Not all marketing techniques are successful, as we all know. Every real estate agent wants to bring more traffic to their websites and social media accounts, generate leads, and close sales but struggles to make it happen.
Marketing is more than just coming up with marketing ideas, creating ads, and posting them online. It may be able to attract a few leads in the start but it's not effective in the long run unless you learn how to implement marketing techniques that convert your prospects into buyers.
In this article, we are going to share 25 marketing techniques for real estate agents that will help you generate leads and close deals faster – no matter where you are right now.
Focus on a particular niche. To become the broker of choice in the market, you need to distinguish yourself from other real estate agents by specializing in a particular niche within the broad domains of residential or commercial real estate. Many real estate agents specialize in one type of property depending on location, property type (single-family homes, multi-family, condo), buyer type (first-time homebuyers, senior citizens, investors), seller type (for sale by owner, home-flippers), situational (vacation rentals, relocation), and so much more! For example, Niche Homes is a boutique real estate agency in Salt Lake City and the Wasatch Front. Its agents market themselves as experts in local neighborhoods to capitalize on their knowledge of the area.
Study your market. Understand your consumer's psychology and you will be able to create a bond with your target audience. Doing market research and paying attention to consumer trends can help you connect with them emotionally and earn their trust. For example, if you are planning to enter the luxury real estate market, it is vital that you have extensive knowledge of the luxury lifestyle.
Design a website user interface that is engaging and intuitive. When designing a compelling user interface (UI), it is important to consider what aspects of a website are most important to a visitor. Real estate websites must present an appealing design, be easy to navigate, and persuade potential clients to take action. The design of your website should reflect the values and identity you want to communicate to your target audience. The Engel Group's website design successfully conveys the agency's brand, providing a rich user experience. Design is unified throughout the site, using a soft color palette and professional-looking font style to appeal to potential clients.
Make your pages conversion-friendly. The average real estate website has just 8 seconds to convince visitors to spend more time on the site. Good design and clear call-to-action buttons can help. The Agency has a website with a home page that displays a stunning picture of its listings. Visitors are enticed by the promise of a newsletter to enter their contact details, which are collected in the agency's database. You can also use specialized telephone numbers that are easy to memorize or recall and put them on your website for immediate contact. Riskin Partners Estate Group features a contact number on its homepage that greets all visitors.
Build your contact list by using opt-in forms. Lead pages should be placed prominently on your website or blog so that you can convert as many visitors into leads as possible. What you need is an opt-in form that engages website and blog visitors by prompting them to provide their information. Opt-ins are marketing techniques to ensure that your visitor clicks through after fulfilling certain conditions, like staying on the page for more than 20 seconds. Holly Williams, a real estate agent in Alexandria, VA provides clients with exclusive insight on events, inside information on neighborhoods, and suggestions for how best to take advantage of the city's resources.
Add a widget to your site that allows visitors to evaluate their own homes. Homeowners looking to sell often want to know how much their house is worth. Let them evaluate their home on your website. You can integrate your home valuation widget with Real Geeks' Home Valuation Tool, a free online service that allows users to examine the market value of their home based on location, square footage, and additional factors. Debra Dobbs, a Chicago-based real estate agent, incorporates a property valuation tool in her website as a marketing technique to generate more leads.
Showcase the locale on your website. Homebuyers can be convinced to buy property in certain neighborhoods. Leverage this as a marketing idea to showcase the locale on your website by using large, crisp header photos. This kind of design tends to persuade the potential buyer that the area is a desirable place to live. Real estate agents Michael and Nancy allow visitors to explore the neighborhood of Santa Barbara through a dedicated page with a feature video and pertinent information.
Put the property map on your website. The geographic location of each property is a key selling point for real estate clients looking to relocate. In addition to making the locations of their listings clear, some real estate sites emphasize location by displaying maps that pinpoint the exact locations of each property and what’s in the vicinity. Spring Condos of Austin utilizes a map showing the exact location of the condominium towers. Here, you can imagine what Spring describes as "spectacular views of Austin from each condominium".
Give your website a human touch. Another marketing idea for an effective real estate website is to humanize it. Humanizing the design of real estate websites can make a professional brand seem more personable and relatable—and lead to more clients. A warm welcome from a real estate agent can be the best way to begin a relationship with a prospect client. On Andrew Kutsenda's site, a friendly feel permeates the website, which makes visitors at ease.
Create a FAQ page on your website. Homebuyers often have a lot of questions about real estate services and the homebuying process. Through a FAQ page, you can provide information about the process of buying and selling real estate to help potential customers learn about your services. Clarke Agency has compiled a list of questions and answers for site visitors. After reading these answers, potential clients will be better informed about the services they offer.
Add a 24-7 live chat to your website.
Websites that have live chat on their website also offer 24/7 help to visitors in need. This means customers can get help whenever they want by clicking on a certain icon, sending a direct message, or talking to a customer support agent. Live chat guides can provide customers with answers to their questions, allowing them to make informed decisions.
Tamara Straight of Boerne, Texas integrates a live chat into her website that allows her to engage with website visitors and answer their questions even if she is not on the site.
Highlight customer testimonials.
Reviews from people whom a potential customer knows and trusts are more effective at convincing potential customers to purchase than any ad campaign. Testimonials from satisfied customers build customer trust and encourage potential customers to purchase your product.
After a successful transaction with a customer, ask for a testimonial. Let the customer know you'll use it on your website or other marketing materials. Lanier Property Group featured testimonials on this website page as well as features in media outlets.
Make your website mobile-friendly.
If you want your website to attract visitors, then ensure that the design of your site is user-friendly on mobile devices. With 52% of internet users now browsing via mobile devices, it has become vital to create a mobile-optimized website. By offering visitors to your website direct access to relevant information—including a prominent CTA button that encourages conversion—you can increase leads and sales on your site.
Ivan Estrada Properties provides customers with easy-to-digest content and high-resolution images in a clean, mobile-friendly layout. In fact, this site was given a Best Mobile honorable mention on the 2021 RealTrends Website Rankings.
Post information and insights on a blog. Starting a blog with helpful information for consumers considering a real estate purchase can be useful. When potential customers are considering buying a home, they will seek out experts in the field, and when they see your blog posts with infographics and videos, they will see you as a real estate expert and come to you for more information. Even Josh Flagg, a well-known real estate agent in Los Angeles, utilizes the power of blog as one of his marketing techniques. In his blog, he invites visitors to read relevant real estate resources like market trends, home design, tips, and more.
Leverage the use of content marketing. With content marketing, you create valuable content that engages real estate customers, helps them solve their problems, and provides an opportunity to present your own services as the solution. In this way, you increase brand awareness and drive sales. To achieve success with content marketing, you'll need to create high-quality content and promote it both on search engines and social media. A good example of content strategy is Rachel Balmforth's site featuring content that speaks directly to her prospective buyers. She knows that aside from properties, her buyers are also looking for interior design, home shopping guides, and home inspirations.
Increase your website traffic by improving your search rankings. The truth is people won’t find your website just because you made it. That’s why it’s important to market your content on search engines like Google. Search engine optimization is a way to get your website and blog content to rank higher in Google searches. Your ability to attract traffic from search engines can be greatly enhanced by developing content focused on keywords that people use to search for real estate properties or brokers and agents online. In addition to a keyword-competition research tool like Ubersuggest, other SEO tools include Ahrefs, Moz, and Google Keyword Planner to help you select target keywords rather than wasting time on low-traffic long-tail keywords that won't get your site visited.
Harness the power of video for real estate marketing. Video marketing can be a relatively inexpensive way to increase your leads. According to HubSpot, 87% of marketers reported a positive return on investment (ROI) when using video marketing. Videos can be an excellent way to convey information, as they combine the best of text, pictures and diagrams, and are engaging to viewers. The ability to instantly access information has led to the popularity of videos, which are shared with other people most of the time. Additionally, videos can improve your website's search engine optimization. Anthony West, a real estate agent specializing in Kansas City, welcomes website visitors with a full-screen video featuring high-end modern construction Kansas homes priced at a million dollars or less.
Be active on social media. Social media marketing can increase your brand awareness, drive leads to your website, and reach a broader audience. Since you're not limited to a real estate-related-only platform, you can reach more people through a more diverse audience. To capitalize on social media's benefits, you must tailor your marketing message to each platform's unique characteristics. The top social media platforms for generating leads are Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and LinkedIn. Check out this page by Debra Ross which has 25 5-star reviews. When potential clients are viewing her profile, they are immediately attracted to the positive reviews. Her listings are located right up front so clients can find the information they need easily.
Take advantage of live features on social media. You can use social media, including Instagram, Facebook and TikTok, to go live and provide a valuable service to your clients by displaying property features. Broadcast a conversation, performance, Q&A or virtual event to the public on these social media channels. To give you an idea, here's a live property walk in Destin, Florida by Five Star Properties.
Arrange virtual open home visits or tours. Virtual open home visits will give you opportunities to meet your agent's contacts virtually, in a non-intrusive way as they are offered, and only when convenient for each person. Create a virtual tour of the properties you are selling or renting to give potential buyers an experience similar to a walk-through. Provide commentary during the visit to add value to the broadcast. Not sure how to execute this? Check out this guided 360 virtual real estate video tour to get you started.
Get your property listings in the Facebook marketplace. Did you know that 33% of millennials spend nearly 14 hours weekly on social media during their housing search? Facebook Marketplace is designed to help millions of people buy and sell items, including finding their next home, without leaving the Facebook platform. Facebook Marketplace enables you to post mobile-friendly listings, deliver relevant property information and list your inventory at no cost. To check sample property listings, simply go to the Property for Sale category in the Facebook marketplace.
Host contests and giveaways. A successful marketing campaign often garners more attention for a business by offering followers an opportunity to engage with the brand, in this case on Facebook and Instagram. Successful contest marketing can draw people in to build brand engagement and boost brand visibility. We created a guide on how to use social media contests as an effective marketing technique for real estate. Overwhelmed on how to do this? Here's a sample giveaway post by a real estate company in Wisconsin.
Optimize your Google Business page. When Google deems a search query local (e.g., “California properties for sale”), it displays Google My Business listings in the search results. As a real estate agent, you can create and manage your Google My Business listing to showcase your services. By claiming a Google My Business listing, you can add a profile picture, business information, hours of operation, and more. For guidance, check out this step-by-step guide to Google My Business for real estate agents.
Utilize a customer relationship management (CRM) software tool to manage your clients. Keeping track of leads, interactions with potential customers, and the individual stage of their buying journey can be tedious and confusing. Instead, you can use online business software to keep your customer relationships organized. This can help you follow up with leads and send contracts at the right time. Additionally, online business software has in-built tagging, filtering, and other features that make customer segmentation, tracking, and so on easier. If you are new in the real estate industry, we discussed in one of our previous posts some of the top software tools you should have.
Maintain relationships after sale. When your customer and you have established a good working relationship, it is important to maintain that relationship after the sale has been completed. Providing personal touches (like unexpected gifts) to maintain and develop long-term relationships with customers can pay off in the long term. It puts you in the position of being top-of-mind when your clients want to buy or sell another property or when they refer friends who need help buying homes.
Final Thoughts
With a smart real estate marketing plan in place, you can get closer to achieving your goals. The above 25 marketing techniques for real estate agents are just a few of the many marketing ideas out there. However, if you can combine them effectively with each other, your chances of success would increase many folds!
