It’s no secret that, when it comes to the real estate market, competition is the name of the game. So, in an age when prospective buyers can see inside the living room of a home for sale 2,000 miles away, adapting your online marketing strategy to highlight your services and secure a sale should be at the top of your priority list.
An extension of your sales skill set, digital marketing will see you refine your strategy in line with this century’s digital shift, helping you hone your craft to the benefit of your sales figures. From optimizing your onsite content to targeting your audience through email campaigns, in this article, we’ll offer a range of actionable tips to help boost your sales ratings and future-proof your career this year and beyond.
Invest in email marketing
According to Smart Insights, a successful email campaign should expect to achieve a click-through rate of between 10% and 15% and, according to the email benchmark compilation from IBM, those sent from businesses within the real estate sector currently have an average click-through rate of 10.2%. While this is encouraging in theory, for those of you just starting to integrate email campaigns into your digital marketing strategy, competition is fierce and you may not be able to expect these sorts of figures immediately.
Email campaigns are a valuable marketing tool used to connect with new leads and nurture existing ones, but it’s not quite as simple as sitting down and creating your first campaign, then sending it out to your subscribers. An effective campaign will make use of well-researched audience segmentation and personalized content that engages the recipient providing them with the vital trigger needed to contact you in an offline capacity.
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Focus on user experience
How likely would you be to close down a website upon discovering that it doesn’t load quickly enough? We’d guess pretty likely. With so many elements on a real estate website being used all at once—from photos and videos to contact links and maps—these sites can, in many cases, be incredibly slow to load on both desktop and mobile platforms. Understandably, this can cause users to bounce straight off your site and click the next search result in pursuit of a more satisfying experience.
With this in mind, it’s crucial you consider how well-optimized your website is for the user. This should be done by thinking about how easy it is to navigate (through filters and category pages), how fast your pages load (on desktop, mobile and tablet) and how relevant and engaging your content is (does it compel the user to get in touch with you?). By focusing your online strategy on your user’s experience as opposed to your inevitable sales intentions, you’re more likely to create a natural, engaged customer base built on trust, helping you guide users through your sales funnel with ease.
Consider your content
In the real estate sector, more so than in many other industries, communication is key. As such, when it comes to communicating with potential clientele via your digital marketing strategy, content really is king. Be it the written word or video and imagery, you need to focus on creating high-quality content that captures leads by communicating a powerful and distinct brand voice.
To do this, you need to pay equal attention to search engine optimization (SEO) and user experience (UX). Professional content creation specialists are equipped to support you in this quest, creating custom content that targets high-value search queries as well as including relevant calls-to-action (CTAs) that prompt sales leads.
Digital marketing is a broad term and, within the saturated real estate market, it certainly comes with its own nuances. While, naturally, your end goal will be to generate more relevant sales opportunities, an initial focus on user experience to establish an online presence that ultimately helps you build an engaged following should remain at the top of your priority list. By fine-tuning how your brand is portrayed online, you’ll be in the driver’s seat when it comes to guiding leads through your sales funnel—remembering all the while that digital marketing is a marathon, not a sprint and patience in this industry is a virtue.
About the Author: Tori Atkinson is the lead content creator for Paragraft, providing custom content writing services for ambitious brands looking to find and nurture their brand voice.
