More and more real Estate professionals are embracing online marketing as its core sales tool. But it doesn’t only stop at sales. Online marketing offers the most effective communication platforms, too. There is really no reason left to still be resistant to online marketing in any way. It gives you access to the much wider audience than conventional marketing, your communication can be monitored much better than before, all the statistics and behavioral information about your audience is just one click away. You probably already know all of this, but are you using all the online marketing benefits to ensure your real estate business success is growing all the time?
Let’s face it! We are all active on online platforms. If you want to find your customers, that’s where you should be looking for them. But, do you know where your customers are most active? Do you know which Social channels they don’t like or don’t use? What are the best online marketing platforms to deliver your message about properties you are selling? How to find buyers online? Where to start looking for the perfect buyer?
Do you know the answers to all of these questions? Most of the real estate professionals probably don’t, and the ones that do have to be aware of the fact that trends in the digital world are changing a lot faster than before. For example, just a few years ago, business-to-customer companies spent most of their Social Media budget on Facebook. Now, Instagram has taken over, and it has become the dominant social network for B2C companies, especially when it comes to lifestyle category.
The real estate sector could easily be categorized as a lifestyle; agencies are talking to individual customers, and they are selling a product that has a powerful story behind it. Yes, agencies are usually communicating with each of their customers individually. To understand what they are looking for and to provide them with best options, each real estate agent needs to pay attention to each of his or her potential buyer. It is time-consuming, demands a lot of effort and concentration, but there is no easy way of getting to know someone to recognize what he or she wants and need in such short amount of time.
When it comes to powerful stories, real estate agents are not selling just properties. If it’s an office space, they are selling visions, business success, team spirit, challenges, and lessons, etc. If it’s a family house, they are selling memories, happiness, childhood, love, birthdays and other celebrations. It’s never just a property. Could the real estate sector really be in the same category as clothes or jewelry brands?
If real estate agents only communicated online with the potential properties buyers, their selling rate would probably drop very quickly. Telephone conversations are still very important in this sector. Actually, every personalized communication platform is important in real estate business. Anything that enables you to provide that certain person with the certain information he or she needs will be a necessary communication tool or platform. So, what are the online marketing options that can improve the business performance of a real estate agency or company? What should be their focus?
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Emails
Sending emails helps real estate professionals to deliver information to their clients. No matter is it just the street where the property is, the size of the property, number of bedrooms, etc. Email has one advantage when compared to telephone communication; the information is in a written form, and the client can look it up later if he or she forgets. Many real estate agents will probably say that the communication with their clients goes in this order:
- Telephone
- In person
And there is no doubt about that. These three communication types are the most effective ones, but it’s not all about communicating with each client individually. You have to create awareness, too. Your potential customers are waiting for that particular agency or company that will communicate effectively with them, and when they become aware of the existence of that particular agency or company, they will probably choose them over anybody else.
How do your emails look like? Do you have a strategy for your email communication? Do you use everything you can when sending an email to a client? What about the video? Incorporating video into your emails can completely change communication experience for you and your clients. If you often send your emails and was thinking of a way how to make them more interesting and engaging for the recipients, the video is your solution. With it, you can transfer all the characteristics of an in-person communication to an email message. If you include videos in your future emails, you will not have to ask yourself if the message is clear enough or written in the right tone. To demonstrate the power of a video in an email, maybe it would be best to say that emails with video have 5.6% greater open rates and 96.38% higher click-through rates on average than those without video.
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Newsletters
Keeping your customers and recipients engaged through newsletters is not easy, especially if you know that your newsletter is not the only one they will receive that day. But isn’t it great that you can include property listings in it? What if you start using videos in your newsletters to tell a story about your agency or company or maybe your employees? You could create a video for the introduction section of your newsletter where an agent could talk about his passion when working with so many satisfied customers and being able to provide them with their new homes or offices. Videos in newsletters offer you a wide range of possibilities, and it’s up to you to decide how and when to utilize them.
At their workplace, people check their emails every day, so this communication tool can help you keep in contact and nurture leads towards sales further down the line. Of course, your goal is to provide your audience with useful content, but you need to be selling yourself as well. Don’t forget about that!
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Social Media
We can’t talk about online marketing without social media. If you want to maximize your sales potential, you need to include social media in your online marketing strategy. Creating a company page on Facebook, Instagram or Twitter will allow you to communicate with your audience more effectively. Which social channels should the real estate agents use?
On social media, you can easily post your listings and produce regular posts that will give your audience sector insights. Actually, social media presence allows real estate agents to catch cold prospects attention. The more attention you gain on your accounts, the more you will be able to demonstrate your expertise in this sector. As a real estate agent, you will not go wrong if you are present on most popular social media networks: Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter, but you could go wrong if you don’t create a different communication strategy for each of them.
Even though many predicted the opposite, but Facebook is still one of the favorite online platforms for many marketers. For real estate professionals, Facebook is great for creating online photo albums of properties, asking for feedback from your previous clients, open discussion on some important topics such as neighborhood safety or schools with the best education program, etc.
Each time you open your Instagram app, it’s like you enter this dynamic and playful world with millions and millions of photos and videos. Real estate agents can record property walkarounds and publish them on Instagram or take some photos of their top properties, add hashtags and let the audience enjoy their beautiful content. Now, when the video marketing is exploding all over the world, punchy social videos are something that will lead you to your perfect customer. Don’t miss that chance!
Of course, communication on LinkedIn is a little bit different. The main reason why people have a profile on LinkedIn is mostly networking. That is why you as a real estate agent should definitely have a profile on this social network. Your communication strategy should be focused more on connecting with your potential customers. For example, if you wish to sell a property that would be perfect office space, then you should connect with people that are working in companies or that are starting a business in that area.
Twitter is probably the least content-heavy social network of all of these, but that doesn’t mean that users are not posting photos and videos on Twitter. As an agent, you could send tweets when the price of a property drops or when you want to ask a question to see what your audience think about something. It’s a fast, focused and easy-to-use network, and users that are active on Twitter are really active on it. Google is great when you want to search for information, but Twitter is the place you go to when you want to hear opinions.
“Google is great when you want to search for information, but Twitter is the place you go to when you want to hear opinions.”
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Conclusion
The great thing about being active in the online world is that it allows the ‘Show, Don’t Tell’ principle. Your audience will see the reviews from your previous customers, they can see your business is still active, they can see photos of your agency or company and employees that work there, and they can send you a direct message without searching for your contact information all over the Internet. Emails, newsletters, social media; use them all. Find what works best for your business and don’t wait for a second longer to get in touch with your perfect customer!
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