Digital Marketing for Real Estate Agents and Agencies
Author: Ely L.
Although there are a lot of digital marketing principles that can be applied to nearly every industry, there are always unique strategies and approaches that are required for a specific industry. Of course, even within each industry every client needs their own unique strategy to grow in a competitive environment, but below we try to outline some general principles for the Real Estate industry when it comes to a strong digital marketing strategy.
Supply and Demand: Business Segmentation
Most real estate agencies will be dealing with the supply side (sellers & landlords) and demand side (buyers and renters) of their business. A good way to approach this is to build your digital marketing strategy as if the company is running 4 different types of lead generation businesses. Also, a lot of the larger real estate companies will also have a Mortgage Broker section of their business, as a 5th pillar.
- Sellers Business – finding people who are selling their properties
- Buyers Business – finding people who want to buy properties
- Mortgage Broker Business – Obviously linked to the Buyer’s Business, but usually operates completely independently
- Landlords Business – finding people who want to rent their properties
- Renters Business – finding people who want to rent properties
Strategy is often about prioritisation and focus, so the first exercise we aim to do with real estate clients is to get a sense of how they prioritise their different business segments. These are some simple example questions that make prioritisation easier and more clear:
- How much revenue does each business segment generate as a % of the total company revenue?
- Where does your company sit vs. competitors for each segment (Market Leader, Top 3, Middle of the Pack, Smaller Challenger)?
- How long is the sales cycle for each segment?
- What are the current market conditions in real estate? What direction is the market moving, and where is there growth and risk?
Of course, many of these are standard business questions, but they are crucial to be asked and integrated into a digital marketing strategy.
Platform Balance – How to Approach Listing Services
Nearly every market has real estate listing services, which consolidate all sale and rental listings. This is great for buyers and renters, and usually great for sellers and landlords, as it means great reach and simplification of the discovery process. These websites not only show nearly every home for sale across all real estate agencies and agents, but they also have great UX/UI, such as map features that let you see all homes for rent or sale in a certain location. As an example, here are some top listing / aggregator real estate listings for the US, UK, and Ireland.
- US: Zillow.com, Homes.com, Realtor.com, Redfin.com
- UK: Zoopla.co.uk, rightmove.co.uk, onthemarket.com
- IE: Myhome.ie, Daft.ie
Listing services provide a great service for the real estate industry and agents work to optimise their listings to get the best results, such as using high quality pictures and including all important details that buyers or renters are interested in. Most even allow paid placements directly on their websites.
When crafting a digital marketing strategy, it’s important to have a clear understanding of how much of your traffic and leads come from listing services and how much that traffic costs you. You can then decide if you want to invest in getting more leads directly, or focus on other business segments where listing services don’t drive as many leads. It also means you have to have an honest review of your website and its capabilities if you are trying to get more direct leads, as users have a very high expectation when it comes to visiting property websites.
Location, Location, Location
The old adage in real estate is ‘location, location, location’. Every realtor knows which neighbourhoods are good for families or young professionals, which areas are upper middle class or working class. This knowledge can and should be reflected in the digital marketing strategy, but requires sitting down with an actual agent to understand how they view their target audiences and the areas they are working in. We always recommend marketing teams speak with sales representatives, but for real estate it is arguably even more crucial for a marketing team to get important business insights from the agents on the ground. This will help with prioritisation, creatives, targeting, and ultimately have a true understanding of the impact of any marketing campaigns. It could be that there is a great opportunity to focus on a niche area which is under-served by existing competitors, or an up-and-coming area with a lot of development planned that you can get a first move advantage by advertising earlier than competitors.
Data is Your Friend
At the end of the day, most real estate agents don’t want to have to spend time worrying about digital marketing. They want high quality leads coming in consistently, so they can do the work of showing properties and closing deals. The real estate industry has a lot of fast moving parts, especially when compared to the size of the transactions and deals being closed, so it is crucial for mid-sized to larger real estate agencies to have control over their data. Managing your data correctly allows you to automate more of the administrative processes, react more quickly to market conditions, and waste less time and money on your digital marketing strategy.
In summary, Real Estate digital marketing has to factor in a complicated ecosystem, balancing supply and demand sides of the business, working with listing websites, and finding unique strategies to establish a competitive advantage. MarketingLens sees data management as a core pillar that can differentiate real estate players and give them a competitive edge in a competitive marketplace.
Reach out today for a free consultation and to learn more about how data and digital marketing can drive more sales and lettings for your real estate business.
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