You understand the pressure and unpredictability of constantly attempting to locate a new prospect as a real estate agent. Nonetheless, utilizing digital marketing techniques can be advantageous for real estate agents in order to effectively create additional leads and expand their client base.
Without having an online presence, you can miss out on a great number of potential customers. An exceedingly large amount of people who are looking to purchase a home begin the process on the internet, examining homes and real estate professionals. Based on research done by the National Association of Realtors, almost all potential buyers begin their search for a home by looking online.
Digital marketing tactics for real estate agents are evolving all the time, but having a digital marketing plan in place is one of the simplest and quickest approaches to get yourself known and obtain customers.
What are the steps to getting started with digital marketing for your real estate business? These are the top ten ways to utilize digital marketing strategies as a real estate agent.
Top Digital Marketing Tactics For Real Estate Agents
1. Utilize Social Media
Do you possess social media accounts for your business? Are you using them to the greatest extent possible? If you are not using any of the main social media platforms, start setting up accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, and Instagram.
The next step is to engage with users. Publish regularly and reliably with superb visuals and useful information. Respond quickly to any questions or comments.
A good idea to promote involvement is to tie each post to your business. Mention your experience in the luxury home market when you share any information about a high-end property listing.
You could also assist customers in becoming better acquainted with you by divulging something more intimate. If a home has a large outdoor area, explain how your pet, Fido, would take pleasure in it.
Make sure to include your contact information on all of your social media networks, and also put social media sharing buttons on your website. Also, consider paying for ads on social platforms. Organic search is harder to achieve as the algorithms involved are consistently changing.
2. Create Interesting, Free Content
These different types of media, such as blogs, eBooks, podcasts, webinars, and infographics, are excellent methods of interacting with prospective customers. Users will come across your content when they look online for information or do research, offering them assistance and allowing them to become familiar with you without feeling pressured.
Giving away free content with no commitments will establish a relationship of trust. Research has revealed that almost half of the purchasers look at three to five pieces of information before contacting a seller.
Also consider exchanging free content for email addresses.
Distribute your complimentary material to email subscribers, such as helpful information regarding the local housing market patterns, or future public viewings in their locality. This is an excellent way for real estate agents to use digital marketing to gain more leads and turn subscribers into buyers.
3. Work with a Professional Photographer
Cell phone cameras have gone through a lot of advancement, yet, imaging results from them are unlikely to be comparable to those of a real estate photographer who uses specialist gear. Photographs of poor quality can cause buyers to become disinterested in even the most appealing properties.
When recruiting a professional photographer with practice in taking pictures of properties, you will quickly realize the esteem of the end product. An expert will be aware of the perfect perspectives, illumination, and which properties to emphasize to attract purchasers.
In addition to taking terrific photographs, why not make a virtual tour of your properties for sale? Online tours enable potential customers to have a clearer mental image of the house, and imagine themselves living there. Exploring a property remotely makes it simpler for a purchaser to decide whether they should pay it a visit in person or leave it be.
Also consider exchanging free content for email addresses. Send email recipients your free material, including helpings of insight concerning localized housing market patterns, or approaching public showings in their vicinity. This is an outstanding approach to utilizing digital marketing for real estate agents.
4. Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly
When browsing the internet, most reach for their smartphone. More than half of all web browsing is carried out on a mobile phone or tablet. Younger generations, such as Millennials and Generation Z, tend to prefer smartphones over desktops. The majority of people who are potential homebuyers come from the current generation.
Making it easier for customers to hunt for a house by having a website that is optimized for mobile phones or creating an app will help their experience. Potential buyers will probably journey from one house viewing to another, or they could tour around residences they are involved in by motor vehicle, searching for the listings on their phone.
If your website does not function well on a cellphone—has slow loading times, looks odd, tough to get around—the visitors will promptly exit the page and go to a different website.
Don’t make your users work hard to find information. You wish to make it so that users have an uninterrupted and straightforward experience on your website.
5. Find Your Niche
In a saturated real estate industry where multiple agents are fighting for the same customers, carving out a specific area of specialization can help you separate yourself from the competition. Act as the representative for a certain kind of real estate property. You might be the go-to specialist for high-end estates or for countryside properties.
You can put your energy into focusing on one purchaser. Be recognized as the go-to individual for all first-time homebuyers, as well as those in need of homes for their extended families.
6. Create a Brand for Yourself
Branding gives customers an understanding of who you are, what your beliefs and principles are, and your special skills. Promoting yourself to the public is the basis of a brand, and it assists people in quickly recognizing you.
You need to spend some time thinking about what image you want to present yourself with as well as what kind of experience you want your customers to have with you.
For example, the image of your company will become distinct if you are primarily selling luxury estate residences compared to more affordable starter homes.
Make sure that your logo and message are the same throughout all of your promotional materials, ranging from your website, to store signs, and even items given away as promotional items.
7. Get Former Client Testimonials
When was the last occasion that you bought something online without looking at any feedback or ratings? If someone wouldn’t buy a pair of socks without first reading a positive review, it is improbable that someone would pick a real estate agent without doing some research of reviews.
The opinions of current clients are very influential in assisting prospective clients in making the decision to employ you. Request that past clients who had a positive experience when engaging with you to compose a recommendation.
Make sure you emphasize these endorsements on your website and spread them on social media. This is an excellent tactic for real estate agents to use in digital marketing.
8. Local Partnerships
One terrific strategy to increase the recognition of your name is to collaborate with nearby media outlets, reporters, and firms.
Create content related to emerging trends in the real estate sector in order to submit to media sources. A large number of urban areas have periodicals that you can work with to encourage your organization. Establish a connection with nearby media companies to provide your knowledge in stories concerned with real estate.
Reach out to local businesses you love. Consider forming an alliance with your beloved eatery or coffee shop so you can assist one another in getting the word out.
9. Set up PPC Ads
This is a hugely popular tactic for marketing real estate online. In pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, companies create ads which are then served to internet users, but the advertiser only has to pay for visits to the advertisement that are the result of a click.
It’s an inexpensive method to get through to a large amount of people online. If your ads are exposed to 1,000 individuals, but only 50 of them decide to click them, then you are only charged for the 50 clicks, even though 950 other individuals were able to view them.
PPC provides you with the opportunity to be very specific when targeting potential customers, allowing you to only display ads to the people you want to reach. It is possible to reach individuals according to their age, sex, preferences, area, financial bracket, and even terms they are looking for on Google.
As an example, if you work as a real estate broker in New York, you can create ads that will be displayed whenever people look up the words ‘New York properties for sale’. The best way to get in touch with potential customers while they are researching available properties is to do it right away.
Once your website is finished, you can start running a trial pay-per-click (PPC) advertising campaign on Google Ads that is catered around the particular words users are looking for. The least amount of money you have to spend is only $5 a day, so you can conduct a trial of your campaign for an extended period of time.
Some examples of long-tail keywords people type on Google when searching for the property include:
- “2 bedroom apartments for sale in xxxx [insert target location]”
- “4 bedroom townhouse for sale in xxxx [insert target location]”
- “cheap apartments for rent in xxxx [insert target location]”
An often-used software by digital advertisers to locate keywords that individuals are looking for is SEMrush. You can employ it to locate all of the Google searches to do with properties that relate to your area.
If the experiment with your promotional initiative is successful, you can extend your daily financial plan so that your campaigns encompass a greater number of people.
10. Set up Retargeting Ads
Retargeting is a form of advertising that displays ads to users who have already interacted with a website. It’s likely that you’ve experienced this phenomenon; after visiting a website once, the advertisements associated with it will seem to be ubiquitous for a period of a month. It’s quite an exceptional digital marketing strategy.
A lot of businesses invest heavily in retargeting due to their realization that someone who has visited their website is a highly attractive prospect.
The huge amount of lures on their screen lead most users of the web to possess a very limited focus. It is possible that they were looking at your website but then became sidetracked by something else on a social media platform and consequently did not return.
Retargeting allows you to reclaim the focus of the people who you would have otherwise been unable to reach. Digital marketing is a powerful tool for real estate agents to use.
The two most commonly used retargeting methods are Google Ads and Facebook Ads.
11. Search Engine Optimization
The process of improving the visibility and rank of a particular website in search engines like Google is known as Search Engine Optimization, or SEO. This is done to help the website become more authoritative.
When you look up information online, you will likely discover a vast amount of applicable material, ranging from thousands to millions of sources. SEO plays a major role in deciding which websites will appear as the top search results in Google.
It is essential to bear in mind that the majority of users of Google only visit websites that appear on the first page of the search results. Ideally, you’d wish to have the highest rating compared to the outputs of all your rivals.
SEO has two major components. Optimizing the individual web pages on your website is called on-page SEO.
Google prefers websites that are organized neatly, simple to get around, work suitably on different gadgets, and load up quickly. If you have constructed your webpage using Wix, then it will be automatically optimized with minimal effort required.
The second part is link building. Google sees a link from other websites to yours as evidence of your authority, just as if it were a referral. The more references you have pointing to your website, the more legitimate it appears, thus leading to a higher probability of being positioned highly in rankings.
12. Collect Emails
Many real estate agents make a large error by not keeping in contact with their leads following the initial engagement. Gathering emails gives you the opportunity to remind people of your presence with tailored messages on occasion.
The simplest method of gathering emails is to put a subscription form on your website. The form may show up as a prompt that requests the user to include their email address to sign up for your mailing list.
For every new item that you obtain or some news that you want to communicate, you can easily disseminate it to all of your followers by utilizing a platform like Mailchimp that transmits out a single email.
You can also send customised greetings on special occasions such as Easter and Christmas. Ensure that gathering email addresses is a fundamental element of your online advertising approach.
13. Get a Google My Business Page
Google My Business (GMB) is a free service managed by Google that enables companies to develop and take care of their digital accounts. Google My Business pages tend to show up in the top spot on the search engine result page, along with on Google Maps.
Social media accounts are essential to have alongside a website as they make it easier for those looking for you to find you. A GMB page will also allow you to gain feedback from former customers.
In this digital age, reviews are extremely valuable because they signify a sense of trust. When somebody who is looking to purchase a house finds your information online, the only way for them to discover if you are competent, dependable and honest is by the feedback they have seen about you.
14. Start a YouTube Channel
If you have a knack for appearing in front of a camera, then you should consider creating and uploading videos to YouTube. People who use the internet can be divided into two groups: those who enjoy reading, and those who enjoy watching videos.
By having a YouTube channel that is regularly updated as well as a website with a blog, you would have every angle taken care of. You would have content for everyone.
Your videos can simply be presentations of your properties. Be brief when writing about the properties but also make sure to provide exhaustive detail. An 8-10 minute video on a three-bedroom apartment should be sufficient to provide details, whereas a 30-minute video would be too extensive.
Many folks on the web possess the ability to spot mistakes like inadequate lighting or audio.
Prior to releasing your videos, guarantee that they have been professionally edited. You don’t want people to criticize you in the comments area due to mistakes that could have been corrected.
15. Offer Rewards for Referrals
Implementing a rewards program is an indirect way of enlisting other people to carry out tasks for you. There’s only so much you can do yourself. Any help you can get goes a long way. You can give money directly to anyone who has made a successful referral.
Be liberal with your incentives, you want people to be enthusiastic and send leads your way. You can highlight each person who receives a reward in the email sent to subscribers as well as on social media platforms. That will inspire even more individuals to join in.
