Over the years, we’ve seen tons of agents, teams, and brokerages that took our advice and built great brands. Of course, when it came time to show off their new brands online, most dropped the ball. They didn’t take the time to find the real estate marketing tools that would help them look professional online.
That’s why we decided to put together this comprehensive list of the best real estate marketing tools available for agents, teams, and brokerages in 2020. Since most of these tools are free or very cheap, there’s simply no excuse to market your brand in an unprofessional way.
These tools won’t only make you look good online, they will help save you time, money, and effort in the process. Sound good? OK, let’s jump right into our list of the best real estate marketing tools for 2020:
Social Media Management Tools
While most agents understand just how important social media is to their marketing efforts in 2020, few of them actually use social media effectively. Sure, they tweet up a storm and share lots of listing pictures on Instagram, but they waste too much time tending to their social media feeds the old-fashioned way. They manually send out every tweet, every comment, and every video.
Luckily, there are marketing tools that can automate the bulk of your social media posting, which means you don’t have to stop what you’re doing to Tweet at the times studies have shown get the most engagement.
Here’s a quick rundown of a few tools to help you automate your social media posting:
Hootsuite
Cost: $29 to $599 per month
Learning curve: Low
Hootsuite is the social media software that 800 of the Fortune 1000 companies trust to plan, create, and schedule their social media posts to maximize views and engagement. Hootsuite lets you store frequently used assets like images and logos so you can create and schedule social media content for multiple channels like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and more from one app.
Buffer
Cost: Free to $99 per month
Learning curve: Low
Like Hootsuite, Buffer also lets agents plan, create, and schedule social media posts. They also have a cool feature that lets you add a first comment to your Instagram posts in order to entice your followers to engage and include more info about your post. The best part is that unlike Hootsuite, Buffer offers a limited free version that lets you manage three social accounts and schedule up to ten posts. Most teams will probably opt to upgrade to the Pro plan for only $15 a month, though.
Tailwind
Cost: Free to $9.99 per month
Learning curve: Low
Spend lots of time on Pinterest or Instagram? Then an app like Tailwind is right up your alley. Tailwind lets you schedule social media posts for Pinterest and Instagram, but also helps you discover key influencers to work with on Pinterest and trending hashtags to post with on Instagram. Even better, Tailwind has a free trial that lasts forever, so you can use a limited version of the app without paying a dime. Of course, if you want to upgrade, Tailwind is only $9.99 per channel, per month. So if you only want to use Tailwind for Instagram, you’re in luck.
Graphic Design Tools
One of the biggest mistakes we see agents make on social media is not taking the time to create professional-looking graphics. Sure, your new homeowner’s guide might have great information in it, but no one is going to download it if it looks unprofessional. Here are a few graphic design tools that will let you compete with even the biggest brokerages.
Adobe Photoshop CC
Cost: $9.99 to $52.99 per month
Learning curve: High
First released in the pre-internet day of 1990, Adobe Photoshop is the gold standard for image creation, photo editing, and online graphics creation in 2020. If you see beautiful graphics online, chances are someone used Photoshop at some point when making them.
Photoshop lets you edit images, create professional-looking designs for online and print, and much, much more. There are also tons and tons of professional templates for flyers, e-books, and social media graphics a click away. The only drawback is that since Adobe Photoshop is professional software, the learning curve can be a bit steep. However, if you’re tech savvy and willing to learn, we highly recommend adding Photoshop to your real estate marketing tool arsenal in 2020.
Canva
Cost: Free to $30 per month
Learning curve: Medium
Designed as a Photoshop replacement for the non-tech savvy, Canva is a must-have for agents who don’t have the time to learn Photoshop, or just want to create great-looking visual assets right away. It works a lot like Photoshop—the only difference is that it doesn’t offer nearly as many features. Instead, you get thousands of predesigned templates built in that you can customize and make your own.
Kapwing
Cost: Free to $20 per month
Learning curve: Low
Have you ever wondered how we make all those hilarious memes (our mothers think they’re funny) that we share on social media? The answer is our secret meme making weapon called Kapwing. Kapwing offers tons of meme templates that you can quickly and easily customize like you can with Canva. Kapwing also lets you make and edit videos, add subtitles, add music to videos, and more.
A Website to Show Off Your Brand
In 2020, your website is even more important than your office. After all, no matter where they find you, your potential clients are going to want to kick the tires and learn more about you. Your website is where they’re going nine times out of ten. That’s why a merely OK website won’t cut it for real estate lead generation. You need a GREAT website. Here are a few options:
Real Geeks
Cost: $249 per month
Learning curve: Low
One of the earliest providers of all-in-one IDX websites and customer relationship management (CRM) tools, Real Geeks offers agents, teams, and brokerages a true turnkey solution for their online marketing efforts. There are way, way too many features to list here, but you will get a gorgeous IDX website optimized for lead generation, a powerful CRM, a property valuation tool, SMS texting, market reports, and—yeah, way too much to list here.
Propertybase
Cost: Starting at $89 per user, per month
Learning curve: Low
Originally Boston Logic, Propertybase is the professional real estate team’s secret weapon. They offer killer IDX websites with mapping features, and an integrated CRM that is designed to help teams nurture leads long term and drive more referrals and business. If you already have a website, they offer a standalone CRM that was recently revamped to be even more effective at keeping teams organized and marketing like Fortune 500 companies.
WordPress Website
Cost: Free to $5,000 and higher
Learning curve: High
If you’re a bit more tech savvy and want to get your hands dirty, then you might want to try your hand at building a WordPress website to show off your brand online. While WordPress is easy to use compared to building a site from scratch, the learning curve for non-tech savvy agents is high. You’ll also need to pay to add features like IDX listings, which come standard with most real estate websites.
InCom
Cost: Starting at $44.94 per month
Learning curve: Low
If you need a website on a budget and don’t need any of the bells and whistles Real Geeks or Propertybase offer, then InCom is a great choice. They offer real estate websites with landing pages, lead generation features, and a built-in CRM starting at just $44.95 per month. A great deal in anyone’s book.
Community Engagement Tools
While online marketing is great, nothing beats engaging with your potential leads in real life. One of the best ways to do that is to work with local businesses. You help them by highlighting their business online, and you’ll get a real-world evangelist for your business for life.
Parkbench
When it comes to building relationships with local businesses that will get you tons of referrals, there’s really only one game in town. Parkbench. Parkbench is the only real estate marketing tool that gives you a turnkey solution to building relationships and nurturing them to generate referrals.
SMS Marketing Tools
If you’ve ever worked with Millennials before, then you know that they have a pathological fear of answering the phone. If I had a dime for every time a Millennial customer told me to “just text me!” I would be able to retire to a private island in the Caribbean tomorrow. Here are a few text messaging tools to help you reach your phone-shy Millennial customers.
SlickText
Cost: Free to $139 per month
Learning curve: Low
SlickText lets agents send bulk text messages for new listings or open house details, schedule texts, add pictures, and set up opt-in text messaging lists to increase engagement automatically. If you start using SlickText to market to your clients and sphere, be ready to give your thumbs a workout.
EZ Texting
Cost: $39 to $119 per month
Learning curve: Low
EZ Texting lets real estate agents build SMS lists that people can subscribe to by texting a keyword to their numbers. You can also use EZ Texting to create SMS polls, drip campaigns, and more.
Your Phone
Cost: $20 per month and higher
Learning curve: Low
While all the amazing software and apps that have come down the pike the last few years are great for your business, maybe the best real estate marketing tool of all time is probably sitting in your pocket right now. Your phone.
After all, your phone gives you the most direct, most personal way to touch your sphere every single day. So set a professional voicemail greeting, make sure your speaker and service work perfectly, and include quick phone calls in your daily marketing mix. If you want to get serious about using your phone to market to your sphere, you can set up a voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) service like Grasshopper to get multiple lines, phone trees, and more.
A Great CRM
Speaking of automating relationships, a great customer relationship management (CRM) tool can do just that but on an even higher level than your phone, albeit with a less personal touch. That said, you can use it to automate text messages and schedule phone calls, so there’s a pretty good argument that your CRM is even more important than your phone for marketing. Here are two killer CRMs for individual agents and teams.
LionDesk
LionDesk is a lightweight, affordable, and easy-to-use CRM that has everything you need to start organizing and automating your relationships, and with transaction management thrown in for good measure. Even better, you can get set up with LionDesk starting at just $25 per month—less than half what other CRM companies charge.
Propertybase CRM|GO
New from Propertybase, CRM|GO is a full-fledged real estate platform for teams that has all the cutting-edge features of Propertybase, but doesn’t require you to have one of their websites to use it. Perfect if you already have a website platform you’re invested in and need a cutting-edge CRM.
A Great Source for Stock Images
While you probably already have gram-worthy shots of your listings, you’re going to need royalty-free images and lots of them for your blog, social media, print marketing, and more. Here are a few sources we use here at The Close for awesome, royalty-free images.
Unsplash
Cost: Free
Learning curve: Low
Venture capital-backed Unsplash is the best source for royalty-free images online. Full stop. This is where we get 99% of our images for The Close. The only drawback is that the selection of images is limited compared to other sources. The quality is higher, though, so this should be your first choice for royalty-free photos.
Adobe Stock
Cost: $29.99 per month
Learning curve: Low
Adobe Stock isn’t free, but they have an absolutely massive number of stock images and graphics for you to use.
Pexels
Cost: Free
Learning curve: Low
Pexels works just like Unsplash. You get royalty-free images that you can use in your marketing. They have a bigger selection, but you’re going to have to sift through a lot of mediocre-quality stock photos to find the gems. This should be your second stop if Unsplash doesn’t have what you need.
Video Production Tools
If we have to explain why video is a crucial real estate marketing tool in 2020, you might just be living on another planet. Video is no longer a bonus—it’s increasingly the primary way your leads will interact with your brand.
Rode VideoMicro Ultracompact Microphone
Cost: $59
Learning curve: Low
This tiny little video microphone will make your videos sound professional instead of crummy. Sound is even more important than image quality when it comes to video production. After all, your audience isn’t watching your videos to see what you look like. They want to hear what you have to say. If you buy anything to improve your videos, this should be it.
Lumen5
Cost: Free to $149 per month
Learning curve: Medium
Lumen5 is the easy way to make professional-looking explainer videos with text, stock video, and more. Lumen5 has templates for social media, as well as prosumer-level tools to help you create videos that look like they came from a Hollywood studio.
Virtual Showing Tools
Buyers have been clamoring for virtual showings for years now, and the pandemic has just accelerated that demand. Why not give them what they want?
Facebook Live
Facebook is the best way to reach the Boomers, who probably own most of the good listings in your farm area. It’s a huge platform that is also pretty reliable and provides a free and easy way to do virtual showings for your buyers.
Instagram TV
If you want to reach the cool kids, then Instagram TV (also known as IGTV) is where it’s at for cool cats and kittens. It’s totally on fleek. Just make sure to study up on how to use it to avoid looking like a dinosaur.
Over to You
Are you using a killer real estate agent marketing tool we forgot? Let us know in the comments or join our Facebook Mastermind Group here.
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