To generate leads, increase your clientele, and stay afloat in a crowded market, you need effective real estate marketing methods.
Since so many interactions now start online, trust-building starts before you even speak to or meet with a client. The means of delivery for that relationship\-building material—organic search results, email marketing, social media, or other channels—is content marketing.
What is content marketing?
To connect with new audiences, re-engage prospects during a protracted decision-making process, and forge connections with their audience, real estate brokers and agents must establish successful content marketing strategies.
According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is “a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action.”
Profitable customer action is created with the sale, purchase or rental of a property.
Real estate transactions are distinctive not just because of their high value but also because of their complexity and duration. Content marketing can help you drive leads by positioning yourself as an expert with valuable, informative content that satisfies the needs, desires or questions of your audience.
What’s the best kind of content to create for SEO?
The best kind of content is that which resonates with your ideal audience so you’ll need to conduct market research to get a sense of who you want to reach. Are hoping to target buyers or renters? Sellers? Create a customer persona so you can tailor your marketing around their needs. This will help you deliver a more personalized approach to our content and speak directly to their needs.
Secondly, you’ll want to do more research for ideas around their questions, need or desires. Using a keyword research tool to look up keywords and questions your customers are typing into search engines will help with this.
While the principles of content marketing are much the same across a variety of industries, the needs of your audience ultimately determine how you apply them. Your content marketing goals will vary depending on what stage of the buying funnel potential customers are in. Buyers’ behaviours’ are always shifting so understanding their current ones will power you with the most effective strategies.
Best channels for real estate content marketing
Channels are how potential customers might find your services or listings. You can create content to distribute amongst a variety of channels online. These channels include:
Social media.
Email marketing.
Your website and blog
Local search results via Google Business Profile
Aligning your content marketing goals
When you take the time to understand what your target audience is looking for, you can create content that meets their needs and helps them achieve their goals. Once you have a laser-like focus on your objectives and goals you then need to move on to understanding your audience. Your content must address their needs as well as yours.
For instance, you might find it easy to close sales but difficult to bring in new clients. You ought to concentrate on the top of the funnel.
Or maybe you can bring in new leads but struggle with closing the deal, you might consider focusing on bottom-of-the-funnel content.
Any business that wishes to thrive in this digital era cannot stand to ignore content marketing and its potential. When considering creating content for your business, there are many resources to help you with this process. Here are a few to help you with content creation and ideation:
Content Marketing Institute for research, ideation and content resources.
Real Estate Marketing Ideas from Search Engine Journal.
26 Real Estate Social Media Post Ideas to Get New Clients from Hootsuite.
Examples of content marketing goals
You will likely have different goals depending on what it is you are trying to achieve and the needs of your audience. Here are a few examples of content marketing goals for realtors:
Top-of-Funnel Goals:
Get website traffic
Increase social media followers
Generate awareness
Mid-Funnel Goals
Newsletter subscriptions
Mortgage rate calculators
Requests for information
Bottom-Funnel Goals:
Requests for showings
In-person meetings
After-sale reviews
What are some guidelines for creating content for SEO?
There are a few things you should keep in mind to make sure your content is effective and can be found in search engines.
First and foremost, your content should be well-written, informative, and relevant to the user. It should sound conversational in its tone, write it as if you were speaking in person. Always include a call to action that motivates users to take action by providing as much free value as possible. Also, every page on your website should serve a specific purpose.
Adopt a data-driven approach to your marketing efforts. Most agents look at marketing as an expense when in actuality you should look at it as an investment. One in-depth informative article can yield a significantly higher return on investment than paid social advertising.
Lastly, content should be regularly updated to ensure that it remains fresh and relevant. By following these simple guidelines, real estate agents can create content that will help them rank higher in search engines and attract more clients.
How will I know if the page I created is optimized?
You will know your page is optimized once your audience takes the desired action you’ve set for them on that page. As mentioned earlier, every page on your website should serve a specific purpose. No page should exist on your website just for the sake of adding pages.
Do you want users to download your ultimate moving-out checklist? Or perhaps you want them to sign up for a showing for an open house? No page is ever truly optimized, your website needs constant testing and changes to get it where you need it to be. Make sure to audit your pages every month, quarter or how you see fit to assess their performance and make any needed changes.
What are my options for analytics for the website?
Once you have your website up and running, you will be able to add Google Analytics via Google Tag Manager to monitor website performance. You’ll need to add a snippet of code on your site and our marketing coaches can help do this for you. Once analytics is installed, you will then be able to collect data on your most viewed listings, best-performing pages and marketing channels drawing users to your site.