in your sales funnel. Don\’t just use these marketing channels haphazardly but rather determine how they can be used strategically. For example, use Twitter to generate qualified leads. Then send them to your blog to continue building the relationship until they call for an appointment.

See the difference? You\’re not using Twitter and your blog to just jam out content. Rather, you are only trying to find qualified leads on Twitter and you\’re just trying to move them one small step to click on your blog. And, on your blog, you\’re not trying to get them to sell their home, you\’re only trying to get an appointment. In other words, each of your marketing channels has a small step in a larger process.

The third step in developing a real estate marketing strategy is to select a few specific, locally-focused keywords that your market is searching for. Yes, it\’s better to target a locally-focused keyword (like \”Chicago real estate agent\”) and only get a few higher quality hits than to target a much more competitive and generalized keyword (like \”real estate agent\”). Your audience will be that much more responsive and more likely to move through your sales funnel.

The fourth step in developing a real estate marketing strategy is to build high quality content in each of your marketing channels around each of those keywords. You\’ll want to do this in every marketing channel you use. And you\’ll want to be consistent about it. You don\’t have to create a lot of content, but you do need to create high quality content consistently.

Real estate marketing strategy is the difference between a successful online marketing presence and an unsuccessful one. If you\’ve tried online marketing for your real estate business in the past and it hasn\’t worked out, try these four real estate marketing strategy steps and see if they make a difference.

Aaron Hoos is a freelance writer and internet marketer for financial and real estate businesses. Click here to read more about real estate marketing strategy.

Aaron Hoos is a freelance writer and internet marketer for financial and real estate businesses. Read more about real estate marketing strategy at http://aaronhoos.com.

Author Bio: Aaron Hoos is a freelance writer and internet marketer for financial and real estate businesses. Click here to read more about real estate marketing strategy.

Category: Real Estate
Keywords: real estate, real estate marketing, real estate marketing strategy,