Industry Focus: 5 Marketing Tips for Real Estate Agents
The real estate market has gone absolutely crazy in recent times. It doesn’t look like that’s going to change any time soon, so here are five hot marketing tips to help real estate agents make the most of it.
Blogging
Building trust is critical when your reputation is integral to your business as a real estate agent. People need to feel confident that they can trust you when they’re engaging you to help buy or sell their home. The same goes for property managers.
Given the state of the housing market, that trust is even more critical. People are hesitant, and rightly so, to take the step from renting to buying. Further, those wanting to sell need to believe you are the best choice available. As a real estate agent, you need to earn their confidence through social proof. One means of doing so is to run a blog.
A well-curated blog is incredibly valuable. How? A blog filled with informative articles written by experts establishes you as an industry leader. It builds an authentic base of written material that people can freely use as resources to educate themselves and better understand your industry – and you.
Leveraging a bit of SEO research will also let a blog do wonderful things for your Google ranking – if you want to improve your Google rating, blogging is the way to go.
Social Media
Keeping active on social media may take a bit of work, but the return on your investment is well worth it. Socials keep you top of mind and your online presence, well, present.
Putting a little budget behind posts is a great way to boost awareness for localities or specific consumer profiles. For example, have you purchased leasing rights to a new suburb? Introduce yourself to the locals, or those looking to become so, by boosting some posts.
Beyond generating awareness, social media holds a lot of value for real estate agents. When people look for a real estate agent, they look for someone they can trust, someone they know has their interests at heart. Socials are one way to build trust and strengthen the relationship between your brand and clients.
Finally, socials can be a great information sharing tool. Those blog articles we mentioned before? Socials are a great place to share that information and encourage people to check out your website. Beyond that, you can share tips, tricks, property updates, and industry news – and that’s just a glimpse at what you can do.
Speaking of shareable content…
Video
People aren’t just interested in the property for sale nowadays. They’re interested in the surroundings that will shape their lifestyle. That’s partly why we see so many property developers promoting the lifestyle that their project beholds to residents.
Capture the lifestyle and attractiveness of your listings by employing drone footage. Besides a top-down view of the property itself, an aerial view is a great way to show off nearby points of interest, like parks, shopping precincts, schools, transport hubs, and the all-important view.
Video walkthroughs are a must for selling, renting, and buying in the current state of the world. People’s day to day lives are busier than ever – not everyone will be able to visit your next open home, or want to if they’re expecting to bump elbows with the 50 other people at the viewing. Offering people a virtual walkthrough of the property is a great way to expand your customer reach and provide an alternate viewing experience.
Going the extra mile with video footage also makes you look more attractive to those wanting to go through an agent to sell or lease their property. It shows that you care about getting the best possible return for your customers.
Paid Ads
Paid ads are a great way to boost your brand awareness or promote specific suburbs. Unlike multi-frame banners that appear on host sites, like REA, paid ads show up on social media. That means your audience doesn’t have to be on a real estate website to see your ads.
Social media also offers a great deal of freedom for creativity and brand promotion. Beyond that, paid ads on these platforms are very cost-effective. For example, you can reach over 1000 people for less than $3 a day on Facebook. That’s cheaper than your daily coffee.
On the other side of the campaign, paid ads produce a tantalising wealth of data. Under the right analysis, a lot of useful insights can be gleaned from that data. You’ll want to heavily lean on those insights for retargeting campaigns to make future marketing campaigns even more effective.
Here’s a fact to put all of this in perspective for you: Australians spend close to 2 hours active on social media every day. That’s nearly 2 hours every day that your brand has a chance to connect with its audience.
Word Of Mouth
We all know that word of mouth is the best type of marketing in the real estate industry. It can’t be beaten. It can’t be bought. Word of mouth marketing must be earned. Why? Because there is a degree of trust that comes with every referral.
Referrals are wonderful. Given that, it’s important to encourage happy customers to refer people to you. The most obvious way to do that is by providing a truly exceptional service. After that, check in with your clients a month down the road. During that check-in, ask for a testimonial and encourage them to refer people to you.
(Remember that your brand must be consistent with meeting and exceeding expectations to keep earning word of mouth referrals.)
Another way to earn word of mouth is to put yourself out there in some face-to-face scenarios – primarily those with people that are a step or two away from being a client. That means speaking at seminars, offering area tours, manning an open home, and staffing display village suites. These are all opportunities for you to make a great first impression on people and build a reputation as a professional and an expert.
Research tells us that we are more likely to trust people we see, those we know more about, people we learn from, and people we find funny or entertaining. So, to earn trust, and thereby encourage word of mouth marketing, you have to put yourself out there.
These tips are just five ways that marketing agents can boost their marketing efforts. Get in touch with the marketing experts today if you want to learn more about anything we discussed here today!
