As a Realtor, weathering market fluctuations is part of your business, but there are a few things you can do to make sure you're fully leveraging the opportunities available to you. Keep your referral pipeline flowing during market downturns by shifting your ad strategy instead of cutting your budget altogether.

There are a lot of Realtors that want to cut their paid digital ad budgets when the listings start to slow and dry up in the market. It's the first thing to go more ofthen that not, and the logic makes sense. Cut back on expenses to weather the down turn and make sure you're ready to pick back up when listings do. There are two things you're missing out on with this approach...

First, you're going to be doing the same thing that 90% of your competitors are doing. That means that when the listings and market do start to pick back up, you're going to be turning your ads back on at the same time as everyone else. You're missing out on the jump you'll have by keeping some ad spend going throughout the downturn, filtered and targeted to your goals. You just need to funnel your digital ad spend into the right places to keep your edge on the market. Not only will you continue to capture leads, but you'll have a jump on the buyers and sellers searching online as the market picks back up.

Second, you are missing out on potential referrals and leads. Depending on your goal you can strategically target your digital ad spend to get targeted results. You know that there will always be buyers and sellers in the marketplace. Chances are your past clients know some of them, or you can target search ads to get in front of them.

Leverage your reputation during downturns by strategically shifting part of your ad budget to retarget to your existing satisfied client base. Keep yourself at the forefront to make sure they keep recommending you.

If you're going to keep re-marketing to your past clients and your sphere (basically everyone in your phone), then remarketing ads are the least expensive way to do that outside of writing time consuming emails. 

For example: If you are going to spend money on newsletters, mail, calendars etc, pairing that with a low budget remarketing campaign as well will keep your marketing in front of those recipients long after the content ends up in the recycling bin.
It's like a digital bus bench that follows your clients around online at a fraction of the cost of the number of benches you would need to pay for in order to get in front of all your past clients and contacts consistently enough for them to remember it.

If you want to target new people only, then search campaigns are a way to do that but not inexpensive to get enough volume. If you are sending flyers out to new people then definitely use QR codes and a tracking link so that you can engage those people, get them in your list and start the remarketing strategy to stay in front of them until they reach out ready to buy or sell.

Not sure what to do with your ad budget as the market starts to slow? Book a free strategy call today to find out what's working for you and what you should shift to take advantage of all the opportunity in your local market