Updated 20 September 2026: first published on Elite Agent in March 2025. The article has been refreshed as an AI basics guide to planning a connected real estate marketing journey.
Plenty of people in real estate, me included, share marketing tactics: an Instagram idea, a short email, a greeting card or a video script.
The difficult question is what happens between those activities. Someone reads your post. Then what? They subscribe to an update. What do they receive? They enquire. Who follows up?
If you are learning AI basics, mapping those connections is a useful first task. You do not need AI to produce another enormous list of things to do. Start by showing it what you already do and asking where the next step is unclear.
How can AI help me plan my real estate marketing?
A framework I have found useful is Ryan Deiss and DigitalMarketer’s Customer Value Journey. It describes eight stages. Here is a brief real estate adaptation:
- Awareness: someone first encounters your agency, perhaps through a local post.
- Engagement: they spend time with something useful, such as an explanation of the selling process.
- Subscribe: they choose to receive more information from you.
- Convert: they take a small next step, such as arranging a conversation.
- Excite: you deliver something helpful from that initial commitment.
- Ascend: the relationship progresses to an appropriate service, such as appointing you to sell.
- Advocate: a client chooses to share their experience.
- Promote: they actively recommend you to someone else.
These are planning prompts, not a promise that every person follows the same path. Progress should suit the client’s needs. A bigger purchase or more expensive campaign is not automatically the right outcome.
Start with one audience and your actual activities
Choose a specific group, such as local homeowners considering a sale in the next year. Write down the activities you already run, what each invites someone to do, who handles that next step and what you currently measure.
Use aggregate figures and fictional examples where possible. Leave private client information out of the AI chat.
I know parts of a marketing system can slip when life gets busy. I have let bits of mine slip too. A useful plan needs to fit the time and people you actually have.
Help me review one real estate marketing journey.
Audience and service: [DETAILS]
Current activities and their next steps: [LIST]
Available people, weekly time and budget: [LIMITS]
Observed results, reporting periods and sources: [DATA, OR SAY NOT MEASURED]
Use these stages: Awareness, Engagement, Subscribe, Convert, Excite, Ascend, Advocate and Promote.
First ask for missing context and wait for my reply. Then map each existing activity to a stage. Show its intended next step, owner and a useful measure. Separate what I already do from your suggestions.
Do not invent conversion rates, customer behaviour, testimonials or results. If the evidence cannot identify the weakest stage, explain what I should measure first.
Suggest one small experiment within my limits, with an owner, review date and a decision rule for keeping, changing or stopping it. Make invitations optional and appropriate to the client’s needs. Do not assume I have particular software or permission to contact someone.What might a useful first experiment look like?
Imagine a fictional agent publishes a weekly suburb update. Readers can subscribe, but the welcome message does not explain what they will receive or how to ask a question.
The first experiment might be improving that welcome message, assigning someone to handle replies and reviewing the questions received over the next month. That gives the agent something specific to learn from.
It does not establish that the welcome message is the biggest problem in their business. They would need evidence to make that call. If the activity is not measured, start there.
Check the plan before adding more work
Read the AI’s suggestions against your actual capacity. Does someone own each step? Can you deliver what the invitation promises? Does the proposed measure help you understand enquiries and useful conversations, or merely count activity?
For reviews and referrals, invite honest feedback without assuming a positive response. Let people choose whether to recommend you.
Write the eight stages on a page and put your existing activities beside them. Choose one connection to improve, give it enough time to assess and record what happened. That is a manageable beginning to a marketing system you can keep improving.
The original version appeared in Samantha McLean’s AI Powered Agents newsletter. Read the refreshed source article on AI Powered Real Estate by Samantha McLean on Substack.