As a real estate agent or realtor, you may have experienced a tremendous shift in the real estate marketing business over the last few years. This shift was all possible because of technology. Clients are now able to buy houses and properties in so many ways. Lots of clients now even make use of online search engines to make research about what they want and, in the end, they have a clear vision of precisely what they want out of their future home.
Social media was one of the first game changers for real estate business and realtors at large. With social media in place, real estate agents or realtors for short – grew big in their real estate businesses. From purchasing Facebook Business Ads to sharing photo albums of new listings on their social media handles like Instagram, Twitter, Pinterest, etc. In general, social media platforms has greatly helped real estate professionals to build a brand and a booming business online.
As a result of social media, search engines and online blogs, digital marketing has come to the forefront of real estate marketing efforts. From generating new leads to completing successful sales, the real estate industry is now heavily reliant on digital marketing. Statistically, it is proven that over 80% of real estate professionals use online ads and social media for their real estate marketing. Your digital marketing strategy can have a much greater impact than traditional marketing strategies on your real estate journey.
So, to be successful in your real estate marketing strategy online, I have prepared the following steps to help you get the results you’re for.
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Real Estate Marketing Step 1: Set Up Your Social Cards.
You can’t be in any business in this era and you are not on any social media platform. If you are not, then you are throwing away a whole lot of money and lead. You should make sure you set up a social media account on all the big social media networks (Facebook, Tiktok, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram, YouTube). Also, make sure all your social media accounts are active. Interact with users, share good content, and promote your properties with your social accounts.
Real Estate Marketing Step 2: Create a Professional Business Website.
Mostly all consumers of anything in today’s world like to do a lot of online research themselves before making purchases. As a result, property and home buying are not excluded. You will also agree with me that even you reading this article will never buy anything online without making proper research. So, it also applies to everybody. You need to create a professional online business website for your real estate marketing strategy.
With your website, make it easy for users to access all the necessary information about the property you are listing – also make sure all your property pages have great photos, virtual tours, and easy access to Google Maps and Google Earth if possible. List the landmarks and hot spots nearby and their respective walking distances (mention the bus stop that’s just a five-minute walk and every other thing that makes the area great.
In Addition, you should consider adding a live chat feature on your website. Your real estate business is extremely people-centric, that’s why it is very important to be available when they need to ask questions or get clarification. Investing in a live chat software allows people to connect 24/7 and schedule appointments without necessarily speaking directly to you.
Read Also: Display Advertising | Top 5 best practices
Real Estate Marketing Step 3: Enable Social Sharing for each Property Page.
Ok, have you ever visited a site and you saw what you really loved and wanted to just share with friends, family and loved ones? I myself do this a lot. But how can this be possible if the owners of those sites never enabled social sharing tools? Just as you love and share other peoples’ content, people visiting your real estate site may have seen a house or property they love and may just want to share your content. If they don’t see any social media sharing tool, that will make it impossible for them to share your content and help you reach more people. So, make it easy for buyers to email and share various properties on your site online by adding social sharing buttons. It will also help you reach more clients.
Step 4: Hire a Professional Photographer.
To become successful in your real estate marketing online, you should not joke with the quality of your images. This is because successful real estate ads rely heavily on great and quality photography. One thing with bad photos is that they will diminish the interest of buyers in even the greatest of properties. It’s absolutely vital that you have gorgeous photos of your properties, especially in your ads campaign. You need to hire a photographer with experience photographing homes and properties to give you better views of each property. However, if you have sophisticated equipment and are confident in your abilities in photography, you can still do this yourself, but ensure the pictures are of great quality. But remember this might be one of those scenarios when it pays to bring in the professionals.
Real Estate Marketing Step 5: Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Pay-Per-Click advertising or PPC for short is an excellent strategy for realtors looking to generate new leads to their business. This is because this ad is based on an action that they only get to pay for every time the ad gets clicked on. Meaning you won’t spend your ads budget unnecessarily.
This is a great digital marketing strategy for real estate professionals running online ads for their business and seeking potential clients who may genuinely be interested in their offering. So, you only pay when someone clicks through your ad.
Often, PPC ads can be targeted toward individuals who have searched for correlated keywords in Google or another search engine.
Step 6: Create an Irresistible Offer to Capture Leads.
Creating an irresistible offer for your real estate business is a must if you want to succeed with your ads. You should try creating an offer may be in form of an eBook that may be “talking of things new homeowners should consider before buying” or “about the most valuable features a new home should have.” Offering free eBooks in exchange for an email address (and zip code, in the case of real estate) is a great way to capture leads and turn those leads into sales in the near future.
Real Estate Marketing Step 7: Develop and Nurture an Email Campaign
Irrespective of whatever industry your business may be, an email marketing campaign is a valuable tool that will help you generate new leads and stay relevant with both present and past clients. These leads are what converts to real sales when you nurture those emails carefully. Ideally, a well-rounded campaign will funnel potential clients through predetermined actions based on their buyer profile and previous engagements with you.
According to Smart Insights, the average open rate of emails for real estate businesses is around 27% with a click-through rate (CTR) of 3%. However, the more relevant your content is to a client, the more likely they will be interested in opening the email to see what you have to say.
Real Estate Marketing Step 8: Spend Time on SEO
If your site is lacking anything, it should not be search engine optimization. This is because Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the networking strategy your site needs to communicate with people looking for you. Quality Search Engine Optimization is a critical technique that you can use to drive leads or traffic to your website. When done correctly, your website and web pages will show up higher on Search Engine Results Pages (SERPs) during relevant searches.
Recently, Google, Bing and other search engines are constantly changing their algorithms, this is why it is critical to focus on your SEO more than one time. Keywords are a basic aspect of SEO that can make a significant difference. To include keywords in your SEO strategy, make sure that you include high-ranking keywords such as your location and your industry throughout the content on your website. Other elements of a strong SEO strategy, including:
Backlinks
Meta titles and descriptions
Social media pages
Online directories, etc.
Because content is such a valuable asset to a good SEO strategy, make sure that you update your blog regularly. Typically, good content with high quality writing with words that are above 1200 is usually considered to rank very high on Google. So, it will be a good practice to write high-value, long-form content on a regular basis.
Read Also: The Differences Between Search Ads, Display Ads, and Social Media Advertising
Step 9: Use Social Media Marketing Strategy
Although it’s a good practice to have social media accounts for your real estate business, and make posts on regular basis. That won’t be enough to get you through and pull money out of the pockets of your buyers. Unless of course, you are an influencer. Even if you are an influencer, I bet it took you time and money to grow your audience and most of them might not be interested in real estate at the moment. This is why having a fully-fledged social media marketing strategy is what will truly yield the results you’re looking for. You should be able to use your social media accounts to run strategic ads that will convert to sales. You can also work with influencers in your niche and promote your real estate business with them. Creating and managing your real estate business through social media ads is a great way to increase your revenue.
Real Estate Marketing Step 10: Keep an Eye on Your Competitors.
In every business, there are always competitors, and to be able to stay in business and be ahead of them, you need to keep an eye on them. You need to know what they are doing, what do their websites look like, how active they are on social media, and what kind of content they are posting and how engaged those contents are. Take a general note of what your competitors are doing. Try to avoid their mistakes and replicate their success!
In conclusion, for you to run a successful online ad for your real estate marketing business, you need to create a flow that will make people trust you and build a relationship with you and your business. A flow in this sense means that you must put all the necessary things in place. Starting from your social media, your website and your funnel. So that when you start running your ads, you will have a place to send your customers to. If you are just running ads without having a website, a blog, social media and an email list, you are definitely wasting huge resources and losing money in the process.
