The Ultimate Guide to Real Estate Investor Marketing

Image courtesy of Una Residences, Miami

Every real estate project needs investment, yet facing the prospect of raising capital can be daunting. Failure to raise money is not a roadblock but a dead end for developers. Learning how to market to real estate investors successfully shifts the balance of power into your hands. Instead of accepting any offer that comes in, developers get to choose from multiple investors competing for the opportunity to fund your project. This is how you obtain the best deal.

Proven Partners can help developers prepare their projects for investors and then form a comprehensive and aggressive marketing plan that opens up multiple avenues to investment. Read on to learn about the top strategies for real estate investor marketing.

Image courtesy of Rose Hill Residences, NYC

Preparation Before Marketing To Real Estate Investors

There’s no point starting to go out and raise capital until you’ve put yourself in a position to convert interest. Preemptively searching for investors is like securing a try-out for the baseball team before learning how to throw and catch. To prepare for the opportunities that come your way, it’s vital to do two things: Build your credibility and refine your presentation.

Strategies For Building Your Credibility

Building credibility encourages future investors to take your project seriously. Unknown commodities are riskier than established brands; thus, investors will not be willing to offer the same quality deals. There are many strategies for building credibility.

Social Media Presence

It’s vital to ensure that when someone searches for you online, they get a positive perspective of a legitimate company with a solid following. There’s always the likelihood that one of these followers may become an investor. 

Build credibility using social media platforms like LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, and Pinterest. On LinkedIn, prioritise gaining followers and sending DMs to relevant people in the field. Being connected with influential figures can be very helpful down the line.

Finding Recognized Advisors Willing To Support The Project

When looking for credible advisors to support you, target the people who will personally like your kind of project or will directly benefit from what you’re doing. These connections can serve as an introduction to sources of capital or a “reference” to add to your pitch deck and other marketing materials.

It doesn’t hurt to assess your options regarding influencers in the finance or real estate space. If an influencer is a good fit for your project, they’ll be able to help grow awareness of your offering and generate interest from future investors.

Publicity In Respected Media Publications

Writing thought leadership articles in respected real estate, finance, and business publications is a great way to establish yourself as a trustworthy voice in your industry. Developers can also generate publicity for their upcoming projects by obtaining media attention through unique choices regarding their developments. 

Image courtesy of The Turiya, Bali

Strategies For Building And Refining Your Presentation

Now that you’ve built credibility for your brand, it’s time to prepare your project. The project you’re raising capital for must work on two levels, similar to catching a fish: First, it must be captivating at a glance — getting potential investors hooked. Second, it must be realistic, thorough, and detailed — reeling the investors in.  

Pitch Deck

The pitch deck is where you hook investors through a concise yet attention-grabbing presentation. It’s not meant to answer every single question an investor may have. The pitch deck should only give enough information to showcase your project’s legitimacy and leave people wanting to hear more. It’s often wise to leave your audience with a simple call-to-action that moves them to the next stage of the sales funnel.

Business and Financial Plan

After the pitch deck, you will need a more extended business plan, usually called an “offering document”. This is where developers get into the nitty gritty details, including sensitivity analysis. The world is more uncertain than ever, and you’ll need to show you’ve thought about all eventualities.

A detailed data bank is also necessary for preparation for investors’ due diligence. Your data bank should include industry reports that support your proposition and third-party feedback regarding project financial forecasts, costs, and projections. 

How To Find Investors

Once preparation is over, it’s time to build your leads through investor marketing. Real estate marketing for investors takes time, and real estate developers need a thorough and robust plan that covers a variety of avenues. While we’re major proponents of digital marketing, we’ve learned the value of a balanced promotional campaign that integrates online and offline campaigns to get results. Here are strategies for real estate investor marketing strategies.

Expand Your Network

Some of the best marketing for real estate investors is also the most “old-school:” Expanding your network through in-person relationships, networking, and communication. There are a few key strategies for expanding your network:

• Assess your existing network: Is there someone who could support your project or work as a mutual connection between you and an interested party?

• Get active in your community: Attend relevant events, conferences, and seminars. Assess membership clubs for opportunities worth the cost. Become engaged in online real estate development communities and networks. And don’t forget to make some stylish business cards!

• Put together a team: You’ll need a legal advisor, accountant, and other professionals on your project to finalize any deals. Put them in advance, and assess your options for their ability to introduce you to relevant prospects. 

Direct Investor Outreach

Reach out to investors both online and offline. Try direct messaging via LinkedIn. Never spam or send mass emails — in our experience, it only stands to be a waste of time. Short, concise, professional outreach is an ideal way to generate leads in your target audience. At this point, you’ve already established a credible LinkedIn presence through your preparation, rendering investors more likely to consider your proposals. 

Become familiar with family offices or private investors in your space. Don’t hesitate to contact them directly if you can’t find a mutual connection to make an introduction.

Social Ads

Social ads are always an option for building prospects. However, marketers must understand the social media landscape they’re trying to navigate. For example, Meta has introduced some regulations that make ads for investment sales tricky. To get around these issues, you may need to focus your advertising towards promoting your company’s general content instead of a specific project.

Google Ads

Google Ads is an online advertising platform placing ads in Google search results and on websites, mobile apps, and videos. A simple analysis will show whether your advertising location is relevant to investors searching for opportunities. Once you’ve located your audience, a tightly defined set of keywords could have the capacity to generate strong and consistent lead flow. 

Google Ads can be a money pit for undisciplined marketers. Beware high CPC (cost-per-click) in major destinations, as it’s easy to blow your budget quickly while not reaching your goals. Developers need to spread their marketing efforts across multiple strategies, ensuring all their eggs are not in one basket. 

SEO & Content Marketing

SEO (search engine optimization) could be a great tool if you start planning well in advance of your investment outreach. SEO is a great way to organically generate clicks to your website by ranking higher on search engines. To rank, companies must commit to creating consistently high-quality content that aligns with current search trends.

Digital Research

Web scraping, or collecting data from websites, can be used to build a database of relevant targets. Developers should be looking for investors with experience in the real estate space or who are known to fund assets similar to the project. 

If digital research returns many relevant results, much of this initial outreach can be automated by email marketing. However, be sure to keep it personalized, genuine and direct. Never spammy.

Villa Del Mar - Cabo San Lucas. Image courtesy of Cabo Villas.

Proven Partners Can Help You with Real Estate Investor Marketing

There are more avenues than ever to generate interest in a real estate investment. By learning how to market to real estate investors, you’ll be sure to stand out from the crowd and secure favourable funding offers. Check out Proven Partners' real estate investor marketing services to learn more from the experts.