Marketing Strategy December 2, 2025 12 min read

Real Estate Marketing Strategies to Embrace in 2026

Your marketing strategy is never finished. To see continued success in your marketing efforts, you have to periodically look at what you’re doing, determine what’s working and what isn’t working, and introduce change accordingly.

Sometimes you might need to make bigger changes, like completely overhauling your entire marketing strategy or going all in on digital (when maybe you’ve never done that before), or you might need to make smaller changes, like introducing a new advertising campaign or updating your logo and branding, but no matter what changes you make, know that change should continually be happening.

After all, continued investment in your marketing strategy is continued investment in your business.

As you plan for 2026, here are some of the things you might want to consider building into your own real estate marketing strategy.

Building a More Comprehensive Search Strategy (That Goes Beyond Traditional Search)

In 2026, it’s more important than ever to expand your search strategy to plan beyond traditional search results and SERPs – but that doesn’t mean you should abandon traditional search all together. Seeing success in 2026 is all about thinking about, and planning for, the multiple different places and ways that your target audience searches online.

And that means expanding your search strategy to ensure you, your brand, and your business can be found in AI search results and LLMs (like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, etc) in addition to traditional search results.

The way people are searching has shifted considerably in 2025, and that will be a consistent them in 2026. Planning for AI search results and LLMs is still fairly new (especially in real estate marketing), so that means that even if you’re just getting started in the new year, it’s not too late to get ahead of your competition.

And while there are many different ways to plan for AI search results and LLMs in your search strategy, all of them start with building a strong online presence strategy that work towards building visibility for both direct brand and in-direct brand searches (which you can learn more about in this blog post called: Building a Real Estate Online Presence Strategy to Get Found in LLMs (like ChatGPT).)

Remember, traditional search results still matter, and your search strategy should still be heavily planning for them, but SEO success in 2026, also means expanding your strategy to ensure you cover your bases around the increasingly different ways your target audience can discover you, find you, and research you.

★ Want to learn more about planning a well-rounded search strategy that performs in LLMs? These posts and resources will help you get started:

Creating a Content Strategy That Resonates With LLMs (and People)

Going into 2026, showing up in LLMs and AI search results at the right times, for right reasons, and by right people, is going to become increasingly important if you want to bring in traffic and create more opportunities to generate leads – and one of the best ways to make that happen is to focus on building a modern content strategy.

But to create a modern content strategy that wins in AI search results (like ChatGPT, Google AI Overviews, etc), chances are, you’ll have to pivot the type of content you’re producing to ensure you’re setting yourself up for success, wherever your target audience finds you.

In 2026, a successful content strategy, that resonates with both people and LLMs, is all about creating content that’s built around topics that are more complex, more specific, and more likely to require a deeper dive by the person that finds it in search results.

That’s because, while people are beginning to trust the answers that LLMs provide, they don’t trust them enough (at least not yet) to help them make bigger decisions, which is where the opportunity is for anyone building out a solid content strategy in 2026.

For example, in the past, to position yourself as a local expert, it made a lot of sense to create a content strategy around the best local places in your neighborhood – and while this is still a solid strategy for social media and traditional search results, when it comes to LLMs and how people use them in 2026, it’s not as easy to get results and bring in traffic because people are more likely to trust LLMs for those type of simple, low barrier searches, and skip clicking through to any AI search provided links.

For example. if someone is looking for the answer to something simple, like “best places pizza places in Washington Heights”, they’re likely to get a few places mentioned in AI search results, and then just check them out (because the risk isn’t very high, it’s low commitment, and the price of a slice of pizza is just a few bucks).

But the same isn’t said for someone looking for answers to more in-depth searches that aren’t likely to be solved in AI search results, and will likely require a click through.

For example, if someone is faced with the overwhelming task of selling their parent’s house when they pass, or figuring out what to do with the family home in a separation, it’s not likely that AI search results will give them a full picture… but it will provide some links that can provide more information for someone wanting to do a deeper dive, which is where the opportunity the is for anyone building a modern content strategy.

Winning in LLMs and AI search results in 2026 is all about producing more detailed content, that shows up in search at the right time and for the right reasons, and prompts a deep-dive by the person searching for answers. By pivoting your content strategy approach, you can set the foundation for getting people to trust you, and eventually, turn them into a lead and a transaction.

★ Want to learn more about planning a content strategy that performs in LLMs? These posts and resources will help you get started:

Going More Niche and Focusing Your Brand (Through Brand Association)

Most agents don’t do enough to separate themselves from their competition, and instead, continually try to be all things to all people, essentially, making themselves the same as everyone else (and creating a lot of competition for themselves).

And that’s why identifying a niche and associating your brand with it can be beneficial. It allows you to focus on what makes you different form your competition, and why someone should choose you over them, especially if they’re in a specific situation that you can help with.

That’s because where there’s focus, there’s opportunity – specifically, an opportunity to get better, higher quality leads by having a focus and a specialization. And that’s especially true in 2026 as people are looking for more specific answers to more specific problems.

Essentially, the more niche you go, and the more effort you put into associating your brand with that niche, the more opportunities you have, because the less competition you have – and if you have a very specific niche and associative brand strategy, you can even set you and your business up to have virtually no competition at all.

And in real estate, there’s no shortage of the type of associations you can connect your brand and business to. For example, your brand associative marketing strategy can work towards having your target audience connect your brand with:

Situations, like going through a separation, moving from a cramped condo to a detached home, or downsizing later in life.
Demographics, like age, gender, or location.
Lifestyle, like luxury, wellness, or technology.
Causes, like climate activism, animal rights, or community betterment.
Feelings, like simplicity, warmth, or compassion.
Or even combinations of the above…

With people looking for more opportunities to work with a person, a business, and a brand that truly understands them and their unique needs, in 2026, narrowing your focus and building an associative brand strategy is a solid way for you to get the exact types of leads you’re looking for.

★ Want to learn more about how using brand association to get better, more qualified leads? Have a look at these posts:

Taking a Solutions-Based Approach to Marketing

For most agents, talking about their successes is a big part of their marketing strategy and their overall marketing message. And why wouldn’t it be? It’s a fairly common strategy that agents have used for a long time and have seen results with. Whether it’s how many properties they’ve sold or what awards they’ve won, a lot of agents focus on highlighting why they’re better or more experienced than their competitors.

A lot of people will respond to that type of messaging, and even choose an agent based on how successful they are. But in an increasingly competitive business like real estate, if you’re a newer agent without much experience to highlight, or even if you’ve been an agent for decades and simply want to find a new way to build more qualified leads, there’s another approach that people will respond to in 2026 more than ever: and that’s by implementing a solutions-based marketing strategy.

A solutions-based marketing strategy is where you focus on addressing how a person’s pain point is solved (and it’s a pivotal part of a successful brand association strategy as well).

Solutions-based marketing is all about focusing on the person you’re trying to reach, rather than on yourself and your accomplishments. And for an agent, there’s no shortage of problems you can solve for people that are within your target audience. You can even attract the types of leads you want, based on the solutions you’re providing.

The key to solutions-based marketing is to make sure your offering clearly solves a problem for your target audience. For example:

If you want to work with busy, young families, your marketing can highlight your expertise in having a solid understanding of all of your local school districts and school rankings.
If you want to work with people who are downsizing, your marketing can showcase your ability to help with and remove some of the stress that goes along with decluttering years of household items.
If you want to work with investors, your marketing can show your expertise in understanding all of the macro-economic trends and historic sale prices that show the best places to invest in (and to avoid investing in).

People will always want to work with someone who is successful and great at what they do, so highlighting your successes does work; but by focusing on the problems people face in a real estate transaction, marketing the solution you have to that problem, and focusing on what’s in it for them, you can get more leads, more business, and more deals, simply by adjusting your marketing message to position yourself as being helpful.

★ Want to learn more about planning a marketing strategy? Have a look at these posts:

Exploring and Adopting Inbound Marketing

Over the course of the past few years, we’ve worked with a lot of agents to introduce inbound marketing into their overall marketing strategies, and because of that, they’re seeing better, more quality-driven results.

And into 2026, inbound marketing will continue to be a powerful component of a strong real estate marketing and lead generation strategy.

What’s the difference between inbound and outbound marketing?

Outbound Marketing is a cold reach out to people to try to make them interested in working with you. For example: billboards and bus bench ads, cold email reach-outs, cold calling, and door-knocking are all outbound marketing techniques.
Inbound Marketing is when you attract and build meaningful, long-lasting connections and bonds with people through providing valuable content, resources, and experiences, and then nurturing them until they’re ready to make a decision. For example, blog posts, search engine strategy, and downloadable resources are all inbound marketing techniques.

When properly set up, inbound marketing can be extremely powerful and can serve as a strong part of your overall quality lead generation strategy for a long time to come.

But why is that?

It’s because the people who engage you, after being brought in by your inbound marketing strategy, will already want to work with you when they’re ready to buy or sell. They’ll remember you, your brand, and your business, and in a lot of cases, they won’t consider working with anyone else because they already trust you.

An inbound marketing strategy is made up of 3 main stages: Attracting, Engaging, and Delighting. You can learn more about how it works in this post called: The Philosophy of Inbound Marketing, and Why it Works for Agents

Effective inbound marketing involves actually caring about your potential clients, providing the information they need, engaging them, and delighting them as they go through the decision-making process, and even beyond as you keep them in your marketing ecosystem.

★ Want to learn more about inbound marketing for real estate? Have a look at these posts and resources:

Adapt, Pivot, and ABC (Always Be Changing)

No matter what 2026 brings, one thing is absolutely true: real estate marketing is always changing, and so, your real estate marketing strategy should also always be changing by including things that work, and mixing in a few things that might work.

Regardless of how you look at it, continued investment in your marketing strategy is continued investment in your business.

Want to learn more about what Artifakt Digital can do and how we can help your business get ahead of the competition? Book a no-obligation consultation call with our team quickly and easily.

Andre Bodnar, Founder at Artifakt Digital

Author: Andre Bodnar

Founder, Business Development

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