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Real Estate Marketing Checklist: The 21 Items a Solo Agent Actually Needs, in Order

A real estate marketing checklist for a solo agent has 21 items in four groups: seven you fix once, four you do weekly, four monthly, and six on listing day.
The order below is the order they pay off.
Each item says who can do it for you and roughly what that costs, because the point of a checklist is not to give you 21 jobs, it is to decide which ones you keep.

Fix once: the foundation

These take a weekend and then mostly hold.

  1. A website with real pages. One page per neighborhood you work, a buyer page, a seller page, an about page that says where you work and why. Everything else on this list draws from it: your social posts, your emails, your Google profile. Yours to write, or your brokerage's template filled in properly. A thin site makes every later item harder.
  2. A claimed Google Business Profile. Category, service area, hours, ten real photos, and a link to your site. Free. This decides what people see when they search your name.
  3. Business pages on Facebook and Instagram. Not your personal profile. Same name, same photo, same bio line, link to the site. Free.
  4. A CRM with every past client in it. Your brokerage platform if it includes one; Follow Up Boss at $58 to $69 a seat if it does not. The single most valuable hour on this list is the one you spend loading it.
  5. A LinkedIn profile that says what you do and where. One sentence. Matters if you work relocations, investors or referral partners; otherwise low priority.
  6. Review requests set up. A saved text and a saved email with your Google review link. Free.
  7. A compliance note from your broker. What the logo requirement is, what the listing-photo rule is, how they want fair housing handled on social. Ask once, write it down, hand it to anyone who posts for you.

Weekly: the habits that produce business

8. Two to four social posts about your market. Not listings. What a term means in your town, why one home sold and one sat, which part of town fits which week, the seller's free fix. Six real examples from a working agent are on the examples page. This is the item agents stop doing first and the one that decides whether anyone remembers you in February.
- Yourself: two to three hours a month from the ideas page.
- Software from your website: Boomp Packs at $9 a month for ten posts by email that you publish; Core at $39 for twenty posts, a carousel and a video published after you approve them; done-for-you at $275 with Boomp's founder approving them. The four-way comparison is its own page.
- A freelancer: $500 to $1,500 a month, right when you also want a campaign or ads handled.
9. One review request. To whoever closed, showed, or thanked you this week. Yours; it lands differently from you.
10. One personal follow-up from the CRM. A text, a call, a note. Not a newsletter. Yours, or an assistant's with your voice.
11. One Google Business Profile post. A photo and two sentences. Yours in five minutes, or have it posted from your website alongside the social posts.

Monthly: the ones that compound

  1. One email to your database. What happened in your market this month, in your words, one screen long. Your CRM or brokerage platform sends it. Yours to write, or draw it from that month's social posts.
  2. A February check. Are you still posting, still following up? This is the item, not the number of followers.
  3. One story post. Why you do this, the client moment that stuck, the thing you learned. One a month keeps the other posts human.
  4. Photos refreshed on Google. Two or three new ones. Free.

Listing day: the six-item list

  1. The listing post, on the page and shared to your profile the day it goes live. Yours; this is the one in ten that is a listing.
  2. The compliance check: brokerage logo, co-listing credit, photo rights, fair-housing read of the copy. From item 7.
  3. The neighbor letter or knock: the ten houses around the listing, "your neighbor is selling, here is what it means for your value." Old, and still the best source of the next listing.
  4. The Google Business Profile post about the listing. Five minutes.
  5. The CRM tag: every showing feedback and every open-house sign-in into the CRM the same day.
  6. The just-sold follow-up, when it closes: the post, the review request, the neighbor note about the price.

What the checklist costs

ItemIf you do itIf someone or something does it
Website pagesA weekendBrokerage template, or a designer once
Google Business ProfileFree, an hour to set up, five minutes a weekWeekly post from your website via Boomp, included in a plan
CRM and follow-upBrokerage platform, or Follow Up Boss $58 to $69 a seatAn assistant runs the sequences; the calls stay yours
Weekly social postsTwo to three hours a month$9 Packs, $39 Core, $275 done-for-you; freelancer $500 to $1,500
Monthly emailAn hourDrawn from the month's posts; sent by the CRM
Listing-day listTwo hours per listingTransaction coordinator, with the post and the neighbor note still yours

Under $200 a month with a paid CRM, under $100 without one.
The item to spend on first is the weekly posts, because it is the one you will otherwise skip the week a listing goes live.

Where to start today

Do item 2 and item 4 this afternoon: claim the profile, load the CRM.
Then decide item 8 honestly.
If you will write two posts a week through February, use the ideas page.
If you will not, get ten finished posts made from your website, free, no email or card, and read them against your own site before choosing who keeps the feed full.

Frequently asked questions

What should be on a real estate marketing checklist?

Four groups. Fix once: a website with real neighborhood and process pages, a claimed Google Business Profile, business pages on Facebook and Instagram, a CRM with every past client in it. Weekly: two to four social posts about your market, one review request, one personal follow-up. Monthly: one email to your database, a check that you are still posting, one story post. Listing day: the listing post, the MLS and brokerage compliance check, the neighbor letter.

What is the most important real estate marketing task?

Following up with people who already know you. Past clients and their referrals produce most of a solo agent's business, so the CRM habit outranks every other line. The second most important is staying visible to that same group between transactions, which is what the weekly social posts do.

How much does it cost to work this checklist?

Under $200 a month for a solo agent. A CRM seat around $58 to $69 a month, or your brokerage's platform if it is included. Social media from $9 a month if software writes the posts and you publish them, $39 if it publishes after you approve, $275 if it is fully handled. Google Business Profile and a monthly email are free or close to it.

Can I outsource the whole checklist?

Most of it. The social posts can be written from your website and published for you; Boomp's done-for-you option at $275 a month does that with the founder approving each post. A transaction coordinator or assistant can run the CRM follow-ups and the listing-day list. The parts that stay yours are the review ask, the personal follow-up and the yes on anything property-specific.

How often should I revisit the checklist?

The fix-once items every January. The weekly and monthly habits get one check in February, because that is the month agents stop. If you are still posting and still following up in February, the checklist is working.

Try it with your business

Get a finished post, carousel, or short video from your website. Keep the file and copy the caption. Your first sample needs no email, account, or card.

Rather not do this yourself? Start with what done-for-you social media should handle or affordable social media management, compared.

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Real Estate Marketing Checklist: The 21 Items a Solo Agent Actually Needs, in Order
KC

Written by Kathleen Celmins

Founder of Boomp. Helping local businesses stay visible on social media without doing the work themselves.