The real estate market is once again flourishing and this has caused a lot of competition for motivated leads. With more and more people stepping into the real estate industry, realtors and investors are coming up with new and innovative ways to get their phones ringing. Whether it’s through social media, video streaming, relevant content, SEO, or virtual realty, it’s safe to say we are finding new and innovative ways to market for real estate.
1. Social Media
Social media has been a blessing to the real estate industry. Marketing for sellers used to be a blanketed approach with direct mail, and now we can target prospective clients through the power of Facebook ads. According to AdEspresso, not only can you target a prospective client by their age, demographic, and location, you can target based on their interests and behaviors. If you know that someone may be motivated to sell their home due to inheriting an unwanted property, you can target them based on that behavior. You can even create specific ads for that type of homeowner, all from the comfort of your living room.
Social media has also helped us share content in a more effective manner. Gone are the days of pitching your articles via email only to see a measly 25% open rate. Now with social media, real estate investors and agents can share not only their blog posts and articles, but videos through their social media following. If you continuously put out great content, you will grow a large following and drive more traffic to your site.
2. Video Streaming
Now with the ability to stream directly from your cell phone, agents and investors now have the opportunity to stream live right to your website. You can also publish your videos to Youtube and other social media sites for added exposure.
Video is great for saving buyers and sellers tons of time and headaches. Buyers no longer need to spend an entire Saturday out looking at properties. The listing agent can shoot a high definition video of the home and provide a detailed tour. This gives buyers more time to find their perfect property without scheduling multiple viewings. Sellers are able to show their home virtually without leaving. Video will increase sales and allow agents to reach a broader audience in a shorter amount of time.
3. Relevant Content
With the ability to fine-tune our target audience, relevant content is more important than ever. Potential clients not only want to read about content for their specific query, but content related to their location. As real estate marketers, it is better to target your specific client with hyper-targeted content as opposed to broad content.
In order to be hyper-targeted in your content, you have to know what potential clients in your market are searching for. A great tool you can use is Google’s Keyword Planner. This free tool can help you find exactly what your potential clients are searching for, so you can create relevant content tailored to one specific audience.
For example, you may find a high search volume for “how to sell my house fast in [market-city]”. You can create a guide walking a potential client through exactly how to sell their home fast in your local market. Zach with Nexus Homebuyers has been able to produce great content for his local market in Knoxville, Tennessee by following this method. “We focus on targeting longer search phrases in our market, such as ‘selling a house that needs repairs’ instead of ‘real estate’. We want our potential clients to be able to find answers to their questions on our site, and the longer they stay on our site, the higher our conversion rate.”
Not only do you need to create amazing content, your blog needs to be updated frequently. The days of one post per month are long gone, and your blog needs to putting out great content regularly. Neil Patel posted an article about how often you should blog, and the frequency is up for debate. Some bloggers post 1 post a week and drive thousands of viewers to their articles. Other blogs such as Huffington Post, post an article every 58 seconds. The frequency at which you post should align with your goals for your website.
4. SEO
SEO, or “search engine optimization”, is the process of getting the “free” or “organic” traffic from the major search engines such as Google, Bing, and Yahoo. The basis for strong SEO is a real estate website that has strong “on-page” factors like content, architecture, and HTML, as well as strong “off-page” factors like trust, links, personal, and social presence. Without getting too technical, SEO can generate leads each and every day for a low cost and a majority of the leads are of high quality.
If you have your website already setup, local SEO is important than ever. You will be able to target clients based on physical proximity even down to certain neighborhoods. This is extremely relevant in the real estate industry given that many real estate professionals may invest or target specific neighborhoods in their marketing efforts. You can create specific content for a given location and if done correctly, your content can rank very quickly for your target market.
5. Virtual Reality
Virtual reality has been gaining momentum, but currently the progress is slow due to hardware and software limitations. As these technologies become more readily available, and prices begin to decrease, virtual reality will begin to offer a unique way for buyers and sellers to view homes. According to Forbes, there are many ways virtual reality will help the real estate industry. From 3-D open houses to using a VR headset to add your furniture and decorations into any room. Virtual reality will allow real estate professionals to buy and sell property at a much greater speed and for the best possible price.
What To Expect In Real Estate Marketing Soon
Each year technology continues to improve our marketing efforts as real estate professionals. With many real estate professionals implementing social media trends, video, relevant content, SEO strategies, and virtual reality, the industry is becoming more competitive than ever. As a real estate agent or investor, if you don’t adapt to the changing industry, you might be left behind.
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