What is the best way to find a marketing partner in the real estate industry? [closed]

My understanding of your question is how do you find strategic partners to support your launch of a real estate matching service. You have a specific interest in a partner that can support your start-up's marketing efforts.

There are three places to look for such a partner: vendors, customers, competitors.

Vendors

I like to go to my potential vendors as partners. They have a vested interest in my success, and they are very often in a similar industry and have deep connections that they will be open to leveraging on behalf of a shared endeavor.

For example, since real estate is regulated on a state by state basis you will find that you will have significant legal expenses as you roll out nationally. For example in 10 (+/-) states commission rebates are illegal. Your match and search in those states will need to remove that variable. So a potential valuable partner would a real estate lawyer with national experience that earns equity with lower bills, and has a network of connected people in the industry around the country.

Customers

I am going to make an assumption that your service is paid for by the real estate professions who choose to be listed. To that end the customer -- either individually, through brokers, and association are fantastic partners. Real Estate professionals all have extensive networks from their broker alliances -- and all the past brokers they have been part of.

Many real estate “team leaders’ are purely in the market of making money on referrals and are dedicated to the investments in lead and referral platforms. They are also notoriously willing to invest in the “next great thing.”

Competitors

By looking at the competitors in the space you will quickly learn some great ideas of where to seek marketing/sales partners. I see that there is a consumer facing Realtor(r) matching company which was underwritten by the Realtor(r) association in Houston and recently won an award from the national association. Perhaps there is another Realtor(r) association elsewhere in the country that for one reason or another prefers your approach over the one in Houston? Maybe purely because it is not from what they perceive for whatever reason a competitor?

Best of luck in finding some great partners for the marketing/sale of your matching service!

It seems if you create a quality service the first place I would go to market it would be the Realtors. If they can add a widget to their email profile, or their own website touting their score then consumers will see it and it can grow from there.

Avvo is a good model, and similar to your concept but for lawyers.

The National Association of Realtors and its annual convention are kind of the hub of that industry.

I worked with a couple of places that had real estate affiliated products. There are leaders in the real estate solutions market that are relatively easy to identify through online business directories and databases like ReferenceUSA.

I second Joseph's laundry list of partner-candidate sources.

One caution: the real estate industry has been absolutely hammered by service providers literally for a couple of decades. Real estate is a natural application for computer systems. I worked on an MLS "extender" system that allowed remote viewing of home images - in 1992 - not using the internet - using stone age, older protocols and services. You will have a very hard task ahead of you differentiating any new service or product in the MLS domain.