These are 12 content marketing strategies that any real estate company can use to grow
A Realtor is more than a salesperson, just as a home is more than drywall and vanilla accents.
Purchasing your forever home is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. It's a turning point in one's life that marks the beginning of adulthood. It's a vehicle to the traditional 2.5 kids, dog and backyard BBQ.
Property is also the most valuable asset that an ordinary Canadian will ever possess. These and other variables combine to make real estate a life-affirming and ever-experiential transaction.
Agents, mortgage originators, appraisers, loan officers, brokers, and other financial services parties in the real estate industry must appeal to this mindset in their marketing.
While low-interest rates and a wide range of inventory may attract attention, there is so much more that real estate marketers can do to pique potential buyers' interest, entice them to buy, and bring in new consumers. Below are some ways;
1. A Variety of Visuals
It's no secret that first impressions count for a lot in the real estate game. As a result, real estate marketers should place a premium on visual content types over all others.
On a practical level, this entails high-resolution professional photography for staging, showcasing, and open houses. These images can be utilized in a variety of marketing channels, from printed collateral to social media. This is useful collateral for those looking for a home in today's market, where virtual tours reign supreme.
"Listings with virtual tours earn 87 % more views than home listings without tours," according to Realtor.ca, and "54 percent of buyers skip over listings of properties that don't include virtual tours."
In the digital world, interactive carousels of visuals should be added to websites and other online media properties so that potential clients can better see the quality of homes on the market. Realtors and brokers can benefit from infographics as they're ideal for answering frequently asked questions in a visual way. Infographics make concepts like benefits and cons, renting vs. owning, fixed-rate vs. adjustable-rate, and condo vs. townhouse easy to see and communicate.
2. Marketing focused on events
When working with real estate agents or brokers, buying or selling a house is a very humanizing experience. And it's a sentiment that that can be empowered with digital marketing strength behind it.
When digital marketing efforts are combined with in-person event-based marketing, a complementary path for lead generation and brand awareness is created. The following are examples of possible events:
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Open houses
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Block parties
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Brokers meet and greet
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Seminars about real estate.
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Q&A sessions with industry experts and potential customers.
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Industry conferences.
Nowadays, events can take place in both physical and digital environments. Regardless of where the prospective party is coming from, you should do your best to create an environment that is beneficial to selling the property.
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Include locations and ways to attend the event on social media to maximize your marketing approach.
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Creating a virtual or hybrid event centered on the real estate in question will boost your marketing results
Also partnerships and understanding more about builders, lenders, appraisers, originators, attorneys, residential and commercial landlords, municipal leaders, and local politicians has also shown to be beneficial.
Have physical collateral on hand for these meetings/events, such as business cards, sales sheets, FAQ brochures, printed listings, and so on.
By taking photos, creating hashtag campaigns, applying for branded Snapchat filters, and growing social networks, real estate marketers will go a step further and harness social media.
3. AR/VR for Virtual Tours
Interactive video is not the same as a static visual. Real estate marketers should leverage augmented and virtual reality video for one-of-a-kind, unique open houses with services like Google Tango, rooomy and Matterport.
Virtual reality tours are allowed on Redfin's site for any listing. Prospective homebuyers may virtually drag and drop over 100,000 pieces of furniture and household items into the properties they're interested in, giving them a decent idea of how the room will appear once they're moved in. Customers can use multidimensional views to decorate, personalize, and visualize unbuilt and empty environments.
It won't be long before open homes are no longer relevant. Prospects will just use their smartphones or virtual reality headsets to enjoy the complete experience without ever entering the house.
Customers want to interact with 360-degree panoramic visuals. With the pandemic soaring virtual reality as a way of connection, this is more crucial than it was even two years ago. Whether or not potential buyers are physically present at the home, this option allows them to have an immersive experience.
4. Newsletter Marketing
According to HubSpot, marketers who used segmented ads saw a 760 percent boost in income. For the average marketer, email marketing has the highest ROI of any medium.
A variety of resources should be included in real estate newsletters, such as:
Blog posts.
Infographics.
Links to social media feeds.
Short videos.
Trending data points.
Geo-specific news.
New listings.
Buyers/sellers guides.
Helpful tangential content.
Email is a convenient way to get in touch with prospective and existing clients 24 hours a day, seven days a week - you never know when someone could be looking for a new home. Personalizing a branded newsletter based on a template is really easy and efficient with so many automated email providers like Constant Contact and Mailchimp.
5. App Integration
Because most prospects seek through aggregated listing services rather than a realtor site or a Google query, non-domain and non-social media channels are critical to real estate marketing success.
Thousands of homes are listed on Redfin, Trulia, Zillow, CoreLogic, MLS, and Craigslist, with extensive filtering and targeting options for home buyers, sellers, and renters at all stages of the real estate transaction, price ranges, and locations.
These apps are also available on mobile, allowing buyers and sellers to browse at their leisure, all from the palms of their hands. Integrating with real estate apps and ensuring that listings are up to date and user-friendly across the web, mobile browsers, and mobile apps is critical to being in front of prospects at all times.
Top-of-funnel interest can be practically unlimited by casting a wide net. Maintaining all contact information, photos, pricing, hyperlinks, and CTAs would be the next step in the marketing funnel. Prospects should be able to contact real estate agents with a single tap on their smartphone screens once they've progressed to the centre of the property search funnel.
6. Success Stories
User-generated content is a good approach to get other people to work for you. It can also be used as a dynamic top-of-funnel and bottom-of-funnel strategy.
If the goal is to attract more clients and sell more houses, customer testimonials, video testimonials, and success stories demonstrating a realtor's ability go a long way toward easing any potential clients' concerns. Much of real estate still follows a word-of-mouth marketing approach, with testimonials from friends, followers, and clients serving as a crucial component of prospecting and onboarding new clients.
More than any other channel, 92 percent of consumers trust peer recommendations, and 88 percent of worldwide respondents trust suggestions from people they know.
Marketers may translate social proof into measurable ROI by including user evaluations and delighted clients on real estate websites and profiles.
7. Local SEO
Being accessible via local listings is a part of remaining a click away from prospects. This is when having a current Google My Business profile comes in handy.
This includes a fully updated profile, accurate contact information across several locations, photos, good user reviews, client testimonials, and business hours.
8. Fact Sheets and Glossaries
Overall, marketing is a tool for resolving customer issues and educating prospects, similar to customer service and technical support. Having a revolving door of digital and physical collateral online and on hand for events is one of the greatest ways to accomplish this.
FAQ resource pages, glossaries of important terminology to know, one-page fact sheets, and other similar aids are jam-packed with useful information. They can also be properly formatted with branded features, unique images, and other visualized artwork, allowing the information to be consumed through a combination of written and graphic elements.
These can also be transformed into shorter social media marketing contents.
9. Evergreen Content
Though benchmark interest rates, government-sponsored loan programmes, market inventory, and pricing patterns are all subject to variation and volatility, much of the real estate industry's essential operations remain consistent from year to year and decade to decade.
ie " Lenders provide mortgages to consumers, and homeowners sell their properties". Done.
This means that current pain points and questions are likely to resurface in the future, which is perfect for content marketing concepts that are evergreen. Rather of having to start from scratch, evergreen blogs, infographics, and sales sheets may be instantly re-optimized with no effort.
When it comes to investing, evergreen content is a guaranteed bet for long-term ROI
10. Co-branded Influencer Campaigns
Attracting the attention of major industry players and gaining their support might lead to a mutually beneficial commercial alliance.
Consider complementary real estate services such as interior design, family photographers, expert stagers, packers and movers, cleaning service providers for both homes and offices, and lawn-care specialists. Co-branding a marketing campaign with one of these companies will help you raise visibility, create more leads, and generate new creative ideas.
Imagine getting the Property Brothers or Chip and Joanna Gaines to like a Facebook post or appear in a sponsored Instagram ad: That's a shot of virality and exposure right there. Local micro-influencers can be just as successful as big-name endorsements, so don't limit yourself to big-name endorsements.
11. Storytelling
On a tactical level, marketing message should be able to express the finer details of real estate decision-making, such as tax deductions and easements. But, in a broader sense, real estate content marketing should present a unified story that is driven by emotions rather than verbiage.
The feeling of owning a house is huge, and marketing should reflect the range of emotions and moments that go into such an occasion. Linear storytelling, such as an inspirational blog post, first-person case studies, and video pilgrimages, can help achieve this.
Customers should be asked to share their personal experiences about how they picked their forever home and what owning a home means to them.
Bring a film team and follow up with previous clients from years ago. Film how homeownership was a vehicle for individuals to grow their families, enjoy their communities, and participate in exciting activities.
Passion, as well as comfort and warmth, have a certain power. That is the story worth hearing.
12. Real Estate Agent Website and Portal
It should go without saying that real estate marketing is a digital endeavour. That involves thinking digitally first in all aspects of the business, including the real estate website.
In real estate, word of mouth and physical events still play a big role, but today's house buyer values companies' online accessibility and seamless technological interactions far more. Millennials now account for 43% of all home purchasers, and we all know how well-versed they are in internet communications and purchases.
To match these client expectations, realtors require top-of-the-line websites and portals. This is what it means:
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Optimal site speed (less than two-second load time).
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Visually stimulating UX.
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Readily available content.
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Convenient appointment-booking features
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Calculators.
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Quizzes.
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Chatbots.
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Social media widgets.
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Payments processing.
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Maps.
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Image/video galleries.
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Resource center.
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Functioning links/CTAs/contact info.
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Social proof quotes.
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Form downloads.
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Logical site layout.
A powerful domain establishes the foundation for a strong brand image, one that is focused on the consumer.