You are here because you want to know how to start your online marketing strategy. As a real estate agent, you can no longer deny that your target market is using the Internet more frequently to search for homes, buy properties, and contact your competition because you are not there to help them.
There is a shortcut: find a full-service advertising agency that can meet your online marketing needs. They can tailor the strategies to suit your goals and budget. But as a customer and business owner, you also need to have at least some basic knowledge of how to do this.
Here is a template you can use:
1. Website
Sure, you can market your business on social media, but there’s not much that Facebook and LinkedIn can do. If you want to consolidate your position online, you need a website.
But that’s not just any random set of pages you can design on Wix or WordPress. It should be real estate focused. How do you do? Here are a few tips:
NAP stands for name, address and telephone. These are the basics that your potential customers need to know if they want to contact you.
If your property is listed on the MLS, you need to make sure that visitors can find it easily. This means having a search bar to enter the location and types of property you want.
Besides making your site more organically visible to search engines, optimizing pages with relevant keywords can help your business appear in the SERPs and get people to click and learn more.
Having a real estate website means you need a lot of property photos, floor plans, and interior plans. Make sure they are optimized for high SEO rank by adding tags like description, city / state name (for US sites), and relevant keywords.
2. Local marketing
Real estate professionals sell to specific demographics and geographic locations. In other words, you don’t have to be everywhere. Instead, it pays to be more focused on localization. Marketing strategies are more targeted, so you will likely get more value from your spending.
Here are some ideas on how you can make it work for your business:
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Create neighborhood specific landing pages
If you’re focusing on a neighborhood like San Francisco’s Upper Market, make sure all site visitors coming from downtown know what to do.
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Identify and acquire authoritative links
You don’t need to hire someone to create fake URLs that contain fake information about your business. Look for local posts like real estate blogs and find out if they’re ready to link to you.
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Create an event page on Facebook
If you’re hosting an open house, get people in your target market (say, wealthy, active couples in San Francisco) to find out by creating a Facebook event.
3. Visual marketing
Autotune and dubstep aside, real estate marketing can be a lot more fun. Visual marketing, in particular, is one of the most effective ways to gain an edge over your competition because it allows you to stand out from the clutter.
Here’s how you can make it work for your business:
Infographics are more than just pictures. They also make your writing and content stand out with site visitors.
Video marketing is so powerful that studies show that B2B businesses that use it get 40% more weekly views than those that don’t. Likewise, if you host discussions on Twitter where potential customers can ask questions, be sure to save them.
If you are selling properties with unique features or amenities, it pays to have a free Google Hangouts video tour of the house.
4. Social media marketing
Of course, what will your real estate site be without social networks? That’s why you don’t just have to create your profiles. You also need to engage with people on them too.
Here are some of the best ways to do it:
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Use social listening tools
Tools like Hootsuite or Sprout Social are platforms that help you monitor conversations about your business, industry, and competitors on various social networks like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Pinterest, etc.
Posting once a day (or even once a week) is not enough. You need to post relevant, useful, and engaging content.
One of the best ways to market your social media pages is to write on other blogs or related posts that are already authoritative and well-followed in your field. This way you have access to their subscribers and they have access to links to your site.
The real estate market is so competitive that you will need all the help you can get. Fortunately, you don’t have to reinvent the wheel to keep your website ahead of the competition. Try these four marketing strategies and see how they transform your business.
