What’s the one thing you shouldn’t stop doing during these times of covid?
And the answer doesn’t have to do with purchasing a truckload of toilet paper.
But in times like these, when the crock brain is fighting more for attention than the part of the brain with the neocortex, some people might tend to freeze and put everything on hold.
While this is a reflex from nature that is quite helpful in certain situations, it can go overboard and paralyze some so that they don’t get anything done anymore — including thinking clearly, which might lead to a crisis.
This article will be a shorter one.
It will hopefully help to put some things into perspective as to why you, as a real estate professional, should not stop marketing during a real estate crisis or during a market showing signs of recession.
I will also give you 8 real estate marketing ideas during covid.
So Why Shouldn’t You Stop Marketing During Covid?
Sales and marketing are the lifeblood of a business.
If you stop doing it, you eventually will run out of leads, clients, and sales.
Instead, you could use the freeze reflex of your crock brain to your advantage. You can take a moment to reconsider certain marketing activities and strategies and reposition yourself in the market.
But I wouldn’t stop marketing at all because times of crisis very often are also huge opportunities.
Many don’t manage too well to resist the crock brain influence.
But if you do, and “keep calm and keep marketing” (sounds a bit like something that could be on a shirt), you will have less competition.
“No matter what you sell or where you sell it, effective advertising is the engine that can keep your business running in good times and bad” – Drew Eric Whitman from the book Cashvertising.
Or look at these well-known companies that got founded either during the big recessions and depressions of the past:
- General Motors: founded during the panic of 1907
- General Electric: founded during the panic of 1873
- FedEx: founded during the oil crisis of 1973
- United Technologies Corporation: founded in 1927 amid the Great Depression
- Microsoft: founded during the panic of 1975
- Google, Travelocity, PayPal, eBay, Amazon, Priceline, and Skype: founded in the aftermath of the dot-com boom
And these are the other arguments:
1) If you are well-established and have a large enough database of clients as a real estate professional, you have the number one way to survive a recession.
2) In a recession, you will probably have fewer buyers and more sellers, resulting in a buyer’s market. So, you can adapt and focus your marketing efforts more on the buyer and investors’ side (for example, creating a nice buyers list)
3) If you take advice from some to go on vacation until things have passed, you will likely fall out of the business and lose touch with the market.
This is the opportunity for those who work through the “bad weather”. These will be the people that take your clients.
4) You would miss the opportunity to adapt and get familiar with or focus more on foreclosures and other distressed property opportunities, such as short sales.
8 Inspiring Real Estate Marketing Ideas During Covid
1) Get smarter and invest a bit more time into education. The less informed you are, the more difficult it might get during less favorable times.
Sellers and buyers might get more selective when deciding on deals and real estate professionals.
2) As mentioned above, now is the time to focus marketing efforts on buyers.
3) Real estate investors can focus on creative investing strategies, such as rent-to-own, carryback deals, owner financing, and more.
Why?
During a recession, there is usually a reduced mortgage availability and higher interest rates. This point is not yet reached since interest rates were even reduced.
4) You can take some time to go to a peaceful place (depending on your travel possibilities in your house or some other place) and re-visit your business plan and strategies to get a bird’s eye view.
5) You could even increase your marketing efforts by:
- Expanding your areas of focus to additional demographics and neighborhoods
- Increase your speed when sending out marketing materials or attending to old and new clients and leads, or doing customer care and follow-ups
- Building a new real estate website (if you don’t have one yet). There are nice solutions where you could get one up and running fast, and optimized to generate more leads.
6) You can increase your joint-venture efforts with other real estate professionals. This could reduce some of your marketing costs.
7) Because of the Corona situation right now, there are more government-imposed travel and gathering restrictions; thus, you can’t move that freely.
So, what can you do?
Open houses would be more difficult to do if you are a real estate agent.
This is your chance to think about getting even more web savvy, digital, and virtual with your real estate business (people might even become afraid of opening a letter from your direct mailing campaign).
So, you could and would need to do more virtual property tours, virtual meetings, and digital marketing.
If people watch too much news, they probably get influenced and become hypersensitive to cleanliness.
This is something you can use as a marketing angle for your marketing copy. (e.g. “HOA fees include a weekly property sterilization and a daily tip top cleaning service.”)
8) Since sellers and buyers are becoming more selective, you can build additional trust by educating them more on market changes and doing more overall content marketing. (Check out my content marketing ideas here).
In Conclusion
The world is not ending (just yet), and in difficult times or a recession, you will need to be open to being flexible and adapting even more to new market conditions.
Letting your “crock brain” get its way is probably not a good idea.
Many of the companies I mentioned above were founded during times of crisis, recession, and depression.
And then, you might miss many opportunities that a real estate crisis can bring.
Not for nothing, the Chinese word for “crisis” means danger and opportunity.
So, keep calm and keep marketing (in other ways than before). I might need to get this phrase on a T-shirt these days.
Don’t hesitate to share this article if you like it.
This article has been reviewed by our editorial team. It has been approved for publication in accordance with our editorial policy.
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