Simply put, digital marketing for real estate is the process of promoting your real estate business online. The marketing activities involved can vary widely depending on your business type and target audience. There are hundreds of different online marketing channels available that real estate professionals can utilize in the digital age. This can make it seem like a challenging task to create a digital marketing strategy that will work for your real estate business.
This article will simplify the concept of digital marketing for real estate. It will explain what role it plays and what types are most commonly used.
Digital marketing plays a several roles in promoting your real estate business:
Digital marketing allows you to build brand awareness for your real estate business. If you target your audience correctly, you can ensure your brand is visible in all the places your potential clients go on the internet. That could mean targeted ads on Google and Facebook, digital display ads, or even blog content optimized for specific keywords.
Digital marketing allows you to generate new business by promoting your service to your target audience, whether they be buyers, sellers, or renters. Using digital real estate platforms, you can market your listings to a large audience of buyers and renters. Using your own blog, website, or social media pages, you can build a network of potential clients and referral businesses for your services by producing content that sells your expertise.
Word of mouth will always be one of the strongest forms of marketing for any real estate business. Word of mouth does exist in digital form. Your online reviews in places like Google My Business, Yelp, and Facebook are visible for the world to see, and you can bet that many potential clients are researching your business before they reach out to you. Focus on building a strong online reputation, and your online lead generation efforts will become much easier.
Digital marketing provides real estate professionals with multiple channels to promote events and new product/service offerings. Whether you’re hosting an open house or you’re looking to set up a free webinar to educate sellers or investors, digital marketing provides you with countless avenues for promoting it to your audience.
Using digital marketing, you are able to generate repeat business and referrals in a number of ways. You can set up remarketing channels so that you can retarget to those who have done business with you in the past. You can also utilize email and social media campaigns to incentivize past clients to refer your business to new potential clients in their network.
The internet has revolutionized how properties are bought, sold, and rented. According to NAR’s 2021 Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, 41% of home buyers started out by looking for properties online vs. just 19% that reached out to a real estate agent first. Their research also revealed that 95% of buyers used online tools in the process of purchasing a home. Now more than ever, digital marketing is an important part of real estate. As more millennials become home buyers in the upcoming years, this trend will only gain momentum.
You can use almost any form of digital marketing to promote your real estate business. Here are the most common types of digital marketing used in real estate:
Designing a clean and professional real estate website to promote your business is an important part of establishing credibility with your potential clients. That could be a simple site for an agent to showcase their listings with an IDX plugin, a blog to showcase your expertise in your particular area of real estate, or both.
Email marketing is one of the best ways for real estate professionals to convert leads into sales and generate repeat business. Utilizing CRM platforms like Hubspot or Mailchimp, you can segment your email contacts and send them targeted content to try and generate new business.
Utilizing paid ad platforms such as Google Ads and Facebook Ads, you can set up highly targeted advertising campaigns to promote your service to those likely to need it. Using Google Ads, you can target keywords that people search when looking for real estate professionals in your area. Using Facebook Ads, you can run Dynamic Ads for Real Estate to showcase your listings, create Testimonial campaigns to generate referral business, and use video ads to showcase your property or promotional videos to potential leads.
Social media networks allow real estate professionals the ability to build a channel of followers, expand their network of potential clients, and promote their brand directly to their target audience. By creating informational content and sharing on social media platforms, real estate businesses can sell their expertise directly to their market audience and establish credibility.
Video is an especially powerful tool for real estate professionals to showcase their properties or sell their expertise in their respective fields. Listings with property videos and/or 3D tours always outperform those without, and many real estate professionals have built a large following by simply sharing their insights and expertise on video platforms like YouTube.
Over the past decade, dozens of new proptech applications have changed the way people buy, sell and rent properties. AirBnb revolutionized the short-term rental industry, and listings sites such as apartments.com and Zillow get a lion’s share of the traffic from potential buyers and renters. Focusing on how you can best position your listings on these sites can vastly improve the number of leads and conversions you can generate in the digital space.
Remarketing campaigns allow you to retarget users who have visited your website in the past but may have not converted. Using Google Display Ads or Facebook Remarketing Ads, you can show previous website visitors targeted ads to build your brand awareness and eventually convert that web traffic into leads for your business.
Which real estate advertising platform is best suited for your business depends largely on which type of real estate business you have. For agents and brokers, platforms like Zillow and apartments.com contain the largest potential audience of buyers and renters. For short-term rental landlords, mobile apps like AirBnb and Vrbo could be valuable sources of revenue. For B2B real estate businesses, content marketing can be a powerful way to establish credibility and expertise with your target audience.
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