The Complete Guide for Crafting of a Successful Real Estate Digital Marketing Strategy

Digital transformation is now a necessity of any business, including businesses that are traditionally rooted in physical interactions like real estate. 

With that being said, having a clear digital marketing strategy is now very important for any real estate business. If you don’t have a strong digital presence, your competitors will steal your clients, period. 

However, real estate digital marketing can be a complex thing to implement, but this is where this guide comes in. 

In this guide, we will share all you need to know for crafting a real estate digital marketing strategy and let us begin right away. 

Have a Professional Website

A professional and functional website should be the starting point of your digital marketing strategy. Yes, even in this age of social media, social media profiles are not adequate replacements for a functional website. 

Make sure your site is well-designed and user-friendly. Nowadays there are various platforms like Wix or Weebly that can help in quickly developing a professional website, and it’s now fairly easy to build a WordPress-based website. 

Here are some tips: 

• Make sure your site is mobile-friendly and loads fast
• Make sure your contact information is easy to find
• Optimize your site’s navigation, have a clear layout so visitors know where to go
• Use a lot of high-quality photos to showcase your properties
• Offer useful tools on your website like mortgage calculators, 360-degree tours for properties, and so on

Content Marketing and Lead Generation

Content is king, and regularly publishing high-quality, relevant content is the most effective way to attract more prospects and generate more leads. 

Publish a blog on your website where you can share real estate tips, review some of your properties, tips on home remodeling, and more. Focus on providing value for your target audience to establish your position as an expert in your industry. 

You can also publish in-depth content like eBooks or real estate industry reports, and offer them for free in exchange for their contact information (email address). 

SEO and Local SEO

SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization, which is a series of optimizations to our website to ensure it ranks higher on Google’s search results for our target keywords. 

Local SEO, on the other hand, is about optimizing our Google Maps (Google My Business) listing so it ranks higher on Google Maps. 

For a real estate business, you have to do both. 

Why? Because Google now pulls results from Google Maps when you search for queries like “realtors near me” or “realtors in New York”. So you’ll need to make sure that both your website’s content (i.e. blog post) and Google Maps listing are always available when your potential clients search for your target keywords. 

You may want to check guides on how you can implement local SEO for your real estate business. 

What keywords should you target? The basic principle is to put yourself in the shoes of your target client: those searching for a realtor, real estate agent, or a property listing. However, you can also get some traction by targeting keywords related to your local area, for example reviewing local events, popular restaurants, and so on. 

Your goal is to bring as many people to your website and let them be aware of your existence as a reliable, trustworthy real estate business. 

Social Media Marketing

It’s quite obvious why we should put our efforts into social media marketing: the social media platforms are where our target audience is nowadays. 

Here are some tips for effective real estate social media marketing:

• Find the right balance between paid promotions and organic efforts (regular posting). Paid promotions will generate quick results but can be expensive. Organic efforts are affordable, if not free, but will take some time to generate results. 
• For paid ads, the secret is to target the right audience. Use the platforms’ built-in insights and tools to help you in finding the right target audience for your business. 
• Partner with relevant influencers to help promote your property. You can, for example, work with an influencer with younger followers and let them promote a property suitable for millennials
• LinkedIn is actually a great platform beside the obvious choices of Instagram and Facebook. 

Have a Secure Digital Infrastructure

All your digital marketing efforts simply won’t matter if your website and/or app are not secure. 

According to a study by Centrify, 65% of affected customers will abandon a business impacted by a data breach, and so we can see that lack of digital security can result in long-term and even permanent reputational damage besides the potential financial repercussions. 

While digital security can be a very long subject to discuss, here are some important best practices to consider: 

• Regularly update your OS, software, and apps, as soon as security patches are made available
• Implement SSL data encryption (HTTPS) 
• Install sufficiently powerful firewall and antivirus/anti-malware
• With most cybersecurity threats are made possible by bots, it’s crucial to invest in an adequate bot management solution
• Require secure and unique passwords on all employee accounts, implement 2-factor authentication when necessary
• Create backup copies of company data

Email Marketing

Email marketing remains really effective with one of the highest ROIs among other marketing channels. 

Once you’ve generated enough leads via content and social media marketing, maintain an email database and regularly send your email newsletters. 

You can use the newsletter to promote a property and your content. You can also regularly send roundup articles like “top 10 properties of the month” that might pique their interests. 

Closing Thoughts

The main idea of your real estate digital marketing strategy is to drive people to your website and social media pages. The longer and more frequently you keep people on these platforms, the more chances you’ll have to show them your property, which will translate into a higher chance of conversions.

It’s crucial to monitor your digital marketing performance regularly according to your goals and KPIs. Digital marketing is supposed to be dynamic, so don’t be afraid to make adjustments when necessary.