8 Costly Marketing Mistakes You Don't Know You're Making (and how to fix them)

When it comes to making mistakes with your marketing as a real estate investor, agent, or coach, you may be pretty bummed to learn how much they are costing you.

As a real estate writer and content marketing coach, I sometimes have interactions with hundreds of real estate professionals like yourself in a single day. That means I get to see A LOT of marketing mistakes on a very regular basis.

Unfortunately, I don't have the ability to work with all of them. There's only so much time in a day and I like to enjoy my life.

But I am still very passionate about helping people help themselves by improving their business and achieving their goals and dreams!

So today I want to go over the 8 most common and costly marketing mistakes I see being made everyday by real estate professionals and offer advice on how to fix them in case you're guilty of making them too.

1. Weak Web Copy

According to the National Association of Realtors, more than 80% of buyers and sellers are searching for an agent or a house online and that number will only continue to rise. Therefore, your web presence is obviously a pretty big deal.

However, it is not good enough to simply exist online. It's crucial to have your own website (separate from the one your brokerage gave you).

If the copy on that site sucks, the following three things will happen:

1. You're barely going to get found by online searchers.
2. Those that do find you, will be "bounced" off of your site.
3.  All of the money & time you spend directing prospects to your site will be wasted.

Don't simply fill the pages of your website with generic, boring copy that has not been structured to hold your prospects' interest and contains no SEO.

Your website copy needs to be designed to attract your ideal clients to your site, get them interested in you, and ultimately begin building a connection with them which you can capitalize on later. 

Go through each page of your website as though you are one of your ideal clients seeing it for the first time and be honest with yourself as you read them:

Do you feel connected to your company?

Are you feeling engaged or excited about the services or products being offered?

Is the messaging clear?

If not, then you need to take the time to go back and fix those problems. Your web copy should be engaging, as much as it is, functional. Don't keep a website that leaves your ideal clients heading for the hills!

2. Marketing Funnel Flops

Okay, so you heard that having a marketing funnel is lucrative and drives serious results, so you carved out the time to build one. Awesome!

Except...nothing is happening. Must have been another gimmick right?!

WRONG! Marketing funnels really do work!

(HINT: You're reading this article because of one).

The thing is, they must be designed and implemented correctly, and your website must be user-friendly (with powerful copy) if it is going to work.

Marketing funnels can truly be your best friend, But if all of the components haven't been written, designed, and implemented correctly, they will actually become a huge waste of your time and money.

If your "marketing funnel" is just a series of unrelated landing pages with an opt-in or phone number to call then I have news for you: That is NOT a marketing funnel! That is an digital brochure that is unlikely to produce the results you want (if any).

A true real estate marketing funnel is a strategically designed work of art that have your ideal prospects excited about having the opportunity to work with you. It isn't some strange abyss that attracts people and then sends them away never to be heard from again.

Again, I want you to put yourself in your prospects' shoes and take a serious and critical look at every stage of your marketing funnel.

Would you be converted through each and every stage if you were them?

Why or why not?

If certain portions of your real estate marketing funnel are more apt to send you away into the abyss, I urge you to go back and edit them to so that they start garnering real conversions from the right types of clients.

3. No Niche

I've said it a thousand times before and I am going to say it again: if you want to be successful in the real estate industry...YOU MUST HAVE A NICHE.

If you don't have a valuable niche or a targeted ideal client, you will continue to attract the types of prospects and clients you hate and waste a fortune (not to mention countless hours) on trying to win business.

That is a TERRIBLE way to live and do business!

After all, didn't you get into real estate so you could build your wealth, have more time to spend with your loved ones, and make your own schedule? Or would you prefer to go broke working 80 hour weeks trying to get ahead.

If you feel like you have tried everything in terms of marketing (cold calling, door-knocking, drip campaigns, social media, commercials, etc.) but haven't gotten anywhere, I can pretty much guarantee it is because you haven't selected a niche and you are trying to market yourself as being something for everyone.

I know that choosing a niche is scary because you fear that you will be alienating potential clients and you "can't afford to do that right now".

I am here to tell you that I know that fear all to well!

When I first started freelance writing, I was writing about thousands of different topics in just about every industry. Seriously, in one day I wrote about Himalayan pink salt lamps, steel welding, and gazebo design!

READ MY ARTICLE DETAILING HOW TO PICK A PROFITABLE NICHE

At the time, writing was just a hobby I did on nights and weekends, but I had always dreamed of making it my career. I was following a fellow blogger that constantly insisted that if I wanted to "make it" as a writer I was going to have to pick a niche.

My argument to her: "I can't afford to do that right now, I need all the business I can get!". Sound familiar?

THEN I GOT HIT WITH A BOMBSHELL...

I ended up losing my job working for a real estate attorney after they settled a major case and could no longer afford me.

So, I decided to give myself one month to try a niche and see if I really could make it as a writer by focusing all of my attention in one direction.

I decided to choose real estate as my niche because I had worked in the industry for years and knew it from a almost every angle.

Still, I had serious doubts!

The results? I went from making an average of $400 per month from my freelance writing, to making over $5,000 in that first month!

Now I work far less hours than I ever have, I am making more than I ever thought I would, and I spend most days lounging in my bikini.

This is all possible because I picked a profitable niche and started targeting ALL of my marketing towards the kinds of clients that I wanted to work with, rather than busting my ass for anyone willing to spend a couple of bucks on some generic copy.

You can do the exact same thing for your real estate business!

4. Budgeting

Another common and costly marketing mistake I see in the real estate industry is a failure to establish a marketing budget.

When you don't lay out a detailed marketing budget that is in-sync with your marketing goals and targeted results, you end up spending a fortune on random marketing tactics and gimmicks and crossing your fingers for results.

You might get lucky doing that here or there but you won't get the kinds of results that you should for the amount that you end up spending.

Instead of constantly throwing darts at the wall hoping that one will stick, why not try and test strategies that make sense for your brand and are designed to target your ideal niche?

If you fail to establish a budget, you will struggle to recognize where your money is going and what your ROI is, which will make it harder for you to analyze what is working and what you need to eliminate from your marketing strategy.

5. Ignoring Results

When it comes to a marketing, nothing matters more than the results. It doesn't matter how clever or artfully-

designed a campaign is, if the results are terrible, it is a flat-out failure.

However, no matter what the results are, the results themselves are of tremendous value to you and your marketing team because they tell you what does and does not work so that you don't waste any time or money.

That is, unless you ignore the results and continue to dump loads of cash into campaigns and tactics that are not producing conversions.

If you are continuously spending money on marketing but are not reaping any benefits, it could be because you are not tailoring every campaign based on the results of your previous successes and failures.

Start compiling and organizing the data from all of your marketing efforts to better target your niche and watch as your campaigns start collecting clients.

6. Lack of Patience

Look, I hate to break it to you, but most marketing campaigns are not a get-rich-quick solution that instantly bring you millions in revenue. If it worked like that, businesses wouldn't fail as often as they do.

The fact of the matter is that the majority of marketing techniques require some time to produce real results.

For example, you can't send out one direct mailer for first time home buyers and expect a slue of phone calls from young professionals that can't wait to buy a house with you. In fact, you typically have to send out closer to 10 mailers before you might get a conversion out of someone.

Content marketing typically takes about six months of consistent production before you should expect results, which is why I turn away clients that only want to try it out for one month. Paying for one month of content is unlikely to get you any big results which will leave you disappointed in my work and turn your investment into a waste.

My point is that you need to have patience with your marketing. Don't just try something once or twice and then give up and start dumping money elsewhere when you don't get a ton of clients from it.

Do your research on the best way to target your niche, that will also make sense for your budget, and then make a commitment.

7. Failure To Follow-Through

 All of the marketing in the world from the world's best agency will go to waste if you do not follow-through with pursuing the results.

I am begging you, if you do not plan to seriously nurture the leads that you attract through your marketing...you have no business advertising at all.

Hell...you have no business being in business!

Do not spend a bunch of time or money on a marketing campaign, only to ignore the leads it produces and then turn around and complain that it didn't work.

If you are overwhelmed by the idea of having to manage all of your prospects and take them from cool to converted then you need to pay someone else that will do it for you.

8. Carrying No Credibility

Have you ever looked at real estate superstars like Tom Ferry or Barbara Corcoran and wondered how they got to the top of the real estate world? The answer is different than what you might expect...

It's their credibility!

But the question is...how do you gain credibility? Especially if you are new to this whole real estate thing, the idea of being perceived as credible seems impossible.It's not.

All you need to propel yourself towards serious success in real estate, position yourself as an expert, and establish major credibility is one thing: a book.

Think about it, all of those big names have a book. They start with a book, then they're invited to begin speaking at events, and before they know what happened, they have to start turning away business because they only have time for their ideal clients. Sounds like a pretty good problem to have right?

The problem is that most people are not capable or willing to make the types of commitments that are required to write and produce an entire book of branded content that will give you the credibility you need to achieve your business dreams.

I'm going to let you in on a little-known secret - neither did they! Major speakers and coaches knew they needed a book but had no idea how to write one or gave up trying half a dozen times before they all did one thing: they hired a professional ghost writer to write it for them.

After conducting an interview, or series of interviews, a professional ghost writer will collect the information you have given them about your business, your brand, and yourself, and turn all of that into a book you can put your name and face on.

That book will be all of the credibility and leverage that you need to go from a nobody in the real estate world, to becoming a major player that has a list of on-demand clients hoping for the chance to work with you.

Remember, without credibility, people will be very reluctant to trust you and you will waste a lot of time and money trying to market yourself to people that think you are just like everybody else. Stand out from the crowd and become a real estate superstar with your own book.