Technology is moving at a breakneck pace, and if you’re not a tech geek (like me!), it’s difficult to keep up with all the latest real estate marketing tools out there. However, marketing tools are necessary to help agents build their businesses easier, faster, and with less stress—so you need to know what’s available. I’ve gathered the best marketing tools for agents and brokers so you can investigate what’s needed to propel your business to the next level.
The Close’s Top Picks for Real Estate Marketing Tools
| Real Estate Marketing Tool Category | Best Tool | Starting Price |
|---|---|---|
| Websites | Agent Fire | $149/month + $500 setup fee |
| CRMs | Wise Agent | $49/month for up to 5 users |
| Social Media Marketing Tools | Coffee & Contracts | $54/month |
| Graphic Design | Canva | $10/month for Pro |
| Video Production | Animoto | $8/month |
| SEO Tools | Ahrefs | $83/month |
| AI Tools | ChatGPT | $20/month |
| Landing Pages | Real Geeks | $299/month + $250 setup fee |
| SMS Marketing Tools | EZ Texting | $20/month |
1. Websites
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My Favorite Features of Agent Fire
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Pricing:
$149/month + $500 setup fee
Every agent in 2024 should have a real estate website that not only showcases listings but also generates leads. Agent Fire is one of the best all-in-one platforms out there, especially for the price. It has real estate marketing tools to help you generate and capture leads, including neighborhood guides, visitor search pages, and listing searches, and feed them directly into your chosen customer relationship manager (CRM).
Website Alternatives
- Placester: Affordable alternative to Agent Fire with easy-to-use website templates.
- Real Geeks: Many similar features as Agent Fire at a budget-friendly price.
2. CRMs
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My Favorite Features of Wise Agent
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Pricing:
$49/month for up to 5 users
When all the fabulous leads start pouring in, you’ll need a way to keep track of them all. A great CRM will allow you to run your business without pulling your hair out. There are a lot of real estate CRMs designed explicitly for your business, but one of my top picks is Wise Agent. It gives you a lot of functionality without breaking the bank. Its functions include concierge onboarding, tons of training, and excellent customer support to get you up and running fast. It also has tons of integrations to build the system you want.
CRM Alternatives
- Follow Up Boss: More robust CRM with tons of functionality, but at a higher price.
- Placester: IDX website with built-in CRM to capture and manage leads.
3. Social Media Marketing Tools
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My Favorite Features of Coffee & Contracts
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Pricing:
$54/month
Agents know that their clients (and future clients) will start looking for their next home online. It will be challenging to snag those home shoppers as clients if they’re not in front of them on social. So, social media is key. But work smarter, not harder, by tapping into the brilliance of Coffee & Contracts to plan, create, and schedule all your social media faster.
I love Coffee & Contract’s trendy, stylish templates and its arsenal of great content. The templates open in Canva, making them super easy to edit, customize with your branding, and use on social media platforms.
Social Media Marketing Tool Alternatives
- Porchlyte: Beautiful designs for your social media, but at a slightly higher cost. Designed for real estate professionals by a seasoned veteran of the industry.
4. Graphic Design
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My Favorite Features of Canva
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Pricing:
$10/month for Pro
I don’t know about you, but I didn’t get into real estate to become a graphic designer. But that’s the game today. Am I right? Make stunning social media posts, flyers, postcards, door hangers, and more with the most amazing drag-and-drop design platform—Canva.
Canva has been my preferred platform for designing practically everything for several years. During that time, it has expanded its library and now includes tons of real estate-specific templates to start your next design. And it recently added artificial intelligence (AI) features that make your projects come together quickly!
Graphic Design Alternatives
- Kapwing: Amazing video content creating and editing tool.
- Adobe Photoshop: The industry standard for design, but more expensive than Canva.
5. Video Production
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My Favorite Features of Animoto
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Pricing:
$8/month
I’m sure I’ve said this before, but if you’re not using video in your marketing stack, you need to start. After all, studies show 44% of people prefer to learn about products and services through video. Luckily, there are plenty of real estate agent tools for video production out there to help you get started. Animoto is one of the OGs of video creation. It is a drag-and-drop video editor designed to create slick, professional-looking results without the hassle. Perfect for making quick listing videos, promotional videos, or social media content that you can easily post directly from right inside the dashboard.
Video Production Alternatives
- Canva: Yes, you can create vertical video content in Canva too!
- Capcut: Platform designed to create vertical video content for social media like TikTok and Instagram Reels.
6. SEO Tools
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My Favorite Features of Ahrefs
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Pricing:
$83/month
If you want your future clients to find you online, you’re going to have to learn to use search engine optimization (SEO) whether you know what it is or not. It’s not as difficult as you might believe. SEO drives traffic by allowing your content to be searchable. For your content or website to be found by Google or any search engine, keywords must be in your content. Ahrefs is a tool to help you find those keywords, which are terms people are actively searching for, so you can use them in your content. That’s how you can show up in search results. And we here at The Close love Ahrefs for this.
I love how simple the Ahrefs user interface is and how easy it is to understand. You can use and benefit from this tool even if you’re not 100% sure what everything means. The easiest way to use Ahrefs is to go to Keyword Explorer and type in a topic, like real estate (your city). Ahrefs will show you how many people are searching for that keyword, plus a list of additional keywords related to the original one.
SEO Tool Alternatives
- Semrush: Gives much similar information as Ahrefs, but not as easy to use.
7. AI Tools
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My Favorite Features of ChatGPT
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Pricing:
$20/month
Ah, AI! I love discussing artificial intelligence, the best real estate agent tools with AI, and how AI disrupts the real estate industry. I’ve talked about it a lot here at The Close. If you haven’t embraced AI yet, start simply and expand from there. Start with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Name yours after you sign up (I named mine Charlie), and begin asking basic questions to get the ball rolling. Use some ChatGPT prompts specifically for real estate, like writing a listing description or creating a social media post using emojis and hashtags. You can find tons of prompts in this article about clever ways to use AI tools and ChatGPT prompts.
I’ve since upgraded to the paid version to get more mileage out of my AI. ChatGPT is a magnificent real estate agent tool that helps you do more in less time. I love that you can ask it to try again if you don’t like the results the first time.
AI Tool Alternatives
- Copy.ai: Free tools like Instagram caption generator, marketing email generator, and cold email generator give this tool some extra punch.
8. Landing Pages
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My Favorite Features of Real Geeks
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Pricing:
$299/month + $250 setup fee
If you’re going to generate online leads, you’ll need a way to capture data. Enter landing pages. Landing pages are single-page websites where visitors land before reaching their intended destination—most likely your lead magnet. Our overall favorite is Real Geeks. I know what you’re thinking—isn’t that a website builder or all-in-one solution? Yes, it is. And it has spent incredible time developing landing pages to make your life easier.
- I love that Real Geeks includes many additional real estate agent tools to help you generate and capture leads, including neighborhood guides, visitor search pages, listing search, and more, all designed to engage and capture more leads and feed them directly to your chosen CRM.
Landing Page Alternatives
- Placester: Built-in lead capture forms ensure leads don’t slip away.
- Agent Fire: Tons of built-in customizable calls to action (CTAs) plus LeadPages integration.
9. SMS Marketing Tools
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My Favorite Features of EZ Texting
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Pricing:
$20/month for up 500 messages/month (6,000 messages annually)
Raise your hand if your inbox is full of emails you haven’t opened. 🙋♀️ Sure, no one wants to listen to voicemail or open email anymore. But you know what gets read? Text messages! If you want to really up your marketing game, you should integrate SMS marketing into your overall strategy. We love EZ Texting for this. EZ Texting is a robust SMS messaging platform with many great features. I love that its AI can help you generate optimized messages that get responses.
Let the integrated AI help you draft the perfect text message (Source: EZ Texting)
EZ Texting makes sending marketing messages quick and easy (Source: EZ Texting)
SMS Marketing Tool Alternative
- Slytext: SMS and MMS texting with a pay-as-you-go plan.
- FollowUp Boss: Powerful CRM with built-in mass texting feature.
Methodology: How We Chose the Best Real Estate Marketing Tools
Though we here at The Close have years of combined real estate experience, choosing the top real estate marketing tools for agents is not easy. Every agent is different and has varying degrees of expertise, technical proficiency, and needs. But I strongly feel these tools can help almost every real estate pro enhance their existing business or start their real estate journey on the right foot.
To add a degree of objectivity to my ratings, I looked at seven main criteria:
- Application
- The tools should solve common marketing challenges (lead generation, client management, automation) while providing tangible, practical benefits in everyday real estate operations.
- Pricing
- Real estate marketing companies should have transparent and affordable pricing models. They should offer good return on investment (ROI) for agents with free versions or trials as a bonus.
- Ease of use
- Tools for real estate agents should have intuitive navigation, a user-friendly interface, and a short learning curve, which is suitable for agents at all tech levels.
- Variety of features and customization options
- We look at tools that cover listing management, lead generation, email marketing, and more. Tools should be customizable to reflect brand identity and appeal to the target audience.
- Integration capabilities
- Many tools are compatible with CRM systems, social media platforms, and email marketing tools. Integrating with existing systems promotes a streamlined marketing strategy through seamless data transfer.
- Analytics and reporting
- Some tools offer monitoring of website traffic and campaign performance to provide actionable insights for strategy optimization.
- Support and training
- Agents should have access to responsive customer support and comprehensive training resources (webinars, tutorials, documentation).
FAQs
What is the best marketing tool for realtors?
The best marketing tool is the one you will use. I believe there are many ways to market your real estate business, and there’s no one-size-fits-all approach. So, go through this list of real estate marketing tools and choose the best fit for your needs. You probably won’t need everything on this list, but this is a great jumping-off point.
That said, I love CRMs and feel every agent should embrace this particular technology. I say this because it will help you manage your leads so fewer fall through the cracks. Many agents spend money to generate leads, and it would be a massive waste of money if you lost some of those leads because you lack a good system to keep track of and nurture them properly. CRMs are the best, most effective, and efficient way to do that.
What are the 4 Ps of marketing in real estate?
The four Ps of marketing in real estate are Product, Price, Place, and Promotion. The four Ps are a useful pneumonic to help you remember the marketing mix for anything you sell. Let’s take a deeper look at each one.
Product: The home you’re selling is your product. Your job as the marketer is to learn as much as possible about the property to pinpoint selling features that future buyers will be interested in. Considering your potential buyers’ intentions, find the features and corresponding benefits that match those buyers’ motivations.
Price: As a real estate marketing expert, it’s your job to determine the best price for the property you’re selling. You’ll want to do a deep dive into your farm area, complete a thorough comparative market analysis (CMA), and land on a price that fits the current market conditions.
Place: Obviously, the home is fixed and can’t be moved. So, your job as a marketer is to get potential buyers to come to you. Where are your future buyers looking for a new home? Your job is to find out where those eyeballs are so you can get in front of them.
Promotion: Lastly, you’ll need to develop a thorough marketing strategy to get the listing in front of the right people as much as possible. How will you get your marketing message to the right channels so your future buyers will see it?
Once you sign that listing agreement with your seller, it’s time to work on your marketing mix to ensure you sell the home as quickly as possible for as much money as possible. Use the four Ps of marketing to get your plan together quickly.
What marketing works for real estate?
The truth is there’s no one right way to market a home for sale. But, it’s best to use a mix of different marketing strategies to reach the most people. When you want to market a new listing, you might start with your email list—send out an announcement about your listing and ask your sphere of influence if they know anyone looking for a new home.
Or you might create a post on social media and an ad campaign to reach people looking to buy a home in your area. You can check in with other agents to see if they have buyers looking for a home that matches your property. Send out postcards around the listing—invite the neighbors to an open house. They may have friends or family they would love to move in next door.
Long story short, it all depends on what you feel most comfortable doing and what will work best in your area for the type of property you are selling. What works best for one agent may not be a good fit for you, but that’s perfectly OK. We have tons of ideas for real estate marketing you can check out. Take them for a test drive and see what works best in your market for your listings.
What is a real estate marketing system?
A real estate marketing system is simply a process you create for marketing your listings. It can vary between types of properties—you wouldn’t market vacant land the same way you would market a luxury condo on the beach. But your marketing system can be a combination of ways to get the word out about your property for sale.
Beyond that, you definitely want to create a system to market and brand yourself as a real estate professional and local expert. You’ll want to create a marketing mix for promoting yourself and your brand. So, don’t only focus on marketing listings. Put together a comprehensive marketing strategy to get you in front of the eyes of your target market.
Do you need marketing for real estate?
The short answer is yes. Absolutely. You need marketing for many reasons, not the least of which is how else will you sell homes for your sellers?
But other than that, without marketing, you’ll never be able to find clients who would love to work with you. You won’t fill your book of business without getting your name, brand, and expertise in front of potential clients. Marketing is essential to filling your pipeline, building your database, and finding clients.
When you develop your marketing plan, you’ll learn who your target audience is, how to reach them, and the best channels to spend time on to get the best return on investment (ROI) on your marketing investment. Once you implement your plan, you’ll have a pathway to a successful, scalable real estate business.
Your Take
There are so many real estate marketing platforms for agents to choose from. And with so many ways to mix and match, the sky’s the limit on marketing stack options. This list is just a basic primer on the tools that enhance your marketing efforts, help scale your business faster, and boost personal productivity so you can spend less time in your business and more time growing your business.
I hope you learned some cool things about different tools you may not be using and will consider adding some to your marketing tech stack. Let me know if you’re using something great that I didn’t mention. I’d love to hear from you. Leave me a comment and tell me how you use some of these cool real estate marketing tools in your business.
