The impact of creating and implementing a stellar real estate marketing plan can be the difference between being a great sales agent or just an average one. Think back to your last community marketing event. Was it deemed successful? How many attendees did you plan for vs. what you had? Did you target the correct audience? Too often, new home sales agents are planning events in hopes of creating a flood of new traffic, but it falls flat. I frequently find myself telling agents to stop being event planners and instead be traffic drivers. But what exactly does that mean? In today’s busy and tech-savvy world, we find new home sales agents having to be creative and tactical to drive more traffic to their community. Let’s take a deep dive into how you, as a sales agent or a sales leader, can create an effective plan for any new home sales community.
Step 1: Identify the Target Consumer Profile
Before beginning any marketing efforts, you will first need to understand the Target Consumer Profile (TCP) for your community. Who specifically should you be targeting as your buyer? Who will be purchasing your product, community, and lifestyle you are offering? Once you have your TCP clearly identified, begin thinking about what types of places and activities your consumer group might prefer. Are there specific local events or places they may enjoy? What kind of activities do they like? This will be a key component to putting your plan together!
Step 2: Create an Annual Calendar
The next step is to look at an annual calendar and get a snapshot of the full year ahead. Each quarter has its own seasonality in your local marketplace, so you will need to identify what times of year those sweet spots fall within. Consider major holidays, local events, festivals, school events, and so on, as it’s essential to map out what times of the year would and would not create the most success for any of your marketing plans. For example, hosting or participating in an event on a day during the local school's spring break week would not be wise. Since many people travel during spring break, the response rate and participation during this week would likely be much lower than in weeks leading up to or after this time frame. Redline through dates you will want to avoid throughout the year and highlight those you feel would be the most successful. If you know of any builder-specific events, large sales events, or perhaps something you want to tie into a specific holiday, be sure to identify them early on to ensure that you do not plan an initiative on a day that conflicts with them.
Step 3: Develop a Monthly Rolling Calendar
After you have your annual calendar marked up and completed, the next step is to create a monthly rolling Sales Associate Marketing Initiative (SAMI) calendar. This will be your roadmap for the next 30 days on how to drive incremental traffic to your community, outside of your builder’s typical marketing. List what you will be doing weekly to target your consumer profile and the items you need to accomplish leading up to any events. Your 30-day plan should include a touchpoint to four categories: Realtor, prospect, business, and referral. To learn more about each of these categories, refer to this home builder marketing article. Outreach to each of these buckets consistently will give you the most well-rounded and effective strategy.
Step 4: Finalize Considerations
As you are planning ideas and ways to target your consumers, remember to be strategic and think outside the box. You’ve determined what your TCP interests are and where they reside, so you should be going to them rather than expecting them to come to you. More often than not, people are too busy to carve time out of their schedules to participate in events at the model. Going out in the community will give you a much larger audience. If you’re looking at targeting prospects, specifically if your TCP comprises younger families, think about sponsoring an event or sporting team at the local school. If your efforts are aimed at targeting Realtors, go to their office and participate in their monthly meeting; doing so can help you gain greater outreach in the long term. Simply asking for five minutes of their time to give a brief presentation on your community and offerings will put your promotions and product at the forefront of their minds and those of their buyers’ too. For local businesses, contact them and ask if they'd like to collaborate on a special incentive. When it comes to referrals, doing a basic follow-up with any of your buyers that recently closed is a must! Checking in on them and reminding them of any referral perks/bonuses your builder offers can surely spark their interest. There are several ideas for a marketing plan, but the key to crafting and executing an effective one is to maintain it. As time goes on, the plan will need to be updated and tracked per initiative, so you can adequately log results after each task is completed.
By implementing the practices and tactics described above, you can significantly boost your traffic. Rolling out a strategy and religiously sticking to it will create significant change in your traffic numbers, and in turn, generate more sales.
