Recommended Real Estate Marketing Tools
We’ve spent countless hours and many thousands of dollars finding the best resources for your real estate business, often by choosing the wrong providers first for ourselves! Here are the trusted resources we use and recommend.
(Some of these are our affiliates, meaning we may get a commission if you purchase from them. Please know that we turn down many potential affiliates, and only recommend ones that we feel are truly worth your time and money.)
Real Estate Web Hosting
I really like Hostgator for web hosting. Reasonable rates, good up-time, and most of all, as a real estate agent I really think you want phone support. (I tried three other web hosting companies that were highly recommended but only offered online support – it’s just not the same.)
Real Estate Domain Names
Godaddy is simply the easiest and most affordable place to buy domain names that I’ve found. It’s also easy to manage your domain name through them afterwards, and they have 24 hour phone support. I’ve used them for many years and still like them.
Real Estate Web Design
Site Build It is a do-it-yourself option that I haven’t used but that comes HIGHLY recommended, and is safe for non-techies. (In other words, if you navigated to this page by yourself you should be able to use Site Build It to create your own real estate website.)
I like Site Build It because it also helps you with keyword research and optimizing your pages for the search engines, which is crucial. The Site Build It website builder, keyword research tools and the hosting is a very reasonable yearly fee. Check out the videos at the site.
Aldebaran Web Designis a Seattle-based web design firm run by Jill Olkoski. I like her because she is very knowledgeable about search engine optimization, and all of the pages in her portfolio sites are optimized for specific keywords, which is very rare to find in a web designer. Her sites are functional (not just pretty) and she will install blogs and e-commerce options as well.
Real Estate Blogs and Blogging
For free, set-it-up-in-one-minute real estate blogging tools it’s hard to beat Active Rain, and it gets lots of search engine juice. Create your free profile and you automatically have the option to start blogging whenever you feel like it.
BloodhoundBlog.net also offers free real estate blogs, and founder Greg Swann is an expert on real estate blogging, so I think this would be an interesting place to start. Caution – I think you’ll be expected to be a real blogger, as in, blogging consistently about real stuff – as opposed to the Active Rain option, which you can pretty much leave alone for as long as you like.
Real Estate Logo Design
Josiah Jost of Siah Designs is such a good logo designer that you almost want to ditch whatever logo you currently have just to see what he’ll come up with. He doesn’t specialize in real estate logos, but I don’t think that matters at all. This is the first place I’d go to get a logo for any business, and last time I talked to him his prices were reasonable.
Real Estate Business Branding
Ann Convery’s ‘Speak Your Business in 30 Seconds or Less’ program is applicable to any business, so even though it’s not geared just to real estate agents I highly recommend it. (I wish I had gotten this information before ever starting out in business, actually.) There’s also a great audio of her being interviewed by master marketer Alexandria Brown, available for free on the main page of her website.
Real Estate Business Organizing and Time Tracking
Backpack is an online organizer that lets you keep your to-dos, notes, ideas and schedule online. It’s very user-friendly, like all the 37Signals software we’ve tried out. The base version is free, but we suggest
you try out the $5 a month version so you can get the calendar and have reminders emailed to you or sent to your phone.
(If you work with a team, try Basecamp instead.)
Online Forms
Want a contact form or questionnaire on your website or blog? Now it’s easy! Formspring has an incredibly easy to use interface that will have even the least techie person creating a nice looking form in minutes. There’s a free option, or you can pay for a few more features. Anything you can do to encourage prospects to contact you is smart (OK, within reason, obviously) so I highly recommend checking out this service.
Graphics and Screen Capture
Snagit is a very easy to use screen capture software, so that you can create an image from any part of your computer screen, then convert it to a number of different formats including .gif, .jpg or .pdf. This is really helpful when creating presentations and tutorials for clients. You can even capture entire long web pages with its scrolling page feature. There’s a lot more you can do with this software, and for around $40 it’s seriously well-priced.
Real Estate Email Marketing
Email Newsletters from ToolsForRealEstate.com
This is our highly regarded email newsletter service. Stay top of mind with past and current clients while positioning yourself effortlessly as their trusted expert with a monthly email newsletter chock full of the type of information homeowners love to receive. Each issue encourages your readers to interact with you and forward your newsletters on to others – it’s like making your readers part of your own marketing team!
Best of all, this service is completely done for you. Never worry about your marketing again – just enjoy the results. Check out our real estate email newsletter service features and pricing here.
