Starting out as a realtor today requires a well-rounded marketing skill set. The industry provides as many opportunities as it ever has but success calls for a wide range of tactics. Real estate agents with a clear strategy and effective marketing tools can gain a considerable advantage over the competition.
If you combine exceptional customer service, a powerful marketing message and a solid reputation, the leads will come to you. Real estate revolves around trust. Positioning yourself in the space as a reputable expert will make your marketing practically effortless. Let’s examine the hacks that can bring result-driven synergies to your real estate marketing.
How Digital Marketing Can Benefit Your Business
Digital marketing is a great way to reach a wide audience for less money than would be possible with most offline methods. At the same time, your ability to apply razor-sharp targeting to this vast sea of prospects is remarkable. Selling a multi-million dollar mansion differs from finding buyers for a small apartment or a commercial space. Online marketing allows you to target different audiences for each type of property. This increases your conversion rates and reduces the cost per lead.
Effectively mediating between a buyer and a seller has always been about understanding the needs on both sides. Closing an agreement hinges on your ability to prove to both parties that you have their interests at heart. Digital marketing can showcase your competencies while reinforcing a potent mission statement: to provide your clients with the results they seek.
Digital Marketing Hacks
Most real estate agents use some form of digital marketing. Whether they own a website or manage classified listings on popular platforms, realtors maintain an online presence. The key lies in understanding the power that each digital marketing method offers.
Use Social Media with a Purpose
Rather than wasting time opening innumerable social media accounts and blindly following countless people, try being deliberate about your approach. Follow users that have big followings. Look for people that are influential in their niches and whose interests coincide with your business goals.
Furthermore, following opinion-leaders in your local community will add to your credibility. It will also increase the probability of obtaining high-quality leads since you are focusing on your locale.
Hacks you can use on social media include tagging local businesses in your posts, publishing location-specific ads on Facebook and Instagram with quality photos of properties and conducting special events and giveaways. These will all raise awareness around your brand and keep you fresh in the minds of potential clients.
You can also organize volunteering initiatives through your social media. Giving back to the community is an important part of relationship-building and social media is ideal for that.
Google Ads
Imagine if you could run a commercial that only appeared on televisions where the viewers happened to be in the market for a piece of real estate. Now think about how useful it would be if your commercial appeared for specific types of buyers. For instance, if the viewers were interested in a new three-bedroom house and you had such a home in your inventory, your commercial would play.
What if these viewers went to the supermarket and your commercial appeared on the TV screen over the checkout lane? This is the level of functionality Google Ads gives you on the internet.
The secret to successfully running campaigns on Google’s Ads is tracking. Knowing which keywords offer higher conversion rates allows you to weed out terms and phrases that are ineffective and wasteful. Therefore, you can bid on keywords that focus on the types of real estate in your inventory as well as on location-specific terms.
Also, by taking advantage of the platform’s remarketing feature, you can target your website visitors when they are on other web properties across the internet. The Google Display Network is comprised of thousands of websites that partner with the search engine giant. When a visitor clicks through to your site, a cookie is placed on their browser. You can then serve ads to them while they are on another website. Again, by using detailed tracking, you can monitor the effectiveness of your remarketing campaign and make valuable adjustments.
Rediscovering Direct Mail
Direct mail is a hidden gem for realtors. It is perhaps the most potent hack you can apply in your real estate business. This is because direct mail has been left behind by most businesses in favor of digital marketing methods. If you can combine the use of direct mail with your online marketing, you can build synergies that amplify the effectiveness of your campaigns.
The Benefits of Direct Mail
Though it may seem counter-intuitive, direct mail offers cost and efficiency benefits over other marketing options.
Higher Return On Investment
The data shows that response rates for direct mail have been on the rise in recent years. Specifically, the Data and Marketing Association released a report in 2016 that showed an increase of 43 percent in customer response in this mode of communication. The research puts the ROI of direct mail at approximately 30 percent across all industries; a return rate that is higher than that of online ads. With click-through rates of 2 or 3 percent on online ads often considered good, direct mail achieves response rates of over five percent for print material sent to homes.
Customer Experience
As mentioned above, creating a positive customer experience is a key component of a strong real estate brand. While digital marketing allows you to appeal to your audience visually, direct mail gives the recipient a tactile experience. A well-made piece of physical mail will appeal to your target market and contribute to building your relationship with prospects.
Relationship-Building Through Direct Mail
If you can manage to create an interesting and informative flyer that the recipient keeps in their office for any period of time, you will remain fresh in their thoughts. This means that your audience is more likely to contact you over the competition for their real estate needs.
If you have customer management software that allows you to keep useful information on your contacts, you can send your list birthday cards or thank you letters. This will further help you maintain interaction with your clientele and prospects. Treating your leads as people rather than dollar signs is something they will appreciate and reciprocate in the form of future business.
Running a Successful Direct Mail Campaign
Direct mail can be very rewarding for realtors but requires work. Creating an appealing piece of mail and finding a custom mailing list can be time-consuming as you may not know where to start.
A direct mailing company can help you implement an effective campaign that causes your phone to ring and brings customers through your door. Finding a direct mailing company that specializes in the real estate niche is even more desirable. An agency with experience in creating material for real estate prospects will have their own hacks for maximizing response rates.
If the potential of enjoying the benefits that direct mail can bring to your bottom line, check out “Wise Pelican” today. Wise Pelican provides hundreds of templates and doesn’t have order minimums. It doesn’t matter if you want to send out a mailing to a small group of clients or if you want to cover an entire country with thousands of recipients. Wise Pelican will help you materialize the solution that is best for the occasion.
Results Through Synergies
Ultimately, the most effective marketing hack for realtors is the creation of synergies between digital marketing tactics and direct mail efforts. If you focus on giving back to the community and positioning your brand as an authority in the space while building a relationship with your prospects, you will boost your leads substantially.
To read more on topics like this, check out the marketing category.
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