Time, money, and energy: Those are three things we all want more of, for obvious reasons — but they’re also the three things that are most difficult to get more of.
As a real estate investor, you likely know this all too well. You’re juggling multiple tasks every day: from searching the market for properties to buy, vetting property management firms and landlords, to showing your units to prospective renters.
One task on your plate that often falls by the wayside due to other, “more important” responsibilities is marketing.
Unless you’ve previously worked in a dedicated marketing role or studied marketing in college, chances are you’re unsure as to how to best brand your business, promote yourself online and offline, and — ultimately — generate substantial interest in your investment properties.
That’s where a marketing assistant comes into play. There are countless reasons why you ought to allocate some of your business resources toward hiring one of these professionals. Here are a handful of the most compelling reasons…
Reason #1: You Need Time for Core Business Tasks
As Seth can attest, a day in the life of an investor involves handling numerous duties, like checking up on existing rental properties, researching Zillow and other real estate portals for new listings, and organizing investment-related finances.
In the midst of the myriad responsibilities investors have to take on each and every day, it can become easy to neglect one’s marketing activities.
By hiring a marketing assistant — in-person or virtual (there are pros and cons to both, but it really all depends on your preferences and budget) — you can ensure a comprehensive promotional strategy is put in place for your investment venture and executed on a daily basis.
The role of a marketing assistant is really a catch-all one. They can handle the majority of your marketing tactics — updating website copy, crafting print design collateral, posting to your social media accounts, and so on.
Or, if you have time to take on most marketing activities and really just need someone to fill the gaps, so to speak, your assistant can simply focus on one primary task, like helping with lead/prospect generation or conducting private showings/open houses for your rental units.
Whatever it is you want your marketing assistant to do for you on a daily or weekly basis is entirely up to you. The goal, at the end of the day, is to have this person take charge of one or more tasks that typically take up too much of your time so you can turn your attention back to more pressing business matters.
Reason #2: You Don’t Know All Marketing Best Practices
As noted, unless you’ve spent a fair amount of time in a marketing position, odds are you’re not up to speed on the latest and most important marketing best practices.
This knowledge gap disappears, however, the second you bring on a reliable, proven marketing assistant — ideally one with a history of helping other professionals and brands (in and out of real estate) grow their online presence and bottom lines.
Think about it: Do you really know a lot about these marketing approaches?:
- Search engine optimization (SEO): The art and science of getting your website to rank well in Google so you can get more traffic and, in turn, renter and buyer leads.
- Email marketing: The act of designing and sending stylized, informative emails to your existing prospects, potential vendor partners, and others within your network.
- CRM management: You need someone who knows how to sort weak leads (those to ignore/wait to contact) from strong ones (those to contact/try to convert ASAP).
And those are just a small sample of the countless online and offline marketing activities a part- or full-time assistant can assist you with.
By recognizing you don’t know everything about how to best promote your real estate investing business and properties and finding someone who has shown they are more than capable of doing so to help you out, you’ll put yourself on the path to greater ROI for the long term.
Reason #3: Your Real Estate Investor Website Needs TLC
No, you may not get a lot of business from your real estate investor website — but that doesn’t mean you couldn’t down the line. After all, how do you know if you’re getting all of the prospects through the digital door if your main digital presence isn’t fully optimized?
Look for a marketing assistant with a background in website design and conversion rate optimization (a.k.a. turning website visitors into interested leads).
By doing so, you add yet another means for getting more, highly qualified renters and buyers you can connect with via email, text, and calls.
Chatting with people who have a substantial interest in your properties as opposed to cold calling individuals who maybe, sort of, might want to rent or buy in your area soon is always the better option. For instance …
If you work with an assistant who modernizes the layout and aesthetic of your site (in other words, ensures it doesn’t look like it was designed at the dawn of the internet) and adds things like lead capture forms and calls to action to contact you, you greatly enhance the quantity and quality of people who reach out to you to learn more about your investment properties.
So, instead of fumbling around with your website or paying a designer/design firm thousands of dollars for a so-so site they never update for you or provide analytics for, hire an assistant — even if only for a few months — to modify your site for the better and make sure it sets you up for business success for years to come.
Reason #4: Your Properties Need to Be Promoted Often
Whether you own a modest investment property (e.g. a small, suburban ranch home) or several expansive ones (e.g. multiple high-end condos in a new development), the marketing approach required to spread the word about these units is the same:
- Publish the listings to your site, along with a list of features/specs and lots of photos
- Share the listings through all relevant promotional avenues, like online ads and social
- Email specific listings to specific leads you think would be interested in them today
- Send automated email digests featuring multiple listings to your general prospect list
- Post flyers of your investment properties in local shops, markets, colleges, and cafes
Just looking at that list makes me tired. Why? Because the amount of — you guessed it — time, money, and energy it takes to promote even a single property of yours can take a dozen hours or more (that is, if you do it right).
That’s where your prospective marketing assistant comes into play. He or she (or they, if you have the bandwidth to hire a small team) can handle the logistics of promoting your investment properties.
As long as you provide the proper direction regarding what specific listing(s) they should promote, where they should allocate their marketing resources (e.g. online vs. offline, digital display ads vs. billboards, etc.), and how much money they have to work with, they can take the baton and run with your marketing strategy, in turn giving you the chance to focus on other facets of your real estate business.
Reason #5: You Have to Stay Sane as an Investor
At the end of the day, what good is trying to run a successful real estate investing business if you feel like pulling out your hair all the time and just completely giving up due to constant stress?
Real estate investing can (and should) be both fruitful and enjoyable. You greatly enhance the chances of enjoying your work and seeing the fruits of your labor by hiring a marketing assistant.
Even if this person only helps out for a few hours each week with minor tasks, those are a few hours you can use to improve other parts of your business.
