Digital Marketing for Real Estate Agents and Realtors
In a stable economy, the demand for real estate is never been in doubt. And now thanks to the internet, that demand is palpable.
Phrases like ‘houses for sale’ get well over 10 million Google searches every month (in the US alone). Listing platforms like Zillow account for 48% of all traffic for real estate searches. If you are an agent or a realtor, then what a time to be alive!
This article will discuss 15 real estate digital marketing strategies to help you dominate the internet and generate an endless stream of leads.
Given the competitiveness of the industry, focus all your efforts on just a particular location, whether it’s a city, suburb, or even just a neighborhood. Also, take some time to refine your buyer persona, in case you haven’t already done so. A buyer persona is simply a precise description of your most ideal clients.
Ask yourself what they do, how much they earn, where they live, whether they have children. Note down every characteristic that might influence their decision-making process.
The internet is extremely broad and unless you have a crystal clear understanding of your potential clients, you’re likely to get lost in the abyss. A buyer persona will give some direction to your online marketing efforts.
Real Estate Digital Marketing Statistics:
- More than 90% of home buyers look for houses online. (Source)
- Social media, listing platforms and brokerage websites generate the highest quality leads. (Source)
- 55% of buyers carry out some research on social media. (Source)
- 78% of salespeople who use social media do better than their peers. (Source)
- Home buyers spend an average of 10 weeks searching for a new home. (Source)
- Up to 64% of realtors are female, and the average age is 55. (Source)
- The main source of business for most realtors is referrals from their old clients. (Source)
- Up to 40% of webinar attendees become leads. (Source)
- Lead nurturing can help generate 50% more leads at a 33% lower cost. (Source)
- 66% of salespeople say that email nurturing is the most effective way of re-engaging leads. (Source)
15 Real Estate Digital Marketing Strategies for Agents and Realtors
1. Get a website
A website is the foundation of your online presence. It’s where clients can easily find information about you and all your properties. It’s your own personal piece of real estate on the internet, similar to owning an office where people can walk into.
The overwhelming majority of property searches happen online, you’d be at a huge disadvantage by not having a website.
Search engines like Google work by presenting to users the most relevant information they can find from different websites on the web. If you have a website, whenever a user searches for property in your target location, it should be among the first results they see.
Your site should primarily contain information about the properties you have for sale or rent, along with your profile and contacts. Each property should be elaborately presented, and include the highest quality photos and videos. If possible, you can also include a 360° virtual tour. If you don’t have the right equipment then you always can hire a video production company to shoot your virtual tour.
The main thing to keep in mind is that the quality of the user experience, or UX in marketing lingo, can determine how well your site ranks in the search engines.
UX is simply how easy the site is to navigate, how fast it loads, and how responsive it is across different devices. A responsive site should work as well on mobile devices as it does on computers. Google always favors websites that have a superior UX by ranking them higher in the search results.
Wix is a great tool you can use to build a website that automatically checks all the boxes of a positive UX – from fast loading times to mobile responsiveness. You can also use services such as FreeWebDesign to get professional developers to build your entire site for free.
2. Set up PPC ads
This is one of the most widely used real estate digital marketing strategy. Pay-per-click, or PPC, is an advertising model where ads get served to people as they browse the internet, however the advertiser only pays for the clicks.
It’s one of the most cost effective ways to reach a wide audience online. If your ads get shown to 1,000 people, however only 50 click them, then you only pay for the 50 clicks, despite the fact that 950 other people saw them.
Another advantage of PPC is that it gives you advanced targeting options to enable you to pinpoint your potential clients, and only show ads to them. You can target people based on their age, gender, interests, location, income class, and even keywords they’re searching on Google.
For example, if you’re a real estate agent based in New York, you can set up ads that show up whenever people search for the phrase ‘houses for sale in New York’. There’s no better way to get in front of prospects right when they’re researching properties.
Once you have finalized your website, you can set up a trial PPC campaign on Google Ads targeting users based on the keywords they’re actively searching. The minimum ad expenditure is just $5 per day, therefore you can run your campaign for a number of weeks as a trial.
Some examples of long-tail keywords people type on Google when searching for 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]”
You can add dozens of keywords to your campaign just to ensure that you’re not missing out on any opportunities.
SEMrush is a popular tool used by digital marketers to find keywords that people are actively searching. You can use it to find all the real estate related Google queries for your location.
If the results from your trial campaign are positive, then you can increase your daily budget so that your ads get shown to even more people.
3. Set up retargeting ads
Retargeting is another advertising model whereby ads get shown to users who previously interacted with a website. You’ve probably seen it a lot; you visit a site once, and for the next month you can’t stop seeing its ads everywhere. It’s quite an exceptional digital marketing strategy.
Many companies spend aggressively on retargeting because they understand that a person who visits their platform is a hot lead.
Majority of internet users have such a short attention span due to the number of distractions that are constantly on their face. They may have been browsing your site, however got distracted by something else on social media, and forgot to return.
Retargeting enables you to recapture their attention, otherwise you’d have lost them for good. It’s one of the most effective digital marketing strategies for real estate agents.
The two most popular retargeting platforms are Google Ads and Facebook Ads.
4. Search Engine Optimization
Search Engine Optimization, or SEO, is the process of increasing a website’s authority to help it have a good ranking on search engines like Google. Whenever you search for information on the internet, there are usually thousands or even millions of relevant content. SEO is what determines the websites that Google actually shows as the top results.
It’s important to keep in mind that most Google users only visit websites that they see on the first page of the results. Ideally, that’s where you’d want to be – above the results from all your competitors.
SEO has two major components. The first is on-page SEO, which entails optimizing the individual pages on your website. Google always favors sites that are well organized, easy to navigate, responsive across different devices, and load lightning fast. If you built your site using Wix, then it’s automatically optimized without much work needed.
The second part is link building. Every time another website adds a link pointing to your site, Google sees it as a referral, which is a sign of authority. The more links you have pointing to your site, the more authoritative it appears to be, and therefore the better ranking it’s likely to have.
Since the process of link building can be tedious and time consuming, I would recommend you outsource it to an SEO freelancer. By investing in SEO, you’ll eventually eliminate the need to spend money on PPC ads because your site will be getting traffic organically.
5. Collect emails
One of the biggest mistakes many real estate agents make is to lose touch with their leads right after the first interaction. When you collect emails, you can remind them of your existence by sending personalized messages every now and then.
The easiest way to collect emails is by adding a sign-up form on your website. The form can appear as a pop up asking them to enter their email to subscribe to your mailing list.
Every time you add a new property to your collection, or you just have some news to share, you can send an email blast to all your subscribers at once using a service like Mailchimp. You can also send personalized messages on holidays like Easter and Christmas. Make sure that collecting emails is a key part of your digital marketing strategy.
Related: 15 powerful growth hacking tactics to get more leads
6. Get a Google My Business page
Google My Business, or GMB, is a free tool run by Google that lets businesses create and manage their online profiles. GMB pages often get the highest placement on the search results page as well as on Google Maps.
They are incredibly important to have in addition to a website because they help you be more visible to people searching. A GMB page will also enable you to collect reviews from past clients.
Reviews mean so much in this internet era because they are a trust signal. When a prospective home buyer finds your contacts online, the only way they can know whether you’re actually knowledgeable, reliable and trustworthy is through the reviews you have.
Every time you finish working with a client, and the experience was positive, never hesitate to ask for a review.
7. Get a blog
A blog is one of the best ways to establish yourself as an authority in real estate. Most people who are looking to purchase a property do a ton of research on the internet. They want to know everything there is to know about the property, the neighborhood, city, nearby attractions, etc.
The more they encounter your name while researching, the more likely you are to become an authority in their eyes.
You can publish posts addressing all sorts of questions a potential buyer may have, including topics such as ‘where to find loans quickly’ and ‘top 10 places to visit in xxxx [insert your location]’.
If you happen to be too busy to do the writing yourself, you can outsource it to a freelancer. The more posts you publish, the more traffic you are likely to get. Google absolutely loves content.
The key to a successful content marketing strategy is keyword research; that is the process of identifying specific queries that get searched frequently on Google. Once you know what they are, then you can write posts addressing them. Keyword research is the only way to be sure that you’re writing on topics that will actually get relevant traffic.
For example, if you find that 10,000 people every month search for the phrase ‘cost of living in xxxx [your location]’, then you know that it’s a topic you need to cover.
SEMrush is the most popular keyword research tool used by bloggers and digital marketers to find high-traffic keywords to write about.
Once your blog starts getting traffic, you can easily monetize it using Adsense, a program run by Google to let publishers earn money by displaying ads.
8. Start a YouTube channel
If you are great in front of a camera, then you can start publishing videos on YouTube. There are two types of internet users, those who prefer to read, and those who prefer to watch videos. By having an active YouTube channel as well as a blog, you would have all your bases covered. You would have content for everyone.
Your videos can simply be presentations of your properties. Make sure to keep them concise, while also covering the properties in depth. A 30 minute video on a three bedroom apartment might be unnecessarily long, but 8-10 minutes might be just right to capture everything in detail.
A lot of people on the internet have a knack for catching blunders such as poor lighting or sound. Before publishing your videos, ensure that they’re edited to a high standard. The last thing you want is people calling you out in the comments section for things that could have been edited.
9. Offer rewards for referrals
Having a rewards program is an indirect way of getting other people to work for you. There’s only so much you can do yourself. Any help you can get goes a long way. You can offer straight up cash for any successful referrals.
Be generous with your rewards, you want people to be excited and actually refer leads to you. Every time somebody is rewarded, you can feature them in the email blast you send to subscribers as well as on social media. That will encourage even more people to want to take part.
10. Be super active on social media
Most people spend a significant amount of their day mindlessly browsing social media. It’s one of the best places to find leads.
According to a study conducted by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), about 77% of real estate businesses use social media, and 47% say that social media consistently gets them the highest quality leads.
Make sure to use the same name across the different social media platforms – the same name as your website. Leave no room for confusion.
Due to the amount of work required to run social pages effectively, I would recommend either hiring a manager or a virtual assistant to handle your social media marketing strategy. Some of their responsibilities will include posting fresh content daily, engaging with other users, growing your following and establishing new leads.
11. Do monthly giveaways
This is a great digital marketing strategy to grow your social media following while increasing awareness to your real estate agency almost effortlessly.
Your giveaway contest can take the form of sharing your social media posts for a chance to enter a draw to win something. The winner gets selected randomly.
If you can get even just 20 people with 1,000 followers to share your post, then it would have been seen by up to 20,000 people. The more people share your posts, the greater the reach. You’ll also be able to grow your account following as more people who want to participant in the contests will start following you. Be generous with the giveaways to get people excited.
12. Publish on listing websites
Property listing platforms account for around 48% of all real estate searches on the internet. Many people who are looking to buy or rent a house by default go to a listing platform. You can create an account on platforms such as eXp property search app and then re-list all your properties. That ensures that you have all your bases covered.
Other popular listing sites include:
- Zillow
- Trulia
- Better Homes and Gardens Real Estate
- Compass
- Zoocasa
- Keller Williams Realty
- RedFin
13. Offer free consultation
As an agent or realtor, you’re likely to be very knowledgeable about the real estate landscape in your location, the laws, benefits of living in the area, some problems it faces, etc. People who are looking to buy property usually have a thousand questions in their mind.
When you offer free consultation services, you give them that extra incentive to contact you right away with their questions. You never know what a few minutes of your time can lead up to.
Consultation is one of the best lead generators because it gives you an opportunity to interact with prospective buyers right when they’re considering a purchase. Once you demonstrate that you’re knowledgeable and trustworthy, it becomes a lot easier to sell to them.
14. Become a contributor on at least one publication
Becoming a contributor is a fantastic way to quickly grow your audience and establish yourself as an authority. Most magazines and blogs would welcome the idea of having a contributor who specializes in such an in-demand field because it would help them get more views.
Your column can focus on issues facing the real estate industry, the latest trends and news. Seize the moment to showcase your knowledge and experience by providing as much useful insights as possible. Don’t hold anything back.
Although contributors usually don’t get compensated for their work, what they get is a unique opportunity to promote themselves to a new audience. They can also add links to their own websites. Back links will help drive referral traffic as well as improve the website’s SEO score. They are one of the most important factors that Google uses when ranking websites.
15. Host a webinar
Webinars are a great way to get attention to your real estate brokerage. You can host new sessions every month on topics such as “things to consider before buying a new home”.
Always start promoting the webinar weeks in advance on social media and via email. The goal is to get as many attendees as possible when the event is live.
You can also do a Q&A to take questions from your audience members. Remember that a lot of the people that tune in are likely considering buying property.
