People have been staking their claims on plots of land since Neolithic times. Establishing a home base allowed families to flourish and communities to thrive.
Real Estate as we know it, however, has only been around since the 1900s. Once a process only available to the rich, the invention of mortgages and investments made the industry accessible and profitable.
Most marketing initially consisted of referrals from family members and trusted friends. Later on, with the advent of printing, television, and other forms of media, real estate companies could reach a wider pool of potential customers. In the modern age, techniques like these are eclipsed by the advent of real estate digital marketing.
What is digital marketing for real estate? What does it include, and what kind of results can it give your real estate business? Let’s explore that together!
Sigificance of Digital Marketing in Real Estate
Real estate digital marketing is more than just another way to find the right customers for your properties. Real estate projects need to invest time and energy in their digital real estate marketing strategy.
Source: axios.com
Why? According to the National Association of Realtors, 100% of homebuyers now use the Internet to make their decisions from start to finish. That’s right–every one of your potential real estate consumers is there waiting to find you, eager to get your help in finding their forever homes and dream properties.
Knowing this makes digital marketing in real estate vital to your success. Whether your local real estate industry is small or large, urban or rural–or even if you’re dealing with luxury vacation and rental properties–it’s essential to have a digital footprint.
Overview of Current Trends in Real Estate Digital Marketing
In the past, the real estate business has been an in-person experience that can get tiring for both the homebuyer and home seller. Spending precious free time researching and touring properties, feeling the pressure of making significant financial decisions quickly, and getting all the necessary paperwork and inspections in order is enough to make a buyer want to give up before they even begin.
In our digital age, so much of the shoe leather that used to be typical of a property buying experience can be easily replaced by real estate online marketing. A potential customer can view many properties on their own time, surrounded by all of the decision-makers in their family and from the comfort of their couches.
If you’re selling homes to new families or negotiating funds to build the luxury properties that retirees dream of, it’s essential to have a digital marketing plan that fits your business. Count on the team at NinjaPromo to know how to maximize your budget and minimize your risk.
It’s not just the buyers who can benefit from digital real estate marketing–the industry has boomed thanks to various ways to highlight their properties and connect with people ready to buy. Real estate digital marketing saves time, money, and energy for everyone involved, making real estate deals increasingly less exhausting.
Most Effective Digital Marketing Strategies for Real Estate 
With so many possibilities available, deciding which ones to use and how to use them can be overwhelming. The most innovative companies use a real estate digital marketing agency to assist them in creating and implementing real estate marketing content. Here’s an overview of the most effective real estate digital marketing strategies.
Run Targeted Social Media Advertising
Social media is everywhere, and when it comes to real estate digital marketing strategy, it is the most powerful way to achieve brand exposure. For example, online marketing for real estate can include:
- offering online photo galleries
- recording short videos for your social feed
- doing live walkthroughs of your properties, and
- engaging with your viewers
You can cement your reputation in the market, all with a few clicks of a mouse.
The beauty of social media is the uniqueness of the customer base on every platform. For example, if you’re targeting families, Facebook is your likely best platform. Instagram can make your space seem hip and trendy, especially when you include influencers.
Beyond simply posting things online, you can be even more strategic with your real estate digital marketing budget by creating ads.
Implement Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Advertising
How do you stand out in the virtual sea of the competitive industry? You can’t count on any one digital platform to get your properties in front of the right eyes. With Pay-Per-Click Advertising, you can seek out the motivated clientele you want to work with efficiently and affordably.
With online databases such as Zillow and Realtor.com, your listings are nothing more than words on a website. Using PPC advertising gives you the advantage of:
- directing your customers to your website
- bypassing the noise, and
- getting you direct access to connect.
Another bonus of PPC advertising is having complete control over how much money you spend and how you spend it. Optimizing your investment is one of the most significant pluses of creating your PPC campaign.
And if that seems too daunting to handle on your own, you can hire a full service digital marketing agency to guide you in making the best decisions for your goals.
Promote Your Website in Search Engines (SEO)
SEO is that mystical bunch of letters that no one seems to understand. Search Engine Optimization is worth learning about when it comes to digital marketing for real estate because it is the workhorse of your real estate digital marketing strategies.
Source: semrush.com
Search Engine Optimization, aka SEO, is the process of improving the visibility of your website by using the particular words (also known as ‘keywords’) that your customers will be searching for when they go to a search platform.
If you are selling luxury vacation cabins on the beaches of Costa Rica, you want to find buyers who are in the market for those exact things, not a split level in the suburbs. Using SEO effectively ensures the words’ luxury,’ ‘beach,’ ‘cabin,’ and ‘Costa Rica’ are featured prominently and often on your real estate company website. When someone types in those keywords in the search engine, the results they receive contain all those words, including your properties.
SEO is a long game, and since it doesn’t give immediate results, many people think it’s not worth the effort. Nothing could be further from the truth. By using search engine optimization on your website and in business listings, you’re finding the right people for your product.
Offer Virtual Tours and 360° Videos
The Pew Research Center surveyed adults in the United States in 2020, curious to see how the COVID-19 pandemic had been affecting the home front.
Roughly one-in-five Americans either relocated due to the pandemic, or knew someone who had. This could be due to college dorms closing, adapting to a new work-from-home routine, or taking in older family members who needed care.
Watching virtual tours and videos of properties became a new pastime, and what began as a way to dream spurred many people to make it a reality. Real estate digital marketing utilizes the latest technology, such as drone photography and virtual staging, to give a vision of their future by showing them every nook and cranny of a property in ways an in-person showing can’t.
Your real estate digital marketing budget doesn’t have to bust when you create these videos–depending on the video quality you need, one of your brokers can do the filming themselves. Established businesses often hire professionals to create content for website tours and social media platforms to match their brand identity.
Deploy Retargeting Campaigns
You have people coming to your website, and that’s great! But for some reason, they’re not following through with scheduling a call or viewing. Adding retargeting to your digital real estate marketing strategy can turn that missed opportunity into gold.
Source: ylopo.com
When cookies are set up on your website, data about where, when, and how long people interact with your listings is collected. This gives you vital information about their budget and wishlist so you can tailor new messages specifically for them.
These ads then appear on other websites while they browse, as if they magically appear to nudge the person back to you. The more they see your real estate company as they go about their business, the more you will appear to be the expert on precisely what they’re in the market for.
Implement Content Marketing Strategy
One way to be considered a thought leader in the real estate market is to demonstrate your value through content marketing. Used widely in real estate digital marketing, having focused content in various outlets can make your business stand out from the crowd by showing you understand your customer’s particular needs.
The ability to tailor your messaging to the right audience–whether they care more about the school system or the resale value–shows that you can guide them through the massive decision ahead of them. It creates the professional experience you want while providing the personal touch they need. Content marketing can come in many forms, including blogs, podcast interviews, and video guides posted on social media.
Collaborate with Influencer Partnerships
Every social group has that one person that everyone goes to when a specific subject arises. Your aunt has the best technique to get the most from the grocery store or a coworker who knows the quickest oil change mechanic. You trust them to lead you to the best solution for your problem.
Digital real estate marketing might not seem like a fit for influencer partnerships. Still, just like these community members that we trust, the virtual world has people who have earned the same loyalty by providing value and authenticity you don’t get from a regular paid spokesperson.
An innovative way to do this is ‘influencer event marketing.’ Imagine staging an open house–but one that’s Instagram-fabulous. With the addition of the right influencers for your target demographic in your imagery, you can instantly add a sparkle that a regular Saturday afternoon walkthrough can’t match.
Utilize Email Marketing
After SEO, email marketing might be the most critical tool in digital marketing for real estate.
- Email creates connection and conversation in a way that other digital marketing cannot.
- Email allows interaction with potential customers–a way to stay on top of mind and gain trust.
Most people do not buy a property on a whim. And when they decide they’re ready to enter the market, the competition for their attention and property-buying dollars is fierce. Having an email marketing campaign directed at nurturing this relationship and proving to them that you are the best agency for their search is invaluable.
Another benefit of email marketing is your control over the precision of your messaging. People who sign up to your mailing list from social media or your website can be separated from people who may have come to an open house. Sending those website viewers more specific content listing all two-bedroom houses might not make sense for the open-house attendees. Email segmentation saves you marketing dollars and shows your attention to detail.
Create Video Marketing Content
No one understands the phrase’ curb appeal’ like a real estate agent. Video marketing content allows a view into your customer’s dream, letting you curate the experience innovatively. While most real estate companies take advantage of video to highlight the many assets of a property, there are additional ways to use video in digital marketing for real estate.
Video marketing content can include:
- a neighborhood walkthrough
- advice for first-time homebuyers, and
- customer testimonials.
Some real estate companies even host Q&A sessions to announce new listings or discuss the market changes in detail, establishing trust with new clients.
Navigating the complex world of digital marketing for real estate is challenging enough–don’t make more work for yourself by attempting to create your digital marketing plan on your own. At NinjaPromo, we have hundreds of happy clients who trust us with finding their voice and amplifying their message, so why shouldn’t you? Call us today, and let’s talk about your future!
Don’t overlook the power of a more informal approach either–an introduction video, a ‘day in the life of’ video, or even a cute holiday message can go a long way to connecting with your customers.
Utilize Chatbots and AI Assistants
While the Internet might be on 24/7, we have rich lives to live. That means you can’t always be available when a potential client has an inquiry about a listing. Chatbots and AI assistants are the cutting-edge technology that savvy real estate companies are using on their websites to foster a sense of immediate attention, showing your customer that you care about their needs.
Chatbots can answer common questions like:
- showing times for a property
- scheduling a viewing right when the customer shows interest,
- striking while the proverbial iron is hot.
Chatbots are always active when your customer is on your website, collecting information and being that bridge to your firm in a friendly and non-invasive way.
The unexpected bonus of chatbots and AI assistants is their ability to free up your team, allowing them to provide a higher level of care and personal attention to your existing clients. That leads to improved morale within your organization, and the happier your colleagues are, the more money you’ll make.
Technological Innovation: VR and AR in Real Estate
So we’ve covered the basics: what’s next? The future for real estate digital marketing is even brighter. While video walkthroughs and drone photography can give a potential property buyer some feeling for the space, the virtual and augmented reality revolution brings a whole new dimension to that experience.
Source: zipdo.co
Virtual Reality (VR) allows a person to have a completely immersive experience, as though they were walking through the actual property in real-time. They can move through the property at their own pace, getting a sense of the rooms’ flow and seeing details that even the best photography can’t capture. The other benefit is that viewing a property in Waikiki is available in London at the touch of a button. The possibilities are endless!
Augmented Reality (AR) is different in that it allows the viewer to explore the potential in a space by creating new furniture arrangements or even painting colors in a simulated environment. The ability to envision renovations also avoids unnecessary haggling during the purchasing process.
Case Studies of Successful Digital Marketing in Real Estate
While real estate marketing concepts like those above benefit the home-buying sector, these techniques shine in digital marketing for startups and venture capital sectors. These areas must raise substantial money to create industry-wide products and more significant residential and business complexes. Let’s look at two examples of these methods in action.
Purchasing properties is a significant financial investment, no matter the size of the place you fall in love with. With the latest technology, such as cryptocurrency, becoming more globally accepted, things like the tokenization of real estate are lowering the barrier for new investors to enter the market.
SWINCA is a Swiss company that identified the need for a crypto real estate industry platform–but also realized that they needed help from professionals in digital marketing. NinjaPromo’s experienced team worked out a way to build brand recognition by creating press releases in several languages, which then went out into 20 top media channels.
NinjaPromo helped their client generate 5.3 million dollars during the ICO, and most impressively, the team was able to create and execute this plan in five days–two days less than the client needed. That’s the rapid success that can happen when you enlist the experts!
These projects can be more than press releases, too. For instance, when tasked with a customer who needed an audience for their high-end apartment complex, they sought out NinjaPromo to assist in building buzz and filling spaces with the ideal clientele. The team at NinjaPromo took the customer’s inspired positioning phrase, “Created by perfectionists,” to inform an omnichannel value awareness and community-building campaign, creating brand platforms on social media (in this case, Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook) that spoke to these future homebuyers.
Using the approaches we’ve discussed above, like social media engagement and chatbots, the customer was able to quickly have 117 bookings for walkthroughs, translating into 41 deals or 35% success rate.
With results like these, not having a flexible and focused digital marketing strategy is leaving money on the table. A full-service digital marketing agency can work with your team to find the right approach for your real estate sector.
The Future of Digital Real Estate Marketing and What to Expect
Real estate digital marketing is a natural choice for real estate firms, expanding their reach to potential customers across the globe and robust enough to suit every price point. It boasts a treasure chest of analytical data that can inform your real estate digital marketing budget, saving you time and money by pointing you down the right path earlier in the sales process.
We’ve seen how new cutting-edge technology is particularly well suited, allowing potential property buyers to do their early research and giving the firms more qualified leads. Digital walkthroughs, virtual and augmented reality, and blockchain use open doors that weren’t previously available.
The future will hold even more promise–using e-signatures and digitized biometrics to complete necessary paperwork, crowdfunding for vacation and luxury properties to be built, and even down to construction teams integrating digital tools to streamline planning and building processes to cut down on lag time. It’s an exciting time to explore using digital marketing in real estate!
Unlock Your Real Estate’s Potential with NinjaPromo: Innovative Digital Marketing for Results
Many of the techniques we’ve discussed in this post are things your firm can undoubtedly do on its own. However, like trying to fix a leak or build a spaceship, the professionals will always be in a different class. At NinjaPromo, we take immense pride in helping our customers in the only way we know how–by being true partners with them.
NinjaPromo is a full-service digital marketing agency established in 2017, with numerous awards for digital marketing and blockchain marketing. Working with various industries ranging from small businesses and startups to B2B and Fintech, we have a team of accomplished engineers and designers who are here to be your guides through the many facets of digital marketing. We deliver results and personal connections to support your needs to scale.
Why spend time spinning your wheels when you could have the brightest minds in digital at your service? Schedule a free consultation call with NinjaPromo today!
Conclusion
Times have changed since the first plot of land was chosen and a shelter was built. Now we have luxury skyscraper residences, cozy residential enclaves, and even micro-homes on wheels for the wandering souls. It only makes sense to bring your marketing into the 21st century by developing and executing the real estate marketing concepts we’ve covered in this article.
And remember, you certainly don’t have to go it alone. Investing in a full-service digital marketing agency will pay dividends for years to come.
