If you are responsible for some kind of marketing in the real estate industry, this information is for you. Perhaps you are a real estate agent responsible for attracting clientele for your broker business, or a real estate investor with thousands of properties in your portfolio. Or perhaps you are a marketing representative looking to constantly create leads.
It doesn’t matter. The principles to accomplish your marketing goals are all the same. What does matter, however, is that you are committed to challenges presented by this competitive world.
What does matter is whether you are willing to communicate, listen and share your goals on whatever platform you find comfortable and convenient. And it does matter that you are doing things that would work for the long-term benefits of your goals.
Social Media Marketing
Social media marketing fits in the smaller as well as bigger scheme of things. You can make social media your hub to advertise your real estate listings, drive traffic to your official sites and leverage different advertising features that the media websites provide.
Social media websites such as Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook, allow you to build your own community of fans and followers, establish expertise and build credibility along the way. Take a video or picture of your real estate event and share it with your list on social media. Play around with colorful captions, emojis, and drawings.
Once you have learned the various features of a social media website, you can transform your business into attraction magnets. Potential customers crave social proof. They are more likely to take action when people are talking about the subject and taking action themselves.
Testimonials from past clients, stories establishing your reputation, interviews with customers, pictures, and videos of your real estate portfolio, all attract fresh customers. The possibilities are endless.
There are some online platforms that are big power players for the real estate industry. And plenty of others arrive on the scene, only to fizzle out when the seasonal popularity wears off.
So, how is a real estate agent to know which of the platform they should spend their time building a presence on, and what platforms are to be ignored? For your convenience, Redfin, Zillow, and Trulia have been on the market for many years and growing strong year after year. Their features are getting better with time as well.
They have some solid usability statistics and plenty of users around the country, so are likely to stay for the long haul. You should also take into consideration how each one of these platforms fits into your overall marketing strategy.
Word of Mouth
We have seen that social media websites in today’s world let you do incredible things when it comes to marketing your real estate business. Does this mean traditional marketing like getting the message out through word of mouth is over? Certainly not.
It has, in fact, evolved to a great extent. Each morning you can listen to NPR where broadcasters are advertising various homes, commercial establishments, and lands for sale and asking people to take action. Whether this action is to visit an open house or contact the builder to explore more options, the goal of word-of-mouth advertising strategy has always been the same – to convert listeners to leads.
You can also spread your real estate marketing message through casual conversations, with your family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, even strangers. You will be surprised to find out that pure gossip is a powerful tool for reaching prospects and clients.
To that end, it’s also a way to learn your potential customers’ most pressing challenges, and build enduring relationships while turning strangers into lifetime clients.
Sending Letters and Postcards
Sending letters and real estate postcards to your audience is the offline equivalent of your official website. It’s not enough to have just an online presence. People expect that you are a real person and your business a real one, and postcards and letters are the best way to showcase the same.
Let us say you have a very well-designed website that is being visited by hundreds of users on a daily basis. So are the websites of dime a dozen other businesses. However, if you are reaching out to your potential clients by mailing business cards, sending newsletters, or even greeting cards wishing them on special occasions, they will see a major connection between your online presence and your public persona. If you are easily findable through the return address on the mailings, they are likely to contact you without hesitation.
Forget who you are targeting for the moment. Most people don’t want marketers heavily skewed to marketing tactics, which means you will have to make some adjustments to your message. How about sending a birthday card or present in appreciation of their time? They are sure to remember your thoughtfulness and respond accordingly.
Community Involvement
The majority of potential customers will not do business with you right away. It is your job to make sure that you are giving them choices to allow you to keep in touch with them. Community involvement is a great way to stay in touch with your prospects. There are many ways you can participate in your own community.
You can set up a booth in a special event or seek permission from your city to conduct a periodical demonstration of your products and services. Being available in person like this is very much about transparency. It is much more about giving your prospects a glimpse into your business in real-time.
In other words, the events are your chance to show your prospects that you are real and to build trust with them. People trust businesses with whom they can come into contact more than they trust some random online presence.
Think strategically about the type of community event you want to take part in. Share your ideas, information, and services through one-on-one conversation. Get your message across, face-to-face. And if you have put effort into marketing your business through such events, don’t forget to respond to post-inquiry. Take the time to continue with the conversations you have inspired and engaged in.
Final Thoughts
Finally, perform your real estate marketing task on other platforms as well. Don’t confine that excellent demo and testimonials to one channel. Let your fans and followers see what they are missing out on, so they will be compelled to reach out to you irrespective of the mode of communication. The more ways you are able to connect with your prospects, the better.
