A simple road map for a successful marketing plan

While you’re polishing up the finishing touches on your 2024 business plan, the Weichert® team has some expert tips to help you also build a solid marketing plan. The two plans work synergistically, so it makes sense to think about them both now to ensure your efforts are aligned and integrated in the year ahead.

Every successful real estate company needs a well-thought-out business plan to outline its course of action. (Be sure to also read our blog about business planning.) A real estate marketing plan is a key part of that. To help make it easier to create yours, Weichert suggests road-mapping these building blocks:

• Objectives
• Budget
• KPIs
• Audience
• Branding
• Timelines 
• Channels
  

Objectives

All business plans start at the top. Take a fundamental review of your business’s mission and vision, your core values, and so forth to help you realign with who you are and what you want to achieve this year. Thinking high-level this way will make it easier for you to get granular with actionable tasks and goals that ladder up to what makes you unique.

Then be sure to make your objectives specific. For example, increase market share by 10% or generate 25 new qualified leads per month. You will have a better sense of how to do this once you are super clear on the competitive differences you want to communicate. 

Lastly, make sure your objectives are realistic. It’s good to stretch yourself and your team, but not to a point where the rubber band snaps. 

Budget

You want to make sure that your marketing dollars are spent well. Find the balance between spending too little and too much. Some say a good rule of thumb is to spend approximately 10% of your gross commission income on your marketing efforts. But, of course, you have to use your judgment on whether or not that number needs to be higher or lower. It all ties back to your objectives, both for marketing and for your greater business plan.

It’s not enough to just establish your budget, though. You’ll also want a plan in place to measure the effectiveness of your investment decisions to understand ROI (return on investment). Read on to the KPI section below for inspiration.

“Building an effective marketing budget requires a deep dive into your sales funnel, where you’ll track results throughout the revenue cycle, from prospect to customer. Harvesting this data from your marketing automation software or CRM makes this process relatively simple.” (Forbes)

At Weichert, our broker-owners can always tap into myWeichert® to help them decipher some of these numbers. Our state-of-the-art CRM, powered by kvCORE technology, makes much of the number crunching easier to figure out. If you’re curious to see how it works, contact us for a demo.

KPIs

Every marketing plan needs key performance indicators (KPIs), also known as metrics, to measure success. There are many KPIs you can use to track your progress throughout the year. But remember, KPIs need to align with your objectives, so choose the ones that make sense with what you’re trying to achieve. 

Here are a few examples of KPIs:

• Impressions/cost per thousand (CPM)
• Leads/cost per lead
• Conversion rates
• Traffic (to your website)
• SEO rankings/socials shares/likes & follows
• Open rates/click-through rates/unsubscribe rates (for email marketing)
• Customer acquisition costs
• Lifetime value of a customer

Remember, by putting KPIs in your marketing plan, you provide yourself with measurable ways to see what’s working and what’s not. From there, you can course-correct as you go to ensure the best return on investment. Without KPIs, you’ve got your fingers crossed that your marketing is working, and who can afford to work that way?

Audience

Your audience is likely two-fold: your present customer base and the new customers you want to acquire. Therefore, a focused marketing plan sets two goals. The first is to maintain engagement and customer loyalty. The second is to capture market share within a specific audience segment of your target audience.

Understanding your audience is vital to developing a successful marketing plan. Is your target customer a first-time home buyer, a home seller, or a renter? Are you targeting specific subsets like relocators, retirees, or second-home buyers?

Identifying your target market is one of the most important parts of your marketing plan. Without a defined audience, your marketing expenses can feel like you’re throwing spaghetti at a wall.

Branding

When developing your marketing plan, you should know why a customer would choose you over anyone else. This is your value proposition and your brand. Be sure to communicate the uniqueness of your brand and do so with consistency.

For us at Weichert, our brand is synonymous with experience, reputation, and people first. We’ve been leaders in the real estate industry for 50+ years, and we’ve thrived through every kind of market possible over the decades. We are also very people-focused, and we care about the success of our broker-owners, their agents, and their clients. We’re one, big Weichert family. The point is, this is who we are—it’s our brand—and we make sure that comes through loud and clear in our marketing, too.

As a byproduct of making your branding sing, you’ll position yourself as something uniquely special and different from your competition.

Timelines

You can plan your marketing timeline with a few things in mind. One is tied to your overall objectives and how you approach each time frame of your business. For example, you may plan a big lead generation push in the winter, so you’re geared up for spring when buying/selling activity picks up. The other timeline lens to look through is the natural calendar that dictates holidays, industry events, back to school, and so forth. Marketing plans can outline activities on a monthly, quarterly, or annual basis. Use those time blocks to help you map your plan. Fill in what activities you already know and look for gaps that require some type of activity. 

Channels

This is where you can have some fun. It’s also where you might feel thoroughly overwhelmed. From email to social media, direct mail to print, blogs to webinars, there are many channels in which you can reach your audience. How can you decide where to put your marketing dollars? Try asking yourself these questions:

• Who am I targeting? (Are they likely to be influenced by others, such as through a social media campaign? Or are they information seekers, eager to listen to an informative webinar?)
• Where is my prospect most likely to be reached? (Are they on the sports fields in town all week with their kids, and therefore would see outdoor ads on park fences? Or are they in a neighborhood with lots of recent real estate activity, and would likely appreciate a personalized letter in their mailbox?)

Once you’ve nailed how to reach them, you can get to actually creating the marketing materials. Weichert affiliates have lots to work with. This includes  myWeichert®, which has many pre-built resources, such as email and text campaigns, social media ad boosting, and landing and squeeze page templates that they can plug into immediately, without having to build templates themselves. They also have access to myMarketing Studio which allows them to create beautiful print materials and social media content through ready-made templates. Plus, they have libraries of social posts, videos, flyers, brochures, and more.

In addition, Weichert supports our broker-owners with plenty of creative inspiration—from lists for different kinds of events they can plan month by month, to holiday-based ideas, to pop-by gift lists to help keep you top of mind. 

But wait, there’s more…

Here are two more planning pointers from Weichert.

Don’t be blind to trends

Starting your marketing plan now means you’ll have your game plan in place to guide your activities, so you aren’t scrambling to figure out what to do on the fly. However, don’t go through the year with blinders on. Keep your eyes open and be ready to adjust your plan as needed to react to emerging real estate trends, such as developments in AI and automation. Efficiency matters in our industry. For example, if you don’t have a CRM system, consider one that can help you streamline email marketing campaigns, automate lead nurturing, and manage client data and interaction. 

Consider going out of your comfort zone

While you may be tempted to continue the tried-and-true tactics that have worked for you for years, take a minute to consider trying one new thing this year. Our President, Bill Scavone, wrote an article for RISMedia. In it he states, “For you to succeed in the ever-changing world of real estate, there are activities you may need to add to your business, which could take you out of your comfort zone. You may need to implement new systems, change your marketing strategies, increase spending … Visualize where you want to be. If you can see it, you can achieve it.” Click here to be inspired by the full article.

Now that you’ve planned your work, are you ready to work your plan? Weichert is here for you. Let’s connect.