Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
What with so many house hunters using the Internet to begin their home search, it's become more important than ever for real estate professionals to get noticed online? RIS Media last week published a list of helpful and easy tips to expand the visibility of your website and branding online, and the best news is you don't need to be a tech guru to implement them.
Place your ads in the right places
This is probably the most obvious tip, but it's worth repeating – you need to place your advertisements in the places where prospective buyers and sellers are most likely to be searching. In other words, you need to adopt a targeted ad campaign, which means honing in on specific locations and searches, and perhaps even people's behaviors, such as those who're most likely to actually buy or sell a home. There are a number of advertising platforms that enable you to launch targeted ad campaigns, including Google Adwords, Facebook Ads and the local advertising platform on Homes.com.
Be Social
There are few better ways to generate exposure and get yourself known than with using social media. Platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and local forums are perfect for someone knowledgeable like you to answer people's questions and blog about real estate in your local area. All of this helps to get noticed, but beware you don't fall into the trap of just blogging about your own listings all the time as that's one of the fastest ways to turn people off – people will just interpret it as spam.
Instead, a better strategy is to come across as “helpful”, which means answering people's questions, and sharing information about your local neighborhood, for example which are the best schools, night spots and so on.
Create lots of great content
You need to be more than just a listing agent. You need to be a resource, and that means filling your website up with useful content about your area. Think about the kind of content your audience will need. If they're buying a home, they might be interested in tips on renovating a home. Alternatively, they might be unsure of how to begin the home search or sales negotiation process. Your job is to blog about these things, so you can position yourself as an expert. And once you've achieved that and people see you as a go-to source for everything real estate-related, it won't be long until you start seeing a much greater number of clients.
