The 8 Best Real Estate Marketing Companies to Boost Your Business in 2023
Editorial Note: We sometimes earn a small commission from partners listed. This never affects editor opinions or evaluations. More
We all know that marketing is one of the most important pieces to being a successful realtor, building your brand, and asserting yourself as a leader in your community.
And of course, it’s not easy, or everyone would be doing it well already! Luckily, new tools can help busy agents keep their existing clients happy while expanding their business. We have has spent hundreds of hours comparing and ranking the best real estate marketing companies based on a comprehensive comparison of features, price points, and return on investment. Here are the very best real estate marketing companies to save you time and help you boost your business:
The 8 Best Real Estate Marketing Companies
- Best Overall: Happy Grasshopper
- Best for Teams: HighNote.io
- Best for New Agents: Agently
- Best for Lead Generation: Real Geeks
- Best for Postcard Marketing: Happy Grasshopper
- Best for Building Referrals : Parkbench
- Best on a Budget: Elevate
- Best for Video Marketing: BIGVU
Best Overall: Happy Grasshopper
Why We Chose It: Happy Grasshopper helps you keep track of follow-up with past clients while maintaining your relationships for future deals. It provides a range of communication tools for you to stay in touch with contacts, including an automated email marketing system, text services, ringless voicemail drops, and even handwritten letter services for those looking for a personal touch.
Happy Grasshopper ensures that your messaging and marketing strategies emulate your own voice. While you can still enjoy email automation, you’ll have the customization options to tailor your messages to your liking. There’s a P.S. line for you to include a personal message, a CTA, or links to blog posts and company updates.
Their strategy is all about drip marketing. Rather than continuously sending listings and check-ins, you’re sending clients content that’s relevant to their life. That doesn’t mean you’ll lack opportunities to promote yourself, but it does mean you’ll build and maintain relationships with clients even when they aren’t interested in buying or selling. It helps you stay up to date with your clients’ changing lives so that you’re at the forefront when their plans for building or selling their home change.
One of my favorite parts is the team will help you if you get stuck – you can either upload yourself, or send them to the Happy Grasshopper team to do it for you. The dashboard functionality is also helpful for viewing reports, tracking your performance, and getting an idea of what to change for the next campaign.
Happy Grasshopper is a solid platform for sending content and monitoring results. It’s worth investigating, but it’s likely it will work well with whatever systems you’re using for lead generation, capture, and nurturing.
- Done-for-you email marketing
- Works well with other tools
- Affordable fast results
- Limited to direct marketing
- Not an alternative to lead generation
Best for Teams: HighNote.io
Why we chose it: HighNote is super easy to use, and is specifically designed with real estate agents and brokerages in mind. It is a versatile presentation builder that has helped thousands of agents get listings, win offers, market their properties, recruit agents, and stay in touch with their clients.
With the presentation builder template, you can simply drag-and-drop materials into HighNote, get a customizable link to your presentation, and deliver a unique experience to your lead or client. There are also millions of icons, animations, and images to complete your presentation and make you stand out.
One of the most impressive things about HighNote is the insights it provides. The system will tell you what your target audience is interested in, and when they are interested in seeing or reviewing the presentation (time of year/day, etc.). HighNote also provides cues reminding you when to follow up with prospects, which is a game changer when you are looking to build a brand or grow your business.
The software was designed from the ground-up by real estate agents who felt there was a gap in the industry’s current marketing materials. HighNote also addresses the needs of the team leader/brokerage, who don’t always have the time or resources to build customized presentations for each and every agent.
Pre-listing and Listing presentations: Rather than sending an email with multiple attachments, the HighNote presentation is easy to read and follow, and the analytics provide real-time insights on when your presentation is opened and what potential sellers are truly interested in.
Offers: Offers designed with HighNote are known to help agents and their buyers beat stronger offers simply because they make the agents and buyers look more credible.
Property Marketing: Rather than filling a brochure filled with inserts, the property marketing templates are easy to read and follow, and can be customized on the fly. The real-time insights also enable you to react and adjust as needed in follow-up conversations.
Recruiting: Finding new agents is absolutely vital and using a recruiting template enables you to showcase what makes your brokerage truly special in a top notch, professional format that shows off your brand and builds awareness.
Post Close: You can use HighNote to deliver closing documents and information on what to do after your clients take possession. In that same template you can also then ask for testimonials instead of having to send a follow-up email afterwards.
- Intuitive and easy to use
- Web builder
- Versatile with many applications
- Analytics are super helpful with suggested text responses
- No CRM features
- No way to integrate with other software
- Can’t upload videos into HighNote directly
Best for New Agents: Agently
Why we chose it: Agently is the first AI-powered coaching & marketing platform for real estate agents. It allows you to automate your marketing, lead generation, and social media in just a few clicks. Agents can now personalize all of their social media templates starting with the general message you want to upload to your feed. You can then make changes to fit your brand and send it out to all of your contacts or upload a list of new prospects.
Agently also has the ability to create and manage a single property customizable website for each of your listings. The websites are designed to generate real estate leads, and are tailored to each specific available property. It allows leads to ask you questions about the properties they are interested in without all of the clutter. The lead’s contact information and questions can integrate straight into Agently’s CRM so they can be easily managed.
If you want to take the listing info and turn it into a flyer, Agently also specializes in personalized brochures. Those are automatically created the moment you create a new listing in the system.
The AI powered property description generator is also a game changer. You just fill out the required info about your new listing, like the price and number of bedrooms, etc. The generator will then allow you to click through several options to find the description that best fits the property. This feature alone can save you a lot of time and money as some agents pay a service just for property descriptions.
Agently also comes with a virtual mentor who provides a list of actionable tasks you need to follow daily in order to reach your real estate goals.
- Offers 7-day free trial
- AI powered property description generator
- Not many integration options
- No mobile app
Best for Lead Generation: Real Geeks
Why we chose it: Real Geeks is an end-to-end solution for an agent that supports all facets of internet-driven lead generation. Real Geeks uses three main components: SEO-friendly, custom branded, MLS integrated agent websites, full CRM capabilities, and done-for-you-lead generation. Lead creation and lead nurturing through client creation and past client follow-up are what you’ll get. Essentially, you can write Real Geeks a check and have an entire web presence, inbound lead flow, and CRM management.
Real Geeks is a real estate marketing company whose primary focus is to generate leads at scale. Real Geeks provides an IDX-connected website, complete with lead capture-optimized landing pages. By running ads on popular social media platforms and using Google to drive traffic to your site, Real Geeks focuses on getting as many paid leads into your customer relationship manager (CRM) as possible.
Real Geeks isn’t the Swiss Army knife of real estate marketing companies. They don’t offer a dozen different services like some of the other providers on our list. They do, however, generate leads really well. They provide real estate agents with the opportunities they need to start a lead on a nurturing journey that will ultimately end at the closing table.
- Easy and fast set up of core elements
- Agent websites look really, really good
- Quick turnaround
- Agent driven lead location verification required
- Zero transparency on media spend
Best for Building Referrals : Parkbench
Why We Chose It: Parkbench is totally different from other real estate marketing services. How? You get (gold standard) referral leads, and they help you stand out from the pack and become a visible realtor in your community. Parkbench grows your sphere of influence by promoting local businesses and relevant initiatives. It all happens through referrals, which is a great way to make yourself stand out locally.
With Parkbench, you create an online platform for an exclusive community, becoming a local leader. Rather than online leads or advertising, you’ll be able to promote and interview local businesses, and in turn, they’ll become strong referral sources for you. Your Parkbench site will offer news and special offers, and it also serves as an excellent lead-capture tool.
Finding ways to build lasting relationships in your community can be difficult, but it’s the primary focus of Parkbench’s platform. You pay a flat fee based on your market and selling price, but that means you can get as many leads and referrals as you can manage based on the connections you make.
Once your initial interview is complete, Parkbench will create your online profile where you can share news, deals, interviews, and reviews. You’ll get a ton of support and coaching from the Parkbench team. They have a library of resources, interview training, and live coaching to ensure your success in building referrals. Best of all, these come at no additional cost to you.
The biggest advantage of Parkbench is its exclusivity. Parkbench only allows one agent per neighborhood, meaning you’re the only one operating in your area. You can focus on that community, enrich it, and relish the connections you’ll make.
Parkbench works to make real estate personal. It involves a large investment of time and money, but the results speak for themselves. They offer you an opportunity to network and create a fantastic foundation to build your business on.
- Opportunity for strong referral relationships
- Exclusive access to community
- Tons of training materials
- Large investment of time
- Only one agent per community
Best on a Budget: Elevate
Why We Chose It: Elevate offers an all-in-one solution: a great CRM, an IDX capable website, and real estate marketing tools. And none of these tools are lacking when it comes to performance, either. The features compare well against some of the bigger players – but Elevate gives you all of that value for a reasonable price.
With Elevate, you get automated social media, email, and text campaigns. Their workflows are designed to give you rich insights throughout the life cycle of the lead. You’ll be able to nurture past, present, and future clients with intelligent campaigns that engage them.
The Elevate website offers IDX capabilities, meaning the content of the website is always relevant to visitors based on the MLS. The website’s interface is very consumer-friendly and offers several lead-capture opportunities. Their website even automates blog content for you every week, lending itself to great SEO potential.
Once all is said and done, the data is stored in a powerful, intuitive CRM. Integrated into the CRM is the CMA Wizard. CMA Wizard allows you to easily create templated CMAs for clients. Plus, it comes with IDX integration, so updating your CMAs is easier than ever. All of your CMAs are stored in a database, too, meaning you can easily search for them later.
- End-to-end real estate marketing solution
- Intuitive interface
- Tons of value at a solid price point
- Must use their CRM for marketing tools
- Performance tracking a bit limited
Best for Video Marketing: BIGVU
Why we chose it: The BIGVU Teleprompter and Captions platform allows you to do just that with ease and confidence. Whether you’re not sure what to say on camera, worried about stumbling over your words, or have zero video editing capabilities, the BIGVU app has you covered.
The BIGVU AI scriptwriter crafts personalized scripts for your videos in seconds, so you don’t have to worry about writer’s block. The scriptwriter will also create tons of ideas and personalized scripts so that you have a variety of videos to choose from.
Using the teleprompter, you can read the script while simultaneously recording. The teleprompter keeps you at eye level with the camera, reading at the pace you choose, and ensuring that you speak clearly and confidently. You can use the AI trimming tool to make editing quick and easy to get it uploaded the same day. The app also generates automatic captions with the click of a button. The trendy and eye-catching subtitles are perfect for clients who are viewing your videos without sound too.
At the end you can add your interactive business card to the video with all of your contact details, so that leads know exactly where to find you. In addition to that, BIGVU creates a branded landing page for your video, giving you that professional edge. And once you hit publish to share across all your social networks, you can login to see the analytics of the demographics of who is watching.
Thousands of realtors use BIGVU to create social media content, listing videos, and brand themselves as experts online. But the true power of the platform is the automation of so many time-consuming tasks, all in one place. Wherever you are—on the go or at home—you can create eye-catching videos from your mobile phone or laptop in minutes.
- Available on mobile and web browser
- Great analytics
- All in one platform- AI scripting, teleprompter, editing and social media share
- Web & mobile interfaces are different
- Editing can be difficult for long videos
- Takes time to discover all the features
What to look for in a real estate marketing company & how to vet them
Do they specialize in real estate?
Real estate has different marketing demands than other industries do. A company that has a robust understanding of real estate will make them far more efficient than other options. Plus, the marketing strategy will be far more likely to integrate seamlessly with your existing business.
You really should be starting with our list since a lot of effort has been made to make it the very best. But, if you’re looking to brave options that are not on the list above, start by looking at a company’s “About” page. Was the company developed by realtors? Was it created as a solution to real estate-specific problems? A “yes” to these questions are green lights that indicate an awareness of the audience you are targeting and which strategies work best.
Ask for samples of old campaigns or work they have done in the past. There is no harm in doing some research before investing in a marketing solution.
They have a strong track record
Reputation means everything in real estate!
Look for a company that you can trust and that has an established presence in the field. They will likely have the experience, staff, tools, and resources you need to hit the ground running.
While you want to work with established experts, be sure that they are willing and ready to embrace new approaches. The market is not the same as it was ten years ago, and your marketing strategy should account for that.
If they have them, read through testimonials and look at portfolios. These are the best tools you can lean on to get a sneak peek of the services you’ll receive. As always, explore external reviews, too. Word of mouth and peer recommendations are worth their weight in gold.
The company you work with should have a record of providing high-quality services. Ask for guarantees about lead quantity, quality, and exclusivity. These factors make a world of difference. Without them, you’re essentially wasting your money.
Their strategies are in line with your vision
Marketing is a broad concept that employs various tactics and tools. The solution you go with should ensure that you have the flexibility and control to leverage strategies that align with your branding and existing efforts.
Here are some marketing techniques you should keep an eye out for:
- Lead magnets (home valuation, marketing reports, etc.)
- Landing pages for local properties
- Marketing collateral (real estate postcards, flyers, brochures, etc.)
- Email marketing (newsletters, templates, etc.)
- Social media marketing
- Video marketing solutions
If you’re looking to expand your social media outreach, opt for a solution that integrates with platforms like Facebook or Linkedin to distribute landing pages and contact forms. If you want your marketing efforts to have a personal touch, go for a company that allows you to customize your own landing pages, flyers, and newsletters.
Whatever your preferred marketing solution is, pick a company that meets your needs.
Embrace new approaches
Just like you, marketing companies are competing for a client’s business. So, take advantage and let them sell to you!
Look for the qualities that make their services unique and strive to embrace the new tools and techniques they have to offer. This can make your campaign far more efficient and effortless, especially if it’s tech-based.
For example, they might use machine learning to bolster their social media management or content engagement strategy, or partner with online content creation services to offer extensive templates and graphics options. They might even have a system to ensure your marketing voice is authentic, such as a dedicated success coach or professional copywriting services.
Depending on what you’re looking for, you’ll likely be met with a new and exciting way to elevate tried and true practices.
Consistency is key
Whatever strategy you use, the service you sign up with should guarantee consistent and measurable results. Even if it requires small changes at the very start, the system you have in place should produce regular numbers. Be on the lookout for services that generate numbers at the start and plateau, or worse, decline.
Here are some telltale signs of a strong, consistent approach:
- Proven, reliable ad campaigns with high engagement numbers
- Sequential email messaging that is automated, so leads are always being nurtured
- Consistent analytics and reporting to keep you in the loop
Consistency makes it possible to have a strategy for now and later so that you can continue to optimize, grow, and scale your numbers up.
Questions to ask a real estate marketing company before you work with them
How many real estate companies have you helped?
This question is important because you’ll be able to gauge their track record and prior experience. A marketing strategy should be based on a thorough understanding of the industry, the market, and target audiences. Looking for someone with an extensive background can help you feel confident that they can field any curve ball that comes their way. Obviously, the more real estate companies they’ve worked with, the higher your chance of success.
The answer you’re looking for: They should give you a straightforward answer on this that boils down to a number they can back up. Look for a company that has worked with 100+ clients in different markets. A mix of quantity and quality is always a safe bet.
How would you approach a campaign for my company specifically?
This question is important because it shows that they don’t have a catch-all approach. No two real estate companies are the same, meaning their marketing solutions shouldn’t be the same either. Your strategy should be specific to your target market and budget.
The answer you’re looking for: Look for a response that engages with specific details about your needs, like the local market, your budget, and your preferences for outreach. If you prefer a traditional approach in a small town, they shouldn’t recommend an expensive digital campaign that targets users in urban areas.
Which specific marketing tactics have worked best for your clients in the past?
When it comes to success, it’s always better to show than it is to tell. This allows prospective agencies to show you their unique selling points and demonstrate the efficacy of their approach. You’ll also get a feel for their capabilities and differentiate their approach from others.
The answer you’re looking for: They should give you specific examples of strategies they’ve used before that have been successful based on a particular metric. Showing you a sample portfolio here is always a huge plus.
Why do you think we’d be a good fit for you?
You’ll be developing a relationship with the marketing team you choose, so you should be confident that it will be productive for both parties. Understanding the dynamic you will have is critical, especially if you have specific needs. For example, working with a brokerage or team focused agency may not be a good fit if you’re a solo agent.
The answer you’re looking for: A solid response may include references to work with similar clients, demonstrate an understanding of your unique needs, or establish a holistic awareness of your long-term goals.
How do your marketing strategies change in bear vs. bull markets?
Adapting to different real estate landscapes and economic environments is crucial to keeping your marketing strategy afloat as the market changes. You should look for a marketing company that can weather the storm with you.
The answer you’re looking for: Look for strategies and shifts in campaigns they have executed in response to a changing economy (especially buyers’ markets vs. sellers’ markets). They may have slowed or accelerated their approaches based on market needs and interests or leveraged data to help them make decisions about next steps. All of these are good indicators that their solutions are as dynamic as the market itself.
Is it possible to work on a performance basis?
A performance-based contract can help you ensure that you see results from the agency you are working with. It guarantees that your money isn’t pooling in strategies that don’t work, which should be at the top of your marketing agency’s priorities.
The answer you’re looking for: While this may not be a pricing model all companies offer, it never hurts to ask. They may detail specifics about pricing for engagement, lead generation, or total return in the form of revenue or closing.
What does the first month with your team look like?
Setting expectations and a plan to get the ball rolling on your new relationship is an important part of gauging what a long-term partnership will look like. It gives you insight into how an agency develops the first steps of its strategies and how they like to get things moving.
The answer you’re looking for: Look for a mix of situation assessment and strategizing. Ideally, your selected company or agency should prioritize understanding your needs before diving into determining how to launch a new campaign. Rushing into things may not generate the results you are hoping for, so look for a happy balance here.
When can I expect results?
Nothing good comes easy, but you should have a general understanding of when you can expect to see numbers change as a result of your investment in a campaign. This helps you manage expectations and hold your agency accountable to certain goals. It also allows you to determine if you are on the same page about what you want to see from the marketing agency you are working with.
The answer you’re looking for: Again, a happy medium is what you want here. Too quick, and they might be over-promising; too slow, and they may not be worth the investment. Strive to work with someone who offers realistic and reasonable expectations.
Our Methodology:
Our in-house real estate experts spent hundreds of hours researching, scoring, and ranking the top real estate marketing companies to boost your business. We looked at everything from pricing and ease of use to the specific real estate industry features that are available. We’ve ranked and rated each marketing tool on 5 different factors to come up with the very best real estate marketing companies to boost your business. The short version of factors considered are:
- Cost: Not all real estate marketing companies are created equal, so it’s important to look at what’s included with your purchase. Some companies charge upwards of $300/month for outdated postcard and social media templates, which is why we take into account the price of the service and compare it to the features and extra resources provided to help each agent succeed.
- Features & user friendliness: Different real estate marketing companies come with different feature sets, some more important for teams than solo agents. Additionally, agents don’t have a lot of extra time to learn a complicated marketing plan, so the more it just works with their natural workflow, the better. That’s why we’ve rated the tools that are easier for agents to navigate without a tech team higher than the ones that are more complicated to use.
- Lead quality: Leads are the lifeblood of any business as they help provide a steady flow of predictable revenue. However, some marketing methods are more effective than others. The type of leads you need may vary depending on the type of business you are operating. Real estate agents want to be able to bring in an even mix of buyer and seller leads that will convert quickly – which is why this is a big factor we’ve considered.
- Customer support: Many real estate agents don’t have the time to fix technical glitches and/or don’t have access to a tech team, so customer support is very important. Whether you might need help setting up integrations or just to get the software up and running, customer support plays a big role in finding your ideal software—especially when it comes to a real estate marketing company that you’ll be using on a daily basis.
- Overall performance: At the end of the day, all marketing investments need to have a good ROI. Our experts looked for how the features meet the specific needs of real estate agents and teams. Real estate agents need to build their brand in order to capture a market, and really scale their business.
Want more info? Check out our full methodology.
