40 ways to promote real estate business
Hi, my name is David, owner of RealEstateAgent68 blog, let me share all of you about #40 ways to promote real estate business as below, if y...
http://realestateagent88.blogspot.com/2018/06/40-ways-to-promote-real-estate-business.html
Hi, my name is David, owner of RealEstateAgent68 blog, let me share all of you about #40 ways to promote real estate business as below, if you need more detaisl, pls leave your comments.
1. Partner With Local Businesses.
Developing relationships with other local businesses will be key for your real estate marketing efforts. See if you can get local breakfast joints to let you buy them a set of new coffee mugs with your logo on them, or buy a place on their paper placemat setting. Don’t be afraid to get creative with local partnerships.
2. Host Free Seminars For Home Buyers.
Make yourself and your knowledge available to the community by hosting mini-seminars. Consider providing a basic 101 seminar about the basics of home buying and mortgages.
Remember, marketing today is all about inbound, and that doesn’t just apply online. Users want you to share some of your knowledge for free before investing time and money in you. A home buying seminar is the local equivalent of a webinar. Yes, it will take time and energy, but attendees will walk away impressed and will have established a relationship with you. That relationship will be worth its weight in gold when they’re ready to shop for a home.
2. Host Local Neighborhood Tours
When it comes to great marketing, nothing beats the personal engagement that comes from hosting a fun event for your sphere. Even better, why not host an event that shows off your own love and expert knowledge about your farm area?
Luxury Manhattan Real Estate Agent Jeff Goodman does just that. Goodman organizes regular walking tours of historic Manhattan neighborhoods for his sphere. Since he hires a professional tour guide for the events, he generally gets 70 or more people attending each tour.
3. Master Your Elevator Pitch
Imagine you were given $5 million to advertise your business with a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl. What would you say?
If this question is leaving you scratching your head, you need to work on your elevator pitch. A 30-second-or-less speech that shows off your unique skills and experience offers value and can end up producing more leads.
4. Become a Columnist in Local Magazines.
When it comes to real estate, it’s important that you get laser focused on local. Getting yourself in local magazines or newspapers is a great way to get the word out about you and your brand. See if you can write a column or feature for local publications. You don’t want to be blatantly salesy – today’s consumers don’t like to be pitched to. Instead, try to showcase your knowledge. Write about how rising prices of houses on the market shows that the town is doing well, or list the reasons why your regional area is becoming more popular (maybe it’s the revitalized downtown area or improved school system).
5. Ask for Referrals
89% of real estate agents said that referrals from current and previous clients are one of their most successful marketing efforts, but it turns out that 41% of real estate agents do not spend any money on referrals per month.
Don’t let this be you in 2018! Create a strategy to ask clients for referrals and make it standard practice. When you’re short on time, the amount of effort required to generate referrals may feel daunting, but it’s important to realize how impactful they are to your business. 92% of people trust recommendations from friends and family over all other forms of marketing according to a report from Nielsen. So don’t be nervous about putting yourself out there and asking your happy clients to pass along your business card or make an introduction. Chances are they will be happy to do so and you’ll gain potential future clients from it.
6. Follow up with Clients
As a real estate agent, it’s critical to stay in touch with your past clients. For most people, buying or selling a home doesn’t many times in their lives, but when it does you want to be the agent they call. If you aren’t already, start sending email newsletters regularly. These should be full of valuable information that is meant to help, not sell, as discussed above in idea 2. By providing this type of content and reaching out regularly, past clients will be more likely to remember you when they need your help again.
One way that won’t cost you a penny is to pick up the phone to thank clients for their business. You can do this if it’s been a couple days after they move in or it’s been a couple of years. If you want to spend a little more time and have a small budget, you could also send a birthday or holiday card to connect in a way that isn’t associated with a business transaction.
7. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Search Engine Advertising
These are sponsored results that show to the right when you search on Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. This can be an excellent real estate marketing opportunity because it drives traffic to your personal website or landing page only from people actively interested in real estate. You choose who views your ads by location and demographics. Keep in mind that if you go into this blindly you could waste a lot of money trying to bring leads into the picture. Figure out who you want to target and what area you are focusing on before starting any campaign.
8. Customer Surveys
Surveying people about service quality has marketing benefits. You can identify opportunities for improvement and you let clients know you value the quality of their experience. You can do this by sending an email and include a link to your survey. The process can be automated on any number of touch points including an open house, house tour, or even the final sale. Give your clients the freedom to answer a survey when they want and get the results in real-time.
9. Establish Good Word of Mouth
Nothing beats a good referral. People like feeling comfortable when it comes to real estate, and if a friend or family member refers your good services, it takes away the uneasy feeling associated with first impressions. Having informational items to give away along with a referral can go a long way as well. Custom real estate business cards and fridge magnets displaying your face and business information are easy items that your clients can pass along to friends and family. Throwing in a popular sports schedule, seed pack, or something else that targets your audiences hobbies and interests are tools that continually draw the attention of potential clientele back to your business.
10. Quit Cold Calling
The trick to growing your business is to get prospects to call you. Nobody likes being hassled with a sales call, and given the resources for businesses today, it comes off a bit lazy. Yeah, it occasionally works, but it only works with your due diligence. Cold calling should be last on your list of to dos. Once you’ve established a web presence, have some solid marketing materials and a good snail mail campaign, only then does your cold calling have purpose. Having something to offer other than your sales pitch gives the person on the other end of the line something they can take away from the experience.
11. Outdoor Advertisements
When you place your real estate website on an outdoor advertisement (ie. bus shelter, bike rack, billboard, etc.,) be sure that it’s clear and legible even if your prospect is driving by. But keep in mind who will predominantly be seeing your website displayed on the bus shelter ad. Mainly people who are at the bus stop, on the bus, or walking by. Most of these people have a web-ready mobile device with them. How can you convince them to load your website right then and there?
Sure a phone number is necessary, but there should be another call to action available for people who aren’t ready to contact you just yet… “Meet the team on our website” or “View upcoming open houses online” are a couple of idea starters for your outdoor advertising calls to action that might help convert prospects into visitors. What are some others?
12. Newspaper Ads
Newspaper ads or community paper ads are common marketing channels for real estate agents and they should always include your website URL. Although newspapers aren’t exactly the sexiest or most modern publications anymore, they still increase brand awareness and convert leads – and they can be paired with modern tools to convert even more.1
Make sure your newspaper ad isn’t where the reader’s journey with you ends that day. Send them from your ad to your website – turn them from a prospect into a visitor. And don’t be afraid to try different call to actions to test the effectiveness of, for instance, “View colour photos of these listings at…” vs. “View drone videos of these listings at…”.
14. Publish Market Reports
A valuable real estate marketing idea would be to create a local market report for the markets your operate in. This is not just a great nurturing tool, but also helps to educate your clients and potential prospects. Include data points like rentable square footage (RSF), average rent prices, vacancy data, absorption rates and any significant transactions. Highlight it on your website as a monthly (or quarterly) feature and you will surely generate more eyeballs and interested readers.
15. Run Targeted Ad Campaigns with Google
Google AdWords offers a fast, efficient and scalable way to target potential tenants and investors online. Programmatic advertising allows you to showcase your services or offers in specific locations in search results, or with display and retargeted ads for people visiting your website or those of your competitors. To put it simply, this is the fastest way to get in front of your most likely prospects.
16. Run Facebook ads
Facebook is also inherently visual (just like real estate), and provides extremely granular targeting options that allow to reach the exact market you want, from first-time, just-married home buyers to wealthy coastal retirees.
17. Run a Remarketing Campaign
Remarketing allows you to recapture traffic on your website, showing ultra-targeted ads only to people who have already visited or performed a specific action on your website. Because more than 90% of your web traffic won’t take an action when they visit, you need to increase return rates – retargeting allows you to do just that.
18. Livestream Your Day-to-Day
Let’s face it — when scrolling through a social media feed, a “Live Now” tag is pretty much irresistibly clickable. People are just naturally curious.
Seeing a new listing for the first time? Why not show your audience via livestream? They’ll feel like they’re getting the inside scoop, and you’ll be able to build your audience and get more leads. That’s a win-win situation.
In this edition of Beverly Hills superstar broker Peter Lorimer’s (amazing) Magic Minute series, he walks you through the process.
19. Create an Awesome Website.
Today’s consumers like to do a lot of legwork themselves online when making major purchases, and that includes home buying as well. I myself have only rented, but even when renting a property I’ll Google Map the address, use Street View to get a feel for the area, see which businesses are within walking distance, look at home photos, and, ideally take a virtual tour of the property.
Make it easy for users to access all this information – make sure all your property pages have great photos, virtual tours, and easy access to Google Maps and Google Earth. List the hot spots nearby and their respective walking distances (mention the bus stop that’s just a five minute walk, or the Starbucks at the end of the block).
Remember: Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly. Tech-savvy consumers spend tons of time on their mobile devices. In fact, a recent study has shown that 80% of Internet users use their mobile devices for online activity. It’s paramount that your website is mobile friendly. Even better, consider creating a mobile app that potential buyers can use to review listings.
20. Add Live Chat to your Website
Hopefully, you’re already focused on driving web traffic, but what happens when a potential client gets to your site?
It’s critical to be there when your prospects need you most. The best way to do this is by
adding live chat to your website so you have coverage 24/7. Live chat is one of the most effective marketing tools available in terms of conversion on your website. With live chat, website visitors have the ability to ask questions and receive answers in real-time rather than going elsewhere to answer their questions. It also prevents the dreaded automated menu loop we’ve all been trapped in when calling customer service.
Chat creates a stronger user experience and gives you valuable information to reach out and follow up. The best, easiest way to upgrade your site is with ReadyChat, a live chat service built specifically for real estate.
Google My Business is the latest in Google location-based pages. If you’re feeling confused, don’t worry – it’s basically the same idea as Google Places for Businesses and Google+ Pages. Setting up a Google My Business account makes it easy for users to find you in Google Search, Google Maps, and Google+. Trust me, this one is a no-brainer.
22. Create a Newsletter.
Email marketing is one of the best strategies for building client relationships. Collect emails from your website, local outreach, or any other methods you can think of. Send your email subscribers the stuff they’re looking for – notices about upcoming open houses, new houses on the market, news about seminars you’re offering in the area, etc. (Note: if you work in different geographical areas, you’ll want to segment your newsletter subscribers based on their location, ensuring that they only get relevant emails and updates from you).
23. Local Sponsorship.
Consider helping sponsor local festivals, sports teams, or school events. Signing up as a local sponsor often means getting your business a spot on t-shirts, program pamphlets, or flyers.
24. Hire a Photo Pro.
Successful real estate relies heavily on great photography. Bad photos will diminish interest in even the greatest of properties. It’s absolutely vital that you have gorgeous photos of your properties. Hire a professional photographer (preferably with experience photographing homes and architecture), or, if you have sophisticated equipment and are confident in your abilities, have your own hand at it. Just remember this is one of those scenarios when it pays to bring in the professionals.
There are tons of great resources that provide in-depth detail about real estate photography – this guide from Digital Photography School is helpful (so long as you have some basic photography experience under you belt already).
15. Set Yourself Up For Social.
Make sure you have social media accounts on all the big networks (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and even Instagram if you snap a lot of house pics). Interact with users, share good press, and promote your properties.
26. Blogs
A real estate blog can benefit your business in so many ways. Potential leads might not always appreciate a real estate business that just lists properties for sale on their website. They’re looking for information about real estate so that they can become more informed and knowledgeable buyers and sellers. With a blog, you can post up information about the general real estate market and what is going on with real estate in your location. For example, if you based in Texas, you can put up articles titled: “How to sell a house in less time in Texas?” or “How to find the perfect home for you in Texas?” Don’t use blogs to sell real estate. Just use them to provide free information to people. This is another way to keep them actively engaged on your website and build your authority in the local real estate market.
27. Add Reviews & Services
Referrals are the best kind of marketing for real estate agents. In your Facebook Page, enable both reviews and services. For ease of communication, make sure clients can book appointments with you or message for questions.
Bower Real Estate does an excellent job at providing information about its services, while leaving an area for client testimonials.
On your website, use client testimonials and information about your services. Do you provide free consultations and can they be booked online? Finding an agent is difficult enough. Make the process for connecting to your client as seamless as possible.
28. Create a Facebook Group & Participate in Local Groups
With the new feature to link Facebook Groups to a Facebook Page, you can offer even more personalized services to clients. Using Facebook Groups is a good way to navigate around the Facebook algorithm. Ideally, clients would be able to post in the Group and help each other through the selling or buying process.
Another option for Facebook Groups is using them as a networking opportunity.
29. Start an Email Nurture Campaign.
Nurture campaigns are like the breadcrumb paths of Hansel and Gretel, except instead of a gingerbread house at the end, clients find their dream home (hopefully without a resident evil witch).
Leave your clients a trail of high-end panko breadcrumbs by tailoring your interactions with them based on previous actions they’ve taken. If they first attended an open house with you, send them an email detailing other nearby houses on the market. If they attended your first time homebuyer’s seminar, send them your “10 Things Every New Homebuyer Should Know “ ebook. Deliver content that will help your clients take the appropriate next step, depending on where they are in their journey.
30. Video Marketing
There is no better way to advertise a real estate business and its property listings than by using videos to market them. We live in an age where people would rather watch a video advertisement than read a text advertisement. Videos let people clearly see who you are and what you’re selling. It gives them more confidence in your business because they’ll get to see that you’re a real person with a real business. Best of all, you can post these videos for free on YouTube or any number of other video sharing platforms.
31. Animated Video.
Consider outsourcing a quality animated video for your real estate businesses. Short, cute, high-quality cartoon videos can help establish your brand as well as give a touch of personality. You may even want to consider featuring local landmarks or sites in your animated video to make it ultra-unique and targeted.
Your animated video doesn’t have to be super sophisticated – check out this short and very simple animated ad from Geico.
32. Search Engine Optimization
If you want people to find your company’s website, you need to make sure that it is optimized for search engines. That way, your real estate business can be discovered from a simple search on Google or any of the other major search engines. Your goal should be to get your website ranked high enough to where it will appear on the first page of someone’s search results. If you can do this successfully, you’ll never have to spend a dime on pay-per-click advertising ever again.
33. Go Live at a Property
Using Facebook Live for business lets you provide a behind-the-scenes, unedited look of a property. If you promote it before the listing goes up, it gives your followers a feeling of an inside scoop. These videos are excellent at engaging your audience and are often highly ranked in Facebook feeds.
Incorporating a Q&A like Zac McHardy did is a great way to get potential buyers into the door without even stepping foot on the property.
Want more tips on how to run a Facebook Live stream from beginning to end? Check out this guide.
34. Experiment With Videos
There are so many video options for posts now. Instead of a standard walkthrough of the house, maybe hire some actors who look like your target clients. Consider creating helpful tutorial videos for your clients, too. Not enough money to hire a staging expert? Pair up with an expert for some how-to videos. It establishes your credibility, gives the staging expert a potential expert and helps your clients. All a win-win.
Joyce Rey Real Estate shared a video that featured a couple enjoying their neighborhood, coming home and taking a break. It highlights all of the main features of the house and helps potential clients picture themselves living there.
35. Build Up Trust
As a real estate agent, you need to build trust with your clients. If you share blog posts, write articles, publish infographics and offer free information to help your clients, they’ll begin to trust your expertise. Offering free advice without pushing your services is an easy tactic for building trust.
Ines Hegedus-Garcia works in Miami and often posts about local events, real estate advice and other information where clients would take interest.
36. Build a Facebook Page
Facebook is still the biggest resource with the largest subset of users that you can target online. Creating a Facebook Business Page, then advertising that business with Facebook is one such approach that you can take to marketing your real estate online. This is a terrific resource whether you're new to the business or you're a veteran in the field.
Once you've built your Facebook Page, ensure that you're active on there and that you continuously deliver a good deal of value in every post. Don't spam your fans by trying to pitch them at every turn. Do things with tact, decorum and composure if you want to succeed in business in the long term.
37. Grow Your Network With Regular Get-togethers
Shares from Nicholas Lee, Licensed Real Estate Agent, Sierra Residential:
Besides advertising exclusives on StreetEasy, Trulia and Zillow and sending out monthly newsletters, my top strategy remains the personal touch. I host a monthly happy hour open bar in New York City and invite my top clients and their friends and families. It’s a great way to grow your network organically, and I’ve gotten some of my best sales clients this way. I highly recommend it.
38. Find the Best Keywords to Build Traffic to Your Website
Check out the in-depth guide on the best 150 real estate keywords to drive traffic to your site. We also cover keyword research on a shoestring budget and insightful general SEO tips from the pros. Still looking for more keywords? Check out Marketing Artfully’s Tara Jacobsen’s list of the best SEO keywords to use on your website.
39. Stay Relevant After Closing
It’s not often you’ll have back-to-back repeat clients, but you always want to stay relevant in your posts. Did you know 70% of homebuyers completely forget who their agent was just a year after closing? Like the previous idea, you want to build up trust for you as an expert and stay connected.
This means sharing information on such things like renovations can keep your posts useful for past clients but also for current ones who are interested in the topic. Local news and events also fall into this category of posts.
40. Keep In Touch.
Stay in touch (even months and years later) with past buyers in order to build in that good relationship. Send anniversary cards, holiday cards, etc to stay fresh in their minds. When they have a friend who is ready to buy, they’ll pass along your info.
1. Partner With Local Businesses.
Developing relationships with other local businesses will be key for your real estate marketing efforts. See if you can get local breakfast joints to let you buy them a set of new coffee mugs with your logo on them, or buy a place on their paper placemat setting. Don’t be afraid to get creative with local partnerships.
2. Host Free Seminars For Home Buyers.
Make yourself and your knowledge available to the community by hosting mini-seminars. Consider providing a basic 101 seminar about the basics of home buying and mortgages.
Remember, marketing today is all about inbound, and that doesn’t just apply online. Users want you to share some of your knowledge for free before investing time and money in you. A home buying seminar is the local equivalent of a webinar. Yes, it will take time and energy, but attendees will walk away impressed and will have established a relationship with you. That relationship will be worth its weight in gold when they’re ready to shop for a home.
2. Host Local Neighborhood Tours
When it comes to great marketing, nothing beats the personal engagement that comes from hosting a fun event for your sphere. Even better, why not host an event that shows off your own love and expert knowledge about your farm area?
Luxury Manhattan Real Estate Agent Jeff Goodman does just that. Goodman organizes regular walking tours of historic Manhattan neighborhoods for his sphere. Since he hires a professional tour guide for the events, he generally gets 70 or more people attending each tour.
3. Master Your Elevator Pitch
Imagine you were given $5 million to advertise your business with a 30-second ad during the Super Bowl. What would you say?
If this question is leaving you scratching your head, you need to work on your elevator pitch. A 30-second-or-less speech that shows off your unique skills and experience offers value and can end up producing more leads.
4. Become a Columnist in Local Magazines.
When it comes to real estate, it’s important that you get laser focused on local. Getting yourself in local magazines or newspapers is a great way to get the word out about you and your brand. See if you can write a column or feature for local publications. You don’t want to be blatantly salesy – today’s consumers don’t like to be pitched to. Instead, try to showcase your knowledge. Write about how rising prices of houses on the market shows that the town is doing well, or list the reasons why your regional area is becoming more popular (maybe it’s the revitalized downtown area or improved school system).
5. Ask for Referrals
89% of real estate agents said that referrals from current and previous clients are one of their most successful marketing efforts, but it turns out that 41% of real estate agents do not spend any money on referrals per month.
Don’t let this be you in 2018! Create a strategy to ask clients for referrals and make it standard practice. When you’re short on time, the amount of effort required to generate referrals may feel daunting, but it’s important to realize how impactful they are to your business. 92% of people trust recommendations from friends and family over all other forms of marketing according to a report from Nielsen. So don’t be nervous about putting yourself out there and asking your happy clients to pass along your business card or make an introduction. Chances are they will be happy to do so and you’ll gain potential future clients from it.
6. Follow up with Clients
As a real estate agent, it’s critical to stay in touch with your past clients. For most people, buying or selling a home doesn’t many times in their lives, but when it does you want to be the agent they call. If you aren’t already, start sending email newsletters regularly. These should be full of valuable information that is meant to help, not sell, as discussed above in idea 2. By providing this type of content and reaching out regularly, past clients will be more likely to remember you when they need your help again.
One way that won’t cost you a penny is to pick up the phone to thank clients for their business. You can do this if it’s been a couple days after they move in or it’s been a couple of years. If you want to spend a little more time and have a small budget, you could also send a birthday or holiday card to connect in a way that isn’t associated with a business transaction.
7. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Search Engine Advertising
These are sponsored results that show to the right when you search on Google, Yahoo, Bing, etc. This can be an excellent real estate marketing opportunity because it drives traffic to your personal website or landing page only from people actively interested in real estate. You choose who views your ads by location and demographics. Keep in mind that if you go into this blindly you could waste a lot of money trying to bring leads into the picture. Figure out who you want to target and what area you are focusing on before starting any campaign.
8. Customer Surveys
Surveying people about service quality has marketing benefits. You can identify opportunities for improvement and you let clients know you value the quality of their experience. You can do this by sending an email and include a link to your survey. The process can be automated on any number of touch points including an open house, house tour, or even the final sale. Give your clients the freedom to answer a survey when they want and get the results in real-time.
9. Establish Good Word of Mouth
Nothing beats a good referral. People like feeling comfortable when it comes to real estate, and if a friend or family member refers your good services, it takes away the uneasy feeling associated with first impressions. Having informational items to give away along with a referral can go a long way as well. Custom real estate business cards and fridge magnets displaying your face and business information are easy items that your clients can pass along to friends and family. Throwing in a popular sports schedule, seed pack, or something else that targets your audiences hobbies and interests are tools that continually draw the attention of potential clientele back to your business.
10. Quit Cold Calling
The trick to growing your business is to get prospects to call you. Nobody likes being hassled with a sales call, and given the resources for businesses today, it comes off a bit lazy. Yeah, it occasionally works, but it only works with your due diligence. Cold calling should be last on your list of to dos. Once you’ve established a web presence, have some solid marketing materials and a good snail mail campaign, only then does your cold calling have purpose. Having something to offer other than your sales pitch gives the person on the other end of the line something they can take away from the experience.
11. Outdoor Advertisements
When you place your real estate website on an outdoor advertisement (ie. bus shelter, bike rack, billboard, etc.,) be sure that it’s clear and legible even if your prospect is driving by. But keep in mind who will predominantly be seeing your website displayed on the bus shelter ad. Mainly people who are at the bus stop, on the bus, or walking by. Most of these people have a web-ready mobile device with them. How can you convince them to load your website right then and there?
Sure a phone number is necessary, but there should be another call to action available for people who aren’t ready to contact you just yet… “Meet the team on our website” or “View upcoming open houses online” are a couple of idea starters for your outdoor advertising calls to action that might help convert prospects into visitors. What are some others?
12. Newspaper Ads
Newspaper ads or community paper ads are common marketing channels for real estate agents and they should always include your website URL. Although newspapers aren’t exactly the sexiest or most modern publications anymore, they still increase brand awareness and convert leads – and they can be paired with modern tools to convert even more.1
Make sure your newspaper ad isn’t where the reader’s journey with you ends that day. Send them from your ad to your website – turn them from a prospect into a visitor. And don’t be afraid to try different call to actions to test the effectiveness of, for instance, “View colour photos of these listings at…” vs. “View drone videos of these listings at…”.
14. Publish Market Reports
A valuable real estate marketing idea would be to create a local market report for the markets your operate in. This is not just a great nurturing tool, but also helps to educate your clients and potential prospects. Include data points like rentable square footage (RSF), average rent prices, vacancy data, absorption rates and any significant transactions. Highlight it on your website as a monthly (or quarterly) feature and you will surely generate more eyeballs and interested readers.
15. Run Targeted Ad Campaigns with Google
Google AdWords offers a fast, efficient and scalable way to target potential tenants and investors online. Programmatic advertising allows you to showcase your services or offers in specific locations in search results, or with display and retargeted ads for people visiting your website or those of your competitors. To put it simply, this is the fastest way to get in front of your most likely prospects.
16. Run Facebook ads
Facebook is also inherently visual (just like real estate), and provides extremely granular targeting options that allow to reach the exact market you want, from first-time, just-married home buyers to wealthy coastal retirees.
17. Run a Remarketing Campaign
Remarketing allows you to recapture traffic on your website, showing ultra-targeted ads only to people who have already visited or performed a specific action on your website. Because more than 90% of your web traffic won’t take an action when they visit, you need to increase return rates – retargeting allows you to do just that.
Let’s face it — when scrolling through a social media feed, a “Live Now” tag is pretty much irresistibly clickable. People are just naturally curious.
Seeing a new listing for the first time? Why not show your audience via livestream? They’ll feel like they’re getting the inside scoop, and you’ll be able to build your audience and get more leads. That’s a win-win situation.
In this edition of Beverly Hills superstar broker Peter Lorimer’s (amazing) Magic Minute series, he walks you through the process.
19. Create an Awesome Website.
Today’s consumers like to do a lot of legwork themselves online when making major purchases, and that includes home buying as well. I myself have only rented, but even when renting a property I’ll Google Map the address, use Street View to get a feel for the area, see which businesses are within walking distance, look at home photos, and, ideally take a virtual tour of the property.
Make it easy for users to access all this information – make sure all your property pages have great photos, virtual tours, and easy access to Google Maps and Google Earth. List the hot spots nearby and their respective walking distances (mention the bus stop that’s just a five minute walk, or the Starbucks at the end of the block).
Remember: Make Your Site Mobile-Friendly. Tech-savvy consumers spend tons of time on their mobile devices. In fact, a recent study has shown that 80% of Internet users use their mobile devices for online activity. It’s paramount that your website is mobile friendly. Even better, consider creating a mobile app that potential buyers can use to review listings.
20. Add Live Chat to your Website
Hopefully, you’re already focused on driving web traffic, but what happens when a potential client gets to your site?
It’s critical to be there when your prospects need you most. The best way to do this is by
adding live chat to your website so you have coverage 24/7. Live chat is one of the most effective marketing tools available in terms of conversion on your website. With live chat, website visitors have the ability to ask questions and receive answers in real-time rather than going elsewhere to answer their questions. It also prevents the dreaded automated menu loop we’ve all been trapped in when calling customer service.
Chat creates a stronger user experience and gives you valuable information to reach out and follow up. The best, easiest way to upgrade your site is with ReadyChat, a live chat service built specifically for real estate.
21. Consumer Reviews On Your Website
Like mentioned already, happy clients singing your praises is the best marketing you can get. So use it. Have a page on your site to feature and accept new reviews or testimonials. A simple form can automate the process and send you an email when a new review arrives. Then you can add it to your website. Take these same reviews and sprinkle then on all your touchpoints.
7 Build Your Google My Business Page.Like mentioned already, happy clients singing your praises is the best marketing you can get. So use it. Have a page on your site to feature and accept new reviews or testimonials. A simple form can automate the process and send you an email when a new review arrives. Then you can add it to your website. Take these same reviews and sprinkle then on all your touchpoints.
Google My Business is the latest in Google location-based pages. If you’re feeling confused, don’t worry – it’s basically the same idea as Google Places for Businesses and Google+ Pages. Setting up a Google My Business account makes it easy for users to find you in Google Search, Google Maps, and Google+. Trust me, this one is a no-brainer.
22. Create a Newsletter.
Email marketing is one of the best strategies for building client relationships. Collect emails from your website, local outreach, or any other methods you can think of. Send your email subscribers the stuff they’re looking for – notices about upcoming open houses, new houses on the market, news about seminars you’re offering in the area, etc. (Note: if you work in different geographical areas, you’ll want to segment your newsletter subscribers based on their location, ensuring that they only get relevant emails and updates from you).
23. Local Sponsorship.
Consider helping sponsor local festivals, sports teams, or school events. Signing up as a local sponsor often means getting your business a spot on t-shirts, program pamphlets, or flyers.
24. Hire a Photo Pro.
Successful real estate relies heavily on great photography. Bad photos will diminish interest in even the greatest of properties. It’s absolutely vital that you have gorgeous photos of your properties. Hire a professional photographer (preferably with experience photographing homes and architecture), or, if you have sophisticated equipment and are confident in your abilities, have your own hand at it. Just remember this is one of those scenarios when it pays to bring in the professionals.
There are tons of great resources that provide in-depth detail about real estate photography – this guide from Digital Photography School is helpful (so long as you have some basic photography experience under you belt already).
15. Set Yourself Up For Social.
Make sure you have social media accounts on all the big networks (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and even Instagram if you snap a lot of house pics). Interact with users, share good press, and promote your properties.
26. Blogs
A real estate blog can benefit your business in so many ways. Potential leads might not always appreciate a real estate business that just lists properties for sale on their website. They’re looking for information about real estate so that they can become more informed and knowledgeable buyers and sellers. With a blog, you can post up information about the general real estate market and what is going on with real estate in your location. For example, if you based in Texas, you can put up articles titled: “How to sell a house in less time in Texas?” or “How to find the perfect home for you in Texas?” Don’t use blogs to sell real estate. Just use them to provide free information to people. This is another way to keep them actively engaged on your website and build your authority in the local real estate market.
27. Add Reviews & Services
Referrals are the best kind of marketing for real estate agents. In your Facebook Page, enable both reviews and services. For ease of communication, make sure clients can book appointments with you or message for questions.
Bower Real Estate does an excellent job at providing information about its services, while leaving an area for client testimonials.
On your website, use client testimonials and information about your services. Do you provide free consultations and can they be booked online? Finding an agent is difficult enough. Make the process for connecting to your client as seamless as possible.
28. Create a Facebook Group & Participate in Local Groups
With the new feature to link Facebook Groups to a Facebook Page, you can offer even more personalized services to clients. Using Facebook Groups is a good way to navigate around the Facebook algorithm. Ideally, clients would be able to post in the Group and help each other through the selling or buying process.
Another option for Facebook Groups is using them as a networking opportunity.
Nurture campaigns are like the breadcrumb paths of Hansel and Gretel, except instead of a gingerbread house at the end, clients find their dream home (hopefully without a resident evil witch).
Leave your clients a trail of high-end panko breadcrumbs by tailoring your interactions with them based on previous actions they’ve taken. If they first attended an open house with you, send them an email detailing other nearby houses on the market. If they attended your first time homebuyer’s seminar, send them your “10 Things Every New Homebuyer Should Know “ ebook. Deliver content that will help your clients take the appropriate next step, depending on where they are in their journey.
30. Video Marketing
There is no better way to advertise a real estate business and its property listings than by using videos to market them. We live in an age where people would rather watch a video advertisement than read a text advertisement. Videos let people clearly see who you are and what you’re selling. It gives them more confidence in your business because they’ll get to see that you’re a real person with a real business. Best of all, you can post these videos for free on YouTube or any number of other video sharing platforms.
31. Animated Video.
Consider outsourcing a quality animated video for your real estate businesses. Short, cute, high-quality cartoon videos can help establish your brand as well as give a touch of personality. You may even want to consider featuring local landmarks or sites in your animated video to make it ultra-unique and targeted.
Your animated video doesn’t have to be super sophisticated – check out this short and very simple animated ad from Geico.
32. Search Engine Optimization
If you want people to find your company’s website, you need to make sure that it is optimized for search engines. That way, your real estate business can be discovered from a simple search on Google or any of the other major search engines. Your goal should be to get your website ranked high enough to where it will appear on the first page of someone’s search results. If you can do this successfully, you’ll never have to spend a dime on pay-per-click advertising ever again.
33. Go Live at a Property
Using Facebook Live for business lets you provide a behind-the-scenes, unedited look of a property. If you promote it before the listing goes up, it gives your followers a feeling of an inside scoop. These videos are excellent at engaging your audience and are often highly ranked in Facebook feeds.
Incorporating a Q&A like Zac McHardy did is a great way to get potential buyers into the door without even stepping foot on the property.
Want more tips on how to run a Facebook Live stream from beginning to end? Check out this guide.
34. Experiment With Videos
There are so many video options for posts now. Instead of a standard walkthrough of the house, maybe hire some actors who look like your target clients. Consider creating helpful tutorial videos for your clients, too. Not enough money to hire a staging expert? Pair up with an expert for some how-to videos. It establishes your credibility, gives the staging expert a potential expert and helps your clients. All a win-win.
Joyce Rey Real Estate shared a video that featured a couple enjoying their neighborhood, coming home and taking a break. It highlights all of the main features of the house and helps potential clients picture themselves living there.
35. Build Up Trust
As a real estate agent, you need to build trust with your clients. If you share blog posts, write articles, publish infographics and offer free information to help your clients, they’ll begin to trust your expertise. Offering free advice without pushing your services is an easy tactic for building trust.
Ines Hegedus-Garcia works in Miami and often posts about local events, real estate advice and other information where clients would take interest.
36. Build a Facebook Page
Facebook is still the biggest resource with the largest subset of users that you can target online. Creating a Facebook Business Page, then advertising that business with Facebook is one such approach that you can take to marketing your real estate online. This is a terrific resource whether you're new to the business or you're a veteran in the field.
Once you've built your Facebook Page, ensure that you're active on there and that you continuously deliver a good deal of value in every post. Don't spam your fans by trying to pitch them at every turn. Do things with tact, decorum and composure if you want to succeed in business in the long term.
37. Grow Your Network With Regular Get-togethers
Shares from Nicholas Lee, Licensed Real Estate Agent, Sierra Residential:
Besides advertising exclusives on StreetEasy, Trulia and Zillow and sending out monthly newsletters, my top strategy remains the personal touch. I host a monthly happy hour open bar in New York City and invite my top clients and their friends and families. It’s a great way to grow your network organically, and I’ve gotten some of my best sales clients this way. I highly recommend it.
38. Find the Best Keywords to Build Traffic to Your Website
Check out the in-depth guide on the best 150 real estate keywords to drive traffic to your site. We also cover keyword research on a shoestring budget and insightful general SEO tips from the pros. Still looking for more keywords? Check out Marketing Artfully’s Tara Jacobsen’s list of the best SEO keywords to use on your website.
It’s not often you’ll have back-to-back repeat clients, but you always want to stay relevant in your posts. Did you know 70% of homebuyers completely forget who their agent was just a year after closing? Like the previous idea, you want to build up trust for you as an expert and stay connected.
This means sharing information on such things like renovations can keep your posts useful for past clients but also for current ones who are interested in the topic. Local news and events also fall into this category of posts.
40. Keep In Touch.
Stay in touch (even months and years later) with past buyers in order to build in that good relationship. Send anniversary cards, holiday cards, etc to stay fresh in their minds. When they have a friend who is ready to buy, they’ll pass along your info.
