5 Ways Real Estate Agents Can Trim Expenses

Get Serious About Organic SEO

Pay-per-click real estate advertising is an excellent paid SEO strategy for bringing leads to your real estate website. But if you need to temporarily reduce your advertising spend, it’s time to double down on your organic SEO efforts.

Organic SEO — optimizing your website using various tactics in order to improve how you rank in unpaid search results — may take longer to pay off but done right, it’s an extremely effective strategy with long-term results. 

Even if you plan to resume paid SEO efforts in the near future, getting serious about organic SEO is never wasted time. It should be a part of every real estate agent’s marketing strategy.

Not sure where to start? Try these four easy things real estate agents can do to boost SEO results.

Leverage Free Tools

Small budget? No problem. There are a ton of free and budget-friendly online tools and apps that real estate agents can leverage. 

Before you sign up for (or renew) a tool or software with a hefty price tag, research to see if there’s a comparable cheaper or even free version that you can switch to.

To get you started, here are four free or affordable apps and tools that we recommend every agent make use of.

Google Drive

Create and share spreadsheets, forms, slideshows, text documents, and various other file types, and access them from any location. Great for copywriting, data management, presentations, sign-in forms, surveys and more.

Canva

Use the free version of Canva to design Instagram posts, printed postcards, open house flyers, property feature sheets and more. If you need to access paid features, you can upgrade on a monthly basis (for about $15) instead of paying for an annual subscription. 

Later

Later’s free plan can help you manage your social media content calendar. It may be less robust than Later’s paid plans, but the free version still lets users schedule up to 10 posts per month (per social media platform), preview how their posts will look and check out some analytics.

InShot

If videos (YouTube, Instagram Reels, TikTok) are a part of your marketing strategy, a mobile video editing app can be super useful. InShot is one of the best. It lets you trim and splice video clips, change the canvas size, and add filters, backgrounds, stickers and music — all from a user-friendly interface. The paid version (which you’ll want, as the free version adds watermarks to finished videos) is budget-friendly, at approximately $4 per month or $18 per year. 

Establish Preferred Rates

If you consistently work with the same stagers, photographers and other service providers on listings, consider having a conversation about preferred rates — slightly discounted prices in exchange for your continued business.

This tactic isn’t one-size-fits-all. You’ll have to assess each relationship and decide whether it can hold up to the possible discomfort that the money conversation may cause. 

You could also consider what you could provide beyond ongoing business to help sweeten the deal. Social media exposure or a mention on your real estate website are great ways to show their business additional love.

Buy Closing Gifts in Bulk

The best real estate client gifts are thoughtful, useful and unique. But that doesn’t mean you need to pick out a personalized item for each and every client.

If you can negotiate or take advantage of a wholesale price for buying large quantities, consider buying closing gifts in bulk.

It will bring your cost-per-gift down, plus it will save you shopping time throughout the year.

Know Your Write-Offs

Tax write-offs aren’t necessarily a way to trim expenses at the moment of purchase, but knowing what you can report as a business expense at tax time is one of the biggest ways real estate agents can save money.

Real estate agents need to take the time to understand what qualifies as a business expense. They also need to be diligent about tracking expenses throughout the year; using an app to log expenses (QuickBooks is an excellent paid option; Mint is a great free option) is the way to go.