Specify Audience & Design Creative
Create a customer persona based on demographic research. Get to know your potential clients by conducting surveys, actively researching current home-buyers, and analyzing who is already buying from 2% Realty agents. From there, come up with creative ways to market your property listings.
Test Your Campaign
By implementing & testing your marketing campaign, you'll gain further insights on what's working and what's not, so you can continue focusing on the successful areas of the campaign.
Review Data & Results
After testing your marketing campaign, review the data and results to find out specifically where you were successful and where you fell short.
Discover Opportunities
Once you have a better idea of what your clients want to see from you as a REALTOR®, you can find new opportunities to grow your career, gain a stronger client base, and therefore, sell more homes.
Your Digital Marketing Property Plan
The Pre-Launch
Follow this formula for "Coming Soon" and "Just Listed" properties as well as open house updates and price changes. Remember, always drive your traffic to property landing pages or another page on your website and ensure you place a strong CTA on every page so potential home-buyers can schedule a viewing or request more information.
On every single landing page, the address of the property should be in the page title, the H1, and the URL. On the backend, name your photos (sometimes called "Alt Text") the property address prior to uploading them to your site. This helps with SEO.
Property Pre Launch Sequence
The Pre-Launch Sequence
- Following a strong Pre-Launch Sequence is a huge part of your Digital Property Marketing Plan
- First impressions are everything to the consumer
- A huge part of the marketing campaign's value is whether or not the potential home-buyer can find the property online
- Pre-Launch activities include: seeding the marketplace, optimizing for SEO, positioning the property for a great first impression
Getting Traffic to your Landing Pages
How To Get Web Clicks Through Social Media
- Using your own personal social media page to generate web clicks sets limitations on you as a REALTOR®.
- If you have a business page, you need to do more than just generate the odd social media post
- Produce a brand identity on the social platforms you've chosen to generate traffic to your website and stay consistent.
(A few stats about each, the demographic and when you may way to use each one and how to set each one up, links and resources)
Social media is an excellent tool for bringing traffic over to your property landing pages. Here's how to use each one effectively.
"The key to successful lead generation through social media is to make sure your information reaches home buyers and sellers when they are ready to make a sale, and Facebook Ads are the perfect way to do that."
Source: https://www.business.com/articles/social-media-marketing-for-real-estate-agents-and-brokers/
Using paid social marketing is a highly effective tool on Facebook. Also, remember the 80/20 rule. 80% of your Facebook posts should be geared towards lifestyle and 20% should be geared towards your real estate business. In short, don't spam people with excessive real estate postings but when you do post about your listings, make sure you're directing them to a landing page.
Twitter isn't the best place to promote real estate listings. Instead, tweet about real time information potential property buyers will be interested in like statistics and links related to investments, real estates, etc. Remember to use relevant hashtags to increase your reach!
LinkedIn is a great business tool, but again, it's not the best place to advertise your property listings. This social media platform is a great one for connecting with other business professionals, getting referrals, and increasing your local network. This is a great place to promote your own content like blog posts, whitepapers, e-books, and more.
Pinterest is certainly more casual in nature, but can still prove effective for your real estate career if you do it right. On Pinterest, create boards like DIY Projects, Organizational Tips, Interior Design, Dream Homes, etc. while also mixing in your own personal graphic design. If you're going to be creating blog posts, either hire a graphic designer or if you have the chops, create your own design to promote your post titles. Then, upload the article to Pinterest and make sure it links back to your article.
Google Adwords Search & Display
According to www.agentfire.com, most agents using Google Adwords fail because they're just not sure how to do it right. Read this article on ways you can succeed and get more leads using Google Adwords: https://agentfire.com/beginners-guide-adwords-real-estate-agents/
Display Advertising (Programmatic)
A more traditional form of marketing, display advertising is where you pay for a banner ad to appear on a website. When clicked, the banner ad will take the visitor over to your website. This can be successful if the display ad is on websites that already generate a lot of traffic, so if you're going to take this route, make sure to be picky and choosy over where you're spending your advertising dollars.
Email Marketing
Email marketing is one of the most effective forms of marketing out there right now. But, you need to know how to do it right. This link offers plenty of information on how to create a successful email marketing campaign: https://blog.kissmetrics.com/beginners-guide-email-marketing/
Marketing Automation
Marketing Automation is quite complex in nature. To put it short, marketing automation is software that automates marketing actions. For a detailed article on everything you should know and beware of in terms of marketing automation, visit this link: https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-automation-information
Sample Copy
Website Strategy & Tactics
To effectively develop an online marketing strategy, choose from the following list of tactics.
Education
"The more we educate or entertain our clients, the more they don't mind being sold to"
- www.contentmarketinginstitute.com
Value
"Value based marketing shifts the process from a product-centric approach to a customer-centric. The company expresses its values as part of its core brand message."
- www.smallbusiness.chron.com
Content
"What drives traffic on the social web are two key things: Great content in all its multi-media glory and the social networks that distribute it at high velocity."
- www.jeffbullas.com
Engagement
"An engaged following equals an audience who know, like, and trust you. And that, at its core, is how successful content marketers help fuel sales."
- www.coschedule.com
Qualifying
"Lead scores are used to determine sales-readiness by quantifying activity that's driven by quality information."
- www.kunocreative.com
SEO
"Search Engine Optimization is the process of tailoring your website to the algorithms that search engines use to rank websites based on "signals" that the site emits. We must make sure we keep up-to-date with best practices to claim the best possible rankings for relevant keywords."
- www.forbes.com
Property Search
"Marketing every property the same regardless of the price is the cornerstone of our business." - www.inman.com
Successful Lead Generation
"The first step in successful lead generation is to create compelling content, and the second is to use that content to convert visitors into leads."
- www.hubspot.com
Consistent blogging paired with monthly newsletter are great ways to maintain a consistent brand, improve your SEO, gain name recognition, and generate more page clicks.
Here are 10 blog topic & newsletter ideas for you to implement into your content marketing strategy.
BLOG TOPIC & NEWSLETTER IDEAS
- Local Housing Update
- National Housing Update
- Mortgage & Finance Update
- Real Estate Investing Update For Kelowna
- How To Negotiate For A Great Deal On Your Next Home
- 5 Ways To Increase The Property Value Of Your Home
- How To Price Your Home Like A Professional
- 3 Tips To Prepare Your Home For A Fast Sale
- 5 Ways To Stage Your Home For A Great First Impression
- 5 Financial Tips To Improve Your Credit To Buy A House
Marketing Your Open Houses
Before doing an open house, you'll need to prioritize your marketing methods beforehand in order for it to be successful. Here are a few different ways to promote your open house to generate more interest.
OPEN HOUSE MARKETING TIPS
- Produce a blog post with plenty of beautiful images along with detailed information about the listing
- Build an individual property page for the listing to further showcase its features
- Send an email to your subscribers promoting the blog post and property page
- Post numerous photos and videos of the listing to your social media pages
- Advertise the open house through Google AdWords
- Work with local publications to get the word out about the open house
- Inform local buyer's agents to let their clients know about the open house
- Create a virtual tour
- Work with professional home stagers to prepare the open house for a great first impression
Other Online Tools
Engagement Tools
Today Facebook has 1.44 billion monthly active users, Twitter has 302 million and Instagram has 300 million. With so much time spent online, digital has become one of the most important ways for REALTORs® to engage with their prospects and customers. The best way to do this effectively is to use trusted social media tools for engagement. Try using at least one of the following:
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Sprout Social
Sprout is a social media management and engagement platform for business that makes it easy for REALTORs® to effectively engage with clients and prospects. -
Pagemodo​​
Pagemodo is a social media management and engagement platform for business that makes it easy for agents to communicate with clients and prospects. This easy to use tool builds custom Facebook landing pages, create content strategies, and assists with ad management.
Paid Social Media Tools
Social media sites are great for reaching and engaging with your customers and are highly effective for running ads that target your ideal client. The major social networks have so much data on their users that targeting can become extremely specific, which makes social an ideal place to run your ad budgets.
-
Nanigans​
Nanigans is an advertising software with an emphasis on Facebook. It has access to the Facebook Exchange (FBX) for retargeting and many other tools that make targeting more efficient. -
Facebook's Power Editor
The Power Editor is Facebook's own tool for creating and running advertising campaigns. Facebook is constantly improving its ad platform and this tool frequently releases new targeting and budgeting features for users. For marketers just starting on the paid social front, this is probably the best choice as there is no third-party fee to create and manage your advertisements. -
Twitter Native Platform
Twitter is another major network brands should consider paying for advertisements. Twitter has some fantastic features for targeting, with segmentation functionality that includes the ability to target certain keywords so that whenever someone tweets out or engages with a tweet using that key phrase, the business will be targeted.
Email Marketing Tools
Email marketing software allows you to stay in contact with your current clients and prospects. Create two lists for these two category of clients and keep them fresh so that when a prospect converts into a client, you can move them over to your client list and vice versa.
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MailChimp​
MailChimp is one of the most powerful email marketing platforms to date. MailChimp's incredibly simplistic platform structure and freemium plan make it easy for even some of the most amateur email marketers to get setup with robust email campaigns. A nice bonus? MailChimp is free up to your first 2000 contacts. - Emma
Emma-also a fun abbreviation for email marketing-is a strong platform that backs up its powerful features with a notoriously hands-on customer service team. Emma has all of the tools that you need to start creating and testing your own email marketing campaigns.
- Marketo
If you've dabbled with some email platforms and feel ready to take it to a more advanced level, Marketo could be the solution for you. Although email is a large facet of its business, it is by no means the only part of the tool. Marketo allows you to combine email into your entire automated marketing campaigns.
Display Retargeting Tools
Have you ever gone to a website, left without purchasing anything, only to be followed around by that company's advertisements all around the web? These are retargeting ads, and even if you haven't heard of them, there's a good chance that you've been targeted by them in the past. This channel is incredibly efficient for getting customers back to your site to make a purchase or become a lead.
- AdRoll​​
AdRoll is one of the most well-known names in the retargeting space, boasting a customer base of over 20,000 brands. Its platform grants access to over 500 ad exchanges, which includes most of the major social media networks. It offers a self-service platform, but you can also leverage its employees for additional help if you need it.
ReTargeting Tools
- ReTargeter​
ReTargeter is a tool that uses site retargeting, search retargeting, and dynamic retargeting. You can use ReTargeter as a self-service platform, or you can pass all of your campaigns onto an account team to run your retargeting for you. You can use these search services à la carte or combine several into a custom package.
- Chango​
Chango is an award-winning display advertising platform with robust retargeting features. With Chango you can combine your own retargeting information with audience intent data that Chango accumulates, which adds a second layer of targeting to your campaigns.
Programmatic Advertising Tools
Programmatic advertising refers to the use of software to automate the purchase of media from both online and offline channels. Two of the largest benefits of using programmatic media buying solutions: time reduction on finding the best networks to advertise on and gaining access to the plethora of data that most of these companies have access to.
- ChoiceStream​
ChoiceStream's technology is able to process a ton of audience data and discern which of it is actually useful knowledge for brands. ChoiceStream then uses that information to properly target ads to your audiences it knows will be a good fit, boosting the relevance of your ads to your targets.
- Rocket Fuel
Rocket Fuel is a popular tool with a feature called Moment Scoring. Moment Scoring uses anonymous user data to calculate how likely someone is to respond to your advertisement, then uses that information to decide when and where to serve your ads. Rocket Fuel offers both a self-service platform and managed services.
- Simpli.fi
Simpli.fi differentiates itself by being able to take complete advantage of unstructured audience data. This means that, unlike some other tools on the market, Simpli.fi doesn't need to rely on pre-made audience segments to categorize audience data, which can be a big advantage when working with a lot of it.
Website Testing Tools
The smallest changes can make the biggest differences when it comes to getting people to convert on your landing pages. Changing the color of your call-to-action button can spell the difference between getting someone to start a free trial of your product, and bouncing from your site. That's why it's important to use website testing tools to constantly innovate your pages.
- Unbounce​
Unbounce is an amazing tool for quickly building, tweaking and publishing new landing pages to test. One of the most fantastic features of Unbounce is how easy it is to use the platform to create brand new pages. Even if you're not much of a designer, you can use some of the templates available as a jumping off point, then tweak them to fit your style.
- Maxymiser​
Maxymiser is a tool that goes beyond landing page testing. This enterprise-level software solution was built to test all sorts of portions of your website, and to run several different tests all at once. Maxymiser also allows you to segment who you want to send to each tests, creating a more catered experience for your website visitors.
- Optimizely​
Optimizely combines tools for visual creation and robust targeting into its platform, making it easy to quickly create and target tests to the proper groups of users. The company also has a formidable amount of partners to make it easier to centralize customer data for your various tests.
Video Hosting Sites
It seems like video has recently become the next big content powerhouse brands are taking advantage of, and with so much effort needed to create videos, it's important to make sure you get as many eyeballs on them as possible. A solid way to do that is to host them on some of the popular video sites which draw in large crowds of viewers.
- Wistia
Not only does this team rock, but the platform is amazing for business looking to host, customize and share videos across the web. One of the best functions of its platform is the ability to include a custom CTA at the end of each individual video, making it easy to drive viewers to specific pages.
- Vimeo
There are over 20 million people and businesses that trust Vimeo to host their high-definition, ad-free videos. With Vimeo, the idea is to get everyone to host some of their high-quality videos on the site, thereby driving viewers who are looking for visually stunning videos. Take a look at the sample below to see the type of quality content they collect.
Content Creation Tools
We all know that content is king, which is why it's so important to start creating some of your own to share with your fans and followers. With so many different content formats out there-infographics, blogs, videos-the biggest question is which type of content can you create that will resonate with your audience. We've recently created a list of 36 free image creation tools which includes a ton of different tools, but here are some of our favorites.
- Landscape by Sprout Social
A great way to make sure your online content stands out is to include an image, but sourcing images that satiate the unique requirements for each social network can be tough. We aimed to solve that problem with our new social media image resizing tool Landscape. Quickly turn one image into multiple, each perfectly sized for the social media networks you're using.
- Canva
If you don't already have an image to resize, try using Canva, a web-based design tool you can use to create unique images to share on your blogs, social networks and more. You can use Canva to create completely unique images from scratch or to polish up some photos that you already have on hand.
- Visual.ly
If you don't have the time or artistic flair to create your own pieces of content, then you can use a tool like Visual.ly. Visual.ly is a platform that pairs those who need content up with those who can create it. The site charges a flat rate for each type of project, which includes Infographics, eBooks and video.
Content Curation Tools
We constantly need to fill our content calendars if we're going to satiate the growing need to share actionable insights with our fans and followers. However, we don't always have the time to put together something unique for every post we create. That's why it's good to have some content curation tools on hand to help you fill up those lulls in your calendar.
- Feedly
With Feedly you choose all of the different blogs, publications and topics that you're interested in and Feedly aggregates all of the recent topics from those people or about those topics into a feed you can monitor. You can integrate your Feedly feed with a tool like Sprout Social to continuously share these articles with your fans and followers.
- Scoop.it
Scoop.it is an incredible tool for easily finding and sharing unique, relevant content to your social networks, blogs and more. With Scoop.it you can find months' worth of great content in no time at all!
- Kapost​
Kapost is a platform that takes into account every step of the content marketing cycle. One fantastic function is the ability to assign different pieces of content to different buyer personas, which shows which stages of the content marketing cycle your prospects are most likely to convert on.
Website Analytics Tools
Many tools out there come with their own performance analytics. For instance, Sprout Social has social media analytics that show how your content performs on a variety of social platforms. However, it's important to keep an eye on the data about events that actually take place on your website.
- Kissmetrics​
Kissmetrics offers analytics tools that help you increase conversions across your entire website. The platform tracks your site visitors throughout their entire conversion journey and gives you reports on each part of the funnel. This helps you fine-tune your entire conversion process to increase sales and revenue.
- Google Analytics
Google Analytics is the standard for most websites these days. Google has advanced analytics that shed light on a variety of your website information, including who your visitors are, how they make their way through your sales funnel, and what they do on your website in real-time.
- Adobe Analytics
Adobe provides an enterprise-level analytics solution for companies who want to gather deep analytics on their website data and performance. The platform has cross-channel attribution functions, 360-degree customer analysis and predictive intelligence which enables you to observe and respond to customer actions in real time.
Customer Service Tools
More than ever before customers are turning to online channels to reach out to brands with their inquiries and complaints. If you're not there to engage with these customers it reflects poorly on your brand, and you could lose their business forever. Try one of these customer service tools to streamline your customer service process and to ensure you're responding to all of your inbound messages.
- Zendesk​
Zendesk provides a full suite of tools that can get your support team up and responding to all of your customers' needs. The platform aggregates all of your communication channels into one place, which makes it simple to respond to your emails, phone calls and chats.
- UserVoice Helpdesk​
UserVoice's beautifully designed customer service platform is a great place for large teams to tackle online customer service needs. The reports offered make it easy to see which agents are performing the best and the customer satisfaction surveys let you know how your team performs as a whole.
- LiveChat​
LiveChat takes a more proactive approach to customer service by facilitating conversations with the people visiting your website. The passive "Chat now" box that lives on your page lets your potential customers reach right out to some of your service reps, helping you effectively answer questions and inquiries.
Search Engine Optimization Tools
SEO is a huge portion of most companies' online marketing efforts, which explains why there are so many tools out there to help brands take full advantage of the channel. These tools take something incredibly complicated and simplify it, which is something we should all be thankful for.
- Moz​
Moz offers two key products to customers: Moz Pro and Moz Local. The Moz Pro product helps with the classic SEO practices, such as tracking rankings, tracking link building efforts and informing content marketing campaigns. Moz Local helps businesses improve their local SEO listings. All you need to do is enter your business's location information and Moz goes to work getting you listed.
- SEMRush​
SEMRush has a ton of great tools that help both paid search experts and SEOs track and improve their search rankings. One key use of SEMRush is to track your competitors. You can use the tools to pull your competitor's backlinks, monitor their fluctuations in ranking and conduct a full competitive analysis.
- Screaming Frog
Screaming Frog is a spider tool that can quickly crawl websites, lists of websites or specific web pages to give you a complete analysis on performance. You can use the tool to see if you have any broken links, broken pages, bad redirects and much more. Fixing most of these errors is a quick win for search marketers.
Affiliate Marketing Tools
Affiliate marketing is the idea of having regular people advocate your brand to drive sales; all you have to do is pay them a percentage of every sale that they generate. It's an effective channel because people tend to trust friends and brand advocates more than they trust a company when it comes to selling. Plus, you only pay for the sales that they generate.
- Commission Junction
CJ is one of the most popular choices for advertisers looking to get their product picked up and sold by publishers. CJ has one of the largest networks of bloggers and its self-service platform makes it easy to scale your affiliate marketing efforts.
- VigLink​
VigLink is an incredible tool for affiliate marketing. The site has a massive database of content provided by publishers which they scan in real-time and add links to relevant keywords they find. The use of this type of contextual advertising makes it much easier to drive sales.
- Rakuten Affiliate Network​
Rakuten is similar to VigLink, except that it advocates long-term relationships between brands and their affiliate. Long-term relationships with your partners helps to build trust and knowledge of your product, which in turn makes it easier for those individuals to sell it.