Online Marketing Does Wonders for Real Estate (If You Do It Right!)

The real estate industry has seen its fair share of seismic shifts in recent years, as technology, consumer behavior, and the economy continue to shape and reshape the industry at large. 

In order to win more property listings and close more deals in this uncertain environment, real estate professionals need to level up their digital marketing strategies while delivering the best real estate customer experience that technology can offer. Forward-thinking real estate professionals from both the residential to commercial sides of the business have already embraced the latest digital technology and property marketing trends - and their practices are worth sharing.

What is digital marketing for real estate agents? 

Digital marketing for real estate agents is the use of online tools and strategies to promote properties, attract clients, and grow a real estate business in the digital age.

4 benefits of a digital marketing strategy for realtors

Let’s start by reviewing the competitive advantages that online marketing can offer real estate businesses:

1. Get to know your customers inside and out - with permission, of course. 

By harnessing the power of data and analytics to understand an audience's tastes and preferences, real estate agents can gain valuable insights that can help inform the listings they present to buyers and the media strategies they use to reach their audience.

2. Reach people wherever they are in their buying journey.

According to the National Association of Realtors, 57% of home buyers start their search online. Plus, with so many consumers now tuning into digital streaming platforms for entertainment, traditional TV advertising by itself just won’t cut it anymore. Instead, a multichannel approach is needed to reach prospective buyers (and the agents who represent them). 

3. Show potential clients what they want to see when they want to see it.

To impress potential buyers and sellers, agents need to produce high-quality visual content, including professional photography, videos, virtual tours, and 3D models that can really showcase a property on any device, and at any time. Consider Matterport’s Digital Pro, an all-inclusive marketing solution for real estate agents and brokers. Buyers expect nothing less than a 3D virtual tour of a property these days.

4. Measure the effectiveness of your marketing strategy.

Track user behavior on your website to determine how many visitors are taking desired actions, like filling out a contact form or scheduling an appointment. You can even report actions like phone calls or office visits that have resulted from your digital marketing. These metrics give you valuable insights into what’s working, while you can adjust what’s not.

Top real estate digital marketing strategies and channels

Now, let’s go through the 3 steps that any agent or broker can follow to accelerate the impact of their digital marketing plan, win more listings and maximize sales.

Step 1: Establish a strong online presence for your real estate brand.

The online storefront for your property listings can come in the form of:

• A website that can showcase your properties and capture new leads

• Property listing marketplaces and social media sites to broaden your reach

Design a user-friendly real estate website.

For effective web design, make sure to:

• Create dedicated landing pages for each marketing strategy.

Provide a more personalized experience with mobile-friendly landing pages for each real estate marketing campaign. Ask your marketing team or agency to tag these pages with a free tool like Google Analytics to keep track of performance and to test the page experience on mobile devices.

• Offer virtual tours of your properties.

Matterport’s Digital Pro can be your one-stop shop for all the top-notch visuals you’ll need to impress both website visitors and the sellers you represent.

• Share testimonials from satisfied customers.

Place positive reviews from past customers on your website to highlight your expertise and build confidence in your capabilities.

Amplify your real estate company with online marketplaces and social media.

Next, set up profiles on social media, review sites, and property listing marketplaces since these are places that can attract a lot of potential buyers:

• Use high-quality images.

Serve up premium visuals with detailed descriptions of your properties on these marketplaces and your social media profiles. Matterport tours, for example, can be automatically distributed to Realtor.com, Homesnap, Homes.com, and more.

• Keep your listings up to date.

Regularly update property listings to reflect changes in availability, price, and other important details to avoid disappointing potential buyers.

• Respond promptly to inquiries.

Every interaction is an opportunity to strengthen a connection with prospective clients, so respond promptly and professionally to any questions you receive through these channels.

Step 2: Find more ideal property buyers online

Setting up shop online is just part one though; the hard part is getting buyers to actually notice. At your disposal are the best digital channels that the Internet can offer, including:

• Search engines that help people discover your website and properties

• Social media to engage and build relationships with potential buyers

• Digital advertising opportunities that can boost your presence across the web

Get more people to discover your website through search engine optimization (SEO).

Optimize your real estate website and content to improve how they show up in search engine results:

• Research keywords that property buyers use to search for listings.

Get your marketing agency or team to incorporate these keywords and phrases across your website, metadata, and other real estate marketing materials to help search engine algorithms process the content.

• Create useful, location-specific landing pages.

Personalize the first thing that buyers see when they click through from search engines, such as listings filtered for a specific location or neighborhood.  For example, a real estate agent marketing properties in San Francisco might identify and cater to popular search terms like "homes for sale in San Francisco" or "commercial real estate for sale in SF." 

• Build backlinks from authoritative websites.

Search engines judge a site by the other sites that link back to it. So, build backlinks from all the local directories, social media platforms, and review sites you’ve used.

Connect with more perfect real estate buyers through social media marketing.

Nurture relationships and build trust with your social network online:

• Choose the right platform for your property and its target market.

Not all social networks are alike; it's important to focus on the ones that your target audience is actively using and engaging with.

While Facebook can offer broad reach across multiple communities and support a variety of content types, TikTok and Instagram tend to skew younger and are more compatible for video marketing. If you’re marketing commercial real estate opportunities, start with LinkedIn, where other agents and brokers already congregate to network with one another.

• Engage with your social network.

Post regularly and consistently, especially during times when your audience is most likely to be online. Then keep the dialogue going; respond to comments and answer questions with as much helpful information as possible.

• Use high-quality visuals and content marketing.

Real estate is visual, and so is social media. To maximize engagement, consider making Mattershort GIFs and trailer videos out of your 3D tour, which can be easily shared and optimized for different platforms. Think of other ways to activate this content on social media, including live-streaming open houses and hosting webinars.

Launch digital ad campaigns.

Run pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns on search engines and social media, paying only when someone actually engages with your ads. To get started:

• Define the target audience for your marketing strategy.

Align with your marketing team or agency on who you’re trying to reach, also known as your target audience. Online platforms offer the ability to target people based on their interests and behaviors. Keep in mind that some platforms have limited their targeting options to comply with fair housing laws in the United States. For instance, Facebook has removed the ability to target by zip code, age, gender, and multicultural affinity when an advertiser runs housing ads. These changes aim to ensure that your ads promote fair housing practices.

• Set campaign goals and track the return on investment (ROI).

Next, set clear goals for your campaigns. Use conversion tracking and analytics to track conversion rates and ensure that your advertising spend is generating meaningful results.

• Create compelling online ads.

Your marketing agency should create ads that are tailored to people’s needs and can capture their imagination. They should use high-quality visuals and copy that speaks directly to your target audience's preferences and address their pain points.  Google Ads and Facebook Ads also offer campaign types that will automatically create ads for you once you’ve given these platforms text, images, and video content, like the ones you created from Matterport’s Digital Pro.

• Choose the appropriate digital marketing channels.

Now, prioritize channels that can match your ads with the right people, ranging from search engine marketing (SEM), social media advertising, display advertising, and a trend toward something called connected TV, which marries the scale of traditional TV with the measurability/interactivity of digital ads.

Step 3: Re-engage potential buyers as part of your marketing strategy

In today’s attention-scarce world, it's not enough to get potential buyers through the door; you need to remind them about the properties they’re interested in. Re-engagement efforts include: 

• Email marketing campaigns to stay top-of-mind with buyer’s agents and brokers 

• Retargeted ads that can close more sales with interested buyers

Send emails to agents and brokers who’ve connected with you before.

Email marketing can help strengthen relationships with clients using these strategies:

• Develop a drip email campaign.

Drip emails are a type of email marketing that involves scheduling a series of automated emails over a period of time for lead generation. The emails can be educational, informative, or promotional.

Take leasing commercial real estate, for instance. Broker marketing campaign can revolve around sending out emails touting different spaces, amenities, and nearby attractions and even update spaces that are now off the market to drive urgency.

• Send targeted and personalized emails.

This form of email communication tends to be more specific to each recipient, containing properties tailored to their unique interests and needs. The best real estate agents even take personalization a step further. For instance, they can personalize a 3D tour with Mattertags, which gives them the ability to offer unique details and recommendations inside a space that are tailored to each client’s tastes.

Re-engage qualified prospects with retargeted ads.

Retargeting or remarketing allows you to keep in touch with buyers who’ve expressed an interest in your listings before:

• Segment your audience. 

Segment your email list based on factors like location, interests, and past behavior, like interest in a specific property or category.

• Use compelling visuals and messaging in your ads.

Personalize ads according to each audience’s interests or past behavior. Re-use the high-quality visuals you created using Digital Pro to hook them in the first place and now, to get them to return. Include any applicable promotional messaging to encourage recipients to re-engage with you.

• Use multiple digital marketing channels.

Finally, cast a wide net with your retargeting ads. Many search engines and social media sites also offer remarketing campaign strategies. And since you’re targeting people who’ve already shown an interest in the properties you offer, you can expect better ROI.

Stand out from the competition and win more listings

In today's crowded real estate market, standing out from the competition can be a challenge. However, with the help of Matterport’s Matterport's Digital Pro, an all-in-one property marketing solution, real estate agents can differentiate themselves with a standard for excellence that’s sure to win them even more listings.

This comprehensive, turnkey package of real estate marketing tools and assets is designed to showcase any property with high-quality visuals. From the immersive digital twin to the HDR photos, 2D floor plans, and preview video, Digital Pro provides a real estate agent with branding materials, including polished templates to ace the real estate listing presentation with sellers and scroll-stopping visuals to find and captivate more prospective buyers and tenants faster. 

Contact us today to book an appointment online and get started with Matterport's Digital Pro. Winning more listings and closing more deals are just around the corner.