Real Estate Marketing Guide
Digital Marketing
According to the NAR, the following are how buyers found the home they purchased:
Internet: 52%
Real estate agent: 29%
Yard sign/open house sign: 6%
Friend, relative, or neighbor: 6%
Homebuilder or their agent: 4%
Directly from sellers/Knew the sellers: 3%
Print newspaper advertisement: less than 1%
Digital marketing efforts to drive your brand awareness and promote all active listings are some of the most effective and efficient marketing campaigns you can run as a real estate agent. Digital marketing campaigns are trackable; you will see who clicks what, you will see how your target market interacts with your content. This is extremely helpful to determine how to modify content to make it more appealing to your audience. You can get reports on the most popular content, such as your most popular listing to get an idea of what users are most interested in and to list similar homes or create content that’s in line with similar subject matter.
There are many digital platforms to choose from to spend your time and dollars on. With a combined effort focused on the most popular listing portals, your content marketing, digital ads, SEO, and website resources, you will hit buyers and sellers at all the places they’re likely to be interested in your services during the home purchase process.
Agent Website
When it comes to your personal brand, your agent website is the showroom. It is the Apple retail Store of your business. Your website should communicate what special value you bring as an agent. What promise do you make? How can you make my life easier? These are the central messages on your homepage.
Eighty-two percent of millennials state buying a home is a priority, and we all know that millennials are well-versed in digital communications and purchasing.
Your website is your central hub for your personal brand’s web presence. You may switch agencies, switch cities, switch niches throughout your real estate career. However, your website and your personal brand remains steadfast and constant as a place where people can discover who you are and what you’re about.
The key to a great website is to keep it simple, allow visitors to learn more about you, why they should work with you and trust you, and the homes you are selling in as little time as possible; considering the short attention span of modern culture. You also need a place where the content is all yours, and not controlled by a social network or other platform. Websites help you to be found online. Own your own content for life. Also, creating your own content gives you something to share or have shared on social media or other sites, which is your public relations engine that helps you create more buzz, trust, and authority in your markets.
Furthermore, your website should look professional and make you look like the expert. Your website also connects visitors to your social media channels, to your home listings, your blog, bio and contact forms. Quality content and good design are the two keys to making sure your website is pleasing to use, and is optimized for being discovered in search engines.
The ways in which to optimize your website include Google’s best practices for Search Engine Optimization and User Experience. Start with the obvious and then move to optimize the more detailed and technical aspects, such as page titles, title tags, site map, and content structure.
Make sure you have a strong, friendly bio that talks briefly about your professional accomplishments and a bit about your personal interests. This shows you are relatable, yet professional. If you’re new, talk more about your career goals and other achievements besides homes sold. An example would be that you go the extra mile for your clients, you give the best service after the sale, etc.
Keep your website current
One of the biggest challenges with a website is to keep it current, with new information including new listings, and new blog content. Make sure you devote 1-2 hours per week to writing and adding content to your site. Make sure your active listings are current too. A great way to do this is to power your site with IDX snippets that can display MLS data about your listings. You can use a simple WordPress template to make this happen.
Make sure your headshots and home listings photos are high resolution and high quality.
Create different landing pages for the communities you primarily work in. Having a different web page for your different niches shows Google that you are a subject matter expert on these locations, giving you better SEO authority and better web traffic, because your content will help lift you in the search rankings. Your pages could be called “homes for sale in Austin” or “Santa Monica real estate agent”.
Make sure your contact information is easy to find on every page of the site, either the header or footer. Even include call to action buttons on each page to get in touch with you.
Optimize the keywords on your site for search engines and human searchers alike. You want to be aware of the keywords users might be using to find you. For example, someone new to the area might search for “homes near Kalamazoo”, or “real estate agents in Kalamazoo”.
Adding keyword-focused, detailed content like blogs and landing pages to your website helps to brand you as an authoritative source for information related to these search terms, giving you more credibility on the topic in the eyes of the search engine and your site visitors.
For large city search terms, like “homes in Dallas”, your agent site probably won’t compete with the large real estate company sites in the search rankings. However, the more granular and “long tail” you focus, you can rank highly for the less-competitive keywords people still do search for. Some examples of hyper-local topics that will help build organic traffic include content about school districts, local market insights, neighborhood attractions, neighborhood culture, and scenic points near subdivisions.
You can even create an interactive neighborhood map so everyone can see your real estate territory and what you specialize in. Having the expertise you do, you can create a map that shows the attractions and details around homes they may be interested in. This type of content may also be valuable for neighborhood associations, who may share your content, and serve as a great resource for all existing and new residents. Becoming an asset for your community helps generate awareness and leads for you as the local expert.
In 2020, it’s easier than ever to make your own website that looks great quickly without much coding knowledge required. Services like Squarespace, Wix, WordPress and Real Estate Webmaster can help you do this. Depending on your budget, you have options to either hire a web designer to create a site for you, rent a site from companies like Easy Agent Pro, Intagent, or Agent Image, or even build your own site if you’re on a tight budget.
Your agent website should meet basic customer expectations, including:
A fast, mobile-responsive website (fast page load speeds)
Easy to navigate user experience
Personalized content that’s easily readable
Contact form and appointment-booking features
Mortgage and other user calculators
Social media connection icons
Photo/video and virtual tour galleries of your listings
Local neighborhood Maps
Chatbots for easy lead generation
Buying/selling/moving resources for homeowners
Interactive mortgage calculator
Checklists like a home-ownership checklist
Blog content – what have you been up to?
Testimonials
Call to action buttons
As a professional in your eld, your personal brand starts with your own agent website. Oftentimes a brokerage or real estate listing site will offer you a “website”, but the problem with this is you don’t control the design of your website. Getting your listings on listing portals is extremely valuable, because it gives more visibility to your listings. Often, you will have a short bio or an agent profile on these listings sites. Don’t let this be a replacement for a proper agent website.
Being a real estate agent in the 21st century involves a digital-first approach. The better digital presence, the more visibility you will have. A great agent website makes it easy for potential buyers and sellers to contact you.
SEO
Agent website SEO
Your goal for your agent website is going to be to earn traffic and draw web visitors to your website and your listings. To make yourself visible, you’ll want to rank highly for key search terms your clients are searching for. As an example, when someone searches for “luxury homes in Austin”, if that were your market, you would want to be the first name and face that shows up. The first 7 positions on page one of a Google search constitute the majority of web traffic for any search term.
To rank in search engines, you’ll want to conduct keyword research to find out the search terms people are typing in relative to your niche. You’ll generally want to include geo-focused keywords that focus on homes in and around your target area. For example, “new listings in South Austin”. When people type these types of things into Google, they generally have some interest in homes for sale. It’s your job to find the ones that are most serious and start a lead generation and lead nurturing campaign with these people.
On your website, you can add keywords to every webpage, every image, and blog content. You can link to other pages on your site that are related, such as a page on condos linking to another page about townhomes on your site. Each of your site pages should be organized and focused on a given target keyword. Optimizing your titles and URLs is also important.
Real Estate Portals
Zillow
With over 188 million views, you have to be in touch with the most popular website for your customers. Consult this resource to set up your agent profile: the steps to set up your own profile. Your profile allows you to share listings and connect with prospects.
With Zillow Premier Agent, you are paying for leads.
Realtor.com
Realtor.com is a top competitor with Zillow, offering many of the same website features as Zillow. Realtor.com has a built in CRM, create your own agent profile, tools for buyer and seller agents, agent ratings, and more.
Other listing portals
Real estate syndication allows you to push your listings out to partner sites with the ease of a click. You can also push out listings to luxury syndication websites like Wall Street Journal or Robb Report. Placing your listings on more sites ensures the best possible coverage online. For luxury listings specially, getting your listings on top sites ensures luxury buyers nationwide and internationally can see your available properties.
Popular Listing Services:
Redfin
Trulia
Zillow
MLS
Craigslist
Many potential home buyers start their search from their mobile device using top real estate apps or on their desktop computers using these same websites, instead of starting with a Google search. These are some of the most popular real estate listing apps on the Apple AppStore and Google Play Store. You’ll get your listings in front of users where there, from desktop to mobile devices.
Fill out as much data you can per listing, including special home features, extras, special home features, or stand out attractions like a deck or swimming pool. The more information you add to MLS listings data the more easily searchable your listings will be. It allows your listing to be correctly identified when users add filters to narrow their search.
Pushing your listings to many different sites increases visibility on your name, your listings, and your brand. Make sure to update all your online listings when a price changes or new images are taken. You will want to make it easy to get in touch with you as soon as possible by prospects, so make sure your listings include an option to call or text, email you, schedule a tour, as well as a form that someone can request you to contact them while also telling you their specific needs.
Plug in all of these inbound leads into your CRM to manage the relationship. Some people may be ready to buy now, but others need more time. You can use your email program and CRM together to send out regular email messages to keep in touch with prospects.
Local SEO
Online business listing sites
Make sure you appear on local business listings, including maps services like Google My Business, Waze, Bing places, Yelp. These types of search results show up high in search engines.
Craigslist
Craigslist can be another great source of leads for your real estate business. Craigslist allows you to post your listings for free! Because of a lot of spam concerns, Craigslist has restricted real estate ads to contact through Craigslist only. However, you can reply to your Craigslist leads asking them to reply through a website form, email, or text.
Things to remember when posting listings to Craigslist:
Each posting must be about a single property for sale only
Make the headline count! Convey the story of the home for sale, not just the address and price
Posting about home loans or financing, or promoting your own website is strictly prohibited
Include all the details of your listings including your high-resolution photos and map location
Don’t include links to your website, ads for other services or advice on the housing market
Post at optimal times when your customers are most likely online
Use a strong call to action to contact you right now to tour the property
Your posts will be visible for up to 5 days or so but not much more, so reposting your listings is important, but don’t abuse this because you’ll get flagged if too much reposting occurs. You can also renew your ads for up to 30 days.
As always, don’t forget to follow up with your leads as soon as possible to stay top of mind with them in their home search.
Mobile Marketing
We all know that people are glued to their smartphones. Mobile web traffic is high and mobile devices have now become people’s primary devices for performing searches.
Consider where your prospective buyers and sellers spend their time online and where their attention likely is. This is where you would want to invest your online advertising budget, to get in front of these people where they are paying attention.
According to the NAR:
The typical buyer used a mobile device to search for properties online. S/he looked at websites with photos, home listings, and information about the home buying process. S/he then contacted an agent and visited a median of 10 homes over 10 weeks again in 2019 before purchasing a home.
81% of Older Millennials, 80% of younger Millennials and 78% of Generation X found their home on a mobile device compared to 68% of Younger Boomers, according to the NAR.
Mobile advertising
Make mobile a big part of your marketing strategy. Most people in 2021 live a mobile-first lifestyle. Meet them where they are.
2019 data (compiled by Buffer) speaks for itself:
Facebook: 94 percent of its monthly active users are on mobile
Twitter: 82 percent of its monthly active users are on mobile
LinkedIn: 60 percent of its unique visitors access LinkedIn via a mobile device
Pinterest: 80 percent of its traffic comes from mobile devices
Snapchat: 100 percent of Snapchat users access the app through mobile
Instagram: No data, but Instagram is primarily a mobile-first app
Best practices for mobile-first marketing approach:
Mobile responsive optimized website.
“Call now” Call to action buttons on your website. Helps guide users to take the easy action on their mobile device that they’re currently holding. It’s easy to get in touch with you with one click.
Test email campaigns based on mobile metrics
Focus heavily on text messages. Use a professional text message service to get push notifications to and from your new leads.
Engage leads with automated text messages
As an agent, you should love to receive lead straight to your mobile device. Why? Because it’s fast and allows you to engage with the prospect quickly and easily, where they are likely to see it.
When you work with leads via text, messages are easily seen because they go straight to the phone and to the user, as opposed to having to go through a social media channel where someone could more easily become inactive on the account or not use the app on their phone.
Most everyone uses text messages regularly, and it’s a medium most people are comfortable with. It’s less invasive than phone calling but more immediate than email. Most standard real estate portals where you share your listings offer the option to receive a text message when you get any new inquiries on your listed properties.
There are also services to send automated mass texts to your leads, but I recommend balancing this with personal follow-up texts to leads. Services like SendHub or SimpleTexting offer full-featured text message platforms you can use to communicate with your leads, and will sync up with your CRM system.
For text message scripts, try SimpleTexting’s templates for real estate agents.
Technology Tools
According to the NAR, members found that the three most valuable technology tools used in their business, excluding email and cell phones were local MLS websites/apps (64%), lockbox/smart key devices (39%), and social media platforms (28%).
Furthermore, 48 percent of all real estate rms cited keeping up with technology as one of the biggest challenges facing their rm in the next two years.
Chatbots
Communicating with prospects quickly is important, whether phone calls, text message, or emails. Another way to generate quick replies is by using a chat service for your website to instantly touch base with site visitors. However, what about the times when you’re unavailable to help potential clients who are doing a late-night home search after hours and you’re sound asleep? An automated chat service could be your best answer.
According to Inc.com, 51% of consumers say a business needs to be available 24/7.
You read that correctly; you need to be available 24/7. That’s a big ask! A chat service can help make this a possibility.
92% of customers feel satisfied using live chat. This is pretty clear. The majority of customers are happy using live chat. 51% of customers like live chat for multitasking purposes, and 21% of customers like live chat so they can shop while they work.
Facebook messenger for business has chatbot functionality, as well as other competitors like LiveChat and HubSpot.
Virtual tour technology
iGuide
50% of online home shoppers said home virtual tours were helpful according to the NAR. There’s a few options out there that make this easy.
Matterport
Matterport is a one-of-a-kind virtual home tour technology. Matterport allows home shoppers to view an incredible 3D model of the home like a dollhouse, from overhead to a full 3D view. This allows the floor plan to come alive and helps shoppers picture and imagine being inside the home. Images are high-res, and the virtual experience is smooth with little delay.
Matterport is mostly used by top performing agents and luxury listings due to its complexity and cost. You will have to pay for the camera and a monthly fee for the processing of all the images to create the virtual experience. The camera is over $3,000 and the monthly subscription plans range from free to $689/month depending on how many active homes you scan.
A competitor to Matterport. Offers 3D floor plans and tours. Takes 360 images, shows room dimensions and square footage. You can also measure within the floor plans directly! Their camera costs $3,500. Processing costs are per tour, with no subscription plan.
Zillow 3D
Zillow 3d is a real estate software that lets you use your smartphone or any 360 camera to take 3D photos. Totally free for as many listings as you have. Zillow says that homes with a 3D tour on their site get 2 times more views on listings on average. Your virtual tour can be shared on any website or social media channel through an embed code.
AR/VR
Virtual Tours using AR and VR
With the current pandemic, many are staying home and not touring homes in person. Moving forward, many clients will prefer the option to tour the home virtually if they are relocating or simply prefer the convenience factor. What makes this a practical reality is the use of technology, virtual reality and augmented reality.
Virtual reality delivers a virtual experience to explore the home as if you were really there. VR and AR services allow customers to create their own home staging layout visualizing interiors and decor of their own choice.
Redfin offers the option of VR tours for all its listings. You can use virtual home tours as an additional channel to show o your listings, in addition to your other marketing efforts and in-person open houses. Other services include Google Tango, and Roomy. These services give customers what they want – immersive, modern and high-definition visuals that are interaction for a realistic portrayal of the feeling a home can give o and what it might feel like to live there.
Virtual staging
Want to beautifully stage a home that is vacant? An amazing technology you can take advantage of is called Virtual Staging. This gives you the option to put any type of furniture layout, paint color, and other interior decorating options in your listing photos to give them an extra pop.
Virtual staging also eliminates the need to spend time and money staging the home yourself. Also, a 2018 study of 4,200+ homes found 85% of staged homes sold for 6-25% more than un-staged homes.
Looking for the best virtual staging software? Use this list by Hubspot.
Social Media
Social media marketing tips
When it comes to social media, the best thing to focus on is to be of value to everyone that follows you. Constant self-promotion doesn’t help anybody, and likely nobody cares about your profession.
However, people do love information about their community, tips of the trade about new hotspots opening, or important local topics.
Incorporating both your personal and professional life into your social media posts shows authenticity as it allows your followers to see all of what you do.
You can post your listings yes, but what can attract more buyers is how you post the stories of the people you help through your work. Posting about happy clients, homes that were renovated from junk to beautiful inspires people to want to upgrade, invest in their home, and take notice of the great service you offer.
In addition to posting, engaging with your followers is the most important thing to remain top of mind. People want to know you’re an active member of the community that is social and outgoing.
Creating and scheduling your social media content will help you stay organized. Decide how many times per day you are going to post, what you are going to post, and stick to it.
Link your blog content to your social media. For Facebook, you can have a business page, but don’t be afraid to post about business on your personal account. For Instagram – consider one account only that’s personal/professional but make it a business account in Instagram so you can track the results. For Facebook, utilize the Facebook business page insights to track your results.
Both of these accounts link with Facebook Ads manager if you choose to promote your brand and listings through paid advertising – which I highly recommend you do!
Don’t forget about all the different types of content you can make – including graphics, video, live video, slideshows, polls, stories, and more. Go live and give your followers a behind the scenes view of your life as a real estate agent, working with clients, home tours and everything in between.
Some of the most popular social networking platforms for real estate agents to market on:
Facebook, Facebook Ads manager, Facebook Messenger
Instagram, Instagram Messenger
LinkedIn
Twitter
Social media is another great way to stay “top of mind” as a real estate agent. Social media is not only a great platform to post relevant and engaging content, but it’s also a great place to engage with your sphere of influence and people you connect with in the community.
Sometimes keeping the conversations going using tools like Instagram, Twitter, Linkedin, and Facebook is one of your most effective marketing strategies. It showcases that you’re not just promoting yourself constantly, but you’re also taking the time to ask questions, get to know people, be part of conversations, and share stories of success.
People also come together on social media to support causes or communicate during times of crisis. Engaging on social media not only boosts your posts’ visibility, but connecting with others shows you’re open, friendly, caring, and genuinely someone people would want to work with. Social media is a place where you can be vulnerable, personal and show your true self. This authenticity helps your prospective buyers and sellers trust in you as their future agent.
Facebook Live Videos - Facebook Live videos offer your friends and followers an inside look at what you’re doing. Take advantage of live video by showcasing home tours, philanthropy activities, inspection processes, etc. Give your audience a behind the scenes look at things they’d find interesting!
Things to post on social media
Create beautiful stories – could be vlog style videos, home tours, or information related to your target markets
Take and share stunning photos (a fairly modern iPhone will do fine in good lighting)
Promote client testimonials
Your blog posts
Photos of homes you are selling
Videos/Photos of you working and your adventures as an agent!
Trends/News about home prices and the real estate industry
Quotes
Educating your followers on the value of home ownership
Boost Engagement with Contests, Polls, & Q&A Stickers on Instagram Stories
Even with free social media tools, you’ll be investing your own time to plot and execute your social media marketing strategy. Set aside time weekly to establish a posting cadence, posts and stories strategy. Also, be engaged with your followers regularly each week, taking the time to comment, ask questions, send event invitations, send DMs, and connect through live videos.
Follow-up regularly on Facebook with sincere messages to friends, avoid promotional messages. This is another form of spam.
Use your social media profile as a platform to show your personal life and personal brand all in one place. In your bio, let people know what you do professionally, what your niche is, and what you enjoy doing in your free time. This shows prospects that you’re relatable.
Social media engagement
Tapping into social media marketing for your real estate business will be one of your most powerful marketing tools. Mainly because social media marketing reaches people where they spend most of their attention, and it allows you a chance to be a part of the conversations happening on social media, anything from industry topic discussions or thoughtful comments on someone’s personal posts.
Don’t think of social media as only an advertising and marketing platform that you broadcast your sales pitches on. Rather, think of it as a place to engage and interact with an audience you want to reach; as a place to create meaningful connection both personally and professionally. “Social” means two-way communication is the key to unlocking the power of the platform.
Staying in touch, engaging, commenting, liking and creating valuable posts are great ways to stay relevant on social media as a real estate agent and promoting your personal brand. Social media helps you stay top of mind the more active you are and can serve as a great way to get more referrals, as the social networks lend themselves to connection, word of mouth, and building trust with a core audience that follows you.
Encourage reviews on your Facebook business page
In your marketing efforts, and in your communication with current and past clients, remember to shoot an email to them specifically asking for them to leave a review on your Facebook page, and your other agent portals and business listings like Yelp and Google. This helps solidify and backup word of mouth for the great work you do.
Reach out to influencers
Want to hire influencers to help you with your social campaigns? Anyone with a decent following on social media can be considered an influencer.
Start small. Think of all the professionals you work with on a regular basis such as interior designers, builders, etc. Do any of them have a substantial social media following? Consider reaching out and asking to partner on a campaign that is mutually promotional for both of you.
You can promote each other on your social platforms and stories or do a post together. Oftentimes, a campaign around a social cause could be a great reason to cross-promote like working together for a food/donation drive to help your local charity meet their goals.
Facebook community page for your target neighborhoods
Creating a Facebook neighborhood group helps you to become a local leader with solid knowledge and love for your local neighborhoods! Neighborhood groups are a great place for new residents or soon to move buyers and sellers to find more specific information about the places they’re considering moving to. As they’re learning more about the neighborhood, the Facebook group allows you the opportunity to interact and let them know what services you can offer them, and offer helpful tips for getting to know the area, as a local expert.
Your neighborhood group can also include your niche, such as South Austin Cycling enthusiasts, or South Austin coffee lovers as examples. You could outline your favorite cycle shops or coffeehouses in the area. Invite other business owners, friends, community leaders to your group and consider allowing a select to become admins with you to help you manage the group.
Also consider joining local groups and real estate groups so you stay tapped into the conversations happening about your local area and the industry overall.
Facebook Messenger
You can use Facebook messenger to keep in touch with prospects or send automated messages to people visiting your page.
Facebook Messenger bots
Facebook Messenger is becoming a more powerful tool for real estate agents. Facebook Messenger now allows for you to create chatbots with users that interact with your Facebook page. You can configure the chatbot to answer frequently asked questions or send you their contact information. For a complete guide on real estate chatbots and how to get the most out of them, try this guide.
Search for the city you are selling homes in. Engage with the postings in your city. Don’t directly promote yourself, but rather offer your opinions and sincere comments to build name recognition.
Instagram Stories
Use Instagram stories as your daily behind the scenes highlight reel. You can promote your daily life as an agent, you can bring followers along for the ride. You can highlight your listings in your stories. Use all of the features of stories, including polls to help promote listings.
Twitter is another online outpost where you can extend your brand and connect with your prospects, given Twitter's demographics match your target audience. Twitter allows you to post links directly to your listings. You have the option of embedding multiple listing photos in one tweet, so it's easy to showcase your homes for sale.
Twitter also offers the option to build your mailing list by helping you collect email addresses using Twitter ads. Twitter is a great platform to announce events, share updates on homes, thought leadership in the form of homebuyer and seller tips, and to continue to network by connecting with your audience and engaging with them via your Twitter feed. You can create multiple twitter feeds to follow by using tools such as TweetDeck.
Linkedin is the best app and social network for professional networking. What used to be a social network for finding a new job, LinkedIn is now a popular content platform with active users daily who read/write content, share articles, make professional recommendations and also use the platform as an online portfolio.
It’s a great way to connect with other real estate agents, but also with homebuyers and sellers, as well as investors and other professionals in the community. More and more agents are getting plugged into LinkedIn to network with top agents to get tips and tricks, as well as a platform for promoting their blog posts and connecting with home buyers.
Posting your thoughts on the housing market and real estate industry is a great way to build your “thought leadership” as someone that is knowledgeable in their eld.
Always connect with your buyers and sellers on Linkedin, as well as your prospects. Send them a message inviting them to connect with you – the go-to real estate agent in the area.
Post a lot of articles related to housing prices, the right times to buy/sell, homebuyer tips, etc. and write a few sentences on your take on the article. Just as the other social networks, post photos of your happy customers, listing photos, and your lead generating content pieces. Also ask your clients to leave a recommendation on LinkedIn for your services.
Linkedin also allows you to advertise on the platform through sponsored posts and inmail messaging capabilities to people outside your network. You’ll only want to invest in LinkedIn advertising after you have solid leads coming in because it won’t be your primary source for leads. However, LinkedIn can be a great platform to build your brand, name recognition with other professionals in the area. These professionals may be great candidates for local partnerships as well as potential buyers/sellers themselves.