Snapchat is a messaging app with excellent potential for real estate marketing. Realtors have begun paying attention to this tool as early as 2016 and although its users tend to be mostly young (45% of Snapchat users are aged between 18-24 and 71% of Snapchat users are under 34 years old), many real estate professionals have reported good success rates.
Back in 2016, Snapchat was regarded as an app with higher engagement than any social network. To date, it has over 300 million active users every month, of which 100 million are active every day. And although only 18% of these users are from the US, Snapshot seems to be effective for many realtors.
User @dustinbrohm (Dustin Brohm) on Snapshot uses the platform to highlight specific homes for sale in the Salt Lake City area:
“I use Snapchat to tell stories and educate people about real estate and smart home technology, as well as to highlight specific homes for sale in the Salt Lake City area,” he explains. “Even more valuable than snapping your listings, Snapchat shows me to be authentic, unrehearsed and real. These days, people are turned off by the polished, rehearsed salesman giving a sales pitch on why they’re the best REALTOR® for the job. They want to work with someone authentic and real, but who has also given them value and educated them.”
Brohm, who is an expert on Snapchat for real estate, also recommends the tool to build relationships with realtors from around the US and the world. However, other real estate experts, like Tyler Zey, suggest that Snapchat is “nearly a complete waste of time for most agents,” especially for those who fail to promote themselves on networks that already work, like YouTube and Facebook.
“Snapchat is better than email marketing if you’ve already got the infrastructure in place for it to fit into,” Zey explains, advising realtors to invest time and energy into improving their websites, blogs, and other social media profiles.
And yet, realtors and brokers like Jennifer Gould, Sonia E Figueroa, Kala Laos, Chelsea Peitz, and Adam Kresch, among several others, owe a lot of their success to this millennial-driven platform.
Several other real estate companies report success in using the app, especially as it enables their staff to develop personal engagement with clients. There are three immediate benefits identified by realtors using Snapchat:
- Realtors can record video previews of a home they want to promote on the market, creating virtual tours that offer more to a potential customer than a text description
- Geofilters on Snapchat allow realtors to target directly potential buyers in a certain geographical area.
- Snapchat enables realtors to deliver a personal, more authentic message and get real time leads
“Snapchat is an innovative tool for realtors,” stated Candace Adams, president and CEO of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices New England and Westchester Properties talking about the main benefits of the platform earlier last year.
One of the best success examples of effective use of Snapchat for real estate is offered by Snaplistings, a project by Dolly Meckler (Snapchat: @dollymeckler) and Michael Hoffman (Snapchat: @mh0ffman). The @snaplistings account features everything from rentals to high-end apartments for sale, and they do it efficiently: most recently, Felipe Ros, a 23-year-old investment banker, rented his place from @snaplistings. Realtors using the account report excellent returns too, as well as serious leads.
Although the app is currently enjoyed more by young users, these will get older in the next years, so it’s very likely that Snapchat will offer broader reach to mature buyers in the long run.
If you are new to Snapchat, the National Association of REALTORS has already put together the Field Guide to Snapchat for REALTORS®, which covers the basics and links to many useful resources to show you how to use the platform efficiently to maximize leads.
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