Most Effective Marketing for Real Estate: Digital Marketing
How to use social media, video content, landing pages, virtual tours and email marketing in real estate
Nowadays, a business doesn’t have the option to opt-out of being online. The world has changed and marketing is evolving at a rapid rate. As a realtor, you must evolve with it. There are a lot of practices and principles to follow in real estate digital marketing. Here we’ve presented the most effective marketing for Real Estate. We will briefly introduce different topics, and offer further reading via the corresponding link in each section.
Real Estate Social Media Marketing
Four billion people in the world use the internet and 75% of them (three billion) use social media. That’s a staggering statistic but it highlights how important social media is in our lives and how necessary it is in real estate digital marketing channels.
With the ubiquity of cell phones, social media is more important than ever. People spend most of their time online. 58% of Millennials found their home on a mobile device. This generation was raised in the internet era and has high expectations of mobile content. Employing social media is not something you can afford to be ambivalent about. Engage your audience in your social media posts and update them regularly.
Platforms like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, and YouTube are heavily used; and since they are where your prospects are, they are where you should be.
You need to have a plan for your social media marketing and should set some objectives for yourself. Clear, actionable, and measurable ones like:
- Increase website traffic
- Raise your follower count
- Improve engagement (to increase brand loyalty)
- Generate more contact form submissions
- Produce more property inquiries or sales (converting social followers to qualified leads and new business)
There are so many practical tips to succeed in real estate social media marketing.
Find more in-depth guide and analysis:
8 Real Estate Marketing Trends to Expect in 2021
Real Estate Video Marketing
With Real Estate you want to showcase properties online and nothing beats video for engagement. The importance of engagement is evident with the growing popularity of virtual tours. Videos attract 403% more inquiries. This makes realtors more efficient, brings around more listings and meetings, and saves time. There are many ways you can use videos in your real estate marketing:
- Real Estate Listing Videos
- Real Estate Market Update
- Testimonials and Interviews
- Home Buying/Selling Tips
And much more! Videos increase revenue 49% faster than other forms of marketing and boost purchase intent by a staggering 97%! These stats might seem too good to be true.
Instead of yelling at your audience that you are a rockstar, prove you are. Provide valuable compelling content such as:
- Renovation and Home Maintenance Tips
- Market News
- Educational Real Estate Videos
- Agent Info Brand Explainer
- Client Success Stories
- Live Videos
- And……
Thanks to advances in technology, realtors can awe and impress their prospects with cutting-edge features like virtual tours and drone videos.
Virtual Tours:
Virtual tours are a simulation of a location or property on your computer or cell phone. You are the pilot navigating the camera to where you want to go. Virtual tours are videos made better. iGuide and Matterport are the two platforms that create 3D models of the properties upon demand.
Real Estate Content Marketing
Real estate content marketing is a relatively new subject in the world of business but it continues to prove its usefulness and value. Where traditional marketing fails at being cost-effective and long-lasting content marketing continues to prove its worth.
The problem is it’s easy to get lost in the process. There are companies that produce content but it can’t be called content marketing. They spend a lot of time on social media without taking advantage of digital marketing strategies.
The principal rule behind content marketing is:
Constant production of valuable and compelling content for a specifically defined audience.
Each word in this definition carries an important meaning that if removed or ignored, ruins the whole idea. For instance, take the words valuable and compelling out of the above definition. The result is content with no significant outcome. That’s why some companies have lost faith in content marketing. Content marketing is not about you, nor is it about selling. It is a long-term investment but unlike traditional marketing, the effects of your efforts will last a long time. This long-term relationship with your clients can be as simple as a market update done in the right way.
Also, it’s about identifying the needs of your audience and producing the content they are looking for online. Why? To present yourself as an expert who can be trusted. This way you grow a fan base for yourself. Then you will steer them in the desired direction:
Triggering profitable behavior in your audience
Content marketing requires thorough planning and research before taking action:
- Studying you’re your audience and defining personas
- Keyword research
- Defining your mission and services – the value you create,
- Developing a content calendar
- Choosing channels for promoting content
- Assessing the effectiveness of your strategy
There are far more mini-steps to content marketing which is all explained in detail in the ultimate guide below:
Real Estate Email Marketing
99% of people check their email inbox daily and it is estimated that by the end of 2020 close to 255 million people will be using emails in the United States. Emails prove to be a pretty efficient asset in real estate marketing as they deliver $42 ROI for every $1 spent. If you still believe real estate is all about in-person meetings and have not developed a real estate email marketing plan, now is the time.
In order to get started, you need to take action. We have broken down the steps you need to take:
1. Define Goals
Real estate marketing won’t happen without a strategy and to have one you need to have defined a clear goal that is clear, actionable, and measurable.
2. Have a Select Audience
You are not aiming for everybody. Regardless of what you think you can cover, you need to know your market and audience. Study your targets and develop your niche.
3. Find Your Own Favorite Email Service Provider
You need to choose an ESP which covers your needs. It should support importing contact lists, be simple with easy-to-customize templates and allow you to track your progress.
4. Encourage Action
An informative and engaging email campaign should always contain a call to action. If you’ve worked to impress your reader you should want to make it as easy as possible for them to access your website or book an appointment.
A call to action is the signpost letting your reader know what to do next, it is the “buy now!” button on a sales page or, in your case, likely a link to book a meeting with you. Don’t let a potential lead slip away. Remember the call to action.
Real Estate Landing Pages
One might think to empower the online presence as a realtor, it is enough to have a website and some social media channels. However, constant lead generation is key to success in real estate marketing. A pretty effective way of directing your visitors to where you have in mind is a landing page.
Unlike a website, a landing page is with a specific and single purpose. It can be integrated into your website or act as a standalone page. The purpose of real estate landing pages is to drive the visitors in your desired direction such as:
- Call you
- Sign up / join
- Download something
- Subscribe
- Try for free
- Learn More
- Etc.
Now lead capturing landing pages offer some valuable services or content and have the sole purpose of getting visitors to submit their contact information (leads). Here are some examples:
- Home Evaluation Landing Pages
- Property Search
- Free Content Landing Pages
- Buyers Leads
- Local Guide Landing Pages
- Property Listing and Real Estate News Landing Page
- Real Estate News
- Real Estate Hot New Listings
Visitors won’t have to pay any money but you won’t be giving any service away for free. The price is visitors’ contact information which is submitted willingly, fair and square.
Real Estate Referrals (Testimonials and Review)
People tend to trust their peers more and customers trust other customers more than they trust agents and marketers. 92% of them read online reviews before making a purchase; you probably are one of them. A few good words from others go a long way and that’s why you need to show your customers how happy your previous clients are. Success stories have become a vital part of real estate marketing.
Testimonials act like solid proof for everything you claim. A couple of happy customers can further highlight your expertise and achievements and portray you as a professional agent capable of actually helping people.
A lot of agents have expressed their satisfaction with how testimonials have worked out for them through real estate referrals.
Introducing Agent Web Profile
The online world requires an online presence and as more and more agents are joining the flow it seems inevitable in the real estate business. A website is the first thing that comes to mind in this matter but that could be quite expensive to create, run and maintain a website.
An alternative option is having an agent profile that will cover most of your marketing needs. And the good news is you can join one for free. That might seem too good to be true but it is not.
Roomvu’s agent profile contains all the important real estate marketing ideas that agents need for their business. A profile picture, tag line, company logo, you name it are all there. It will also keep track of your sales and listings.
The agent web profile offers many exciting features that are easy to set up and use. You can have:
- Your own photo and cover photo
- Testimonials and Specializations
- Lead capturing landing pages
- Your listings records
- Ready-made videos
- Social media marketing
- Email videos
- etc.
Empowering your online presence is a must in real estate marketing. You will create awareness for your brand and will get better results. Our free and premium services integrated with data analytics and automated marketing suites are there to help you impress your clients, build trust and stand out. For more information on the agent, and web profile click on the link below:
Real estate marketing now employs many different approaches and tools. To get the best results you need to have a plan and make use of all these best practices to stand out and try to become the digital mayor of your neighborhood. There are still many people who have not put their trust in the online world; on the other hand, there are many who have already established their online presence. To keep up with the pace and stand out later, make it a habit for yourself to think online. The world is yours.
Read More: Successful Real Estate Marketing Ideas and Examples to Get Leads In 2020
Thank you for this vital blog post. As you point out, the experiences that comprise the customer’s journey are more important than ever in the new hyper-connected world enabled by social media. Brands can now use insights from social datasets to fuel their decisions to improve the customer experience, help define content type and channel, and surface opportunities to remove barriers in the path to purchase – don’t you think it’s a great time to be in marketing?