In today's fiercely competitive online mediums, there's no shortage of potential ways to market real estate. However, like any other online marketing discipline, getting in front of the right customers is posing more and more difficult. As real estate agents and homeowners realize the steep uphill battle needed to be climbed, they turn to professionals to assist them in this highly complex and convoluted field of online marketing.
The truth? Unless you're an agent, investor or owner with a large platform online, getting in front of the right audience takes time. It doesn't happen overnight. Yet, as lucrative as the real estate market is for potential fixer-uppers and agencies looking to move homes quickly, there are some proven methods and so-called secrets to success in business, that allow them to sell a home faster and more efficiently than before by using the right real estate marketing strategies.
#1 Build a Professional Website
Those that have mastered the mediums of online marketing, know quite well how important it is to have a professional website. However, this idea for marketing real estate marketing isn't a new one. Still, there is a big difference between a regular website and a professional one. For agents and agencies looking to move properties, this is more important now than ever.
When building your website, focus on both aesthetics and functionality. Ensure that you address things like the overall speed of the site, ease of navigation, quality of the content, sharpness of the photos and so on. Don't bombard visitors with too many ads all over the place, and ensure that it's a site that people want to continue to check back on with fresh content and properties added regularly. Need help?
#2 Install Google Analytics
Clearly, marketing real estate involves analytics. If you don't have analytics installed on your website, you're really shooting yourself in the foot. Setup Google Analytics so that you can track all sorts of metrics as they relate to your content and website's visitors over time.
This is a terrific way to understand whether or not your efforts are actually working out for you or not. How well are your posts doing? How many people are visiting your site? Have you set goals? What is the average session rate? What about the bounce rate or exit rate? It might sound confusing now, but as you learn about analytics, it will all make sense and come together.
#3 Create a Lead Generation Tool
One great tool for marketing real estate is to create a lead generation page. To advanced marketers, this is called a squeeze page. Why a squeeze page? Because you're trying to squeeze an email address out of visitors who might incline not to provide it to you. This will help you with your email marketing efforts down the road.
So, what's a good lead generation tool? You can build a home appraisal tool or some other tool to assist in the real estate process. When the form is completed, you can simply ask to email the results to the user. Any type of real estate tool that would be helpful to prospective buyers or sellers would work here, along with sendable results after the user completes the form.
#4 Get Social On Instagram
Instagram is a great resource for reaching droves of users that are on a wildly-popular social media platform. While it's no longer as simple to reach those users on Instagram, due to the algorithm changes that have removed the chronological ordering of posts and geared them more towards popularity, you still need an Instagram profile when it comes to real estate marketing.
Use this as an opportunity to post photos and videos of real estate or to capture some other relevant lifestyle imagery that will help you to get the word out. Connect with others by searching for popular or relevant hashtags and check out what your competition might be doing on the platform as well.
#5 Reach Out to Social Media Influencers
Who are the social media influencers in the real estate market that you could reach out to? There are plenty in the luxury sector and there are plenty in the purely real estate segment as well. Your job is to search for the right influencers on the right platforms that you could collaborate with.
If you have a small budget, this is a terrific way to market your real estate because you can get in front of hundreds of thousands or millions of prospective users without having to wait years and years to build up a big profile. However, be careful to vet the influencers well and ensure that their users are legitimate.
#6 Use Message Bots
Currently, there are over 4 billion downloads of messenger apps globally. Message bots can engage multiple prospects at the moment of discovery. Targeted messaging with crafted offers for different market segments will boost your conversion on these leads. Need Help?
#7 Use Email Marketing Campaigns
By using a popular email marketing system such as Aweber and also installing LeadPages, you can establish a way to collect email addresses and market to those users. LeadPages will allow you to create landing pages that will be enticing for people, so you can use it to collect email addresses that you will eventually market to through Aweber.
It might sound confusing at first, but email marketing is definitely where the money is. The money is most certainly in the list, but it needs to be done the right way and you need to attract the right people first. Use your email campaigns to add lots of value constantly over time and watch as the results ratchet up quickly.
#8 Build a System Of Referrals
One way to supercharge your real estate marketing efforts online is to build a system for referrals. You could integrate this into your email signature so that it becomes more passive than active, but at the outset, it doesn't hurt to simply ask for a referral. Once you've completed a few successful transactions, network with your clients and ask them to refer you to their friends.
You could also offer something in exchange for referrals. Maybe it's an Amazon gift card or maybe it's a Home Depot gift card, or just maybe it's something else. Whatever it is, come up with a unique way to pitch this to your clients and then ensure you treat all of those people the right way.
#9 Focus on Brand Awareness
Building your brand in the real estate field is important. Do you have a professional logo? How well does your brand convey your message to your clients?
These are all important as they provide the basis of your brand. Go through and higher top-quality designers on sites like 99Designs, Logo Bee and others where you can create a professional brand that will help you better appeal to a larger group of individuals in your demographic. Need Help?