5 tips for setting your 2022 real estate marketing budget

One important change that has occurred as a result of the pandemic is a greater reliance on technology.

Buyers and sellers have become accustomed to virtual tours, photography, videos, virtual tours and open houses. Real estate professionals who adopted the technology during the pandemic have thrived. Those who have not seen their business reduced and even fail.

Expectations are higher than ever and customers are not returning to the pre-pandemic ways of doing business.

How are you going to move forward and budget accordingly? The answer is in your business plan. Here are five tips for setting your 2022 marketing budget.

1. Start with your business plan

Your business plan informs all marketing efforts. Why is your business plan essential? If you have a goal without a plan to achieve it, will you meet it? Your business plan governs all aspects of your business operations.

With this plan, you will achieve your goals and never leave your business to chance.

Create your business plan

Your business plan helps you prepare for upcoming expenses, so the likelihood of something taking you by surprise will be low.

Have you created a business plan? When you review your business plan, does your digital marketing reflect your goal, your vision, your mission and your values? Otherwise, you will have to rethink your digital marketing strategy.

Determine your orientation

Your goal, your vision, your mission and your values ​​are at the heart of your business. They inform every business decision you make. Combined, they form a powerful set of principles that determine your focus in your business and determine your message, branding, and voice.

As part of your business plan, they allow you to define Long and short term SMART goals that reflect what makes you unique and define the tools, systems and strategies to help you achieve your goals.

Goals will help you determine how much to spend on marketing initiatives, and vice versa, assess their ROI (return on investment).

Bottom line: Have a plan and work that plan.

2. Remember that budgeting for time is just as vital as budgeting for money.

When most people think of a budget, they think in terms of dollars. When it comes to a marketing budget, you need to consider both time and money.

Determine what you can delegate

As an independent contractor, your time is money. What keeps small businesses small is the inability to delegate.

Look at your strengths. Look at the activities that you have dedicated yourself to doing, and time block with a critical eye.

Here are the essential questions to ask yourself:

Determine which complex tasks you need help with and which ones are below your pay grade because they are repetitive and easy to delegate.

Figure out what your time is worth

What do you think your time is worth? Find out by dividing the pay by the number of hours spent doing what it took to get paid.

Your remuneration must not be equal to the minimum wage (or less) once you’ve averaged your time spent on your business.

Be strategic. Be smart about how you spend your time. Are you outsourcing items that you can’t do yourself? If time is a priority, it may be possible to delegate your marketing automation tasks or graphics, as well as lead management and cultivation.

If you don’t have a lot of money to spend, or are just getting started, add to your team might be worth considering. Connecting with a local college for marketing interns may also be a viable option. Especially when it comes to your digital presence and personal marketing, you can waste so much time with the social aspect of the digital world.

Bottom line: Optimize your time allocation to maximize your income.

3. Always evaluate

You must plan annually, quarterly and monthly reviews of all marketing initiatives on your calendar. If you don’t stop and evaluate your efforts, you will waste time, money and momentum. Of course, the advantage of evaluation is to modify and adjust. You don’t have to completely delete something.

You might find ways to improve it. Assessment helps you do this. It helps your business grow because you become more efficient.

Evaluate your efforts by determining your ROI. This means that, for the most part, your initiatives should be quantitative so that they can be easy to assess.

Does the financial risk or investment outweigh the reward? Asking this question will help you determine whether you need to keep moving forward or if you need to change what you’re doing for the best return on your time, money, and effort.

Conclusion: Marketing is not a ‘set it and forget it’ discipline.

4. Know that you are in control of your income

As an independent entrepreneur, you are the CEO of your own business. This means that the only limit on your income is you! If you focus your time on gainful activities, you will see it in your result. It can be both stimulating and scary at the same time.

Each activity serves as an initiative, and in turn, an associated expense. Ultimately, your marketing efforts should compensate for all costs associated with accumulated business and closed deals, which will allow you to reap the benefits of your efforts.

This means that expense tracking is essential. Chances are, your broker has a spreadsheet or spending schedule that you can use.

Otherwise, Revolutionary broker has a free spreadsheet for real estate professionals. There are also many apps for expense tracking, which is part of budgeting.

In addition to tracking expenses, these programs allow you to set up recurring or anticipated expenses throughout the year.

There’s nothing sneaky about registering cars. It happens every year. Budgeting helps you prepare. A budget helps you organize and determine the actions you need to take (appointments to set, calls to make and transactions to close) to generate the desired annual income. You should include your marketing expenses, travel, MLS dues, car maintenance, business licenses, brokerage fees, and anything business related in your budget.

Bottom line: Budgets are the blueprint for your financial goals.

5. Budget for victory

Marketing budgets are living documents that can structure your efforts, but you must actively use them or they will quickly become unnecessary.

Just as your marketing efforts have evolved to align with the post-COVID connected consumer, make sure your budget is aligned with your business goals and activities with regular reviews and adjustments.

A budget commitment, especially when it comes to marketing, is a proven way to set yourself up for success and have a winning year.

Bonus: 3 financial tips every real estate agent needs

Here are some more tips on how to treat your business like a business.

• Hire a tax / accounting professional and know what you can write off and what you should be tracking. They will want you to track things like your mileage, keep business receipts and payroll records, document your budget, and stay on budget.
• Automate payments and negotiate service costs to save you time and money.
• Have separate bank accounts for your business from your personal funds. Mixing funds can lead to legal and tax issues, and when you mix up, you put your personal finances at risk if you are sued.

Michelle Ayala is the Marketing Director Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate Universal in Las Vegas. Connect with her on LinkedIn Where Facebook.