We’ve bumped heads and brainstormed the coldest, hardest, most creative real estate marketing ideas. In fact, I’m not even going to waste your time with a deep intro, outlining the essence of real estate lead generation and how important it is. It is what it is.

Here are 20 of the quirkiest real estate marketing ideas that your competitors probably aren’t doing.

Without further ado, let’s keep it real with NetHunt CRM.

Make cool videos.

It might seem simple, but a lot of brands get it wrong. We could have included Real estate video marketing in our last list of essential real estate lead generation strategies, but we figured with all the creative options available, they still come under the bracket of cool.

Links to pages with embedded video content receive 157% more organic search results.

- [Brafton]

Real estate video marketing generates beautiful web traffic at the bottom end of the sales funnel. Near the middle of the funnel, a good video can persuade sellers to work with an agent.

Think of it this way… When they’re impressed by previous clients’ videos on your website, a house seller is going to want to have that same spotlight shone onto their home. Overall, property listings with a video on them can offer up to four times more leads.

It just makes sense.

At NetHunt, we actively engage in video content marketing. We find it an excellent resource for adding texture to our content, lifting words out of blog posts and putting them into something much more easy-to-consume, colourful, and engaging.

They can be uploaded to any platform - social media, your website, and even displayed in your shop window. For real estate, videos are a no-brainer.

Real estate marketing video ideas.

💡 Drone footage is always a winner; it's fun to watch and uniquely informative. It can provide a sharp look at property beyond the standard street-level perspective. If you’re showcasing a property with a lot of land attached to it, house-browsers gain a better picture of the lay of the land.

💡Take advantage of AR and VR technology to create virtual house tours. Virtual tours became especially prominent in 2020 and beyond, when real estate agent tried to find ways to jump start the housing markets when everybody was locked down. Virtual tours offer a comprehensive, accurate, and repeatable preview of any property for potential buyers.

💡Agent introduction videos put you or your agents in the spotlight for potential buyers. They showcase an agent’s experience and achievements, but they also need to show that agent to be friendly and easy to work with. Try and make your agent introduction video fun. Having an agent stand and talk in front of a wall about themselves is boring. Get brainstorming.

💡Testimonial videos from previous clients help to establish trust, respect, and authority in a brand in the same way that good, old-fashioned video content marketing featuring how-to content does. Personally, I never even buy a phone charger from Amazon first without the reviews. Testimonial videos are crucial when people are investing so much money into the real estate service you offer.

Looking for a real estate video tool? We’ve got just the ticket...

Engage and improve the local community.

Real estate is unique in so many different ways. Not only are they confined to the local community that they’re in, but they’re actively building those communities. They find people who want to live there. Without trying to sound cheesy here, they make their dreams come true.

Sorry. That was quite cheesy.

I’m trying to say that real estate agents have a vital role in a local community if they want to. Taking this role seriously can help a real estate agency both socially and professionally in different ways. They’re often the first point of contact anybody has in a new town, they know the makeup of the local schools, and they understand the local economy.

Their relationship with a local community is personal. To that end, real estate agents need to engage their local community to get their name out there, develop leads, and find out on-the-ground information about the neighbourhood, area, and market.

Real estate marketing community engagement ideas.

💡Work with local nonprofit agencies to make the area a better place. Choose your cause: helping the homeless, working with an animal shelter, opposing a fourth runway at the city airport; anything you feel passionate about and want to do something about. Helping out at local old-person centres and homes is often overlooked but a rewarding way to impact a community.

💡To take the first idea further, volunteering for a public office isn’t necessarily a marketing idea. But, by becoming an active advocate for the local area, there’s no better way to have an impact on your community. You can have a direct effect on your village, town, or city; you’ll meet different people, let them know your name, and ultimately strengthen your brand.

💡It’s in your active interest for the local area to look good and appealing. Why not start a local beautification drive? Give yourself some visibility by planting some trees, doing a sponsored litter pick by the side of the road, or starting a donation drive for a new fountain for the town square. Help your fellow community reclaim their public space; it’s imperative post-2020.

💡 Donate to a local charity. You’ve simply not got the time to be active in your local community; we get it, you’re selling houses. The next best thing to do would be to donate to a local charity you feel is a worthy cause. If you make a significant donation, you’re within your rights to ask for some recognition, like a social media post with a picture of a giant cheque.

💡 Organise a community yard sale. Find a space, get permission to use it, and invite the local community to come, set up a table, and sell the stuff that they don’t need or use anymore. Get some food trucks down to feed the masses and hire a local musician to play some tunes. Get creative, and this is an opportunity to snap some pictures and show potential buyers how much community spirit your local area has.

I’ve already got loads of leads; what now?

Store them and utilise them within a beautiful CRM system. Real Estate CRM centralises data, speeds up response times, automatically notifies your teams whenever anything good happens and deals with things’ money side. All in all, real estate CRM helps develop long-term customer relationships and referrals. Now you’ve generated leads; you can automatically manage them all.

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Find out more about choosing a CRM system for real estate. arrow right

Sponsoring something costs money. The thing it doesn’t cost is time and effort. By putting some money towards a local event, you can sit back and watch the leads roll in as your name becomes more recognisable, trusted, and liked in the local community.

A well-placed sponsorship offers real estate businesses tremendous opportunities: target market exposure, image enhancement, a competitive advantage, a chance to show your fun or caring side, proof of your commitment to the community and, ultimately… revenue and growth.

It’s common sense that people like doing business with people they know. Find a real estate sponsorship opportunity that your business can afford, get your branding spot on and positioned, and show your dedication to a local cause, enterprise, or activity.

Make people like you!

Real estate marketing sponsorship ideas.

💡 Amateur sports leagues and sports teams are always on the lookout for sponsorship opportunities. Sponsorship money typically goes towards kit and equipment, administration and growth, or stadium upkeep. Your business gains recognition by having its name emblazoned either on the kit or in the stands somewhere.

💡You could even report on that team or league in an email newsletter.

💡Sponsor a local community project or municipal building project. You don’t need to fork out for a new hospital, bus station, or train station, but your business can offer to renovate or improve something smaller and more manageable in the local community. A win-win, you’re improving the local area and showing off a plaque with your business’s name on it right next to that improvement.

💡Animal shelter sponsorship tends to be very popular in real estate marketing circles. These types of local institutions tend to run adoption events for their sheltered animals. By giving them sponsorship money, you’re paying for tables, canopy shelters, food trucks, some advertising, and people working at the event. Show your soft side and get some pics with a fluffy friend.

💡If you’re looking to make a big splash outside your local area, podcast, magazine, or YouTube content creators are places for you to put your name out there and establish your industry influence on a much larger scale. They can be helpful for holiday home real estate agents. Just make sure that their audience is relevant.

Guerilla real estate marketing.

You might recognise that word - Guerilla. In the context of warfare, Guerilla tactics are all about ambushing and surprising your enemy. Guerilla Marketing is similar, except we’re not trying to kill our customers but rather get them on side. Check out our article about Guerilla Marketing, featuring a collection of the good, the bad, and the ugly sides of this marketing technique.

Guerilla marketing can be cheap, its publicity can snowball, and the word-of-mouth referrals that a good guerrilla marketing campaign garners is unmatched. Specifically for real estate marketing, it can garner a lot of local interest in your brand; it can even be a newsworthy event.

Guerilla marketing is very, very niche. It’s business-specific how your brand decides it wants to tell its story. As a result, I can only offer you inspiration for the best and worst guerilla marketing campaigns in recent history, as told by the wonderful Anastasia, our customer success queen!

… and the rest.

I tried to keep this article structure in some sort of way. Alas, real estate marketing opportunities are so vast that they don’t all fit into neat and tidy sub-categories like the three above. This section of the article is somewhat of a free-for-all, and I’m just going to chuck ideas at you as they come.

💡 Create a Zillow account. Zillow is the Yelp of the real estate marketing world. Any real estate agent worth their salt should upload their business details to the platform. You can advertise your agency on their website but at a price. Still, it might be worth it - directories like Zillow make up around half of internet traffic!

💡 Update your Google Business information. Google Business is how your brand is represented in the Google sphere. When potential house-buyers and sellers are looking in a specific area for real estate services, the first place they’ll go is into their web browser where they’ll search real estate agency + [local area]. It’s very important to represent your business correctly here; this is an absolute no-brainer for any real estate agency.

  • Complete your business information and add a description.
  • Upload more and better images of your estate agency and the local area.
  • Respond to all Google My Business reviews.
  • Use posts to promote events, offers, and content.
  • Create and upload videos [see section 1 of this article].

💡 Seasonal greeting cards for ex-customers. Stick a reminder in your CRM system to notify you of previous customers’ birthdays. On the day, send them a card, tell them that you’re thinking about them on their special day, and they’ll start thinking about you. But is that lead generation?

No, the lead generation comes when they refer you to their friends who are selling their house. Firing out Christmas cards, Eid cards, Hanukkah cards, congratulations-on-your-new-baby cards, happy-house-buying-anniversary cards, or any card you want is a cheap, simple, and personal way of developing referral leads for your business.

💡 Be the first to welcome a new business to a community. Local businesses are a staple of local marketing.

When a new business opens up in your local area, be the first to welcome them. What’s your budget? Either send a welcome hamper or knock on their door and say hello. This gets your foot in the door first and helps develop a referral culture around your brand. It can get you on the inside track to buy some ad space, whether on a coffee mug or a menu.

💡 Talk to people. You’re a real estate agent, so I can put money on the fact that you’re good at it. Visit local businesses, introduce yourself, apply to be a speaker at a local event or town hall, go to bars, and make friends there. Real estate marketing relies on referrals, so your brand depends on you and your colleagues being personal and memorable.

💡 Make real estate flyers. This is the best way to market your real estate company. Make a flyer that helps you grab some local attention. You can print them and stick them on the busy streets of your city.

Your extrovertism is the most potent real estate marketing weapon.

Thank you for keeping it real with NetHunt CRM.

And remember, once your real estate marketing starts paying off, you'll see an increase in transactions. Use a real estate transaction management system to handle them effectively.

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