Fun Christmas marketing ideas for real estate agents

Why run a Christmas campaign? When you run a campaign that’s in line with the current season, you soft-market yourself as being community-focused and fun. This is an excellent real estate brand marketing strategy because it makes your brand more memorable in the eyes of the local community.

Some campaign activities might be physical, but these still allow you to capitalise online by using them to create digital assets like photos, graphics and videos. These can then be used in your social posts, social stories, and reels.

We’ve put together some fun and engaging real estate Christmas marketing ideas that will allow you to show your brand’s personality and make stronger connections with your local community.

Idea 1 – Hire a Santa

Have you considered hiring a Santa for some fun Christmas real estate ads and promotions? Here are some ways that you can utilise this idea:

• Organise free Santa photo sessions at your office
• Have a Santa meet and greet in the main street of your town or suburb
• Organise a Santa run around your local streets to give out treats to the kids

You could even team up with a community organisation for this such as the CFA (Country Fire Authority) or the local Lions or Apex clubs.

This gives you the chance to connect with your local community and provides lots of opportunities for photo/video sessions that you can then use in your real estate social media marketing campaigns.

Idea 2 – Create some Advent calendars

We all know that Advent calendars are a popular Christmas tradition. Your real estate agency could consider getting some Advent calendars printed with your branding and give them away either from your office or during a door-knocking session.

Have a look at these branded, chocolate-filled Advent calendars that you can order.

Alternatively, you could consider sending a digital calendar to your clients and partnering with other local businesses to offer discounts like this one from MyAdvent.net.

Idea 3 – Run a community competition

When you run a competition, it’s an excellent opportunity to engage with the locals in your area and through your social media pages to enhance your real estate digital marketing.

You could run a Christmas lights competition where you get local homeowners to upload a photo of their displays. Or, they could email these photos to you, and you can then feature them on your social media pages.

You can then ask all your followers to vote on their favourite photos. The photo with the most votes wins a prize.

Another favourite competition is to run a colouring contest for local kids. You can distribute entry forms via your website and drop them to primary schools, daycare centres, and even your local coffee shops. The completed entries could be displayed in your office windows, and then the winning entries are posted on your social media pages.

Idea 4 – Letters from Santa

This is a unique idea that is gaining in popularity in recent years. To organise this, all you have to do is put a printable form on your real estate website that local kids can fill in with their favourite Santa wishes.

You then place a special Santa mailbox in front of your office where the kids can post their letters. Make sure that the form contains fields for the name and address of the child.

Once you receive the completed letters, you can then post a personalised letter back to each child from Santa. Not only will this delight the children who participate, but you also collect some new family names and addresses in the process.

Idea 5 – Reverse Christmas tree

Major department stores like Big W and Kmart do this every year, but there’s no reason why you can’t organise this for your real estate office and lesser-known charities. Set up a Christmas tree and ask local families to donate a new gift suitable for a child or young person.

Once all the gifts have been collected, organise a Christmas breakfast or lunch for a local charity, shelter, or refuge to hand out the gifts to children who may otherwise have missed out.

If you advertise this freely on your social media pages, it might even get the attention of your local news media, and you’ll get some free publicity as a result.

Idea 6 – Put a Christmas spin on your normal marketing

Use the season to add some sparkle and fun to your regular marketing campaigns. Here are a few ways to add some Christmas spirit to your marketing:

• Embellish your real estate signboards with some Christmas graphics. You could even ask your signboard installers to dress up as Santa for the day. You can then use this to create a Christmas photo shoot of your installers putting up the signs.
• Make sure that some of your blogs are Christmas-related for some fun and frivolity.
• Consider creating a fun Christmas video featuring your team. Have a look at this real estate team’s Christmas video for some inspiration.
• Add some fun Christmas elements to your website and social media pages. You might even want to create a special Christmas cover photo for your Facebook page or a Christmas banner for your website.

Idea 7 – 12 days of Christmas giveaways

For this campaign, you’ll want to collect 12 prizes that you’ll give away, one per day, leading up to Christmas. You can use your favourite social media channel to promote this campaign and include certain calls to action to select the winner daily.

Calls to action could include:

• Likes
• Comments
• A photo caption contest
• Tagging a friend
• Sharing a story

Before you do this, make sure that you read up on the rules regarding competitions on your social media channel of choice as they all have different guidelines for this.

Idea 8 – Send Christmas cards

Sending physical Christmas cards is a tradition that seems to have gone out of favour. But this is something that could make your real estate brand stand out from your competitors if you choose to do it.

You can get the cards printed professionally with a photo of your real estate team all wearing Santa hats or for a little more fun wear an ugly Christmas sweater. These cards can then be sent to everyone on your database with a personalised message.

If physical cards are too much effort or you don’t have the staff or the time to organise these, consider sending digital e-cards instead. The most important thing is to make your clients feel that they’re more than just an entry in your database.

Make it fun and professional

Whichever idea you go with, ensure that you engage a professional photographer or videographer to create some impressive footage for your real estate agency’s Christmas marketing campaigns.

You also want to make sure that you sponsor your posts on social media to ensure that they’re seen by the local community.

Put your December real estate marketing plan into action

Make sure you plan and organise your Christmas campaign in November. This allows you to have materials printed and delivered in time before your campaign goes live in the first week of December.

Ensure that you get all your staff involved as well as your suppliers and even other local businesses. You also want to keep your Christmas ads running until Boxing Day.

Christmas is a great time for you to have some fun with your marketing campaigns and really connect with your local community. It’s one of the best ways to keep your real estate brand first and foremost in everyone’s mind so that when it comes to listing a property, it will be your real estate marketing agency that they think of before any other.

Written by Melanie Hoole

My team and I specialise in helping real estate and property professionals perfect their personal brand, build a first-class digital profile and implement inbound marketing activities to attract leads. If you are unsure which direction to take with your digital marketing contact me for help.