While real estate investing pros often find themselves at odds with Realtors and agents it is always smart to keep your eye on what they are doing and what seems to be working for them.
There are so many Realtors out there and so much is spent on testing and trying out new marketing campaigns that even if they don’t always get it right it can be a good additional form of real estate education that can help you cut out a lot of the trial and error in your own marketing as well as keeping an keen eye on trends.
A recent survey from Citi Investment Research asked real estate agents what they felt the best online marketing tools were and where they were seeing the biggest results and returns on investment. So what was number one? It should be no surprise to real estate investing companies that they clearly pointed to social media sites like Facebook as being among their most valuable tools of the moment. Following social media was Trulia, then Zillow and Yahoo Real Estate. However, agents also voted search based marketing for generating their own web traffic more valuable than any other 3rd party sites, except for Trulia.
Real estate investing companies should also be aware that forecasts predict $22 billion to be spent on advertising this year by Realtors, mortgage companies and developers. This does not include real estate investing companies.
This means that while no money down real estate investing deals are possible and the market definitely appears to be improving you definitely want to be prepared to do a good amount of marketing yourself too. Social media of course can be a great way to get an advantage over your competition without having to spend a ton of money but you you should still strive to make your profiles look great and stand out.
