At Marketing for Estate Agents we firmly believe good marketing can only be achieved after good planning and to be successful you need to start with a great marketing plan. Our favourite cliché is “fail to plan and you plan to fail” so what makes a good Marketing Plan, what does it contain and I know you’ll be thinking - does it take a long time to write and implement and what will it deliver?

Before I answer those questions in this video, click pause and go and complete our free online Marketing Audit here, it’ll take just 10 minutes and is a powerful and fast tool to help you rate your current marketing activity and make improvements now to grow your business

Do you ever sit in the office in the morning and wonder why a new listing by your competitor never even called you for a market appraisal, why you never seem to receive enquiries from that village that’s full of houses similar to the one you sold only last week or why you just can't get through the door of higher value houses?

Maybe you co-ordinate your social media through a single point in the office, but no matter how many listings you share across Facebook, Twitter or Instagram you never seem to receive any enquiries from people who have seen you online.

And all the time you're seeing a reduction in listings, an increase in competition who also seem to generate more interest and you're having to cut your fees to win business.

These are all sure signs that you're failing to plan your marketing but where do you start? Why does an estate agent need a marketing plan, what makes a good marketing plan? What does it contain?

What is a marketing plan for estate agents?

Very simply a marketing plan is the method by which you're going to reach the people who might buy your services, your prospective customers, and what message you’re going to give them to grab their attention, build their trust and encourage them, when the time’s right, to buy your services.

It’s an integrated collection of strategies working together.

Why do estate agents need a marketing plan?

Without a plan the marketing activities you do will be unfocused and will not be effective or efficient. You'll be wasting a lot of time and energy on things that are not delivering success, sporadic social media, posting inconsistent mail drops advertising opportunities followed on a whim, follow-up calls and even the appraisals you're attending and listings you’re securing are all wasting your marketing energies.

A marketing plan, therefore brings together all your activities, your customer interactions and efforts to be seen and recognised to ensure they work together to always be winning you more business and growing your business.

What does a marketing plan contain?

A good plan will identify a target market, the type of customer you want to attract. For estate agents this should include things like; age group, income, family status, the kind of house they're looking for or selling, their current location and where they want to move to. Also think about  where these customers will find out about you, hear what you have to say. We’ll talk more about that when we discuss your marketing channels.

This brings me nicely to the next section of your marketing plan, your message, what are you going to say to your audience that grabs their attention, gets them noticing you and crucially makes them want to engage with you - ultimately to purchase your services. Your message should be concise, clear and unique. Don't be generic, everyone uses phrases like professional expert and local, so be personal and build rapport and stand out from your competition.

When you've developed a clear message, you then need to plan how to broadcast that message to your target market. The profile of your target customer has already identified where they hang out and where they’re going to hear your message. This might be social media and on-line but don’t discount off-line marketing, advertising and direct mail and email.

Finally, in this introduction to a Marketing Plan, you need to think about how you're going to capture and nurture leads you've generated through your marketing activities. With so many channels available and in use, on-line and off, it can be difficult to keep up and record the leads and enquiries you receive so it's vital you and your team have a consistent and thorough method for this.

I'll talk in more detail about the capture and nurture of leads in a future blog, but for now my key piece of advice is to develop a comprehensive email list, rather than rely on social media follows.

If you haven’t already done so go ahead and take our free online Marketing Audit

Marketing for Estate Agents can help you develop, implement and maintain strategies that produce real, fast and long-term results.

Our Estate Agent Marketing Plan service can produce a bespoke, clear, concise and holistic set of strategies that your unique business can implement and maintain with appropriate effort and cost.

Your marketing plan will be a comprehensive approach to raising your business profile, to being recognised and ultimately make you the estate agent of choice when people are ready to sell their home.