The real estate market is volatile and subject to a number of outside factors affecting price and availability. That’s why investors and homebuyers turn to the professionals to help them find the property of their dreams. As competition increases, it’s increasingly important for real estate agencies to establish an online presence that maximizes visibility and builds trust among potential clients.
In today’s digital world, there are plenty of ways to effectively market real estate. However, the problem lies in getting in front of the right audience. You know, the ones who are actually going to become leads or customers and not just meaningless clicks.
Getting ahead as a real estate business is tough. Property isn’t something people invest in every day, so it’s crucial for agencies to ensure their online marketing strategies are developed with the buyer in mind. This means using targeted strategies that drive engagement, build trust, and encourage conversions.
In this article, we’re sharing 10 smart marketing ideas to help your real estate business secure buyers. Ready? Let’s go.
Top 10 Real Estate Marketing Ideas
1. Create a highly optimized website
In today’s digital world, consumers turn to the internet to find a variety of products and services that fill their needs or desires. If you’re a modern business then having a fully functional, highly optimized website is crucial.
For a real estate agency, your website should contain listings of your properties and detailed descriptions of the services you offer. This is your chance to show existing and potential clients what you have to offer, and what makes you stand out from your competitors.
It’s a good idea to include different media on your site. Using quality images and videos will help visitors understand what you’re offering. You should also consider implementing an SEO strategy when designing your website. Ensure each webpage is optimized with high-ranking keywords to increase your visibility in search engine results.
Consumers have high expectations when it comes to website usability, and having a poorly designed website can be a visitor’s queue to navigate away from the page and take their business elsewhere (i.e. to your competitors!) Ensure your website is optimized to cater to the user experience. This means ensuring it’s fast, responsive, easy to navigate, and has a great mobile site. The last one is particularly important in today’s smartphone era. According to this report, 81% of older millennials, 80% of younger millennials, and 78% of Generation X found their home on a mobile device compared to 68% of Younger Boomers.
Also, consider the content on your website. Highlight effective call-to-actions, update the site with fresh content regularly, and don’t bombard viewers with unnecessary ads! You might consider hiring an SEO copywriter to help ensure your website says exactly what it needs to say without overloading visitors with text and irrelevant information.
2. Use social media to your advantage
Everyone’s on social media these days. One report by the National Association of Realtors found that social media was the best tool for generating high-quality leads among realtors. You should leverage the reach of your social media profiles and use it to promote your real estate agency or share updates about new property listings or services that you offer.
Consider using popular platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and LinkedIn to share images of new properties through paid promotion. These platforms allow you to choose your target audience, budget, and type of post (static image, video, carousel, etc). This ensures you’re targeting the right people with your social media campaigns, in other words, the ones who are most likely to be searching for investment opportunities!
If you run a real estate blog or create other types of content, social media is a great way to share this with your target audience and increase your brand awareness.
3. Create a blog
Creating a blog is a great way to provide value to your audience. Create an editorial calendar filled with great blog article ideas to keep your audience engaged with your business.
You might discuss current trends in real estate, share your predictions for the future of the market, or hone in on particular properties and why their location is a good investment opportunity.
Whatever it is, ensure you’re providing your audience with unique insights that they wouldn’t be able to find elsewhere. This will establish your business as a credible source and industry leader, not only improving your online visibility but also building trusting, mutual relationships with your clients.
Ensure your blog content is optimized for SEO. It should contain relevant keywords to help your articles rank on Google and other search engines. There are a number of handy tools like Ahrefs and Google Analytics that can help you choose the keywords and search terms your clients are searching for, which will also help you develop fresh ideas to keep them interested!
4. Implement effective email marketing campaigns
87% of marketers use email to disseminate content and share relevant information with their customers. As a real estate agency, you can send out a monthly newsletter sharing business updates or new property listings with your clients. It’s a good idea to keep email campaigns short and sweet, including nice images or video walkthroughs of available properties.
5. Consider using experiential marketing to connect with leads in real life
Experiential marketing is about showing your prospects and clients what you have to offer in a real-world situation. You might host a tour of the area where property listings are located, arrange an open-house event, or hold a seminar or conference to help buyers understand the process of property investment. This gives your audience a chance to connect with you outside of the virtual realm and can be hugely beneficial for securing leads and prospects in your local area.
6. Create video walkthroughs of your property listings
High-quality photos are a must, but why not take it one step further by creating video walkthroughs of your property listings to share with your prospects? With video, you can share a more realistic depiction of your properties while allowing views to get a feel for what the space is like in person.
You don’t have to spend half your budget on professionally shot videos, consider investing in a drone or simply using a high-quality smartphone to create your property video walkthroughs. Then you just need some great editing software to piece it all together and you’re set!
7. Set up a Google My Business account
Setting up a Google My Business listing for your real estate agency is a great way to ensure you’re visible to local searchers. Be sure to target relevant keywords that’ll ensure your business listing appears when people search for real estate agencies in your area. Setting up an account is simple, just head here to create an account and start providing business information such as location, opening hours, and services offered. Your clients will also be able to leave reviews on your business listing page which, if they’re good ones, can help to boost your business to the top of the listing results.
8. Host a webinar
Webinars are a great way to connect with your audience in an interactive environment while establishing your business as an industry expert. Webinars are a great way to share information with your audience while allowing them to actively participate in an online event.
Brainstorm some interesting topics that you think your target audience could benefit from knowing. Once you have your idea, all that’s left to do is choose a great webinar software and start promoting the event on your website and social media profiles! If you want to know more about webinars and how to host them, check out our comprehensive guide to webinars.
9. Consider PPC advertising
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is a bit of a grey area in the marketing world due to its high cost and often low returns. However, effective PPC advertising is a great way to increase your brand reach and attract new leads to your business. For real estate agencies, it allows you to draw in traffic to your website by sharing advertisements displaying your service offerings or property listings.
If you’re considering PPC advertising it’s a good idea to set your budget accordingly and implement the right analytics tools to track its results and ensure its bringing in qualified leads.
10. Leverage influencer marketing
Whether you like it or not, influencers are a major marketing tool in today’s social-media-driven world. This is particularly salient for real estate agencies marketing their services to millennial buyers, as they’re the audience most likely to engage with influencers on social media.
Consider partnering with social media influencers and using their reach to promote your services or particular property listings. Do thorough research to find influencers whose ideals align with those of your business, and reach out to them with a collaboration offer. Of course, this is something that must be factored into your budget as influencers are unlikely to do any sort of promotion for free!
Ready to take your real estate agency to new heights with these smart marketing ideas?
So, there you have it—10 smart marketing ideas to promote your real estate business and secure buyers.
There is a range of real estate online marketing strategies that can work for your real estate business. The smart marketing ideas mentioned in this article are a great starting point to maximize the visibility of your real estate agency and start building trusting relationships with leads and clients.
As consumers are faced with more choices than ever before, it’s essential for businesses to ensure they’re implementing the right tactics to reach and secure leads and customers. For businesses operating in the real estate sector, this means ensuring your online marketing strategies cater to the needs of a digitally-empowered audience.