One of my friends, Miss J, started investing in real estate back in 2018. I happened to meet her at one of those three day REIA conferences. She was talkative so naturally we became fast friends.
Miss J had just gone through a messy divorce which left her and her ex husband bpth penniless. There were no winners after this one, trust me.
She decided that she was not going to stay poor.
She and her husband had owned a very successful business. He had retained 100% rights to that business, but she had been the one creating all the product. So neither of them benefited from that arrangement.
They had started this very niche business 20 years ago, so naturally she hadn’t kept her marketable skills up to date. Besides, she was the type of person who would rather die than work for anyone but herself. She was working 80 hour weeks, just to survive. So, she didn’t have a lot of money and she certainly didn’t have a lot of time.
By all rights, Miss J should have failed. If she was any other person, she might have even been forced into homelessness. But she persevered. She’s the type of lady who won’t let anything stop her, but that’s only half the reason she survived and is now thriving. She also had a secret weapon.
She was a marketing genius.
Miss J had been taking care of all of the marketing and branding for her old business. She had 20 years of marketing experience under her belt. And she knew that you need great real estate branding and a stellar marketing plan and to make it in any economy. Especially one as saturated as residential real estate in a big city.
Most new investors go into this business with their eyes wide shut. They’re told a lot of lies and half truths and they really have no idea what they’re getting themselves into. But Miss J? She knew.
So, she stepped into one of the most saturated markets out there and absolutely destroyed her competition.
It doesn’t matter if you have all the time and money in the world. It doesn’t even matter if your niche is unsaturated [link to Beaux], you should do everything you can to save your money and your time. A real estate marketing plan is the number one thing that will do that. And that’s exactly what I’m going to teach you to create.
The Perfect Marketing Plan Template
So, how do you go from virtually unknown to an investing superstar in a short period of time? You have to get your name out there. And you have to be trustworthy.
A good marketing plan will help you do that!
So, how do you create one?
Any marketing plan worth the paper it’s written on answers these seven questions:
- Who is your Audience?
- What is your Message?
- What are your goals?
- What is your budget?
- Which type of marketing fits in with your budget, goals, and skills?
- What is your timeline and how can you track it?
- What happened and how can you make it better?
We’re going to explore all of these, in depth, in this series. But for now, I’ll just give you an overview.
- Who is your Audience
When you’re trying to be efficient, every piece of marketing is important. You need to carefully craft them so that they connect you with your ideal customer. People buy when they feel like you understand them. So, you need to work on understanding who your prospective buyers and sellers are.
- What type of person sells what you’re trying to buy?
- What are some of the unique situations they need to be in to sell at your price point?
- What are their hopes, fears, and wants?
The best way to answer these questions is to create an avatar. An avatar is a picture perfect representation of your ideal customer. Who are you trying to target? More on that in the next part of this series! [link]
- What is your message?
Once you know who you are selling to, you need to figure out who you are. What sets you apart from the competition and how you can use that to better serve your prospects. After all, real estate investors are actually salesmen and problem solvers. You’re selling your ability to solve someone’s unwanted property problem. You’re here to help and you will help them better than anyone else because of… what? This is called your unique selling point (USP).
What makes you better than everyone else?
Many times, generic companies steal their competition’s message. This leaves the customer confused at what you have to offer them specifically. What is your message and what makes you unique?
I have a two part mini series that discusses this here. [link]
- What are your goals?
Where is your company going? What are you trying to do? You answer these questions by setting goals. After all, how do you know where to aim if you don’t have a target?
The best, and most well known, framework for setting goals is the SMART framework. According to Entrepreneur.com, “SMART goal-setting cuts through the fog of confusion and drills down on the achievable results that will help you fulfill your vision for your company.”
So make sure your goals are Specific, Measurable, Assignable, Realistic, and Time-Related. More on that here [link].
- What is your budget?
This question is, arguably, the most important. Money is always a scarce resource for businesses, especially lean startups like yours. Real estate investors need money for two main functions; finding real estate and buying real estate.
Before you decide how much money should go towards marketing, you’ll need to figure out three things.
- How much money do you have right now?
- How much money can you inject into your business each month?
- How cheap are your loans?
Once you know that, you can determine how much needs to be set aside for purchasing and how much you can use to find deals.
- Which type of marketing?
The type of marketing that you use depends on your goals, budget, and message. You also need to consider the trust, price, and time that each method takes.
For instance, setting up a website and sending out mailers is a 1-2 knockout duo that builds trust with your prospective sellers and is very time efficient. Unfortunately, if you have only a vague idea of your ideal customer, this type of marketing is very expensive.
On the other hand, texting is both cheap and fast but does not build much trust.
There are a million ways you can generate leads for real estate, each with its own pros and cons. Later on, we’ll do a deep dive on each of them so you know exactly what type of marketing fits with your budget, goals, and company values.
- What is your timeline and how are you tracking it?
Once you’ve selected two or three marketing techniques, you’ll need to figure out how to track them. The easiest way to track any new thing is to set up milestones. Since you’re new to investing and don’t have a clear idea on the return for each type of marketing, you’ll really have to rely on your milestones. One great milestone might be “I texted 1000 people” or “I mailed out 5000 mailers” or even “1000 people visited my website last month.”
Timelines and milestones are meant to break your SMART goals down and give you a process to follow. Your timelines will be directly related to your SMART goals, but they’ll be more of a how than a what. You need to know if your lead generation techniques are worth the money and time you put into them!
- What happened and how can you make it better?
You need to evaluate your progress on a regular basis. You could set all the goals in the world but if you aren’t honest with your progress, you’ll never succeed.
This evaluation is more than just an evaluation of yourself, though. It’s also an evaluation of your processes.
Conclusion
These are the basic building blocks of a winning real estate marketing and business plan. Every investor needs a marketing plan, but only the smart investors create one. In case you’re new to my blogs and books, we’re all about investing smart here. I don’t like wasting money and I don’t like wasting time. I’m all about getting to the goal as fast as I can. Ahead of schedule and under budget.
But, be warned! Neither a business plan nor a marketing plan are easy to create… but they are completely worth it. Business.gov.au says it best: “[A marketing plan] requires research, time and commitment, but is a very valuable process that can greatly contribute to your business success.”
Having these plans gives you a one-up on all your investment competition. Not only will you have some mini-goals along the way to keep you motivated, you’ll have a reliable way of tracking what works and what doesn’t. This will help you find success much faster than your competition.
Put another way, “If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six sharpening my axe.” – Abe Lincoln.
Once you’ve read through this series on marketing, you’ll have everything you need to create a hyper-successful marketing plan. It’ll take a little time, but it will save you far more time and money than you will spend.
Click here to move on to the next part of this series [link]: Who is your ideal customer?
