How to make the most out of your real estate advertising budget
As a realtor, you know that being discovered by home buyers and sellers is essential for your business. You’ve probably already established a presence in your local community through direct mail or word of mouth, and now you want to grow your business online. You’re most likely reading this because you are wondering how to spend your real estate advertising budget wisely.
The real estate industry has had some interesting ups and down over the past decade – NAR (National Association of Realtors) membership hit its all-time high back in 2006 with 1,357,000 realtors before dropping dramatically with the housing financial crisis. However, since its rock bottom in 2012 (with 999,000 members), it has been steadily increasing, and with over 3 million licensed real estate agents in 2020, and the state of the market in 2021, the competition among realtors is heating up.
The competition is fierce, and these days you’ll need expert online and offline marketing skills to set yourself apart from the pack.
1. Social media is your advertising friend
Real estate advertising is all about creating your brand and being easily accessible online. According to studies, 90% of home buyers utilize the Internet as a source of information when searching to buy a new home, 76% of home buyers drive by or schedule a viewing for a home they found on the Internet, and 41% of home buyers first located their home online. Keeping your face and name in front of prospects is an important part of building your brand (both buyers and sellers). Successful realtors cannot be secret agents!
In order to get your name in front of potential leads, you have to master the social media game. First, make sure you have accounts on all of the major social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google+, and even Instagram if you take a lot of photos of your homes). Then, interact with users, market your properties, and share positive publicity.
Pinterest boards are a great way to share photos and information about particular listings. In addition to property images, you may create a Pinterest board for a specific property that highlights major aspects of the area.
Google My Business is the most recent addition to Google’s collection of location-based pages. Don’t worry if you’re perplexed; it’s essentially the same concept as Google Places for Businesses and Google+ Pages. Users will be able to locate you in Google Search, Google Maps, and Google+ if you create a Google My Business account. This one, believe me, is a no-brainer.
What are other Realtors in your area doing? What do their websites look like? How active are they on social media? Take note of what competitors are doing – then avoid their mistakes and replicate their success!
Sharing is caring
Home browsers are likely to want to share their favorite housing photos with their friends and family, so make it simple for them to email and share various houses online by including social sharing icons.
Social real estate ads are where it’s at
Don’t be afraid to spend money on paid social media ads. With organic reach on many popular social media platforms, such as Facebook diminishing, sponsored Facebook and Google ads are typically the most effective way to reach clients. Both Facebook and Google offer various targeting options to ensure that you’re only paying to be seen by your target audiences. Most importantly, utilize emotional storytelling with compelling copy and powerful visual elements in your real estate advertising. People naturally are more responsive to stories. So tell a good one and lead with flock to you.
This is where RealDigi Ads can be a game-changer for your real estate business. With little to no experience of Google Ads, you can confidently design profitable Google Ads campaigns in minutes. Everything you need for a successful real estate advertisement campaign has been pre-programmed for you, from selecting the proper keywords to tweaking the wording of your ads.
2. Hire a professional photographer
Great photography is crucial to successful real estate advertising. Even the best houses will lose interest if the images are bad. It’s critical to have beautiful images of your properties, particularly for your social media ads. Hire a professional photographer (ideally one who has photographed homes and architecture), or try your hand at it yourself if you have advanced equipment and are confident in your talents. Just keep in mind that this is one of those situations where hiring an expert is probably a good idea.
Showcase local splendor
In many respects, you’re selling more than simply a property; you’re selling an entire town, neighborhood, or region. With high-quality, attractive images of local town landmarks and familiar sights, you can show off the best that your area has to offer.
Wow them with a virtual tour of the home
Your client’s time is valuable, and they want to learn as much as possible about a property before paying a visit. Virtual tours are an excellent approach to provide potential buyers with a thorough and accurate overview of the property.
3. Host free seminars for home buyers
Hosting mini-seminars allows you to make yourself and your knowledge available to the community. Consider holding a 101 class on the fundamentals of house ownership and mortgages to increase your discoverability.
Remember that today’s real estate advertising is all about inbound, which doesn’t only apply to the online world. Before investing time and money in you, users expect you to give part of your knowledge for free. A local version of a webinar is a home buying seminar. Yes, it will take time and effort, but your guests will be impressed and will have formed a bond with you. Then, when they’re ready to buy a house, that relationship will be worth its weight in gold.
Hosting a webinar can be a terrific method to draw attention to your company if you’re comfortable with it. For example, you can host a webinar on “Secret Things to Look For In A New Home,” and include a Q&A session at the end for questions. Webinars can also be repurposed as YouTube videos, which can be utilized as useful video content that lives on your website indefinitely!
These seminars and webinars can also be used as content for your social media ads. Getting your name in front of potential home buyers and sellers and providing them with something they need is invaluable. Be a solution to your potential client’s problem.
Managing your digital footprint
There are three crucial things to note when building your online presence –– 1) traffic does not equal conversions, you can get 100,000 unique visitors to your site every day and never have a single conversion, 2) a website conversion occurs when a visitor to your website creates a new account (registration), and 3) it’s essential for you as a realtor to contact the prospect immediately. Whether you make contact with the prospect via phone or email is not what matters, all that matters is getting the communication started ASAP and keeping the communication ongoing.
The tools you’ll need to be successful in real estate advertising are as follows: a lead capture website, CRM (customer relationship management), and email drip marketing. The trick is not to think of marketing as simply getting leads to your website because campaigns created on RealDigi Ads for Google Ads will do that for you. Instead, what you do after a lead converts is even more critical. Drip email campaigns, email blasts about new listings or incentives you offer, text marketing, newsletters, and video marketing are all crucial for digital real estate advertising.
Sending direct mail to the same areas you’re targeting with your Google Ads campaigns will make all your advertising much stronger. Though direct mail to potential buyers and sellers is an old-school method, it still works. Call, call and keep calling until you reach the prospect. The longer you advertise on Google and continue your real estate advertising efforts, the more you will see an increase in your Real Estate business.
At RealDigi Ads, we are here to help you reach home buyers and sellers in the most efficient and effective way possible. We are dedicated to transforming your real estate advertising and committed to the growth of your real estate business.
