Real Estate In Review: A Solid Marketing Strategy for 2024

Steve Osborn

Managing Director, Identity Marketing

Start with Your Business Goals

From a business level, the first question is, what do you want to achieve in 2024? Whether it’s breaking into new markets, growing into higher price points, retaining staff, recruiting new agents, or increasing properties under management, each goal requires different tactics. Aligning business and marketing tactics is where the magic happens.

Review Your Brand Pillars

Reflect on the past year and identify where your brand may have faltered. Did you lack original messaging? Is your brand’s visual identity cohesive and aligned with your business aspirations? These questions will help you identify projects that need attention. For example, if your property marketing is not unique or cohesive, that becomes a project.

Seek Inspiration Outside Real Estate

To genuinely innovate and make an impact, you need to look beyond the real estate industry for inspiration. As the saying goes, “Cover bands don’t change the world.” Your brand needs to find its unique voice to thrive. So, look at companies outside real estate that excel in areas where your brand foundations may need more.

Strengthen Your Foundations

Once you’ve identified the weak points in your brand, create a list of identity-related projects that need completion before rolling out any marketing campaigns. Projects might include but are not limited to:

• Refreshing the brand’s visual identity to align with your marketplace.
• Creating a verbal identity for how the brand communicates.
• Aligning your website with your business aspirations.
• Archiving a lot of off-brand posts on Instagram.
• A content shoot so you have a great library of original photos
• A strong foundation will make every marketing dollar go further.

Plan Your Company Events

Events like Movember or The World’s Greatest Shave offer excellent opportunities for brand exposure while raising money for good causes. Pick ones that align with your brand. Plan these events early in the year and structure them as a three-part story: the beginning (why you’re participating), the middle (updates), and the outcome (results and acknowledgments). It gives you multiple reasons to run promotions and create noise.

Tactical Alignment

Your tactics should align with your business plan. For instance, if you aim to refresh your visual identity to target a higher price point, your social media should reflect this with high-quality videography and photography. This is where an external perspective helps – consider consulting with specialists like Identity Marketing (couldn’t resist a small plug for our business) who can offer a fresh, expert viewpoint.

Create a Marketing Calendar

Once you’ve outlined your projects, events, and tactics, plot them on a calendar. Break these into tasks and assign them to your creative team for execution.

Agent Brands

If the entry-level for a brand is a strong brand foundation, then the entry level for agents is a strong personal brand. I don’t mean agents need logos or colour schemes.

With Instagram replacing business cards, the content shared creates an overall brand for that agent and ideally you want it in alignment with the brand.

This is a different subject and should be an article in itself. I’d take a similar approach to looking at the agent’s goals and identity before looking at the marketing tactics.

Review Your Team Composition

Last but not least, ensure you have the right team in place. A common pitfall is assigning tasks to team members who are not skilled at the required level in that area. For example, a marketing graduate may not be the best fit for graphic design tasks. If you need help with your team’s capabilities, consider outsourcing to specialists in real estate marketing.

Planning your marketing strategy for 2024 is not just about creating a calendar; it’s about aligning goals with actionable plans reinforced with a strong brand foundation. By taking a structured approach to planning, you give yourself the best chance of achieving your business goals.

Want more brand insight from Steve? Check out his piece on what good brands should do.