Depending on who you are and what you believe in, and who your target audience is and what they believe in, building a sustainability strategy into your real estate marketing strategy can not only bring in better quality leads made up of people that have the same values as you, but also, make you feel better as a human and a marketer.
However, if you’re not truly interested in or passionate about helping your local community or the broader environment, you shouldn’t try to build sustainability into your marketing strategy.
That’s because sustainable real estate marketing won’t work if it’s not, and doesn’t feel, truly authentic. You’ll easily set yourself up to be called out if it’s not something you truly value, which could not only be embarrassing but also detrimental to your brand as a whole.
Before we explore how it works, let’s talk about what sustainability in marketing actually means:
When most people think about sustainability in marketing, they probably think about the environmental impact of what they do; and while considering the environment is part of it, sustainable marketing goes a few steps further.
Essentially, there’s a difference between green marketing and sustainable marketing:
- Green Marketing is when you focus your efforts on environmental awareness and eco-friendly issues exclusively.
- Sustainable Marketing is when you include environmental awareness and eco-friendly issues in your marketing, but also expand it into social, economic, and other community related issues.
Especially right now, because of the ongoing housing crisis going on in a number of North American cities, a lot of agents feel a personal responsibility to ensure that what they’re doing in their marketing strategy and overall business efforts gives back to the community at large in an ethical, moral, and more sustainable way than ever before.
Depending on how passionate you are about it, building sustainability into your marketing strategy can be a smaller effort (like giving back to a local charity or cause) or it can be a huge part of your marketing efforts (like building a full-fledged sustainable marketing plan that works ethical accountability into every single thing you do), and which one you choose, if any, is dependent on what’s important you as a human, as an agent, and as a marketer.
So if you’re passionate about sustainability (and connecting with other people that feel the same way and have the same values), how do you build it into your real estate business and marketing plan?
Through Your Messaging and Mission
The best way to let everyone know that sustainability is important to you is to build it into your overall messaging strategy so that it’s a core part of what you tell people about you, your business, and your overall goals.
And good place place to start to do that is with your mission statement or company value statement, by clearly defining how what you do involves sustainability. By doing that, you’ll be able to ensure that all of your messaging goes back to the underlying goal of what you do as an agent and as a business.
★ Want to learn more about mission statements? Have a look at this post called: Why You Should Have a Mission Statement for Your Real Estate Business.
After that, you should build it into your overall messaging and content strategy by expanding on what’s important to you and what you do to give back and build towards a sustainable future.
Through Your Offerings
If you ever purchased something purely because it was locally or ethically sourced, or because it was 100% recyclable, then you’ve experienced (and reacted to) sustainable marketing. And the same angle can easily be worked into your overall marketing strategy and offerings as a real estate agent.
Let’s say, for example, at the end of each year, you donated 5% of your total earnings to your local SPCA, or a local homeless shelter, or a local community garden, or anything else that had an environmental, social, or economic impact, you’d be building sustainability into your business, as well as doing something good for the community.
And, if you marketed that as a part of who you are and what you do, it’s absolutely possible (and perhaps even likely) that people with the same values would work with you purely because of the way you give back.
If you wanted to take it even further, you could build an entire niche around sustainability (assuming you were really passionate about it). If everything that you did, as part of your day to day real estate business and marketing efforts, had a sustainable aspect to it, that worked towards the greater good, you could build a solid business, as well as do something that was really meaningful to you by making the community a better place.
★ If you want to learn more about building a real estate marketing plan, have a look at these posts and resources:
- A Guide for Real Estate Agents: How to Create a Marketing Plan
- Real Estate Marketing 101: A Guide for Agents
- Why Personal, Targeted Marketing Means Better Real Estate Leads
- Download our eBook: The Ultimate Guide to Real Estate Marketing
Through Your Actions
At the end of the day, the best way to build sustainability into your overall marketing is to take the action to actually live it. There’s no better way to show that you care than by getting involved in the causes that mean something to you; and there’s no harm in building that effort into your marketing strategy as well so people are aware that you care about it (especially if they’ll consider working with you as a result of it).
Whether it’s a small part of your business, or the core focus, remember that sustainable real estate marketing won’t work if it’s not, and doesn’t feel, truly authentic.
Want to get better, more qualified leads and build your authority? Our inbound marketing guide is a walkthrough of the overall philosophy of inbound marketing, why it’s effective, and how you can build it into your own real estate marketing strategy to get better marketing results.
