Think Locally, Reach Globally: The Beginners Guide to Real Estate Marketing
Did you know that the global real estate market size is growing at a fast rate?
In fact, its current market value is at $3.5 trillion. The main reason for the growth of this industry is the increasing number of people and the demand for personal spaces.
If you’re in the real estate business, you might have trouble fighting the competition and getting the publicity to expand your business. In that case, you need to up your real estate marketing tactics.
Don’t worry, we’ve got your back.
Are you ready to learn some realtor marketing tips? Follow our simple but efficient real estate marketing guide below:
SEO Marketing Strategies
With more than 1.7 billion websites around the world, it’s difficult to stand out from all the other real estate websites in the industry. But one of the most reliable means of increasing your online influence is to use SEO tactics. Here are some of the things you can do:
1. Use Local Keywords
At its core, keywords refer to the terms that you’d like to show up for when people use search engines like Google. A good starting point is to make a huge list of keywords that you want to rank high for. By then, you can develop a strategy that can help you spread these terms throughout your content.
But with the real estate industry, thousands of firms want the attention of a small list of potential clients. Your company might cater to several towns and cities within a region. But when it comes to optimization, you need to start paying attention to local keyword phrases.
The main reason is about 66% of people shopping for homes to begin searching using local phrases. What this means is that you need to focus on the main city you’re doing business with. Once you establish your online presence, you can consider expanding to other locations.
2. Rethink Your Content Strategy
Think again if you’re doing simple property listings for your content marketing tactics. Listings are important to your website’s well-being, but it’s only one out of the many. After all, you need to update your website with fresh and informative blog posts and other resources.
Doing this is the best way for you to get visitors that keep coming back. They’re more likely to engage with your website and bring more traffic. It’s one of the several important ranking factors used by Google.
Remember, Google is so powerful it controls 92% of the world’s search engine market. So, if you want to rank higher and get more visitors, you need to optimize your content marketing strategy. For example, you can make articles that talk about the top reasons for living in the area you’re working for.
To make effective content for real estate, you need to follow a lot of guidelines. You need to use high-quality images as well as videos and audio content. Most of all, you need to ensure that you’re still writing for your audience, not for the search engine algorithms.
3. Use Social Media
Did you know that about 91% of real estate companies take advantage of digital platforms like social media? If you’re one of these companies, you need to ask yourself: am I using it to its maximum potential? Once you know the answer, you have an idea of where you stand.
Most real estate firms that use social media actively gain the benefit of enjoying visibility for their brands. Real estate agents thrive by building meaningful relationships with clients. The best way to do that is to use the following social media platforms:
- YouTube
There are a lot of other platforms around, but they cater more to a specific audience. If you want the biggest one around, you can focus on Facebook. After all, this social media network has about 2.2 billion active users each month.
But always remember that it isn’t necessary for you to be active everywhere. What you can do is to research on which platforms your clients are most likely frequent. Meet them there and use hashtags that help you expand your brand’s visibility.
4. Get Natural Inbound Links
The most common question experts get is how to get inbound links for real estate businesses. This isn’t the right mindset since what you need to prioritize is how to make valuable content. After all, this makes it easier for you to get natural links.
Backlinks are important to increase your website’s overall rankings. But the better goal is to achieve an increased rate of traffic and user engagements. In a general sense, you need to avoid buying for backlinks since it’s considered as a “black hat” SEO tactic.
Google will penalize your website when they find this out. Over the years, the search engine’s algorithm got really good in taking down websites that use these unethical tactics. What you should focus on is to make unique, high-quality content other websites will want to link to.
Another way to attract links is to sponsor or attend local community events. It doesn’t matter whether it’s races, fairs, or school events. You can even work with charitable organizations to get involved more with your local community.
5. Invest in Responsive Website Design
One of the most important components of your online presence is your website. If you haven’t yet, it’s important that it’s viewable no matter what device your visitors use. It should look great and intuitive regardless of whether they’re viewing it using laptops, desktops, tablets, or smartphones.
Most of the home buyers these days use mobile devices to look for properties on the internet. This is especially noticeable for first-time shoppers as well as younger visitors like Millennials. You’ll miss out on a large swath of traffic if you don’t adapt your website to respond to mobile devices.
6. Use Directories
There are a lot of online real estate directory services with a vast online reach. For example, Zillow has about 83 million users around the world. They account for about 64% of the entire online real estate market industry.
Once you decide to use these online directories, you need to follow some guidelines. For example, you should give a link back to your own website whenever it’s possible. This helps your potential buyers know their next step, guiding them to your website and connecting with you.
With this, you can collect more data on them to better control your interaction. It’s also important to double-check the information on the listing. This helps set the proper level of expectations for your potential buyers.
7. Encourage Reviews
People see home buying as one of the biggest investments they can make in their life. With that, they need to have a feeling of trust in their chosen agent. It falls on you to ensure that they find the best properties around.
If you’re doing a great job, don’t forget to showcase your positive customer reviews. Do it as frequently as you can on your website. Your efforts will go a long way towards building client trust ratings.
Don’t hesitate to promote positive reviews from external websites like Google Places, online directories, and Yelp. To make it much better you need to make a testimonial section your real estate website. This helps prospective buyers see your business as legitimate and trustworthy.
It’s important to keep your cool when you get bad reviews. It happens to all businesses, no matter how good you might be. The most important thing to focus on is to respond to it in the most professional manner.
8. Opt for Quicker Website Speeds
Another important ranking factor for Google is your page load time and overall site speed. Real estate websites often get penalized due to the usage of oversized images. A lot of other websites don’t delete their old listings too, resulting in a buildup of useless content that slow down the site.
With that, it isn’t really needed for you to have the fastest speed to reach the top. For example, give valuable information to your visitors on the landing page. It might have high-quality images and embedded videos that slow it down, but it’s information they want.
Make sure to measure the impact of using page-slowing elements on your website. Compare your site speed to your local competitors and use it as a basis. Work towards the minimum first and increase it whenever you can.
9. Test and Analyze on a Regular Basis
It’s important to keep testing and reinventing your processes once you get a system that works. This helps ensure that your website gets more optimized over time and for the right cost. You need to make continuous readjustments to your SEO strategy to stay competitive.
You also need to change your SEO strategies to fit the algorithm updates on the Google search engine. It’s recommended to use tools like Google Analytics. This helps you identify your audience base and discover the processes that work for you.
Always remember that attaining a fully-optimized real estate website is an ongoing process. It will need your constant attention and patience.
Most successful real estate agents have these qualities anyway, so it shouldn’t be much of a problem with you.
10. Make a Structured Data Markup
Structured data is a type of markup used on webpages, making it an important part of an SEO strategy.
It gives extra information about your web pages’ content. That helps ensure that various search engines like Google understand your content better.
Google Search uses these for some unique result features—primarily snippets.
As an example, pages with valid structured data enjoy better rankings in the search engine results page. After all, they get used in rich snippets as well as image carousels and knowledge boxes.
Most featured fragments will appear at the top of the result page. It gives users a concise answer to your potential audiences’ search questions. Snippets will include your page title and the link to that page.
This is one of the most coveted positions in the results page. That’s why if you want your real estate marketing plan to work, you need to make the right structure.
Markup your content and make good use of keyword-targeted paragraphs that help answer some of your potential customers’ common questions.
Listing Strategy for Digital Marketing
With listings becoming more available with the digital age, you need a good strategy to stay relevant. Make an impact and stand out from your competitors. You need to use these techniques:
1. Hire Professional Photographers
A lot of real estate firms rely on low-quality images taken from smartphones. It won’t impress online shoppers, making your brand seem inexperienced. Hire a professional photographer and capture your properties on its best light.
2. Use Good Video Content
It doesn’t need a tech genius to start using video content. Often, all you need to do is to make photo slideshows that act as a virtual house tour. The next step is to film inside the home to help sell the experience more.
3. Combine Digital and Print Marketing
Do your best to give the best experience to your clients. Show them how tech-savvy your real estate business is, sharing presentations and videos using tablets. After that, make them feel your brand is well-established by showing them a physical book containing more information.
Start Real Estate Marketing Today!
It’s often difficult to stand out from other real estate businesses due to market saturation. If you want to set yourself apart from your competitors, you need to start investing in real estate marketing.
You need to use real estate SEO strategies to help make your business more noticeable online.
You can use this guide as a starting point if you don’t know what to do. But to make the most out of these processes, you need to pair up with marketing experts specializing in the real estate industry.
That helps ensure that you don’t stumble around trying what works and what doesn’t.
Do you need help with your strategies? Don’t delay and contact us today so we can help you.