About 3.5 trillion U.S dollars was spent buying goods and services online in 2019 worldwide. In recent years, the way people market and sell their goods has changed, leading to various challenges for realtors.
The challenges facing the real estate industry include increased competition. Most realtors also lack effective marketing strategies. A good marketing strategy should outline where to invest and how it will work out.
For realtors to survive and make profits in this changing industry, they must embrace change and technological advancements. Below are various tools that realtors can adopt to achieve their marketing objectives.
Facebook is the biggest social media site, with over two billion active users. Social media helps businesses to prospect, generate leads and succeed. With Facebook having so many clients searching for properties, having a great marketing strategy with this tool can bring the much-needed profits.
To enjoy the Facebook business features and become more professional, a realtor will first set up a Facebook business page. After setting up, a marketer should update their cover photo, create useful tabs for the business, among others. For better business performance, they must regularly respond to comments, post-high-quality images and videos of properties, and share industry information.
A real estate business can post other types of content: helpful advice and tips relating to home buying and interior décor, testimonials, images of happy clients, company CSR activities, and contests. These kinds of content can help in increasing engagement and followers.
Facebook ads, which can run simultaneously on Instagram, can also improve a realtor’s marketing success.
Instagram is a highly visual platform with a high engagement rate, making it one of the best platforms to market properties. The other advantages of marketing on Instagram include hashtags, which help in a higher ranking in Instagram search and getting more referrals from the followers.
Instagram provides different ways to advertise products, such as creating an Instagram ad campaign or running Instagram carousel ads. Instagram carousel ads can support users of up to ten images and videos for page followers to swipe, hence a better way to sell different property features.
Apart from Instagram stories that support both images and videos, Instagram also has Instagram TV to support video content. Instagram TV is important for realtors because:
- It allows them to share videos of their properties with a wider audience
- It helps grow the number of followers of the accounts
- It exposes their properties to more potential buyers
Though IG TV is still new, early adopters can gain more when it picks up. Facebook and Instagram, with all their advantages, have some shortcomings. For instance, Facebook does not have good technical support for real estate, it has poor functional quality, and several ghost users and fake followers.
Boomtown
Boomtown is marketing software for real estate agents. After signing up, real estate agents can access several features. Realtors can know potential clients and increase the chances of getting new leads. Realtors can make calls and respond to leads using boom town through email, text, or phone as quickly as possible.
Real estate agents can also check their work schedules using the app. The app also provides real-time insights into leads that can bring business. Though the app is very beneficial to realtors, it cannot flush out fake numbers, and some clients may find it hard to use.
Wise Pelican
Wise Pelican is a tool that supports direct mail marketing for real estate. Wise Pelican enables realtors to generate real estate postcard templates for mailing affordably. The tool has various estate postcard templates a realtor can choose from.
Having an engaging marketing strategy is essential for successful wise pelican marketing that can generate leads. The mails can be scheduled as per the marketers’ needs and for consistency purposes. Wise Pelican has a tracking system that can be used to track postcards.
Zillow Premier Agent Appa
Using the Zillow premier agent app for marketing can offer several benefits for realtors. Through the app, a realtor can exclusively promote their properties. It also has a wider reach for potential customers.
However, the app can confuse customers as it promotes non-listing agents together with listings that do not belong to them. The other disadvantage of this app is that leads from subscribing agents sometimes are not responsive.
Mailchimp
MailChimp is a popular platform for email marketing that realtors can use. Email marketing involves sending emails promoting products or services or just passing information to the target audience.
MailChimp offers various email marketing advantages:
- You can send emails to over 2,000 subscribers
- It supports landing pages
- Integrates with google ads and Instagram ads
- You can open multiple user accounts
The platform also supports A/B tests, and reports can also be accessed for all the marketer activities. MailChimp’s disadvantage is that the interface might be challenging for new users, and they also have the right to cancel accounts. Realtors also cannot edit the readily subscribed forms provided.
YouTube
Owned by Google, YouTube has become the number two search engine worldwide. The power of video cannot be underestimated, especially in marketing properties. Videos add more personalities, especially to brands. Videos not only increase search rankings but are also a great way of generating leads.
A realtor should have a good video marketing plan to gain into YouTube clients. The YouTube channel should have good design and company details. The content of the videos can vary from market updates, interviews, how-to videos, and listings. The video’s type and length are some of the factors to consider while making a video on properties.
A real estate agent should ensure that the video has a catchy title, description, captions, thumbnail, and call to action. YouTube provides an analysis of how the videos are performing. To reach even a wider audience, realtors can share the videos on their social pages.
Hire a Digital Expert to Help
Marketing has evolved, and property sales can never boom without a change in marketing strategy. Having a reputable digital marketing agency that understands the marketing dynamics and the real estate industry is the first step to finding success in real estate.