15 techniques of selling real estate with digital marketing
If you are running a business in the real estate sector, you have probably realized by now that your presence in the digital world is key to determining your success. In fact by implementing sales techniques with digital marketing not only will it generate new leads but also help you achieve the aims that you have set out.
The real estate sector has suffered a downturn over the last decade due to the financial crisis. However, little by little competition in the field has grown. Therefore if you find yourself in this situation and need a little help to differentiate yourself from the competition, it would be good to know some digital marketing real estate sales techniques.
According to a study by The National Association of Realtors, 92% of buyers use the Internet when they set out to look for their future home and it is these estate agents, who have an active online presence, that are winning. Is your business part of the digital solution?
Whether your answer to the above question is yes or no, here are 15 real estate sales techniques using digital marketing that will help set yourself apart from the competition and be part of the solution:
TABLE OF CONTENTS
1.- Your Landing page should have value
Today´s consumers find it easier and prefer to do much of the fieldwork themselves online, doing much of the searching without the help of your business. If your Estate agency has a landing page, it is likely that the customer will eventually navigate through it. However, your landing page has to be set up correctly and be prepared for all devices and above all must include all the relevant information needed to make it easy for the customer. Otherwise, it won’t be long before you lose out and change because of the competition.
The landing page must be clear, simple, and intuitive. The easier it is to use, the more time the customer will spend on your site. There are several key factors to increasing conversions on your landing pages, so study them and adapt them to your business. In fact, a well organised landing page is fundamental to the success of your website. Here are some great examples of good organization that you can count on to help get your project off the ground.
We know that designing an attractive landing page can be complicated if you don’t have any design knowledge, experience or professional help. However, there are landing page platforms out there such as Landing Optimizer that can do it for you and for free. They will help you with multiple templates that can be adapted to your business without giving you a headache.
2.- An adaptable web design
Due to the continuous increase in website traffic by visitors who use different mobile devices, the need to create websites that are optimised for mobiles and tablets is growing. That’s why; if you are serious about to optimizing your landing pages you should really take this into account.
In fact, 60% of all website traffic is from mobile devices. Adapting to this is one of the best real estate sales techniques with digital marketing.
Why is adapting the design, the answer? Statistics show that web designs that have been adapted to devices have higher conversion rates and also increase sales. Don´t just take our word for it, it is also recommend by Google and obviously you potential clients would love to be able to visit your website from anywhere and on any device.
With the Landing Optimizer tool, you can create optimized landing pages for both desktop and mobile devices easily and without any technical knowledge needed.
3.-Email marketing: Fundamental among real estate sales techniques with digital marketing
Email Marketing is one of the best strategies for building customer relationships; in fact, in the Real estate sector it can be crucial. Sending emails with new offers, about new houses, geographical location and surrounding areas that the customer will be interested in, will help you to generate a higher volume of traffic to your website and will probably improve the profits of your business as well.
If you have yet to launch an email marketing campaign or one you have launched hasn’t worked, you should know that it could be because you don’t know the steps to follow. Keep up to date with good emailing practices and adapt them to suit your business.
Furthermore, if you prefer to do it on your own, we highly recommend getting to know the tools that email marketing managers use to carry out their campaigns, that way your work will be made a lot easier.
4.- Take advantage of Segmentation
In order to carry out email marketing more effectively you must understand the importance of segmentation. The more you segment your database, the better you will know your customers and be able to reach out to each of them with personalized messages thus building confidence towards your brand.
Your Customers want to believe that your company thinks about them and that the elaborate content they receive is just for them. In addition a personalised message has more chance of standing out against a backdrop of massive amounts of commercial messages, promotions and notifications that your customers receive in their inboxes on a day-to-day basis which can overwhelm them.
5.- SMS Marketing
Just like Email marketing, mass SMS can help you with your real estate sales strategy. Even though they both serve the same purpose, SMS is much more direct and effective and than Emails.
A good technique is to insert the URL of your company to the SMS so that the customer goes directly to your website from their mobile. With this and a landing page adapted to mobile devices you will score a lot of points.
6.- Set up a social network profile
Through the use of Facebook, Twitter and other social networks many companies have been able to learn more about their target market. It has also allowed the customers to develop a more direct way of interacting between themselves and your brand. This way you can know first hand exactly what they are thinking so you can place your offers and add the URL of your website accordingly.
Further more you can post questions or images to get more attention from your customers. This is one of the most important digital marketing selling techniques. That’s why you must pay attention to all social networks.
Beyond Facebook and Twitter there is Pinterest or Instagram; these networks are excellent for businesses that use a lot of photographs and let´s not forget Google+ and YouTube.
7.- Making the most of a good webinar
If you are confident enough you can create webinars or digital seminars, to attract customers to your business, maybe launching something like “12 advantages to finding a new home you didn’t know about”. That way, in addition to sharing the video on your YouTube channel you can also place it permanently on your website.
Your customers will see that you are different, that you take it seriously and that you are willing to resolve any of their doubts live while they watch you from their sofa. With a little creativity, this is one of the best digital marketing sales techniques that you can use.
8.- Finding your Niche
If your business has a lot of competition, it might be time to focus on niche markets as well. That is, make your business the one to go to for people who have more specific requests like looking for a house adapted to pets, families with children or young couples looking for their first home.
Adapting your business to certain characteristics sets you apart from the rest of the pack. In order to do this, there are interesting tools like Google Keyword Planner or SEMrush that can show you where the niche markets that interest you the most are.
9.- Ask your Customers to share their testimonies
Customer testimonies are an enormous signal of confidence as it shows how real your business is. In fact, there are many potential customers who put a lot of trust in online comments and reviews before making their decision.
Make the most of these testimonials and strategically place them throughout all elements of your digital marketing campaigns. Don`t hold back in sharing them on your social networks either and ask your customers who have received excellent service to also share their experiences on their personal profiles.
10.- Retargeting
Do you know how to use retargeting properly? This strategy aims to tag the customer when they arrive at your website. That way, once they leave your page they will start receiving ads containing offers from you, in an attempt to convince them they have made a mistake leaving and to ask themselves whether they should return or not.
One of the most effective ways to reach clients through display retargeting is with MDirector CRM Retargeting. It’s a tool that lets you do retargeting online and on mobile devices. This platform also lets you add cookies to each customer in your database and follow up on their subsequent browsing.
11.- Create a blog on your website
Platforms like WordPress can make your life easy if you want to create your own blog. This digital marketing technique can help you with real estate sales and creating content gives you the opportunity to attract customers and create a loyal customer base.
If you publish content on a regular basis and update it with information that is valuable to your customer base you will get good engagement. That way you will be more involved with them and will be able to resolve any doubts that they may have but, at times, may feel too afraid to ask.
12.- Take care of you real estate content marketing
There are many ways a real estate agency can attract clients though running a good content-based marketing strategy is an excellent choice. In order to achieve some of the previous techniques where the objective was creating content, it is first necessary to plan what is going to be said. It is essential to have a calendar of content and a manual that also specifies the tone of the content that you are going to follow.
Developing a real estate marketing strategy will increase your visibility on the Internet and social networks, making your brand visible, increasing visitors to your site, improving your positioning and also saving you money.
13.- Work on organic positioning
Work on your SEO and complement it with your content strategy. There are a number of keywords that are associated to real estate that could be beneficial to you, decide which ones relate best to your brand and work to set up relevant links.
Only by doing this will you be in the top positions of the Google search pages.
14.- Don’t forget to use high quality photographs
Real Estate Digital success depends a lot on the audio-visual content you use, but above all, the photographs. It is absolutely vital that the photographs on display show the best that you have to offer.
In fact, this is one of the areas where it is important to use the services of a professional. It is probably better not to show any images at all than badly taken, low quality images. A well taken, high quality photo can help you capture leads whereas a bad photo can only damage your brand.
15.- Learn to measure the impact of your messages
Knowing how to extract the information, knowing the important standard measures of each indicator, defining how the customer should behave and the results you expect to get from each one are the first steps to extracting truly relevant information about metrics and digital marketing.
Therefore, clearly define the digital marketing KPIs that can best help you with your strategy and follow them up accordingly.
If you want to put these techniques of real estate sales with digital marketing into practise you will need a digital marketing platform like MDirector. It is a tool that will help you manage your real estate campaigns the right way by showing all of your channels in a single platform. Would you like more information about MDirector?