In March’s Marketing and Branding Month, we’ll go deep on agent branding and best practices for spending with Zillow, Realtor.com and more. Top CMOs of leading firms drop by to share their newest tactics, too. And to top off this theme month, Inman is debuting a brand new set of awards for branding and marketing leaders in the industry called Marketing All-Stars.
This article was last updated Mar. 6, 2023.
For many real estate agents and brokers, the past couple of years have been a seat-of-your-pants wild ride, where it was possible to forget about marketing in favor of serving the clients who seemed to magically appear in many markets. That means that for a lot of agents, especially those who are newer to the industry, developing a boots-up marketing strategy may be a new endeavor.
The good news is that it’s not complicated to put together your marketing plan. It just requires time and consistency. You already know the basics:
- Core content like blog posts, video content or podcast episodes
- Distribution of that content through social media and email marketing
- Ongoing engagement through those same platforms as well as top-of-mind cultivation of your farm through direct mail
While there are marketing plans of varying complexity and expense, a basic plan can be created with minimal expense. All it takes is a commitment to put out that content on an ongoing basis and some insight into the audience you’re aiming to reach.
The big-picture statistics
These statistics will help you get a sense of what’s working right now, both within the industry and for top-notch marketing experts whose job it is to keep track of the latest and greatest strategies. Let them guide you through creating a winning plan for 2023 and beyond.
1. Atlanta, Georgia; Raleigh, North Carolina; Dallas, Texas; Fayetteville, Arkansas; and Greenville, South Carolina join five other metropolitan areas — all of them in the South — among NAR’s top 10 housing markets in 2023. (NAR)
2. Lawrence Yun, NAR chief economist and senior vice president of research, forecasts that 4.78 million homes will be sold next year. This is down 6.8 percent from 2022. (NAR)
3. Short-form video, influencer marketing, and social shopping/using DMs for customer service were among marketers’ favorite strategies in 2022, according to Hubspot, and are projected to continue into 2023.
4. Millennials currently make up the largest generational cohort of homebuyers at nearly 20 percent while Gen-X makes up the largest segment of homesellers at 24 percent. (The Close)
5. Nearly 80 percent of listing agents use videography and drone photography to market their listings. (The Close)
6. Seventy-three percent of homeowners say they’re more likely to list with an agent who uses video to market their property. (The Close)
Email marketing
7. According to a recent study by Litmus, the majority of brands have increased their email marketing due to the steady ROI, with 37 percent of businesses increasing their email marketing budget. In fact, only 1.3 percent of businesses that use email promotions have cut back. (Fits Small Business)
8. Email marketing is associated with five times more conversions than social media marketing. While social media marketing is important for staying top of mind and cultivating relationships, email marketing is considered superior for conversions. (Fits Small Business)
9. Segmentation has been associated with email open rates as high as 94 percent and click-through rates as high as 38 percent vs. 42 percent and 4.5 percent for unsegmented email campaigns. (Fits Small Business)
10. The ideal subject line for an email campaign is six to ten words. (Fits Small Business)
11. The best times for email opens are 10 a.m., 2 p.m. and 7 to 10 p.m. (Fits Small Business)
Social media marketing
12. While Facebook was still the highest ROI social media platform in 2022, YouTube, Instagram and TikTok will see more growth than Facebook in 2023. (Hubspot)
13. In the United States, 79 percent of people have a social media account on at least one platform. (Hubspot)
14. For Gen-Z, 71 percent prefer to discover new products and services on social media. For millennials, this is true for 51 percent. (Hubspot)
15. For marketers who are using TikTok, 56 percent plan to increase or maintain their investment on the platform in 2023. (Hubspot)
16. TikTok isn’t just for Gen-Z. In the three months prior to Hubspot’s study, 50 percent of millennials reported visiting the platform along with 38 percent of Gen-Xers surveyed.
17. Most marketers use three to five social media platforms for their clients, with Facebook as the most widely used by 64 percent of marketers, followed by Instagram (58 percent), YouTube (57 percent), Twitter (43 percent) and TikTok (42 percent).
Content marketing
18. Besides blog content, 37 percent of B2C marketers plan to use longer-form case studies in their content marketing strategy for the first time this year. (Hubspot)
19. For data-based content marketing, 56 percent of marketers say that infographics are their most effective form of marketing. (Hubspot)
20. Some 90 percent of marketers will increase or maintain their investment in short-form video content in 2023. (Hubspot)
21. Updated and engaging content with refreshed links and statistics will be an important part of keeping older content evergreen and improving search engine optimization, especially for those who’ve been creating online content for many years. (Hubspot)
22. On average, the third most viewed page on an agent’s website is the About Us/About Me page, so a great bio is essential. (The Close)
23. Among recent homesellers, 69 percent said they would gladly write a review or testimonial if asked. (The Close)
Christy Murdock is a Realtor, freelance writer, coach and consultant and the owner of Writing Real Estate. She is also the creator of the online course Crafting the Property Description: The Step-by-Step Formula for Reluctant Real Estate Writers. Follow Writing Real Estate on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube.
