Okay, I get it. There is nothing new under the sun. I didn’t invent anything you’ve never heard of before.

But I do think this is a list of the more obscure real estate marketing strategies.

We’re not talking the boring stuff like real estate website blog posts, content marketing, email marketing, and Facebook ads. We’re going off-road with some truly creative real estate marketing ideas!

Hopefully at least one of these is either something you haven’t heard of before or a new twist on an old strategy that might work for you!

Event Sponsors plus Social Sharing

This is an idea I got from listening to the Side Hustle Show, a podcast about self-starting entrepreneurs.

In this episode, guest Chris Ritter mentioned how he promoted a virtual event he was hosting. He went to vendors in his industry (swimming) and offered to promote them as sponsors of his virtual event for free if they promoted it on their social media platforms.

It was a win-win. It cost the vendors nothing to share the event on Facebook and via email to the rest of their audience, and got Chris a ton of free promotion and sign-ups!

As agents, we can do something similar. Between open houses, buyer seminars, client appreciation events, and charity work, I imagine there are some events you could apply this tactic to.

Perhaps you can team up with a popular local business to cater or attend a client appreciation party. Find the social media influencers in your community and enlist their help in something. Collaborate!

You might already be doing stuff that you are failing to leverage. Are you hosting an open house for a builder? Did that builder share your post advertising yourself and your event on their social channels? They should!

Take it the next step and consider a seminar or event specific to your niche. Here’s how Suzanne MacDowell made the most of her vendor relationships:

When the foreclosure crisis was just getting into full swing, I held a seminar for investors looking to purchase short sale properties.  But I invited homeowners whose names had appeared on The List Pendens (Pre-foreclosure) lists recently.  We had a lawyer, a real estate broker, and a bank representative present to answer questions and at the end we had a survey “how did we do” with a final check box, please contact me with more information.  Worked like a charm.  No one had to raise their hand and say, “Me, I am in trouble” until they were in a private setting.  It was a very subtle, very gentle, very respectful way of offering help. I got a listing, a lake front home, and I also brought the buyer to closing.  

People want information without feeling pressured.  It’s the reason no one wants to give you their information at an open house.  They think they are going to be bombarded with phone calls before they are ready.  If we can offer that information in a more low key, no pressure manner, we will gain more clients.

Orphan Buyers

You know the stats.

Only a fraction of home sellers even remember the name of the agent they used when they bought their home. An even smaller fraction reuse that agent. Maybe the experience was lackluster. Maybe the agent is no longer working. Maybe the seller wants to consider all options.

Some sellers even think of their agent as a “buyer” agent and are looking for a different “listing” agent.

Orphan buyers is a term to describe these home buyers who are, for one reason or another, “abandoned” after the transaction.

These are an opportunity for listing agents.

Hopefully, you’ve already made a good impression on these folks with your excellent staging, canny negotiating, and smooth transaction. Perhaps they’re already secretly hoping to have such a thorough agent when they are on the other side of the transaction!

This is a long but rewarding game.

Consider leaving goodies and housewarming gifts not only for your clients, the sellers, but the buyers as well. Leave behind a swag bag with your branding with the keys, garage door opener, warranty info, and your standard housewarming gift set.

Add them to your “houseiversary” mailing list. You know their names and address! Maybe you even have an email address.

You obviously want to be careful not to be appearing to poach other agents’ clients. Perhaps you would want to employ this strategy selectively depending on who their agent is. But all is fair in love, war, and real estate, and there is nothing wrong with marketing to these new homeowners and building the seeds of a relationship that may bear fruit in years.

You can even see results sooner by earning referrals if you sufficiently impressed the buyer with your listing prowess!

Partner on an Aged Database

Your business is your database.

And indeed, when an agent sells their business, they are actually selling a list of their contacts and relationships!

Buying a database is a tricky but doable strategy. Often, an agent might network with a retiring top agent and work out a deal to take over their clients and past relationships with a warm handoff.

But that costs money! Maybe you can work out a referral relationship, but some agents may want cash upfront.

Instead, consider partnering with their database. I am talking about working other agents’ old cold leads.

Many agents have a lengthy database of leads they’ve neglected. They may have paid for lead generation services like Market Leader, BoldLeads, or Zillow leads they’ve let sit or forgot to respond to. Past inquiries who stopped responding and they let go. Market value inquiries who were upside down on their mortgage and decided against selling. Chances are good that any agent who has been in the business a few years has hundreds of leads that went nowhere. And given how effective most agents are at follow up, many of those leads probably weren’t aren’t totally useless.

Reach out to these agents in your brokerage or community and strike a deal! Ask for their database and, in exchange, they’ll get a referral fee for anyone you convert.

They weren’t going to do it. They’ve already moved on. It’s a win-win!

Obviously, these are about as cold as leads get, short of door knocking and cold calling. It’s gonna be a grind.

But the leads are free. And the skills involved in converting these potential clients – phone skills, follow up, objection handling – are the kinds of skills that top agents develop. If you can rock this strategy as a newer agent, you are going to go far in the real estate business.

This is similar to what Referral Exchange offers. Referral Exchange offers to let you upload an old list of leads which they will then try to contact, qualify, and refer to another agent for you.

Repurposing the Gig Economy

If you are a part-time agent or have a side job, there may be a way to double your marketing efforts by combining the two.

Ride sharing services like Uber and Lyft are perhaps the most obvious opportunity. There are a couple ways to leverage ride sharing.

The first way would be as driver yourself. You might have a spare job or need some side income as a real estate agent, or aspiring agent. Neil Mathweg with the Onion Juice Podcast (now called Agent Rise) interviewed Dustin Brohm with Search Salt Lake about his own strategy of picking up business while driving for Uber.

But successful agents don’t drive for Uber. That doesn’t mean you can’t still see benefits.

Matt York with Queen City Buyer suggests a slightly more scalable model than driving the car yourself: enlisting drivers:

Thinking “outside the box” is critical in any saturated market. Utilizing resources that service the masses is a technique we often look into. We’ve spent weekends riding around in local Uber’s and Lift’s, asking drivers to hand out our information to their riders. Obviously there was a form of compensation for the drivers as well.  

Now, I would be cautious with this strategy. I assume Uber and Lyft don’t want their drivers pushing marketing materials on riders. Perhaps it’s as simple as getting them business cards or brochures when the opportunity arises organically in conversation. And of course, compensation for a client referral from an unlicensed agent is limited in most states ($50 in Texas).

I’d consider getting even more creative. Consider making a “Welcome to My Town” brochure with a list of best restaurants, best nightlife, best events and attractions, and, of course, your brokerage info prominent. That is something of value drivers can hand out to anyone, brings value to the types of people they are often ferrying around, and gets you out there.

Viral Listing Photos

One example I considered but didn’t have the cajones to try as an agent was doctoring a listing photo for each listing. Hiding ewoks, UFOs, something that highlights your property and gets attention.

Or you could go the old tried and true three methods of selling anything: sex, sex, and sex.

Obviously, doctored photos shouldn’t be used in the MLS if rules prohibit it, and you may want to get your seller’s buy-in first. But you can certainly use it for social sharing and juice your Facebook and Pinterest activity! Instead of sharing just another listing, you can guarantee your followers are going to pay extra close attention to your new listing pics.

Josh Matteson with Lula, an app for finding local professionals, has other ideas for making the most of your listing photos: by partnering with local influencers and photographers.

“Influencer photography”. When the home you are trying to sell is staged, reach out to some local influencers about potential photo shoots. You’ll notice that many of their pictures are taken in neutral, staged locations. A clean, neutral site where they can take some lifestyle pictures would be a great start. You can offer up the space in exchange for a shout out when they post the pictures on their social media. If that’s not enough for them, offer to bring in lunch from their favorite restaurant that day.

Listing pictures are great, but imagine a prominent local influencer posting lifestyle pictures in the property on their personal accounts? That means all of their followers would see the home. Worth a shot!

And of course, you can apply the same methodology to your listing videos.

Here is a digital media company with their take on the most famous (and cheap!) Realtor listing videos of 2018.

Conclusion

These are the most unique real estate marketing ideas I could come up with.

If you have any more ideas, please share in the comments below!