Baseball, while it is “America’s pastime”, it creates barely a blip of interest among sports enthusiasts worldwide. The cyclical three-up, three-down nature of the game, the lack of physical contact and the typically low scores have all been speculated as reasons the sport hasn’t garnered the following of football in America or soccer globally. For those, however, that anticipate the day pitchers and catchers report to Spring training and dread the final pitch of the Fall classic, the game holds an appeal like no other. At the center of that appeal are baseball pitchers, exhibiting strategic cunning coupled with physical prowess as they select the perfect pitch from an arsenal of pitches – curveball, cutter, slider, fastball – and then deliver it to the awaiting batter. Imagine how the game would change though, if that pitcher had only one pitch. Every batter, every pitch would be exactly the same; curveball, curveball, curveball, and so on. While there has been some one pitch wonders, in general it seems the game would lose some of its intrigue.

Real estate marketing is a lot like baseball in that firms have an arsenal of marketing tools such as direct mail, email marketing and social media from which to select in marketing their offerings to would be investors, buyers or leasers. Despite the variety of tools at their disposal, too often real estate marketers limit their efforts to just one “pitch”. Recent posts have spent a lot of time talking about the continued value of real estate postcards, but to use them at the exclusion of other marketing channels would be shortsighted. In fact, Marketing Profs, the popular educators of modern marketing techniques states that “…combining multiple channels is exponentially more effective than using them as standalone campaigns.”

One of the things that’s chiefly responsible for leveling the playing field today between marketers and their audiences, is the depth of readily available information and the breadth of channels that information can come from. This gives the targeted audience a lot of say in where, when and how they will receive information about a product, service or company. If you’re serious about reaching your market, you had best be prepared to market using multiple marketing tools and channels. This will have the added benefits of keeping your frequency high and creating a ubiquity for your message. So, to what extent is your real estate marketing taking advantage of all the available marketing tools? This quiz will help you gauge how well you’re doing and maybe spark some new ideas for you. Give yourself one point for each affirmative answer.

My real estate marketing efforts….

1. Use brochures and flyers _________
2. Use email marketing _________
3. Use direct mail marketing _________
4. Incorporates social media _________
5. Use search engine optimization _________
6. Use real estate specific templates for communicating with the market _________
7. Uses inbound marketing techniques _________
8. Incorporates best web design practices for converting visitors to leads _________
9. Are based on a written real estate marketing plan _________
10. Incorporates customer contact management _________
11. Does not have more than 50% my marketing budget going toward any one tactic _________
12. Are supported by a real estate specific marketing agency _________

If you scored:

10-12 points: Great job, your real estate marketing seems headed in the right direction

7-9 points: You’re on the right track, but you may want to consider some tweaks

4-6 points: Keep going, there’s plenty of great tools and approaches to help you reach your audiences

1-3 points: Good start. Think about hiring a virtual marketing assistant to help maximize your efforts