10 Effective Ways Realtors Can Use Digital Marketing to Boost Sales

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10 Effective Ways Realtors Can Use Digital Marketing to Boost Sales
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Digital marketing has become a game changer for many realtors seeking ways to boost sales or get noticed online. While real estate experts still lead the home-buying process most of the time, smart buyers are now performing the initial leg work online before involving the professionals. More than half of the buyers use the internet in searching for their dream home, prompting real estate industry players to establish an active online presence and stay competitive.

The Tried and Tested Digital Marketing Strategies

If you’re not utilizing the digital landscape by maintaining a website or social media platform, then you’re definitely missing out on the golden nuggets out there. Here are 10 effective digital marketing strategies you can use to boost your online presence:

Create a User Friendly Website (Desktop and Mobile)

In the real estate industry, a professional website is an essential business component to help you generate qualified prospects and referrals. To initiate traffic and interest, you can put feature photos, location maps, and interesting landmarks on your website. The key to successful website marketing, however, is making your site load up fast, or otherwise, potential buyers will abandon you and look elsewhere.

Real estate experts can develop a responsive website optimized for mobile and desktop browsing. Aside from the in-depth knowledge of what your prospective clients are searching for, you also need a reliable website designer to organize your photos, property details, and affiliated links to be posted. Nearly half of web browsing is completed on mobile devices, so your website should be designed more responsive to make your target users feel comfortable while browsing. To give your clients the best experience, your website, whether in mobile or desktop version, should feature the following content in full details:

  • Comprehensive list of all new local listings
  • Detailed content about the home-buying process, including required documents and completed forms
  • Related links when buyers become ready to move in, such as movers, home inspectors, and lawyers
  • Special discounts and other offers
  • Regular blog content about home improvement, property selling, and maintenance suggestions
  • Accurate details of the real estate agent

You may consider adding a live chat feature on your website to help clients communicate with you or set up an appointment without necessarily speaking to you. Since most real estate businesses are people-centric, you have to make yourself readily available to accept inquiries and comments.

Create and Post Valuable Content

A blog is one of the most effective ways to elevate your SEO strategies while building a positive reputation in the industry. You can use this content to engage with your clients by providing expert advice on buying, selling, or renting a property. Your digital marketing effort may appear meaningless without valuable content, whether you share it on your official website or social media profiles.

Blogging is also an alternative channel to display your marketing or technical expertise, especially if you have prior experience in property sales and home design. To maximize the value of your content, however, make sure to feature relevant topics which your clients and page visitors can relate, while making your site responsive on any device. When writing content, you must deliver it in a way that your readers will be compelled to follow your brand.

Remember that responsive websites can generate more indexed pages, thanks to most search engines’ mobile-first indexing system. Here are some interesting topics you can share with your clients through blogging:

  • Home improvement tips or suggestions
  • Comprehensive guide to the home buying process
  • Home listings
  • Real estate market trends
  • National and local government codes related to home purchases or selling

Host Virtual Tours

Providing virtual tours is one way to give clients an idea of what a home for sale has to offer. Whether in video format or 3D computer-aided view, virtual times are powerful pieces of content that can effectively boost your SEO marketing campaign on top of supporting your featured images.

Video content can generate revenues faster than traditional marketing, with the opportunity to reach your target audience across various regions. As a real estate professional, your primary responsibility is to make the whole home buying process as comfortable as possible for your clients. Here’s what you need to remember when you decide to use virtual tours to promote properties for sale:

  • Ensuring the video of the virtual tour is responsive across all viewing platforms, whether on mobile devices or desktop browser
  • Making the video look professional and interactive
  • Utilizing real footage of the home, instead of digital photos and graphics
  • Creating videos that are user-friendly and 3D capable
  • Featuring home improvement tips and “how-to” videos to initiate a conversation

Social Media Marketing Strategy

Social media has allowed real estate professionals to become more engaged with potential buyers through advertisements and photo sharing of new listings while building brand awareness for their business. With most real estate agencies now using social media channels, how can you differentiate your brand over the rest of the fierce marketplace? Since digital marketing can offer a much more significant impact than conventional marketing methods, make sure to use all major social media platforms in promoting your home listings, including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn. Utilize these online resources to interact with clients, regular post content, and actively promoting your featured properties.

Sharing different content is one of the most important things to remember when developing your own social media strategy. But make sure that every content you produce is useful for your audience, rather than just a long list of home listings and features. Though a relevant real estate topic you post regularly on different social media accounts can help a lot, the key to successful social media marketing still relies on the type of content that directly complements your SEO strategy. Some useful content you can feature on your social media profiles may include:

  • New and exciting home listings
  • Professional profile as a real estate broker
  • Compelling blog posts like investment tips and property sales
  • Supported case studies
  • Client testimonials

Make Use of Local Images

In the real estate industry, the use of local images is extremely important to promote your current home listings. Because you’re not just selling new houses, you’re telling great stories about the property’s surroundings. Consider featuring local landmarks, exciting cuisines, and neighborhood cultures in high-quality photos. Chances are, home shoppers would love to see the best things that your area has to offer or property details worth sharing with family and friends.

Do Webinar

Sharing your real estate expertise through webinars and online workshops makes it easy to attain your digital marketing goals. You may use high-yielding webinar hosting tools like GoToWebinar to help your business reach a broad audience range while staying relevant in the industry. Using webinars, you can directly engage with your audience who might be interested in learning the real estate profession’s craft, from property rental to home buying. Since real estate digital marketing largely depends on generated inbound leads, having your brand and expertise exposed to the local scene is always crucial for an effective digital marketing strategy. You can also offer Digital Marketing Courses when you do webinars to really boost your brand and expertise in the real estate niche.

Optimize Using SEO

In search engine optimization (SEO), the race to the top of the search results page is a continuous marketing process. SEO is a critical marketing technique used to drive real estate enthusiasts and homebuyers to your website. Similar to other business forms, the purpose of SEO is to generate qualified leads by drawing organic traffic and convert visitors as buyers. If properly executed, your website may show up higher over the search result for a specific search query.

Search engine algorithms, however, keep changing each day, prompting real estate professionals to develop high ranking keywords to make content relevant to the user. Typically, the material that is ranked highest on search engines includes long-form content and high-value images, so try to produce highly useful content as often as possible to stay relevant. As part of the SEO strategy, make sure to use high-performing keywords throughout your content and website in order to enhance page conversion. Here are other valuable elements of an efficient SEO strategy which you need to focus on:

  • Meta descriptions and titles
  • Backlinks
  • Online directories
  • Web content
  • Social media page content

Build your Google My Business

Google is the most widely-used search engine tool used by online consumers to search for information, including new home listings and credible real estate businesses. And the search engine giant released Google My Business platform to help real estate professionals get found better on organic searches while allowing them to organize all Google accounts in one safe place. With Google My Business platform, you can indicate your business hours, office location, service information, and photos of your brand.

To get your name properly indexed, however, you should write down the details of your professional services as accurately as possible to help users quickly find you. This platform is basically the same as Google Places for Businesses and Google+ Pages when setting up the business profile.

Create a Referral System

Do you know that client referrals account for nearly half of the total revenue for real estate enterprises? It is clear that earning referrals should form part of your marketing strategies, whether you use outbound or inbound marketing methods, to secure new clients and referrals. But the most effective way to increase real estate referrals for your business is to formulate a referral system that will work for you. You can create your referral system by using one or more of the following:

  • agent-to-agent referrals
  • Direct referrals from friends and family
  • Social influencer referrals
  • Satisfied customers

Imagine the great opportunities you may get when you combine traditional referral methods with online methods. In fact, homebuyers trust online reviews and client testimonials just as much as they trust personal recommendations. If someone has gained the first-class experience with you, that trust is definitely earned.

To earn your audience’s trust and confidence, consider producing a recorded video interview with your previous clients. You can also write long-form content that features a client perspective.

Build Relationships

A real estate business is about having a direct relationship with clients and forming partnerships with other local businesses in your area. See if you can sell items like coffee mugs or writing pens to local shops with your business brand on it. You can also request testimonials from previous companies you have worked with to earn your brand’s trust signals.

Affiliate marketing is also one of the most efficient digital marketing tactics you can use to enhance brand awareness and customer engagement. Online influencers, whether individual or corporation, may earn additional income by sponsoring specialized products or services on their website. You may search for local enterprises that also share similar views and marketing goals as yours to drive exposure.

A well-rounded marketing campaign is necessary to generate high quality leads for your business. Digital marketing will always be a valuable business proponent in connecting yourself with potential clients while remaining relevant to any search query about real estate best practices.

Dale Basilla
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