If you’re not a tech geek, keeping up with the latest and greatest real estate marketing tools can be a challenge. That’s why we decided to update our list of the best tools available for realtors in 2022.
Click on a category below to jump to descriptions and in-depth reviews of The Close’s top picks for the best real estate marketing tools of 2022:
Websites
Real Geeks
Cost: $299 per month
Learning curve: Low
One of the earliest providers of all-in-one IDX websites and customer relationship management (CRM) tools, Real Geeks offers agents, teams, and brokerages a true turnkey solution for their online marketing efforts. There are way, way too many features to list here, but you will get a gorgeous IDX website optimized for lead generation, a powerful CRM, a property valuation tool, SMS texting, market reports, and—yeah, way too much to list here.
[Related article: Real Geeks Review: An In-depth Look at Pricing & Features]
Propertybase
Cost: Starting at $89 per user, per month
Learning curve: Low
Originally Boston Logic, Propertybase is the professional real estate team’s secret weapon. They offer killer IDX websites with mapping features as well as an integrated CRM that is designed to help teams nurture leads long term and drive more referrals and business. If you already have a website, they offer a standalone CRM that was recently revamped to be even more effective at keeping teams organized and marketing like Fortune 500 companies.
[Related article: Propertybase GO Review: The Next Generation of Real Estate CRM?]
DIY WordPress Website
Cost: Free to $5,000 and up
Learning curve: High
If you’re a bit more tech-savvy and want to get your hands dirty, then you might want to try your hand at building a WordPress website to show off your brand online. While WordPress is easy to use compared to building a site from scratch, the learning curve for non-tech-savvy agents is high. You’ll also need to pay to add features like IDX listings, which come standard with most real estate websites.
Related articles:
- How to Build an IDX Real Estate Website: The Ultimate Guide 2022
- The 6 Best Real Estate Website Builders of 2022
- 7 Web Design Tricks for Realtors to Get More Leads
- Real Trends Top 25 Real Estate Agents Websites RANKED
Placester
Cost: Starting at $80 per month
Learning curve: Medium
While they don’t offer a robust, integrated CRM, Placester is definitely worth considering for one reason: they make lovely websites. While there is some debate on whether or not your website needs to be beautiful to convert leads, there is no debate that an ugly site will hurt your brand. So if you already have a CRM you love, you can’t go wrong with a Placester website.
[Related article: Placester Review + Video: Is It Really the Best Real Estate Website Builder?]
Social Media Tools
Artur’In
Cost: $199 to $399 per month ($300 setup fee waived for Close readers)
Learning curve: Low
One of the biggest problems agents have with social media is finding the time to post enough to stay relevant and feed the algorithms. Artur’In solves this problem by posting sticky, local real estate content to your social media channels for you. So instead of hunting for great content to post every morning, you can focus on creating high-value video content using Instagram Stories or Reels.
[Related article: Instagram Stories for Agents: 12 Easy Ways to Drive Engagement]
PorchLyte
Cost: $47 per month
Learning curve: Low
Founded by Tracey Henning, a Realtor with 27 years of experience, PorchLyte offers agents social media posts, lead magnets, video scripts, blog posts, and training to put it all together into an unstoppable social media presence. She also runs an exclusive Facebook community to share referrals and swap social media strategies.
Close readers can claim 7 days of ready-to-go customizable social media templates from PorchLyte for free.
Coffee & Contracts
Cost: $54 per month
Learning curve: Low
Another Realtor-founded company, Coffee & Contracts offers agents gorgeous and trendy templates for Instagram. Founder Haley Ingram calls it “Your $54-a-month Marketing Manager” and we couldn’t agree more. Hiring a social media manager who keeps up with the latest trends as Haley does would easily cost you 10 times what she charges. Assuming you could even find one!
Hootsuite
Cost: $29 to $599 per month
Learning curve: Low
Hootsuite is the social media software that 800 of the Fortune 1000 companies trust to plan, create, and schedule their social media posts to maximize views and engagement. Hootsuite lets you store frequently used assets like images and logos so you can create and schedule social media content for multiple channels like Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, and more from one app.
Buffer
Cost: Free to $99 per month
Learning curve: Low
Like Hootsuite, Buffer also lets agents plan, create, and schedule social media posts. They also have a cool feature that lets you add the first comment to your Instagram posts to entice your followers to engage and include more info about your post. The best part is that, unlike Hootsuite, Buffer offers a limited free version that lets you manage three social accounts and schedule up to 10 posts. Most teams will probably opt to upgrade to the Pro plan for only $15 a month, though.
Tailwind
Cost: Free to $9.99 per month
Learning curve: Low
Spend lots of time on Pinterest or Instagram? Then an app like Tailwind is right up your alley. Tailwind lets you schedule social media posts for Pinterest and Instagram but also helps you discover key influencers to work with on Pinterest and trending hashtags to post with on Instagram. Even better, Tailwind has a free trial that lasts forever, so you can use a limited version of the app without paying a dime. Of course, if you want to upgrade, Tailwind is only $9.99 per channel, per month. So if you only want to use Tailwind for Instagram, you’re in luck.
[Related article: 21 Real Estate Social Media Marketing Tips From Top Agents & Coaches]
Marketing-focused CRMs
Speaking of automating relationships, a great customer relationship management (CRM) tool can do just that but on an even higher level than your phone, albeit with a less personal touch. That said, you can use it to automate text messages and schedule phone calls, so there’s a pretty good argument that your CRM is even more important than your phone for marketing. Here are two killer CRMs for individual agents and teams.
LionDesk
Cost: $21 per month
Learning curve: Medium
LionDesk is a lightweight, affordable, and easy-to-use CRM that has everything you need to start organizing and automating your relationships, and with transaction management thrown in for good measure. Even better, you can get set up with LionDesk starting at just $21 per month—less than half what other CRM companies charge.
[Related article: LionDesk Review: The New King of the Real Estate CRM Jungle?]
IXACT Contact
Cost: $33 per user, per month
Learning curve: Medium
When it comes to bang for your buck from a CRM with great marketing tools, IXACT Contact is hard to beat. For just $33 per month, IXACT Contact users get marketing extras like social media automation, a beautiful agent website, and an automated monthly e-newsletter. Agents even get “concierge” setup help and unlimited phone support to make sure they’re getting the best return on investment (ROI).
Click here to learn more and start your free five-week trial to check out this marketing-focused CRM.
Related articles:
- The Best Real Estate CRM for 2022: In-depth Reviews & Pricing
- The 7 Best Free Real Estate CRMs of 2022
Community Engagement Tools
Parkbench
Cost: Varies by ZIP code
Learning curve: Low
When it comes to building relationships with local businesses that will get you tons of referrals, there’s only one game in town: Parkbench. Parkbench is the only real estate marketing tool that gives you a turnkey solution to building relationships and nurturing them to generate referrals.
[Related article: How Parkbench Helps Agents Drive Community Connections (Even During a Pandemic)]
Graphic Design Tools
Lab Coat Agents Marketing Center
Cost: $59 per month
Learning curve: Low
LCA Marketing Center is like Canva on steroids. It gives you all the super-easy-to-use design tools Canva does but is only for real estate agents. That means you won’t have to struggle to force restaurant templates to work for your flyers. The designs are also top-notch and very professional-looking.
Visit Lab Coat Agents Marketing
Adobe Photoshop
Cost: $20.99 per month
Learning curve: High
Of course, if you want to get really serious, then Adobe Photoshop is a no-brainer. It is and has been the choice of every serious graphic design professional for more than 20 years now. Facing stiff competition from the likes of LCA Marketing Center and Canva, prices have gone down dramatically. The learning curve is high, though, so Photoshop will require an investment of time and effort to pay off.
Canva
Cost: Free to $30 per month
Learning curve: Medium
Designed as a Photoshop replacement for the non-tech savvy, Canva is a must-have for agents who don’t have the time to learn Photoshop, or just want to create great-looking visual assets right away. It works a lot like Photoshop—the only difference is that it doesn’t offer nearly as many features. Instead, you get thousands of predesigned templates that you can customize and make your own.
Kapwing
Cost: Free to $20 per month
Learning curve: Low
Have you ever wondered how we make all those hilarious memes (our mothers think they’re funny) that we share on social media? The answer is our secret meme-making weapon called Kapwing. Kapwing offers tons of meme templates that you can quickly and easily customize, as you can with Canva. Kapwing also lets you make and edit videos, add subtitles, add music to videos, and more.
Unsplash
Cost: Free
Learning curve: Low
Venture capital-backed Unsplash is the best source for royalty-free images online. Full stop. This is where we get 99% of our stock photos for The Close. The only drawback is that the selection of images is limited compared to other sources. The quality is higher, though, so this should be your first choice for royalty-free photos.
SEO Tools
Ahrefs
Cost: $99 per month
Learning curve: Medium
Over the past few years, Ahrefs has managed to wrestle the throne away from Moz and become the most accurate and most useful search engine optimization (SEO) tool on the market. It lets you take the guesswork out of deciding which articles to write by showing the keywords with the most traffic and the lowest difficulty to rank for. Don’t tell them I told you this, but you could theoretically pay for just one month and research your entire content runway for the year. If you’re more serious about SEO, then a monthly subscription makes more sense.
SEMrush
Cost: $83 per month
Learning curve: Medium
If you want to get serious about beating the competition, then SEMrush is an invaluable marketing tool. It lets you spy on the competition and figure out what keywords they’re ranking for, how much traffic they’re getting, and who is linking to them.
Related articles:
- Real Estate SEO: 11 Tips to Dominate Local Search & Get Free Leads in 2022
- How to Use Real Estate Keywords to Get More Leads From Google
SMS Marketing Tools
SlickText
Cost: Free to $139 per month
Learning curve: Low
SlickText lets agents send bulk text messages for new listings or open house details, schedule texts, add pictures, and set up opt-in text messaging lists to increase engagement automatically. If you start using SlickText to market to your clients and sphere, be ready to give your thumbs a workout.
EZ Texting
Cost: $39 to $119 per month
Learning curve: Low
EZ Texting lets real estate agents build SMS lists that people can subscribe to by texting a keyword to their numbers. You can also use EZ Texting to create SMS polls, drip campaigns, and more.
Video Production Tools
If we have to explain why video is a crucial real estate marketing tool in 2022, you might just be living on another planet. Video is no longer a bonus—it’s increasingly the primary way your leads will interact with your brand.
Rode VideoMicro
Cost: $59
Learning curve: Low
This tiny little video microphone will make your videos sound professional instead of crummy. Sound is even more important than image quality when it comes to video production. After all, your audience isn’t watching your videos to see what you look like. They want to hear what you have to say. If you buy anything to improve your videos, this should be it.
Lumen5
Cost: Free to $149 per month
Learning curve: Medium
Lumen5 is the easy way to make professional-looking explainer videos with text, stock video, and more. Lumen5 has templates for social media as well as prosumer-level tools to help you create videos that look like they came from a Hollywood studio.
Animoto
Cost: Free to $15 per month
Learning curve: Medium
Animoto is a drag-and-drop video editor that is designed for small businesses. It’s easy to use and gets you slick, professional-looking results without the hassle. Perfect for making quick listing videos, promotional videos, or anything else you want to make that needs to look and sound great.
[Related article: 11 Real Estate Videos Smart Agents Are Using + Examples]
Over to You
Are you using a killer real estate agent marketing tool we forgot? Let us know in the comments or join our Facebook Mastermind Group here.
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