The Definitive Guide To Real Estate Digital Marketing

The importance of real estate digital marketing in 2023 cannot be overstated. Buying or selling a home might be one of the most important decisions a person makes in their life. But it’s a good bet that before they ever speak to you, they’ll go online.

This will enable them to conduct research to obtain a better knowledge of what a real estate transaction entails and what real estate agent they should work with.

The recent lockdowns and the accelerated shift to work-from-anywhere has also driven more of the real estate viewing to go online. More Realtors are providing virtual house tours to prospective buyers with the goal of closing purchases through the Internet or establishing a solid relationship with a new client. As a result, digital marketing is more vital than ever before.

The world has changed dramatically. The new generation of property buyers and sellers value convenience and competence more than ever before. To grow your real estate business, you have to meet their needs, and I’ll walk through what you need to know in this article.

 

Increase top of mind awareness with digital marketing

As a real estate agent, you must maintain contact with potential clients and expand your network by marketing yourself on a regular basis. The best method to do this is through digital marketing.

We saw a strong market in 2021 for most of the country. However, in 2023, it is predicted to change marginally toward a more buyer-friendly market. This might open up an array of opportunities for both sellers and buyers.

In this real estate digital marketing guide, we’ll walk you through the practical digital marketing tactics that may help you beat the competition and build a powerful real estate brand.

 

 

Get your WordPress website set up

Your website is where digital marketing for real estate agents begins and ends. A modern website will serve as the hub of all of your digital marketing and offline activities. This asset will stay with you when you change brokerages or team and allow you to grow your business, no matter where you may affiliate.

Therefore, if you don’t already have one, you should start here. Let’s look at how to use your website to apply digital marketing strategies for real estate.

WordPress is a fantastic platform for your real estate website. It is also utilized on some of the best realtor websites on the internet! Simply said, real estate professionals use WordPress, the most versatile website builder, for a variety of reasons.

 

The following are some of the reasons why the best realtor websites tend to use WordPress.

Ease of use:

Many top Realtors are known for running their businesses in a hands-on manner. If they are working on a real estate website, they will want to learn everything they can about it.

An easy-to-use tool like this enables you to readily grasp and examine a website’s backend to enhance their digital marketing strategies for real estate.

Enterprise-level features at small-business prices:

Because WordPress is open-source, the fundamental WP technology is available for free, with only the need for hosting and a great real estate theme (here are a few to of the best ones). That’s a terrific starting point, and it helps to lower the overall cost of any unique design or integration.

Would you like to add an event calendar, video gallery, Twitter Feed, Facebook Fan Box, and other features to your website? WordPress makes this possible through plugins, the majority of which are free or extremely low-cost.

Adding these features individually through coding is not only expensive but also time-consuming, but with WordPress, you keep that functionality that you do not get with a Websitebox, Placester and without the need to find a developer for each change.

Provide great content on your blog:

A blog adds a whole new depth to your standard website, bringing additional business to your door. A blog enriches your website’s real estate marketing content. Visitors will find your information useful in answering their inquiries and making educated decisions.

Visitors to your Realtor website, or real estate digital marketing hub, will grow as a result.

The most significant benefit of utilizing WordPress is that it is built to work better with Google’s crawlers. You will be able to gain the desired attention on the search engines right out of the box, which will assist you if you are new to SEO.

IDX integration:

Using IDX on your WordPress website to extend your property inventory is an excellent idea. When your prospects are looking for a property, they will have a bigger selection of active listings to choose from.

The majority of IDX (Internet Data Exchange) services include a plugin that allows you to link their service with your WordPress site.

Showcase IDX makes it easy to get started and have a beautiful IDX on your website in no time. We recognize that not all agents are tech-savvy, therefore we simplified the installation process as much as possible.

 

Build high – converting landing pages

While traffic to your home page is important, traffic to a tailored landing page is more likely to lead to a new lead and thus new client. That’s because your homepage’s purpose is to entice people to explore your website further by showing all of the options available to them.

On the other hand, a landing page serves simply to urge visitors to take a specific action. Despite this, many multibillion-dollar corporations that sell to other businesses make the error of sending traffic to their homepages.

Squeeze pages and lead capture forms are great for securing lead information and controlling communication. After someone clicks on a property advertisement or before they obtain all of the information about a property on your site, create squeeze pages.

By installing the Showcase IDX plugin on your WordPress website, you can generate targeted leads with prominent calls-to-action and registration prompts. You can also create individual squeeze pages for ANY listing in your MLS.

When it comes to tools that enhance digital marketing for real estate agents, Showcase IDX stands out from the competition. With customized forms, innovative features, and stored search functionality, this powerful plugin helps enhance lead generation and convert visitors.

Configure where, how, and when visitors are prompted to sign up for new search listings that match their search criteria. Using social logins, you can generate more genuine leads.

 

Make local area pages

One of the primary objectives of real estate digital marketing is to direct people to your Listings or About pages. Creating community and local area pages can serve as a link between the two.

Buyers and sellers may not be as familiar with your neighborhoods as you are. That’s why creating area pages is a great way to capture their attention and provide the information they seek. Investing the small amount of time to create these pages on your site is also how you outrank Zillow in Google’s search results.

These sections demonstrate your local market experience and knowledge, positioning you as the local area expert. This article will teach you how to create and promote area and community pages for your real estate marketing.

Community or neighborhood pages are an important part of most real estate websites. These pages help visitors get a better idea of what living in a community would be like.

Consider community pages in the same way that you would a Yelp or Tripadvisor “top list”. You want to give the consumer useful content that is well-organized and simple to comprehend. This allows students to learn about the area while concentrating on what it’s like to live there.

With Showcase IDX, you can quickly and effectively develop community pages to show clients your local expertise and provide an experience, unlike anything Zillow or others can provide. They simply cannot do nationwide what you can do in your local area – you are the hyperlocal expert.

Display up-to-date MLS information as well as important features such as school information and social network sharing. Google recognizes your listing and community material as your own, which boosts your SEO.

 

Social Media Marketing

77 percent of real estate firms use social media, with nearly half claiming that it is their primary source of high-quality leads.

According to a survey conducted by the National Association of Realtors (NAR)

 

There’s no getting around it: you need a social media marketing strategy to compete in today’s real estate market. Social media outperforms more traditional marketing strategies in the following areas:

Become a real estate social media influencer:

One of the most effective ways to keep yourself and your brand at the forefront of people’s minds is through social media. Given that millennials now account for the majority of home buyers, the role of local real estate influencers is more important than ever.

Realtors that use social media, particularly Instagram, to gain an advantage in their company are known as real estate influencers. Instagram is by far the biggest influencer marketing platform, and these realtors make full use of it.

Hundreds of thousands of people follow them on Instagram, where they post photos of their opulent lifestyle and high-profile postings.

Increase traffic to your website and/or landing page:

Facebook and Instagram will be your go-to real estate apps, thanks to their billions of active users on both platforms. Nonetheless, you should try out each one to see which one works best for your business.

Don’t you want someone who finds a home they love to share it on social media?

You can use social media posts to encourage people to interact with your brand more directly, either through your website or a targeted landing page.

As long as you have an IDX solution like Showcase IDX for WordPress that makes social media sharing simple, these shares can drive more traffic to your website.

In addition to using your postings, you may use social media advertising to expand your reach, acquire more prospects, and close more business overall.

Provide social proof:

People want to know that someone is trustworthy and reliable before conducting business with them. You’ll be able to give folks a glimpse into what it’s like to work with you by using social media tools like Facebook reviews and uploading real customer testimonials.

This is critical for establishing a strong network of leads.

Real estate is a competitive profession, and you’ll need to figure out how to stand out among the hundreds of thousands of Realtors in your area. You can do this right on your website by using testimonials and helpful information to establish credibility.

Buyer testimonials are valuable because they provide social proof that you are an excellent Realtor to work with. Choose a few of your best client testimonials and feedback and feature them on the homepage or a dedicated testimonial page.

 

Click here to download 100+ incredible social media graphics to use on your social.

Best part is they are free – my thanks for you investing the time to read this guide.

 

Lead Nurturing: An Overview

The real estate industry is extremely competitive, and many brokers make the mistake of concentrating their real estate marketing efforts on finding clients who are ready to purchase or sell right away.

Don’t get me wrong: ready-to-act buyers and sellers are fantastic, but they’re only the bottom of a well-thought-out lead funnel.

The truth is that the majority of leads you receive could be anywhere from three months to a year or two away from completing a transaction. Those leads could be extremely beneficial if you plan to stay in real estate when the time comes.

The practice of cultivating and maintaining relationships with your leads is known as lead nurturing. You’ll be the natural choice when they’re ready to buy or sell a house if you stay in touch with those who aren’t ready to transact yet and help them get ready.

 

 

CRMs Help with Lead Nurturing in Sales

Knowing exactly what your clients are looking for is one approach to ensure that your nurturing efforts have a strong impact. For example, understanding if your clients are first-time buyers or not may influence the information they prefer to get from you.

Because some leads take weeks or months to decide whether or not they want to work with you and for them to get ready to actually buy, it’s easy to lose track of who wanted what, what personal information you collected about them, and previous contacts.

To keep track of these details, use a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) tool.

A CRM is a technology that manages all of your company’s interactions and relationships with customers and future customers. The primary purpose is to strengthen business contacts in order to assist your real estate firm to thrive.

A CRM system helps organizations stay connected to their customers while also reducing procedures and enhancing profitability.

Showcase IDX CRM integrations

With the Showcase IDX WordPress plugin, you can learn more about your clients, avoid opportunities slipping through the cracks with automated follow-ups, and manage your team with ease.

Showcase IDX’s development team spent a lot of time and effort to provide the best approach to transfer leads and their activity to your CRM and other services. No other IDX can match the flexibility, dependability, and responsiveness of IDX. Want to use Follow Up Boss, Keller Command, or any other system on the market? Use the integrations through Zapier to send your new leads to 1000+ other marketing technologies. It takes less than 3 minutes to set up.

 

Email Marketing

Despite being one of the older channels, email marketing is still very much alive and well in the digital marketing scene. Even with the proliferation of new social media channels, 73% of millennials still prefer to receive business interactions via email.

Although email marketing is a paid marketing channel, it is still one of the most cost-effective. According to email marketing data, every $1 invested on email generates $42 in revenue (that’s a whopping 4200 percent return on investment!).

Because you have greater control, emails are more intimate. Every demographic uses email these days. You can quickly segment your audience, and educate potential clients. Email marketing is an excellent approach to nurturing leads.

Our Showcase IDX WordPress plugin transforms your website and marketing into a living platform. You can send out drip emails to clients with new listings, dynamically update hotsheets, and offer detailed listing pages.

You can also set up past clients with open houses or new on market listings in their current neighborhood to let them stay aware of what is happening around their current home. This is a great way to 1) stay top of mind for when your past clients are ready to move again and 2) increase your referrals as your past clients can easily forward the emails from your website to their friends if something looks interesting for a friend wanting to move nearby.

 

What is a Multiple Listing Service?

Multiple listing services (MLSs) are private databases that real estate professionals (agents, brokers, and others) develop and manage to assist their clients in buying and selling property.

As an agent, you likely know this, but if you’re working with a marketing agency that is not used to building modern real estate websites, they may need a quick overview, and this section will help. The purpose of an MLS is to link home buyers and sellers by allowing brokers to access each other’s listings of properties for sale. By streamlining and sharing information, both the listing and selling brokers profit.

All of the data is centralized in the MLS, making it easy to find everything in one spot, but it takes a modern IDX to ingest this data and integrate it into the modern home search tools that consumers require to use your website. Updates to the MLS happen instantly, whereas some real estate websites can take a while to update as they are often done manually (we update as frequently as every 15 minutes).

Benefits of the MLS

Agents and brokers post information about homes they have listed on the MLS and encourage other brokers to help them sell in exchange for compensation if they find a buyer.

Increased publicity for a seller’s property is a win-win situation. Buyers benefit from the fact that they can get information on all MLS-listed houses while just working with one agent.

MLSs level the playing field so that even the tiniest local brokerage can compete with the largest multi-state enterprise.

Access to the MLS

An MLS is only accessible to licensed members who pay dues or a membership fee to each MLS. This is due to operational costs and security considerations to protect the data.

In exchange, the Realtors receive information about the homes in the region, including listings, images, and property characteristics like square footage and features.

The problem with big sites like Zillow and Redfin

Some privacy experts point out that some large websites like Zillow are known for selling client information (including financial info based on their search information) to agents. You want to protect your clients’ information and minimize the chance that a competitive agent will be calling your client.

With Showcase IDX, you can make all local listings accessible and provide your clients with the resources they need to use your site instead of a major real estate portal that may treat them like a sales opportunity.

 

IDX Integration on your real estate website

The term Internet Data Exchange (IDX) refers to the policies, standards, and software that govern the presentation of real estate listing information on websites.

Most crucially for agents and brokers, IDX is what allows MLS members to incorporate real estate listings from the MLS database into their own websites.

Here are some of the powerful benefits that integrating IDX in your real estate website can provide:

Accurate map-based searching:

The search function in Showcase IDX smoothly integrates advanced map-based searching. You also get the ability to drill down to explore detailed MLS information without feeling overwhelmed.

Grab your audience’s attention:

Providing your audience with the relevant real estate content they require is a proven method to capture your audience’s attention and convert them into quality leads.

When you integrate Showcase IDX into your real estate website, you gain user-friendly search features like beautiful property galleries and dynamic map search.

This makes it easier for website clients to find their perfect property on the real estate agent’s website, increasing sales.

Capture real estate leads effortlessly:

You can convert your website traffic into a lead pipeline using Showcase IDX’s compelling lead capture features and functionality. With the help of our lead capture forms, you’ll be able to see who is interested in particular properties.

This also provides you with information on how to provide better service to your potential new clientele.

Clients and prospects can also sign up for email alerts when new properties matching their search criteria become available. You’ll be alerted as well, allowing you to keep track of their interest and respond appropriately.

Mobile-ready & fully responsive:

Showcase IDX was created and built to provide an exceptional mobile experience. Built to be extremely quick, even on one bar of reception, this powerful plugin’s optimized design and UX provides you a significant advantage over your competition.

Don’t pass up on hot leads! Display your listings in a responsive design that grabs the attention of your real estate leads no matter what device they’re using to browse.

Optimized for SEO:

We take search engine optimization (SEO) very seriously. Our flexible customization features, in addition to following Google best practices, helps ensure that our listing pages are properly indexed.

You benefit from search engine indexing because the listings are under your domain, not on a subdomain like with some vendors, which brings more traffic to your website. Visitors can share listings on social media using social share buttons, resulting in significant backlinks to your site.

Having indexable Showcase IDX listings on your website increases the likelihood that they will locate it.

 

 

Final Thoughts On Real Estate Digital Marketing

Real estate agents must keep their ears to the ground since the internet marketing landscape is continuously shifting. As a result, you may notice new trends and capitalize on them to gain new customers.

When it comes to executing the best marketing techniques for your real estate business, you must keep one foot in the present and one foot in the future. Create a digital marketing strategy and plan but be flexible in the face of new ideas and a rapidly changing industry.

I hope you’ve been motivated to tweak your digital marketing strategy as a result of this article. Have a question on your digital marketing? Leave it in the comments below, and I’ll be happy to reply.

Author Details
Entrepreneurial marketing leader that’s built and run organizations from start-up to over $500M annual revenue. He brings a unique combination of storytelling and innovation to the team, having led marketing for many brands. Kurt’s a regular conference speaker and workshop leader around modern marketing tactics that actually drive sales. In addition, he has been asked to coach and advise thousands of leaders, from startup founders to the President of the United States.

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