You might be surprised to learn that all your marketing knowledge about (digital) real estate marketing strategies always comes down to the one principle that defines everything else.

As a real estate professional, you could say that you are not in the real estate business but in the business of marketing and sales.

Sounds familiar, yes?

I am sure you’ve heard that on different sites and podcasts already.

It is correct because marketing and sales are the heart of the business (actually, of any company).

Without them, you don’t get real estate leads.

Without leads, you don’t get sales; without sales, you don’t have clients or repeat clients who keep your business alive and growing. In this information age, I find one problem often because I like marketing. 

There is too much information out there.

Just Google “real estate marketing,” and you’ll get overwhelmed with different articles, videos, etc., with a bunch of other methods and lists of what you should and should not do.

When reading and learning about different tactics, I sometimes get a mix of emotions, such as losing out on something (I should somehow use all the tactics) and anger about this information overload or not being able to see the bigger picture.

You might feel similar things sometimes.

There is so much information out there that you might even fear losing money by using the wrong marketing approaches.

Wouldn’t it be nice to avoid distractions and instead have the bigger picture in mind and filter the correct information so you don’t have a mess in your head?

Over the last few years, what helped me a lot is one principle that breaks all marketing methods and tactics down to just a straightforward thing, including real estate marketing strategies online.

I read it in a book by Perry Marshall called “80/20 Sales and Marketing“.

It was like a vacuum cleaner for a cluttered mind. He mentions the so-called power triangle, which consists of only three things: Traffic, Conversion, and Economics.

In addition to “Economics,” I would also say “Strategies.”

So it is Traffic, Conversion, and Economics/Strategies. But more on that later.

By the way, the structure of my blog is precisely this power triangle.

All real estate marketing topics can be categorized that way.

The slightly trippy thing is that this power triangle is a fractal.

Within the large triangle, other triangles also consist of the three areas of Traffic, Conversion, and Economics/Strategies.

Bear with me; this will be clear to you after a few more paragraphs.

In short: To sell real estate to anybody, you need the following:

  1. Traffic: You need people online or offline to sell to.
  2. Conversion: Persuasion is needed to convince those people to buy from you.
  3. Economics: You need to provide something valuable, so they want to give you their money.

If you profit with these three, you can take that profit and scale, meaning re-investing it to get more traffic, conversion, and valuable things.

Additionally, you can apply the Pareto principle to it and ask yourself, what is the 20% traffic methods that give me 80% of the sales, or in the case of “Conversion,” what is 20% of my ad copy or landing page copy that gives me 80% of new leads or sales?. 

The same goes for your product (things of value): What 20% of my offers (neighborhoods, housing types, etc.) give me 80% of the sales? Etc.

And as already mentioned, there is a “power triangle” in traffic, conversion, and economics.

Let’s use a landing page as an example, which would be in the category of “conversion.”

Traffic within this category would be people that visit this landing page. 

Conversion would be the number of people opting for your free neighborhood report or some other type of free giveaway. 

And “Economics” would be what they get in exchange for their email address, such as the free report.

Let’s use an offline real estate marketing example that a real estate agent might use, such as an open house event, which in itself would be in the area of “traffic” (the open house event is a form of generating offline traffic):

 

  • Traffic: The number of people coming to your open house event.
  • Conversion: How you present the house with home staging techniques, etc., so you get contact information and even potentially an offer on the house.
  • Economics: The nice house in a nice neighborhood and other reasons why this specific property might be valuable to an open house visitor, leading visitors to want to make an offer.

And then, there is a “power triangle” in economics. 

If we stay with the open house event, economics would be the thing of value (the house). Traffic would be the number of offers you receive, conversion would be the number of offers getting accepted, and economics would be the value of the deal you create for yourself (e.g., commission, wholesale fee, profit margin, etc.).

So why do I also see the area of economics also as strategy, at least when structuring my blog topics here?

Well, suppose you look at how economics is defined above (something valuable you give where you can get money in exchange).

In that case, we are discussing some product or service. 

To create a product or service, you need to answer the question of how and with which tools, and you can do that at the lowest costs possible. 

And that, to me, is also strategy or economics doing this. So, economics, to me, always includes strategies, too.

Since the “power triangle” is also present in all three (Traffic, Conversion, Economics), the question of how you can do that with the most efficient strategy must also be answered when it comes to economics in all three of them.

To bring this point home, I will give you an overview of my future article topics with reference to real estate marketing and how the power triangle can be applied there.

Article Topics

Traffic – Online

Traffic – Offline

Conversion – Online

Conversion – Offline

  • Print Media (Direct Mail, Postcards, Brochures, etc.)
  • Open Houses
  • Sales

EcononomicsEconomics/ Strategies

  • Marketing mix (4Ps, 7Ps, 8Ps of Marketing)
  • Market Intelligence & Angles
  • Content
  • Tools & Service Providers
  • Leverage

Ending this first article, I hope that I could help you get a getting a first bird’s eye view of the underlying principle of basically all (real estate) marketing strategies. In passing, you now also know what my blog will be about.


This article has been reviewed by our editorial team. It has been approved for publication in accordance with our editorial policy.


Tobias Schnellbacher