As real estate agents, we all know that a big part of getting a property sold as quickly as possible is generating maximum exposure. This is why we all love MLS — it does so much of the heavy lifting for us.
We create a listing, and within minutes, our MLS syndicates our listing to major real estate sites like realtor.com, Zillow and Trulia.
However, if your online marketing strategy is exclusive to MLS, you’re leaving a lot of exposure on the table.
In addition to using MLS, there are a number of other very effective marketing tactics available to you that are quick to deploy and won’t cost you a dime. Below, you’ll find five of them.
Facebook Marketplace
Facebook Marketplace launched back in October 2016 as a place for Facebook users 18 and over to buy and sell pretty much anything, including real estate.
Facebook Marketplace makes adding a real estate listing easy. You can create your listing by doing the following:
- Add property photos from your phone
- Ceate a name
- Include a description
- Add a price
- Confirm location
- Select category
You can interact with people within Marketplace and even receive offers!
Another great benefit to promoting your listings on Facebook Marketplace is the opportunity to personally connect with your audience.
Users who view your listing have the option to click through to your personal profile or business page to learn more about you. You can also quickly send the listing to your Facebook friends for some additional free marketing help.
Blogging
Actively blogging is possibly one of the best ways to generate leads from your website.
According to Hubspot, consumer companies with a blogging frequency of over 11 posts per month receive more than four times more leads than companies who blog only four or five times per month.
Imagine how that same statistic would compare with companies that don’t blog at all!
Speak with whoever built your website about adding a free blogging platform such as WordPress.
Reciprocal linking
Reciprocal linking is just a fancy way of referring to a situation when two website owners decide to link to one another.
By getting other business owners to put a link on their site back to yours, you can increase traffic to your website and acquire more leads.
Of course, you need to be willing to link back to them as well.
You’ve likely seen this on sites that have a “trusted partners” or “recommended vendors” page on the site.
Start off by asking other business owners in your networking or Chamber of Commerce groups if they’d be willing to do reciprocal linking.
Chances are, they’ve never even thought about it and will think you’re brilliant for coming up with the idea.
YouTube videos
Zillow video walkthroughs are great, but those videos can only live on Zillow. Why not capture video clips of your property, and publish them on YouTube as well?
With a billion hours of video watched daily, YouTube on mobile alone, reaches more 18-to-34- and 18-to-49-year-olds than any cable network in the US.
Mini Open Houses
Obviously, open houses are nothing new and are likely part of your marketing strategy already.
However, unlike traditional open houses that take place over the weekend for several hours, I’ve found that doing mini open houses for 30-60 minutes during the week, over the lunch hour, can be very effective.
These mini open houses give people the convenience of swinging by on their lunch break, and the short time frame creates a sense of urgency.
Additionally, when you schedule an open house, some of the major real estate sites will boost your listing to the top of their search results, which leads to even more exposure.
In the competitive world of real estate, setting yourself and your listings apart from the rest is critical to your long-term success.
I’m confident that adding these five tactics to your marketing plan will get you more exposure for your listings.
The best part is that these tactics won’t require much of your time, and they won’t cost you a dime.
Brandon Jones is a licensed Realtor, real estate investor, and the founder of RealEstateHacks.net. He resides near Springfield, Missouri, with his wife and two sons.
