Create your real estate marketing plan in 12 steps (+ template)

by Ashley Harwood

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Creating or evolving your real estate marketing plan is a critical aspect of every agent’s overall business plan. Your marketing plan will determine if and how you’ll connect with new clients in the year ahead. It’s important to be intentional and choose marketing strategies that give you the highest likelihood of meeting and connecting with your ideal clients. If your marketing isn’t aligned with your niche, personal brand, and skills, you’ll waste time, money and effort pursuing it.

I put together this guide to help you find your niche and create a marketing plan that’s aligned with your brand, target market and personality. I’ll explain why a detailed plan is crucial for every agent and walk you through the actionable, step-by-step guide I’ve used with hundreds of agents to help you create your own unique plan.

In this article

The 3 real estate marketing tools every agent needs

Why every agent needs a marketing plan

How to create your real estate marketing plan

The full pictur: Creating a real estate marketing plan that works for you

The 3 real estate marketing tools every agent needs

No matter which marketing strategies you choose to include in your real estate marketing plan, there are three crucial tools that you’ll need. Your tools will evolve as your business evolves, of course, but these three will get you started on the right path:

1. An easy-to-use, scalable CRM

Most brokerages provide a CRM, but you can usually purchase your own if you prefer. When selecting the right one for you, consider how easy it is to navigate and whether it provides the functionality you need. If it’s too complicated, you likely won’t use it.

Most agents don’t need a CRM to do anything but provide a way to communicate with their database, set up task reminders, and host a website. I’ve always used KW Command. But if you’re not a KW agent, our team of real estate pros have researched countless CRMs to find the best tools for every budget. Check out our research and top choices in the link below.

The best real estate CRM for every budget in 2024

2. A mobile-friendly real estate website

Our team of real estate industry experts researched the top real estate website builders to help new and experienced agents launch a beautiful, crisp, clean website that offers lots of functionality — not to mention marketing oomph.

Ideally, you’ll want a website that you can bring with you from brokerage to brokerage. Check out top picks for every budget!

I love Canva for all things design. It’s what I use for my coaching and real estate businesses. The ability to upload my brand colors and fonts for easy access makes creating social media content, Eventbrite banners, and all my marketing pieces so easy. Working in Canva, the design team at Coffee & Contracts has done the heavy lifting for you, creating a suite of social media marketing posts for every single day, for every platform. All you need to do is choose the templates you love and add your contact info, and then post them to your favorite social platform.

Check out Coffee & Contracts

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Why every agent needs a strategic marketing plan

The most successful agents have a marketing plan that’s specific and focused. With so many possible ways to find business, many agents (myself included in my first few years!) fall into a similar pattern — trying too many things at once, not doing any of them at a high level or consistently enough, not seeing results, and then feeling like a failure.

Here are four benefits of a specific and focused real estate marketing plan that will set you up for success this year and for years to come:

1. More strategic use of your time

By focusing on fewer marketing activities (and those that are proven to work), you can use your time more wisely, strategically, and effectively. Rather than wasting time and money trying many different tactics to find clients, a detailed plan allows you to focus on just a few. I usually recommend sticking to no more than two or three.

2. The compound interest effect

If you’re familiar with compound interest, you know that it scales exponentially and builds on itself over time. The same is true for agents who put their effort into one to three marketing strategies. Consistency is key, of course. The compound effect happens over time, yet if you don’t have a concrete marketing plan in place, you won’t see the results you hope for.

3. The freedom to say “no” to everything else

Most of us default to saying “yes” to too many things. If you’ve ever walked through a vendor hall at a real estate conference, you know what I mean. We say “yes” to any new shiny object we find, and that typically leads to wasting time, money, and energy. Instead, use your real estate marketing plan as a guide. Ask yourself if this tool you’re considering buying or tactic you’re about to try is aligned with your plan. From there, the decision is made for you!

4. Focus on your ideal client to create your ideal business

We all say we want to work with any client who’s willing to hire us. But the reality is most of us prefer working within a specific niche. Your niche could be anything from first-time buyers to downsizers or investors. By identifying your ideal client before you create your plan, you can tailor your activities to your audience. Doing so will help you build your ideal business, working with clients you enjoy, in the niche you love.

Fun fact

NAR reports that in 2023, 19% of homebuyers were single women, and 16% were unmarried couples. A strategic marketing plan will help you target these growing niches in the industry.

12 steps to create your real estate marketing plan

Coffee & Contracts marketing plan templates

Now that you understand why a concrete marketing plan is critical for your real estate business, let’s explore the 12 steps to creating your own unique plan. Download our free real estate marketing plan guide and template, created and thoughtfully designed in collaboration with Coffee & Contracts. It’s yours to keep and reference whenever you want to check in on your marketing efforts.

Download Our Marketing Plan Template

Setting the stage to create your real estate marketing plan

Planning time usually doesn’t occur naturally in a busy real estate agent’s calendar. In my experience, planning doesn’t happen at all unless it’s purposefully scheduled and protected. This means carving out time specifically to plan your real estate marketing plan.

How much time you’ll need varies from person to person, but in general, I’d allocate anywhere from a few hours to two days to work on your marketing plan. My preferred two-day approach looks like this:

Day 1: You complete all the steps listed here and create a rough draft of your plan. Then sleep on it.
Day 2: Revisit your marketing plan and make any adjustments. Sometimes, stepping away from a project for even a little bit helps you see it more clearly.

I always recommend changing up your environment. Creativity and clarity flourish when we aren’t in our everyday spaces (home, office, etc), and even one night in a hotel (even in your own city!) can provide the space you need to create your real estate marketing plan.A quiet spot to think, analyze, and plan will make a huge difference. I like to take myself on a short retreat once or twice each year.

1. Identify your target market & niche

Millennials have been the largest demographic group buying homes for almost a decade. That changed in 2023, though. According to NAR, Baby Boomers purchased more homes than any other group that year — making up 39% of all home purchases. Targeting Boomers would be a smart niche if you live in an area heavily populated by this demographic.

However, you should be very strategic in choosing a niche. While it’s worth considering the latest demographic trends, you should also consider who lives in your area, the property inventory near you, and who you’d most like to work with. Finally, you should take note of the folks you naturally encounter in your daily life.

Perhaps you aspire to work with luxury properties, or you have a love for the new construction highrises that have been popping up in your city. Maybe you dream of helping first-time homebuyers and military families find their first home. I know It sounds counterintuitive, but the more narrow your niche, the better. You’ll see why in the next step.

EXeRCISE

Look at your calendar from the past month. Where have you spent time? Where are you meeting with and talking to other people who might be close to buying or selling a home? Chances are you’re talking to more people every month than you realize!

You may have had contact with your social group or with someone where you volunteer your time. You may chat with other parents at your kids’ school, with members of your church, or simply with your neighbors you run into when you’re out walking your dog. Maybe you have a strong college alumni network or a large extended family who would be happy to refer you some business.

By assessing the groups of people you’re often in contact with, you’ll have some data to work with, and you can choose a niche that makes sense.

2. Define your unique value proposition

In this step, you’ll want to consider what differentiates you from other agents in your area. Identifying your unique value proposition is a common marketing practice that you can apply to your personal brand to fuel the growth of your business.

It comes down to identifying the pain points of the niche market you’ve chosen, assessing the unique benefits you can provide to those clients, and then communicating how you’re uniquely positioned to solve their pain points.

You might think of this as a messaging exercise. If every agent can help sellers sell their home, what makes you so special? What’s your elevator pitch? How can you help buyers and sellers reach their goals in a unique way? If we met at a real estate conference and I told you I work with buyers and sellers in the Boston area, you likely would not remember me in a few months.

But you’d likely remember me if I told you,“I work with retired seniors who don’t want the hassle of maintaining a large property anymore, who want more time and freedom to spend with their grandchildren, and who would appreciate having the entire downsizing process managed for them. I specialize in downsizing in Newton, MA and cover the greater Boston area.”

3. Set goals for your business

Every real estate coach and training company has their own advice about goal-setting. There’s no right or wrong way to set goals, as long as they are specific and measurable and that you’ve written them down. I advise agents to set several goals.

How many people do you want to help (units)?
How much money do you desire to learn (GCI)?
How much do you want to work (days off)?

Maybe your goal is to sell 20 properties, make $150,000 this year, and work five days per week. That’s specific and measurable, so as the months pass, you can track whether your real estate marketing plan is keeping you on pace to meet your goals.

4. Audit your current marketing activities

Once you have the time and space to create your plan, start with an audit of your marketing efforts. Write down every marketing strategy you’ve tried or are currently engaged in. Then, write down how much time, money, and energy each strategy took. You’ll also want to keep in mind how much you enjoy each strategy!

Finally, write down the results from each marketing initiative. Here’s an example of an audit one of my clients recently completed for their Chamber of Commerce membership.

Example marketing strategy audit

Marketing Strategy:	Annual Chamber of Commerce membership
Dues:	$360
Time investment:	2 hours per month
Energy investment:	tiring, but fun
Results (units):	5 referrals, three closings
Results (GCI):	$30,000

Completing this audit for all of your marketing strategies can be time-consuming and tedious. Not all of us love the data collection and math involved. Yet, it’s vital for your success going forward if you want to maximize your marketing plan results.

5. Track & analyze your results

Tracking data isn’t sexy, I know. Yet, it’s one of the most important parts of a solid real estate marketing plan. It’s the key to understanding at a high level what’s working and what’s not. Knowing which marketing activities are working best will help set your business up for success. Tracking these metrics will save you money, time, and energy down the road!

If you were the agent in the audit example above, would you continue your membership with the Chamber of Commerce? Is the return worth it? For me, I’d say absolutely yes! The financial ROI is incredibly high, and the time ROI is also very high. It breaks down to $1,250/hour if you consider this agent’s $30,000 return in gross commission income (GCI) divided by the 24 hours they spent on their annual Chamber of Commerce membership.

This marketing effort also resulted in five referrals that may pan out in the future. The energy expended takes a toll, yet the agent is still having fun, even if they find their Chamber membership a bit tiring.

Our marketing plan template includes a section where you can track your results. And yes, we made it simple on purpose. The simpler the tracking tool, the more likely you are to keep it updated. Remember, just like the best CRM, the best tracking tool is the one you actually use.

Download Our Marketing Plan Template

6. Delete, Delegate or Double Down

In this step in your real estate marketing plan, you’ll want to assess which marketing strategies to delete, delegate, or double down on. I call this the three D’s. Your marketing plan audit should give you a clearer picture and help you make decisions about which specific marketing strategies you’ll focus on this year. For each activity, you’ll decide if you want to:&

Delete

Get rid of it entirely. If the marketing activity is not working at all or costing more than you’re making, delete it. I would even delete strategies that are merely breaking even, as those are a waste of energy and time.

Eliminate these strategies from your new marketing plan and give yourself permission to get rid of them without feeling guilty! I’m telling you now — it’s ok to stop doing anything that’s not working — as long as you’ve given the strategy enough time.

Some marketing strategies, like farming a neighborhood with direct mail, simply take more time to yield results than others. I recommend giving each strategy at least six months to one year before deciding to delete it,

I know this sounds extreme and maybe a little scary, but remember — you can always revisit a deleted marketing strategy at a later point in your career — ideally when you have more time or money to invest or when you can afford to hire someone else to do it for you.

Delegate

If the marketing activity is bringing results but you dread doing it, then delegate. Pay someone else to do it for you. This can be structured as an hourly rate or a referral fee on closed business. Or you can hire another company to help you streamline your efforts.

Example 1: Hire an ISA (inside sales agent) to make cold calls and set appointments for you. This is a great task to delegate to another agent in your office who’s awesome on the phone.
Example 2: Hire a graphic designer or marketing company to take over handling your social media content. I see a lot of agents struggle with this, and the convenience of having access to pre-designed templates is usually worth the cost.

Coffee & Contracts creates gorgeous templates and done-for-you viral content for Instagram posts, Reels and stories for just $54 per month. The best part is they’re all created by top-producing agents and designed to actually generate leads and build your brand.

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Double-down

For every marketing initiative that’s generating a positive ROI (and that you enjoy), double down. This is where the best results are found! By deleting and delegating everything else, you’ve created more time, money, and energy to pour into the right strategies for you. This is what alignment looks like, and this is where I see agents really find their greatest success.

Not sure what to delete? As I’m coaching agents, I notice many of them yield positive results from cold calling — but they dread every second of it. If reading that sentence just now resonated with you, I can confidently say that’s a glaring signal that cold calling is not aligned with your personality. Be careful not to commit to any marketing strategy that’s too much of an energy-suck! You need to reserve enough energy to serve your clients well.

If you’d like some help brainstorming your marketing strategies, check out The Quiet Success Club. We meet twice a month via Zoom and mastermind various marketing ideas to help you find more business.

7. Choose the right marketing channels

When creating your real estate marketing plan, be intentional and strategic about which marketing activities and channels give you the highest likelihood of meeting and connecting with your ideal clients. If it’s not aligned with your niche, don’t waste your time, energy, and money on it. Here are some things to consider about your niche.

Social media channels: The client who is on TikTok all day is likely not the same client who’s on Facebook or LinkedIn

Where they spend their time: Golf courses, local parents’ groups, church, etc.

Hobbies and interests: Hiking groups, gardening, book clubs, etc.

Life stage: Are they young families with school-age children who are part of the local parents’ group? Are they active seniors who spend time at the senior center?

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Here are some real estate marketing channels that are aligned with specific audiences:

For first-time buyers: Use Instagram Reels or TikTok videos to market your business to new buyers, as younger people are typically first-time buyers who use those social media platforms.

For Baby Boomers: Run Facebook ads offering a home valuation to find Baby Boomers looking to sell. This demographic constitutes the majority of homeowners, and many use Facebook daily.

For buyers trading up: Join a parents’ group online or in-person to find clients who are outgrowing their starter home and need a larger property to accommodate their growing family.

8. Align your marketing strategies with your brand & skillset

I see agents make this mistake all the time. They learn about a marketing strategy that worked well for someone else and decide to give it a try. After a few months, they’re discouraged and frustrated. They ask themselves, “Why did this work for them but not for me?”.

It’s all about alignment. When considering marketing strategies (and there are literally hundreds of options out there), choose ones that make sense for your personality and your brand. If you enjoy networking more than cold calling, create your marketing plan around networking events. If you love writing, start a blog. Being aligned will make everything so much easier and generate much better results.

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9. Establish your budget for money, time & energy

Usually, the word “budget” is synonymous with money alone. I’d encourage you to set a financial budget, of course. But you should also set budgets for your time and your energy. Each of these is a valuable resource that needs to be tracked and measured to help you get desired results and not squander your most valuable resources along the way!

Pro TIP

Many agents don’t think about the importance of energy management. In my experience, managing energy is critical to avoiding burnout, staying healthy (physically and mentally), and enjoying your day-to-day life.

A quick way to assess the energy you expend working on a marketing strategy is to give yourself a score of one to 10, both before and after each marketing activity. Ask yourself before you walk into that networking event: “How’s my energy right now, from one to 10?” then ask the same question when you leave. This is simply data collection to help you start to see trends. So, when you do your next marketing strategy audit, you’ll be able to make better decisions about which strategies are worth keeping.

10. Schedule your marketing initiatives in your calendar

So you have your marketing plan in place, your goals set, and your budget determined. Now, it’s time to get into the action part of the plan by setting daily, weekly and monthly tasks for yourself. Determine the monthly tasks that’ll help you achieve your goals. Next, break these into weekly and daily tasks and block time on your calendar for your various marketing activities.

Remember to start small, with manageable daily tasks. It’s like starting a new habit. When you start small, you set yourself up for success — for an easy win. That win will motivate you to do more. Momentum will build, and over time, you’ll get into a steady rhythm with your new habit.

Remember to build your vacation time and personal days off into your real estate marketing plan. Don’t forget to take time off!

11. Keep yourself accountable

You know what they say about the best-laid plans. Your calendar is key to your accountability. Set calendar events and time blocks to complete your daily, weekly and monthly tasks that you’ve included in your real estate marketing plan. It’s the only way to ensure you’ll do them consistently. I like to color-code my calendar, using green for all money-making activities.

You can use a paper calendar, Google Calendar, or any other tool that works for you. To stay on track, consider setting recurring reminders in your phone or using your CRM to alert you to your recurring real estate marketing tasks. Most CRMs have task functionality with alerts to help you stay on track. Check out our list of indispensable tools, above.

12. Adapt your real estate marketing plan

You’re going to want to return to steps 5 & 6 to audit your marketing activities and delete, double down or delegate. I recommend reviewing your results tracker quarterly, but at minimum, once per year. The real estate market constantly evolves, and so should your marketing plan and marketing messaging!

Again, the goal is to save time, money, and energy and maximize results. Don’t be afraid to pivot and adjust as you go along. In deciding when to pivot and adjust your marketing plan, ask yourself the following questions:

How much time, money, and energy have I invested so far?
What has the return on investment been?
Have I given it enough time to see results? Keep in mind some things take longer than others. Building a database and working by referral, geographic farming tends to take longer. Cold calling and door knocking tend to generate results faster.
Am I enjoying this enough to continue, or is it making me miserable?

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The full picture: Creating a real estate marketing plan that works for you

Creating an effective real estate marketing plan can be challenging, but if you focus on strategies that are aligned with your personal brand, skill set, and niche, you can create a plan that will carry you through your entire career.

To keep you going through the mundane and frustrating days, your end goal should be your ultimate dream life — how you wish to spend your days, the freedom you want, and the work you’d most enjoy.

Marketing to find new clients to make that dream come true can be mundane, and there will be frustrating days. If your marketing plan includes cold calling, there will inevitably be times when you simply don’t want to deal with another irate expired seller who’s already been called 20 times that morning.

When your “why” is powerful enough, though, you stick with it. A “why” is that strong gut feeling, that ultimate motivation to get to your dream life.

Vision boards are powerful tools to help you articulate your end goal and keep it top-of-mind. The easiest way to create a vision board is to collect words and images from magazines or printed from online that capture your goal — your why. Then, paste the images and words on a poster board and keep them in front of you, maybe on a wall in your office or bedroom. It’s a little old school, yes, but it works!

About Ashley Harwood

Ashley Harwood began her real estate career in 2013 and built a six-figure business as a solo agent before launching Move Over Extroverts in 2018. She developed training materials, classes, and coaching programs for her fellow introverts. Beginning in 2020, Ashley served as Director of Agent Growth for three Keller Williams offices in the Boston metro area. She’s now the Lead Listing agent for the Fleet Homes team in Massachusetts and a regular contributor to Vetted by HousingWire. She created The Quiet Success curriculum and has taught thousands of real estate agents nationwide. She has also been a guest speaker at top industry events and has been named a leading real estate coach by prominent industry publications.