5 Musts for Marketing Yourself and Your Real Estate Investment Business

Marketing is one of the most essential tools in a real estate investor’s arsenal. After all, it doesn’t matter how good you are if no one finds out about it. No matter what stage you’re at in your business, you must find a way to successfully market yourself in order to gain new clients and keep your name fresh and relevant among existing clients.

So how do you go about building a successful marketing campaign?

This question is a broad one, and the answer will differ from investor to investor. However, we have created five simple tips to help you win clients and brand recognition through marketing.

Create a working marketing budget.

You can’t move forward with a marketing plan until you know how much you can afford to spend. Create a loose budget at first, knowing that you can adjust it and fill in the details once you have a better idea of what things actually cost.

Find your niche.

Maybe you rehab hundred-year-old homes. Or maybe you specialize in moving multi-dwelling rentals in a specific neighborhood. Whatever specific aspect of investing you’re best at and love doing the most is  your niche. If you operate in a more general way, you might want to think about developing a niche to set yourself apart. Organic word-of-mouth marketing will almost certainly follow, as you’ll have people saying “Yeah, I know someone who specializes in that!”

Figure out who your target market is.

You can paper your entire town with flyers, but if you aren’t reaching your target market – those people who fall into your niche services – you are really just wasting time, money and resources that could be spent elsewhere. Think about the type of client you’d most like to work with, and who would most benefit from your services and want to work with someone like you. Then figure out how to single out those people and market to them directly.

Set some goals.

Develop some reasonable, attainable, specific marketing goals for your business. Nebulous goals like “I’d like to work a bit on my website,” beg to be ignored, while definitive goals like “I will hire someone this month to make my website more representative of my brand” are far more productive. Plan out how you will effectively reach these goals, within the constraints of your budget, giving the most time, resources and money to those goals that are most urgent.

Understand that marketing is an art, not a science.

There will be a long learning curve as you work out what works and what doesn’t for your specific business. Some of the things you try at first will fail. However, with some trial and error, some guidance, and some experience under your belt, you can and will find a marketing strategy that meets your needs and takes your business to the next level.