Top Digital Marketing Strategies for Agents
Back in the early days of real estate marketing, if you wanted someone to learn more about you and your business as an agent or brokerage, you’d prop up appealing lawn signs, take out ads in local print publications, or even rent a billboard or two in your farming area.
While those marketing practices are still very much around today, the extent real estate professionals are willing to take their marketing efforts is much, much more complex. And it makes sense — with the congestion of real estate agents competing with each other in busy markets such as Toronto’s, those motivated to succeed are willing to do what it takes to spread the word about their business and services.
Of course, digital marketing has become one of the most popular arenas for Realtors® to extend their reach and collect leads. In today’s modern world, marketing yourself and your business online has become the bare minimum, but those who do it correctly stand head and shoulders above the rest.
To find out more about which digital marketing practices are worth the effort and attention of real estate professionals, read up on our top digital marketing strategies for agents here.
Social Media Marketing
These days, if a small business, ambitious entrepreneur, or emerging product doesn’t exist on the most popular social media platforms, they might as well also not exist in the real world too.
Social media has become such an intrinsic part of people’s lives that you can find (and purchase) almost anything you could ever want or need on platforms like Instagram and Facebook today. And because of that, it hasn’t taken long for advertisers to catch onto the power of using social media to increase the reach and exposure of their products and services.
While paying professional advertisers, marketers, and influencers to promote your product or service online can get expensive over time, it’s important to remember it doesn’t cost anything to advertise your own products and services on social media on your own.
In today’s age when people even shop for homes on social media, it’s vital you establish a consistent and strong presence on the most widely used social media platforms for the success of your personal real estate business.
Even if your brokerage or team has their own separate social media accounts, it’s always advisable for you to set up your own and work hard to create content consistently on it. At the end of the day, you never know who’s going to find and reach out to you on platforms like Instagram or Facebook, so why not try your best to grow your personal presence online?
Not quite got the hang of the social media marketing game just yet? Find out more about how you can grow your business presence through social media by reading through our Social Media Tips And Tricks For Real Estate Agents.
Email Marketing
We get it — very few people truly enjoy reading through all of the newsletters they receive from the various brands and companies they’ve mistakenly given their email out to. However, that doesn’t mean that email marketing in the form of regular newsletters is useless — in fact, there’s a good chance you actually look forward to receiving a few.
Not all newsletters are made the same, and encouraging people to sign up and regularly read yours comes down to the value and quality of content you feature in yours. Plus, the rules around spammy newsletters have changed over the past decade as well. Since Canada passed the Canada Anti-Spam Law (CASL) in 2010, brands and companies are only permitted to send email advertisements and newsletters to people who’ve already agreed to receive messages from them.
That means that those who do choose to sign up for your newsletter probably want to hear from you regularly, so it’s up to you to supply them with useful, value-added content. With the opt-in, opt-out rule, however, you won’t have long to hit the mark before users decide to unsubscribe. So ensure your content is creative, informative, and relevant to you and your real estate services before each issue while also keeping in mind not to send them too often.
Looking for an example of a great real estate-related newsletter? We think ours is pretty good. To subscribe, simply click “Sign Up For Our Newsletter” here and the latest issue will be in your inbox before you know it. Of course, you’re always welcome to unsubscribe any time you want.
Consistent Blog Content
While social media ads and newsletters are designed to be short, snappy pieces of content that capture the attention of readers quickly, and longer-form messaging you want to get across to your online audiences can be done through blog posts.
Although blogging is no recent revelation to the world of digital marketing, there are only a select few in the real estate industry (or any industry, for that matter) that do it well. The key here is consistently producing informative content that directly appeals to your specific audience.
Coming up with blog topics and long-term content outlines can be challenging to start off with — very few people already have 10 great blog post ideas just waiting to be written without doing a bit of work first. However, the best piece of advice we can give you in the way of formulating blog topics is to listen to your audience.
As a Realtor®, you should already be speaking to and interacting with your audiences on a personal level every day, whether that’s out in the field, over the phone, or through social media. Naturally, that means you should already (either consciously or subconsciously) have a great idea of what their interests, questions, and concerns about real estate are.
The trick is, just as each Realtor® is different, so are their clients. What your clients are curious about learning more about is going to be different than what other Realtors’® audiences are going to want to know more about. Think about who you’re writing for and what kind of content will educate, entertain, and engage them, then write out a few blog topics that hone in on those interests. From there, consistency is the secret to growing your blog section and therefore your website and personal brand.
One of the best ways to appeal to a specific group of potential clientele is to find your unique niche within your local real estate market. Not sure how? Use these 5 Ways to Find Your Niche in Real Estate here.
Targeted Ads
Unless you’ve got some pretty strong Google Chrome extensions or activity-hiding applications installed on your computer, you most likely encounter targeted ads every day online. While these ads can initially come across as rather creepy, they’re actually very effective at capturing leads and interactions from consumers.
The way they work is simple — they use a computer user’s cache to inform which brands, products, and services they’re most likely to be interested in according to their search and activity history. That means that if you’ve been looking at a new car, pair of sneakers, or real estate listing, there’s a good chance you’ll see it again on a targeted ad when visiting a completely different website.
Of course, as a Realtor®, you know that nobody makes a bid for a home from the first time they’ve seen the online listing. Instead, it takes time, consideration, and lots of return visits from the buyer to determine if they want to make an offer for a home or not — and targeted ads are great at speeding up this process.
The great thing about creating targeted ads is that you as the publisher can choose which pages of your website you want to create ads for, choose which website you want them to appear on, and how many times you want them to pop up. So, whether you want to implement a more aggressive approach or a slower one, it’s up to you to decide how you want to interact with your online audience.
At Royal LePage Professionals, we’re proud of our tight-knit team and how well we support each other’s marketing and career goals. If you’re an agent and want to feel that same kind of team-based support, read through our brokerage-specific pages here to learn more:
