5 Digital Marketing Strategies For Real Estate

Marketing has changed over the years, especially for real estate agents.  It’s all moved digital.  In the past there’s always been things that real estate agents have done outside of the digital world from marketing that have been effective and, in many cases, still are.  But to truly grow your real estate business you need to have a strong digital presence. Let’s break down 5 tips on how you can do that. 

1. Establish your niche

This is key when it comes to real estate.  What type of properties do you sell?  What neighbourhoods do you prefer to sell?  What price range of homes do you prefer to sell?  Do you prefer commercial?  What buyers and sellers do you want to help on the commercial side?  Really try to hone in that specific niche, because understanding that is key.  Everything is built off of that in the digital world with regards to your website, your marketing campaigns,  the audience you’re building and everything else on social media.  It all comes down to that niche.  So start there. For instance if your business model is dropshipping, your niche could be something like shopify dropshipping or aliexpress dropshipping, etc.

2. Build a highly convertible website

Your website is your 24/7 salesperson.  It never calls in sick.  It can sell 1000 people at the same time with the perfect pitch.  So you want to have a beautiful site that people are going to and you’re going to want to use a strong IDX listing program.  IDX Broker is the one that we recommend and work with.  It’s really nice, has all the functionality you need.  You can customize the design and you can showcase your niche,  the types of properties that you really want to highlight on your website.  It makes it really easy to do that so that you can SEO optimize those as well,  so that they rank high on Google.  And so the website’s just really like the core in the digital world.  That’s your digital business in the digital world and so you want to start there because all of your marketing campaigns are going to drive traffic to your site.  People are going to look there for research.  So you want to have that dialled in.  Power tip here, make sure it’s mobile friendly, because 80% of people, and even more these days, are looking at your site on mobile,  that are on the go and so you’re going to want to have a beautiful site on mobile phones.

3. Build a strong social presence

You’re going to want to dominate social media for your niche in your area.  Focus on Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest.  Those are going to be the ones that are the most effective for you.  Some ideas with social media marketing. You’re going to want to post a lot of videos.  Create videos all the time of the different properties that you’re selling,  properties that come onto the market.  Go to those properties as soon as they come on the market.  Take some video.  Share that on social media for your niche.  This is going to be key because people are going to follow you on social media, particularly when you’re targeting people interested  in your niche of products that you sell and they’re going to want to see that content and that continual content.  You’ll be proactively giving them what they need, making it easier for them to find what they’re looking for.

So make sure that you do that.  And then outside of that, think of other ideas and things you can share on social media on a constant basis so there’s a never ending flow of interesting content within your niche to help build your business.  And as you’re posting this content,  spend some money to promote that,  so it gets in front of people on the paid side as well,  gets in front of more people in your area.  So invest in social targeting ads to start building audiences around your niche as you start to create this content on social media.  And then power tip here,  ask for them to reach out to you and direct message you when they’re interested in a property or they have a question or they want to do a walk through.  Have them direct message you.  It’s so easy and that’s a great way to develop a lead flow on social media.

4. Create a lot of video

Video is key.  You can even do live videos when you’re doing walkthroughs of these properties.  But outside of just videos about properties,  think about the questions that people ask about your niche.  Maybe it’s that the neighbourhood that you serve, or the neighbourhoods that you’re targeting.  What are the power tips on those neighbourhoods?  What are the insider information on those neighbourhoods?  How can you share more of this information out into the world on social media?  Those are great video ideas.  As you’re doing these walkthroughs and talking to your customers they’re going to ask questions.  And those questions,  you should write those down because you can do tips and quick videos answering those questions on social media.  If somebody has a question about something, somebody else has that same question, right.  You can answer that question for multiple people  by posting these videos online.

As you create this video content,  you’re going to start to develop a brand and you’re going to build your brand and people are going to become aware of you as an agent and they’re going to trust you because there’s a certain amount of personality that comes through a video that doesn’t come through on written form or static pictures. You can use online video editors to add comprehensible and informational data to your video content. On the video they’re going to have more of an understanding and a relationship with you so when they’re ready to move to,  whether they’re buying or selling,  they’re going to think of you first and you’re going to earn their business.

5. Use a CRM

CRM is essential to business today and for agents it’s extremely powerful because you can store all kinds of information about your customers and your leads  and your prospects in there,  outside of maybe just the types of properties that are listed that they’re interested in,  the numbers of bedrooms,  the price ranges,  the neighbourhoods.  Those things are all important but you can also store things in there like their birthday.  You can store things in there like the children’s names and their interests and things like this that’s going to give you a better relationship with that customer and you’re going to be able to do some sorting and some filtering based on this information.  For example, if a new property becomes available in a nice neighbourhood that a lot of people are interested in with four bedrooms,  you can quickly jump into the CRM  and you can do some filtering and sorting it and get a nice little list there of people that that’s a perfect fit for.  You can jump right in and start calling them, start setting up walkthroughs.  You can even generate an email campaign that sends them an email with the video that you made about that property talking about it and requesting if they need more info to hit you up so you can do a walkthrough.

So a CRM allows for all this.  It just makes you a better businessperson.  It’s going to make you more revenue long-term.  And a lot of real estate agents  they send like an annual gift card and kind of a thank you on Christmas after you’ve purchased a home with them or something like that and that’s all great and fun but with a younger demographic they’re looking at their mail less.  A lot of times they’re not even looking at it, right.  You want to send them digital messages.  If you can send them automated emails, with little thank you messages,  maybe gift cards.  You can even send them text messages at these times or jump in and direct message them on social media because you saved their social media information in your CRM,  think about how much more modern this makes you.  And the more modern you are, the more you’re going to get referrals and recommendations from that past customer base that’s going to continually grow your business.