Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Anyone who works in the real estate sector knows that without a good marketing funnel, you’re not going to be successful. Real estate agents of all types rely upon their ability to build client relationships, as poor client-building means not enough clients to sustain your business. Thus, marketing yourself, your professional services, and your overall brand, becomes one of your primary tasks. It doesn’t matter how well you can serve your clients if you don’t have any, after all!
This all-important task has evolved in modern times. Thanks to the wide reach of the internet, digital marketing and branding is one of the most important ways to build and maintain a client funnel. In fact, with house-hunters placing their core focus on online property searches, digital branding and marketing is now crucial. Without a strong online presence, you’re practically invisible – and invisible real estate agents don’t close sales. Here’s what you need to know about why digital marketing is now so vital.
The truth is that most house hunters begin their search online. In fact, a whopping 78 percent start with an internet search! If you don’t maintain an online presence, you don’t have a chance of showing up in those searches. On top of that, if you’re not using the right branding and marketing techniques (like search engine optimization), your content won’t rank very high in the search results. You can pay Google to be placed at the top of the list, but that’s not always a cost-effective investment in many cases.
And this is a very big deal to be sure. The highest-ranked organic (i.e. not paid) search result on Google has a click-through rate of more than 27 percent. By comparison, the 5th-ranked search result gets a paltry 6.3 percent. And forget about anything lower than that – in fact, if you don’t even make it to the first page, the chances of your result getting seen are minuscule at only 0.63 percent. So, unless you’re working your hardest to optimize your online content, it’s not going to show up in search queries!
Search engine optimization for real estate is a major endeavor. It’s a huge topic and one that’s well beyond the scope of this guide. Now, real estate SEO is something that you can learn to do yourself, as there are resources you can avail yourself of to learn crucial concepts like how to research the most popular real estate-related keywords and how to include them in your digital content properly for best results in ways that don’t penalize your search ranking for using artificial methods like keyword stuffing.
SEO through keyword optimization is just the tip of the iceberg, though. There are other real estate SEO strategies that you will need to learn, such as the type of content to publish online, which platforms that content needs to be published on, and even the schedule you adhere to when you post that content. It’s a big, complex world that you’ll find yourself in, and it’s only natural if you might feel lost at first. Thankfully, there are paths through this labyrinth that will lead you out and into the light of day.
Real estate professionals often find themselves having to be the proverbial Jack of all trades. This is especially true for real estate agents at the beginning of their careers when they’re just striking out on their own. In other words, to get your business up and running you end up being the chief cook and bottle washer, having to do a little bit of everything. That includes your own branding and marketing activities in digital spaces across the internet, on your own, with only little outside help – or none at all!
This is, of course, eminently achievable. Thousands of real estate agents run their own digital marketing and branding, often to great effect. Yet there are other ways to build your digital presence without having to burn the candle at both ends. Partnering with a smart, agile, and savvy marketing expert that will work closely with you to create digital content that’s as effective as possible is an excellent alternative. It’s an investment to be sure, but one that pays for itself many times over to be sure.
At this point, two things should be crystal clear. First, marketing yourself as a real estate professional absolutely requires you to do so online, as that is where people now look for real estate services. Digital spaces, from social media platforms and professional blogs, are the content that feeds search engines like Google; ensuring you can be found by potential clients through those search engines means maintaining a strong and effective digital presence across a multitude of platforms for the best visibility.
Second, using digital marketing and using digital marketing effectively are two very different things. Without the proper knowledge and expertise behind your online branding activities, you’re not going to get the results you need to stand out from the crowd of your competitors. This means either investing time and effort in learning the ins and outs of proper digital marketing techniques or investing resources by enlisting the help of a professional marketing firm. Either way, it’s an investment, so choose wisely.
