A lot of entrepreneurs stop marketing this time of year. 

And while the generic holiday e-blast is a definite DON’T, there are plenty of dos to engage with past clients, feed your social media algorithm, and stay top of mind with prospects. 

If you missed last week’s Walk Thru, we’re breaking down the December marketing ideas from all four moderators: The Broke Agent, Byron Lazine, Victoria Velazquez and The Massive Agent.  

Here’s a list of marketing dos and don’ts from four industry professionals who know what it takes to excel in this industry—and how to make every day of the year count.  

DO: Let Clients Know You are Thinking of Them

The holiday season is an easy time to reach out and engage with past clients, your sphere of influence and prospects. 

Let clients know you are thinking of them—without expecting anything in return—by hosting a holiday event or sending a gift. For those who want to be a bit more creative, here are a couple of out-of-the-box ideas:

1. Book of the Year: Victoria Velazquez started giving her clients a ‘book of the year’ to mark the new year. It has become a fun tradition with an incredible response.

We started doing this because I was like, ‘How do I share more of my personality with my clients, that has absolutely nothing to do with real estate? I wanted to give them something that was meaningful, a gift that they would either love or be able to re-gift to someone else if it wasn’t for them. So, we started doing a book of the year five years ago…and the response is always amazing.

Victoria Velazquez

2. Holiday Photoshoot: Heidi DeRusso, a top-performing agent on Byron Lazine’s team, hosted a holiday photoshoot for her clients this year. She blocked off a studio for the afternoon, put out refreshments, and gave her clients the opportunity to get some holiday family photos.  

DON’T: Overextend Your Budget

You don’t have to go all-out with holiday parties and gifts if it’s not in your budget. There are plenty of easy, low-cost ways you can show your appreciation to your clients:

DO: Be the Expert

Continue to share housing market news with your audience. An easy way to do this is to write an annual letter to everyone in your database. Type this out using actual letterhead. 

It doesn’t have to be very long, either. Three to five paragraphs is fine as long as you make them count. As for what you can write— 

Just recap the year. And put your opinion, state of the market, ‘Here’s what I think is gonna happen in 2023,’ backed by some data….Here’s the impact we made on the community, here’s how many great clients we were able to to work with, here’s our outlook for 2023,’ even if you email that letter to everyone, make it look official.’

And if you have a team, if you have agents, send them, from the business perspective, your annual letter as well. It’s just a nice touch, and right now, we should be doing more of that.

Byron Lazine

Being the expert in your community can go beyond real estate advice. 

Get to know what holiday-related events are going on so you can be the go-to on what’s happening in your area. This is also a great time of year to highlight local businesses. Create content surrounding your favorite restaurants, shops, and community events, and be sure to tag the establishments in your videos so they can share, too. 

DON’T: Be a Grinch

Focus on all the holiday fun going on this time of year—and don’t forget to capture content! 

One party could generate enough shareable content for a year. In addition to posting on your social media, share those images and videos with the people in them, so they can share them with their own networks. 

This is that time of year where people actually want to go out and do things, so as an agent, if you can just let them know what’s happening in the community—there’s a tree-lighting over here, a “Meet Santa” over here—you could do content for a year on that stuff, but you can [also] pack it all into a month…“This time of year is fun. And I think it’s a great business move to focus on all the fun that’s going on and just be a likable human. And no branded Merry Christmas card.

Dustin Brohm, aka the Massive Agent

DO: Focus on Building Your Business

Whether you are a newer agent or someone who wants to up their sales in 2023, the work you do this month should include building your business. 

Byron Lazine gets real with agents who’ve been in the business for one or two years, have done about 17 deals, and are putting out tons of content with tips for other agents. 

If they continue to do this in 2023, instead of focusing on actually building a business, they’re going to get steamrolled….For everybody that’s done 17 deals, take a step back and go deep on those 17 clients that you have. Start talking to them.

Byron Lazine

DON’T: Neglect Social 

Now for some timely Instagram hacks for the holidays by BAM co-founder and marketing genius, The Broke Agent. 

Here are five hacks worth incorporating into your Instagram strategy for this month: 

  1. Recap posts: Create a recap of your year highlighting all your sales. Use templates on Instagram and TikTok to create a quick flashing video of all your transactions. 
  2. Storytelling: As you reflect on 2022, use some of your best (or worst) deals and talk about a specific transaction, what happened, and why it was meaningful to your clients.
  3. Naughty or nice lists: This one is just for fun—list things in the real estate industry that you don’t like or who would be on your Naughty List (obviously not your clients). Do the opposite to create your Nice List.
  4. Holiday audios: Use trending audio in the back of your Instagram Reels. Even though original audio is better, it is still good to trendjack for this entire month. 
  5. Holiday content: Any time you can use some type of holiday aspect in your content, it’ll perform better. 

For more marketing ideas from The Broke Agent, check out his December Content Ideas for Agents.