How to Market Real Estate Without Spending a Fortune

You might be charging your vendor a marketing fee, but still finding that budget stretched thin — especially with the major portals holding the industry in a chokehold.

I’m not here to tell you that you’ll be out of that chokehold anytime soon. But I am here to insist that you start building your own audience and directing traffic to your own website.

This one shift could allow you to launch properties to market and generate buyer leads — even offers — without needing to use a portal at all. That’s how you create happy vendors and reduce ad spend.

Your No-Fluff, Low-Cost Real Estate Marketing System

Let’s break down the essentials you should be doing in-house:

• ✅ Creating window cards

• ✅ Sending weekly email roundups

• ✅ Emailing your new listings to your database

• ✅ Posting your listings to social media

• ✅ Spending a small amount ($80–100) on targeted local social ads

• ✅ Driving traffic back to your website

• ✅ Using your CRM to automate listings to your site and portals

If you’re doing all of that — amazing. If not, and you’re not sure where to start, book a call with me and I’ll walk you through it.

Want to Really Impress Your Clients?

Then it’s time to look at your backend systems.

• Are you leveraging AI and automation tools to generate your marketing materials?

• Or is your admin team stuck tweaking social posts and formatting window cards?

Every hour spent fiddling in Canva is an hour they’re not calling leads, following up on appointments, or helping you close deals.

Are You Launching Listings Strategically?

Many agencies just upload to the portals and call it a day. But what if you:

• Sent the listing to your database first?

• Teased the listing on socials before it goes live?

• Timed your ads for maximum weekend traffic?

• Had a system for ensuring consistency with every launch?

When your agents are working with your systems, they can confidently explain the marketing plan to clients — and deliver results that feel thoughtful and strategic.

What If You Didn’t Need the Full Budget?

Imagine turning around and telling your vendor:

“We only needed half your budget — and we still got results.”

That’s the difference between scrambling to post a listing and actually running a launch strategy.

So What Can You Do?

I’ve built systems for a large local real estate agency that allowed them to reduce the admin time spent on social media drastically. What used to take every admin — and an additional person — at least four hours a day to schedule posts and launch ads… now takes just one admin one hour a day across a team of 70.

Using tools like Zapier, Abyssale, Google Sheets, and their WordPress website, we’ve cut down repetitive tasks, reduced the need for ongoing training, and freed up the team to focus on more impactful work — like creating better content, nurturing leads, or simply staying on top of listings.

The same system could even automate your window cards and brochures — if your admin team isn’t too scared to imagine what they’ll do with all that time back.

Want Help Automating the System?

If you’d like to chat about how to automate your marketing with AI tools and simple systems — without hiring more staff — book a call or send me a message.