Digital Marketing Strategies for Real Estate
Since people buy and make enquiries about anything and everything online, real estate firms are increasingly making an effort to establish a digital presence using digital marketing strategies.
Customers and potential customers have many options to choose from on the internet, meaning your brand has to be visible and ready to compete. With digital marketing, you can build your brand by creating a strong online presence and engaging existing and new customers, resulting in more vendor leads & sales.
Digital marketing for real estate agents entails a lot of different things. One thing to avoid is focusing solely on property listings and deals per se. The best digital marketing strategy will be one that integrates your digital reselling content with your other social media platforms.
A successful strategy will integrate your advertising with all of the other things you are doing on social media. For example, integrating links to properties on Facebook or Instagram would help followers find out about them without having to Google them.
Build your email database
As a real estate agent, one of the most important things that you can do is build your email database. This is the best way to get your name out there and connect with potential clients.
One way that email marketing can be used by real estate agents is by creating a separate email list for buyer and seller leads. This allows agents to not only keep track of potential clients, but also have a database of homes on the market in their area.
These segmented lists can then be further split by suburb, budget etc. and used to automate outreach and reminders keeping you at the forefront of the user’s mind. Personalised email converts a lot better than cold contact attempts, so do this from the get go.
Personalised emails have much higher open and click through rates than plain text mailings, so try and convert as many customers to opt-in from all channels. For more info on how email marketing can help, check out our email marketing services.
Optimise for search engines
How often are you on Google, Bing, Yahoo or some other search engine trying to find things? Well, you’re not the only one. In the real estate sphere, searches could be for properties in certain areas, reliable agencies and realtors, and even the experiences of other real estate consumers in similar situations.
These searches could lead prospective clients right to you and, so, being easy to find online can be immensely profitable. To be easily found online, however, you have to be strategic – which is what search engine optimisation and engagement is all about.
You will have to use content and images relevant to your real estate community and apply search engine marketing as well. Optimising your Google My Business listing should be high on your to-do list especially if you don’t have your own standalone website we build real estate websites if you need one. This listing can then be promoted via Google Ads if required, to get you above all other realtors in your area.
Use social media to get more vendors & sales
The benefits of using social media for real estate agents is that it allows you to have another platform to advertise your services and connect with potential clients. It can also be a great way to connect with other realtors in the same area, along with local property managers and authorities who can provide assistance.
You should always use social media as a way to promote your work and business while communicating and networking. You don’t want to always be pushing people to buy and sell, add value to their lives. You want to be sure that people know what they are getting if they contact you or if they go through with a purchase. Get personal, share stories about your day to day, successes and troubles.
Personalised Marketing
Personalised marketing strategies are successful because people prefer to be talked to rather than talked at. People get tired of seeing the same generalised messages over and over again. This strategy uses data collection, analysis and automated technology to reach out to customers or prospects as individuals. So, instead of just sending out adverts with the hope of catching someone’s attention, you can run behaviour-based campaigns to fit your leads.
According to a recent Forrester report, 96% of website visitors leave without taking the desired actions. With personalised marketing, you can provide the information your target audience wants at the right time and in the right place. Retargeting and remarketing strategies, for instance, target people who have had some contact with your real estate agency already.
Timely data driven reminders
People have short attention spans and move easily from one task to the next. That is why you need to use data, automation and timely email messages in order to achieve your targets. A common mistake made by real estate agents is not using the appropriate timing for their automated reminders.
Retargeting
Retargeting is a tactic of using digital marketing to advertise products or services to web visitors that have previously visited your website or viewed your advertising. Although this strategy can be used for any business, it’s particularly useful for real estate agents as they will often have a high number of leads that may either 1) not know how the real estate process works and are unsure what steps to take next; or 2) are simply in the market for a home but haven’t quite made up their minds yet.
Retargeting can be used to get more vendors by reminding potential vendors why you are the best choice and serve them with relevant information in the way of a guided story.
