The outbreak of COVID-19 has greatly affected the real estate industry, and as social distancing regulations become the norm and individuals think (and rethink) purchase decisions, property viewings have decreased substantially. This is because potential property buyers have become more cautious and apprehensive with spending as well as in-person meetings and property viewings. Due to these lifestyle shifts, it has become vital for property agents to adjust their real estate marketing strategies to reach the highest quality audience, at the right time, through the right channels, with the right message.
In 2021, if you want the edge over your competitors, you need to change with the times and adapt to a more digital marketing environment to ensure your strategy suits the new normal.
In this regard, we have compiled a list of the top 10 real estate marketing strategies for 2021 to help you gain success in 2021.
It almost goes without saying, but all real estate agencies require a high functioning and informative website if they want to gain quality leads and drive them through the sales funnel.
What your real estate website should consist of:
As you build on your website you can begin to collect leads through your content creation. For example, you can create an informative e-guide that is designed to inform prospective customers about the real estate industry.
Website visitors will have to download this content to access it and in order to do this, they will have to provide their contact information. This information can then be stored on your leads list and used for further lead nurturing through email campaigns, social media marketing and more. Essentially, your website is a hub for information sharing and lead generation.
Promoting your real estate listings and business takes strategy and digital savvy and blogging should not be underestimated. By creating an informative and helpful blog on your website you have the power to keep prospective clients interested in your insight while promoting your business and building trust.
The Benefits of Blog Posts for your Real Estate Business:
As stated previously, the importance of blogging for real estate cannot be underestimated under present digital and marketing circumstances. Even with the emergence of digital marketing tools designed to support your visibility and push forward your services, it does not diminish the value of what a blog can do for your brand. You see, a blog post is the ideal tool for creating a solid stream of website traffic, growing audience, and nurturing prospects.
Social media, search engine optimisation, Google AdWords... all these other channels of marketing speak to a wider audience. That is: those in the awareness and research phase of the purchasing process. When a potential buyer or investor emerges from social media, landing pages, content marketing, lead forms or SEO, you need to nurture them and drive them through the customer journey. This is where email marketing and lead nurturing comes into play.
For example, let’s say you have collected lead data through a landing page and a prospective client submits their contact information through the call-to-action of this page you need to use this information to your advantage - without overwhelming the prospect. With a customer relationship management tool such as HubSpot, you are able to segment these contacts and send out automated and personalised emails that match their interests and where they are in the customer journey.
Benefits of email marketing:
Nurturing leads and buyers with personalised, informative and segmented email marketing ensures continued communication and keeps your business top of mind at all times.
Social media marketing is vital for real estate agencies and real estate agents. Without an active, informative and engaging social media, potential buyers will not have the instant communication they expect in the digital age - and they will quickly turn to your competitors. There are a variety of social media channels real estate companies should focus their efforts on.
Social media is a great way to create awareness while engaging with potential customers. With lead generation advertising on these platforms growing, you are also able to direct consumers to take specific call-to-actions to drive them through the customer journey.
A Chatbot is an application that replicates spoken or written human speech for the purpose of establishing interaction with a real person - essentially, Chatbots are a new age conversational service agent. A Chatbot can be placed on your website and related applications to ensure website visitors are able to communicate with your organisation at any given moment - instant communication is vital in the digital age.
Why Website Chatbots are important for real estate:
A Customer Relationship Management platform such as HubSpot is able to integrate Chatbots into your website smoothly and efficiently - ensuring customer satisfaction and ultimately, increased sales.
Google is one of the most powerful tools out there - we touched on the importance of organic ranking when we mentioned Search Engine Optimisation, but Google AdWords is also a great marketing tool. Google AdWords provides a straightforward approach to helping your real estate business stand out from your competitors in the search engine results.
What is Google AdWords?
Google AdWords is an online advertising platform, where advertisers bid to display brief advertisements, service offerings, product listings, or videos to web users. It can place ads both in the results of search engines like Google Search and on non-search websites, mobile apps, and videos.
Why Google AdWords is Effective for Real Estate:
Google AdWords provides real estate businesses with a quicker and easier way to gain leads compared to long-term SEO efforts. But in order to gain real results, you need to work with AdWords professionals who are able to analyse your campaigns and amend them when necessary.
By aligning marketing and sales processes, real estate businesses are able to understand the buyer's journey in greater detail and reach out to a lead at the right time - with the correct message. This kind of marketing strategy eliminates low quality leads and ensures that every call and follow up email has value and can contribute to the growth of the business.
In order to do this, real estate marketers need to invest in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) Software. CRM is a strategy that businesses use to manage interactions with customers and potential customers, helping organisations streamline marketing processes, build and nurture relationships, increase sales, improve customer service and ultimately increase the bottom line.
Quality CRMs such as HubSpot provide a single place for marketing and sales teams to implement, manage and track all their efforts. Not only can your marketing team run all digital campaigns through the platform, they are able to track the success of every campaign in greater detail in order to learn what is working and what is not working.
As mentioned previously, a quality CRM will also be able to send out automated and personalised emails and communications to leads based on their behaviour, sending them the right message at the right time - making for better customer service and more conversions. This automated service also saves your real estate agents time, and instead of typing out personalised emails, the system will do the work for them so that they can spend time making sales, instead of focusing on time-consuming tasks.
The benefits of HubSpot CRM for Real Estate include:
All the tools that you require to run a great marketing campaign are available within the HubSpot software, and these tools work together to attract, engage and delight potential and current property buyers and investors.
By nature and especially in the digital age, consumers will not do business with a company or person they perceive to be untrustworthy or deceitful. This is why online reviews and testimonials are so important for business success - especially when it comes to real estate - purchasing a property is not the same as buying a laptop for your home…
By publishing testimonials of happy buyers on your real estate website and social media platforms you deliver “social proof” that establishes trust between your business and target audience. And displaying testimonials on strategic parts of your website and other platforms can encourage potential customers to move on to the next stage of the conversion funnel.
In addition to your website, other great platforms for testimonials include:
Benefits of testimonials:
Today's consumer needs to TRUST you completely and in order to gain their trust you need to create content that builds it - from thought-leadership blogs to client testimonials.
Videos are vital for real estate - especially in the time of Covid-19. Real estate agents and businesses that use video as a walk through virtual tour of a property have created a safe way to gain awareness and delight potential buyers - which can then lead to greater conversions.
Recent statistics regarding real estate virtual tours and videos have proven just how important this tactic is for the industry:
By creating high quality videos and sharing them on your listings, website and social platforms, you encourage engagement with potential buyers, build trust and gain the attention of high quality leads who would like to view a property in person.
With 1.6 billion monthly users, WhatsApp is the most popular messaging app in the world. With that in mind, WhatsApp can be incredibly powerful for businesses when it comes to customer service and converting leads. When it comes to real estate WhatsApp (similar to Chatbots) has the power to answer client queries and like email marketing, nurture relationships. Of course, this has to be done in a "non-spammy" way and has to be GDPR compliant at all times - this is why it is important to work with a professional digital marketing agency in regards to WhatsApp marketing.
How a WhatsApp chatbot tool can help the real estate industry:
Communication is key - and instant communication is vital for business success in 2021.
If you are a realtor or developer in the real estate industry, you will have seen a major shift in the last decade as clients begin to purchase property in a different way, beginning the buyer's journey online through market research.
This is why digital marketing has become imperative to the real estate industry, from generating new leads to completing a sale, the real estate industry needs to go digital in order to find success.
With years of experience in digital marketing for the real estate industry, Nexa is here to help real estate professionals reach their target audience online, generate quality leads and convert those leads into customers.
Our experience in Real Estate marketing stems from our work with CBRE, JLL, Savills, Sotheby's, DAMAC Properties and countless other agencies and real estate developers. Contact Nexa for all your real estate marketing needs, today.