Real Estate and Digital Marketing: the basics
Getting into real estate and digital marketing can be overwhelming for a lot of people, especially many real estate agents who are used to doing “non-digital” marketing – or as we like to call it “traditional marketing. Things like listings on the real estate portals, newspaper/magazine ads, just listed/sold DLs and of course, signboards.
Digital marketing in its simplest form is marketing on a digital platform. With so many options available, it can feel like a maze to get started, but remember the old saying – “fish where the fish are” to attract new leads.
So let’s take a quick look at some of the more popular options so you don’t feel pressured to do everything all at once.
Email marketing
Think of email marketing as the digital version of a printed newsletter or DL you would normally post, or pay someone to deliver on your behalf.
The average person is in at least 5 real estate agent’s databases so it’s important to make sure what you put in your email is relevant. Relevancy will increase the likelihood of the email being opened and read.
Don’t just send an email full of properties – mix up the content so you can cater for the active and passive property seeker. People doing their property research appreciate informative articles to help them understand the processes behind buying, selling, investing and even what is happening in their local market.
In real estate there are many email marketing tools such as Designly, ActivePipe and Mail Chimp, so make sure you find one that works easily for you.
Property Portals
With portals such as Realestate.com.au, Domain in Australia and Trade Me Property in NZ reaching their 3rd decade, portals are starting to be regarded as the “traditional” way of marketing listings and building brand awareness.
The incredible audience numbers indicate portals are the first place property seekers visit when looking to do their research for properties, as well as an agent or property manager to manage their property. The more listings an agent has, the more opportunities there are build their brand with potential property seekers using the portals.
Your Website
Known as your “online shop window”, your website is the place people visit when they’ve seen your web address advertised somewhere, or they’ve found it via a Google search or come through to it from your listings on the property portals.
Your website is all about you – make sure it is engaging and useful for anyone coming to your website. Don’t just have listings, but also include informatitve and educational content such as blog articles, suburb profiles and most importantly information about you and your business.
People visiting your website are looking to find out more about you – and this is your opportunity to start building a relationship with them before you meet face to face.
Using a Facebook Business page to build trust and authority is a challenge when your listings are relevant for a very small percentage of active property buyers using social media.
The majority of Facebook users are in “passive” mode – they’re chatting with friends, watching very funny cat videos, and connecting with their family and friends.
This is where you need to think about what the rest of your local audience might want to know about – if they aren’t actively selling their property right now, what do they want to know about?
This is where you can share informative and educational content that will build trust and credibility with them so when they are ready to sell, they are more likely to contact you and list their home with you.
Most importantly, make sure this content is on your own website so when you’re sharing a post, it will direct your Facebook audience to the website where you want to engage with them instead of using your Facebook Business page as a replica of your own website.
Final words
Traditional and digital marketing works best when you have multiple channels working with each other, not alone. So make sure you have a plan on how you’ll have all of your digital and offline marketing working to build your brand and drive you new leads.
