Estate Agent Marketing

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• Get your estate agent business noticed
• How to market your estate agents
• Dedicated locally targeted marketing campaign
• Integrated strategy

Get your estate agent business noticed

The competition among estate agents is immense. You need to stand out from the crowd and be the local estate agent that your target market remembers and turn to.

The key to achieving this kind of success is strong marketing strategies. You need to ensure customers know about your excellent estate agent business, which requires you to be proactive in making your business known to your local customer base and beyond.

How to market your estate agents: advertising strategies for property marketing agencies

Online presence: Digital marketing and targeted local marketing

In the current climate, the only way to achieve this crucial visibility and to reach your potential customer base is to be visibly present online and to maximise the world of digital marketing. It’s vital you focus your efforts on your local customer base. Local people wanting to sell their home will want to use a reputable local estate agent. Also, those moving into the area will be looking for houses in the locality sold by a trusted estate agent who is part of the community and knows the local housing market and area well.

Ways to increase your online presence

Estate agents are ideally situated to maximise on the huge increase in web usage. It’s time to increase your online presence in line with this. Shape your brand identity as an estate agent around your target customers. Your online presence should ultimately allow your business to achieve its overarching advertising and marketing strategies. Essentially, it’s a vehicle for delivering these and therefore a vehicle for growth. Below are some fundamental basics to get you on your way.

1.    Website

It’s worth investing in a site that looks visually enticing but more than anything it needs to be fully useable. If it isn’t a fully working, easy to use or an up to date site you’re essentially putting potential customers off by not providing a good user experience and sending your customers to your competitor’s door.

For example, leaving expired content on your site (houses that have already been sold is a good example) leads to an incredibly frustrating process for customers. Similarly, if your site doesn’t load properly it will annoy potential customers who won’t want to hang around waiting and will look elsewhere for an estate agent with a site they can access.

It’s crucial that your contact information is correct. Make sure your site has a clear layout. Make sure it’s not confusing or crowded with information. Make sure it’s easy to find the search feature so potential customers can easily navigate your site and search specifically within a locality or postcode for available properties. Lastly make sure it’s mobile friendly.

2.    Write a regular blog

Connect with your community

A valuable way to increase your online presence is to start a regular Blog. A company blog is the perfect platform to grow your community and engage with your customers. Blogs offer the estate agent the opportunity to build brand identity while giving customers an inside eye on how the real estate business operates. You could use your blog to give clients an insight in to staff stories and successes, for example. Personal content is increasingly popular. Connecting with your client base is the way to grow your online presence and really create a personal engagement with your customers. Long-form content gets more user engagement and shares on social media. There’s plenty of research out there indicating this.

Experts in real estate

A regular blog can also provide you with the perfect forum to write authoritatively on a subject you are an expert in. This gives the business kudos and places you as experts in your field. Putting lengthy, reliable, well-researched and expert content out there will set you up as an estate agent that’s ‘in the know’. A trusted and turned to expert providing invaluable resource in your area of expertise, on top of the latest property trends. All of which can lead to future good relations and future custom.

3. Post excellent online content

Across the board, whatever content you post; social media posts; website content; blog posts; email campaigns/newsletters; the content has to be compelling, interesting, informative, useful and relevant.Relevant to the business you’re in and to your customer base and what they will want to read. Ensure content is topical to current market trends.

Offer ‘how to” advice

Content that can answer ‘how’ and ‘why’ search queries is a really popular strategy when structuring long-form content. It is this type of content that gets you excellent user engagement. ‘How to market your home’ or ‘Why you should choose an estate agents to sell your home’ are two examples of how you could use your blog to write an informative, relevant and interesting long form piece of content. Providing regular informative, lengthy content, offering advice and ‘how to’ guidance will create a good relationship between you and your customers because they are turning to you as a resource. It’s a great way to engage with your client base. Long-form content gives the reader both value and reward.

User-Generated Content (UGC)

User-Generated Content (UGC) is an excellent way to connect with your customers and promote your online presence and your business. The residential real estate field lends itself ideally to this type of marketing. Homes are big on social media. Everything that’s associated with property is popular on social media. Interiors and gardens are a huge draw! Tap into the latest trends. Encourage clients who have used you to sell their home or have bought a home through you to post photos by promoting UGC. A great idea for an estate agent is to run a photo contest that invites your customers to share photos of themselves outside or in their new home. Most people love to show off their homes, especially recently acquired homes. The prize could be a home related product such as a new throw for the sofa or get even more creative and link up with a local business relevant to your field, such as a local hardware store and offer the prize of paint or wallpaper to decorate a room. Shared exposure. Get creative and come up with some engaging ideas that will encourage your customers to want to be a part of your community.

Promoting user-generated content makes customers feel valued and a part of your business. Moving house is an emotional experience and the value of making your customers feel relevant, involved, important and appreciated cannot be underestimated.

Regularly posting such informative content will continue to boost your kudos and also your altruistic standing in the community. This continual kudos building provides more proof of your standing in your business market and testament to your industry expertise and a chance to build on your business profile and user engagement, as you build your residential real estate business.

Regularly providing this type of content will boost your online presence and continue to attract more potential customers as users share content published on your site on their favourite social media spaces.

4. Execute an excellent SEO strategy

You may wish to seek expert advice to stay ahead of this ever-changing landscape. Ensuring you have a watertight SEO strategy is crucially important. Ultimately the desired outcome of your SEO strategy is to achieve an overall increase in core keyword rankings and organic traffic. Be mindful of external factors, such as Google algorithm updates, Google Penalties, and competitors when planning your strategy. Ensure any weak internal factors, such as poor content, bad links and a non-mobile friendly site are fixed. 

SEO is an ongoing process; there is always some tweaking, refreshing, upgrading and repairing to do to ensure your site stays fresh, relevant and on top of any algorithm updates. Your website needs to stand out from the crowd of competitors. Search engines such as Google favour websites packed with quality content and links which are regularly updated.

5. Google My Business

Set up your business up on GMB. You need your business to show in local search results and this is the only way to make this happen. It’s simple and quick for customers to access information about your estate agents online. Your contact information, address, directions and opening hours can all be accessed easily. You can also include extra information to help build your brand and attract customers by utilising images and videos. Also, be sure to find ways to encourage your clients to leave excellent reviews on your Google My Business Page.

This is an excellent tool for residential real estate marketing to attract the local customer base. The information about your business on your GMB needs to be correct and up to date. Use the right keywords in your business description to get the right results in searches. When optimised with top keywords your restaurant description on GMB will help your business show up on search results.

The information you display on GMB needs to be 100% accurate. If the information you display is incorrect or the page is not working right this can negatively affect website traffic but also whether people find the location of your property marketing agency in person.

With your business address registered on GMB, your target local customers can find you by using the Google Maps function. You will have an infinitely better chance of staying on top of the competition if you take advantage of this free digital marketing tool, helping your business gain online visibility by showing up on map listings.

6. Google Posts

Use the Google Posts function to promote your business, provide interesting and topical real estate news, information on upcoming events and special announcements. These posts will appear on Google Search and Google Maps which means you can reach your target customers.

7. Targeted email campaigns

Send relevant, informative emails that will be of interest to those on your mailing list. Ensure they’re targeted correctly. Keep your property marketing purposeful and pertinent. If you’re sending out a list of available properties match the client information you hold on your database with the properties you include in the email. Ensure they are within the right price range for the client base. Don’t waste your customer’s time with information not relevant to them.

8. Social Media

Promote your business

Use social media as a primary marketing tool. Use digital marketing to engage with your local customer base. Your estate agents should be promoted in the right places online in the right way so that your customer base trust you and want to invest in a new home or sell their existing home with you. Social media gives you the perfect platform to establish business as a respected and trusted estate agent in the local vicinity. Ensure your customer base know you provide a professional service, which is smooth and hassle-free. Encourage your existing and previous customers to leave good reviews and to recommend you on Facebook etc.

Create a buzz

Homes are popular on social media; it’s a huge topic of interest. This makes the residential real estate market well placed to tap into current trends. Create a buzz surrounding the property market in your local area beyond. Leading social media platforms are all excellent avenues for you to promote your property marketing agency and are essential estate agent marketing tools enabling you to reach your target customers and achieve business growth.

Brand identity and lifestyle

Harnessing social media as a marketing strategy gives you the opportunity to shape your brand identity and to connect and form relationships with your target audience.

It’s a very emotional experience buying a new home and equally sensitive saying goodbye to a family home and moving on to pastures new. Make sure your customer base knows you understand how stressful moving can be and that you’re here to ensure the majority of stress is taken out of buying a new home. Post engaging content that is useful and of interest to your target audience. Tap into this personal aspect via social media and the targeted posts you produce and you will begin to form a relationship with your customer base and it’s this relationship that will see your success as a business grow.

Social media is a fundamental avenue to promote your business and for you to promote your brand as an estate agent and the lifestyle you are offering through the homes you sell and rent. Social media platforms help you to visually sell your business and interact with current and future customers. Creating a lifestyle brand; creating the visual online presence that your estate agents is the one to use.  

Interact

Use social media to interact with your customers. Introduce staff members, share snippets of your working day and staff stories, post photos of your most unusual, newest or popular residential properties for sale. Go one step further and post home-based lifestyle photos and content of interior design ideas, for example. Inform customers of special events or private viewings on the horizon and promote what makes your real estate property business the best. Use high quality, relevant video to capture your customer’s attention. Online users are saturated with content so it’s imperative you make yours stand out and worthy of a click; make it valuable content. Use storytelling on social media platforms to allow your client base to get to know you and your staff. Regularly share interesting, valuable and topical content. Encourage user interaction. Adopting this dedicated online marketing strategy will help generate engagement and build followers.

9. Mobile Technology

Estate Agents should be maximising mobile ads. Make sure your customer base knows you understand how stressful moving can be and that you’re here to ensure the majority of stress is taken out of buying a new home. Post engaging content that is useful and of interest to your target audience.

Most internet users predominantly search from a mobile device. If your company isn’t making the most mobile ads it simply won’t get found by users.

It’s imperative your website is mobile friendly. This is a must have basic when trying to increase your online presence and attract more custom. Sites which take too long to load or don’t read properly on a mobile device will put potential buyers off; these potential customers will look elsewhere for an estate agent they can actually access information on.

Dedicated locally targeted marketing campaign

In a saturated marketplace such as the real estate market you need to be different from all of your competitors and put into place clever, current marketing strategies to get your company noticed and remembered on your home turf. Residential real estate marketing is well suited to locally targeted advertising, allowing you to reach specific demographics. Adopting some dedicated local marketing strategies to get your property marketing company known and noticed locally is vital. It’s important to form relationships with the local community and gain a reputation as a valued member of the local business world, offering a valued service to the locality.

Petrol pump advertising: reach your local target market

Petrol pump advertising is an increasingly popular marketing solution, particularly suited to the real estate business, with the potential to maximise your brand visibility within a specific region or postcode.

AdNozzles are unmissable. On average, a person spends three minutes filling up their car at the pump. You have a captive, largely local audience with a set length of time to view your advert. It’s right in front of every motorist who stops to use the pumps, drawing them into reading it. Your advertising campaign is unavoidable to the motorist using the pump and is actually a welcome distraction. Naturally the eyes fall to rest on something while performing the regular, mundane task of filling up your car with petrol. This task does not require your full attention and your mind and eyes will wander, subconsciously searching for something to read or some information to take in. Cue your property marketing agency petrol pump advertising campaign.

Roadside, supermarket and motorway coverage means your adverts have the capacity to reach every demographic. These adverts provide a one-to-one interaction with and target the local customer base you so vitally need to capture. They get noticed by the right customer base and they work. This is some weighty exposure for your business.

You can choose who to aim your estate agent marketing at and opt for targeted options to reach specific demographics. For example:

• White van drivers: utilize diesel nozzles.
• Truckers: target HGV forecourts.
• Local Shoppers: run a campaign on supermarket forecourts.
• Local Business users: maximise the national motorway network. Attract local business users.

AdNozzles can be utilized around specific types of location such as

• Conurbations: focus on the major urban areas.
• Proximity campaign: Run your real estate property marketing campaign at forecourts within a radius or drive time zone from your company address.
• Property marketing London: advertise in premium locations within the M25.

Coverage is nationwide and spans all areas, consisting of 4,500 forecourts pumping 72% of all UK fuel volume, including the major petrol companies and supermarkets.

Fuel nozzle advertising is a smart place to advertise; providing the unique opportunity to form connections with every motorist that uses the petrol pump creating huge opportunity for impact. Your business will get noticed, especially true if your ad is visually enticing.

Petrol pump advertising is an interesting, unique and proven way of getting your business noticed in your local area.

Integrated strategy

Employ both digital and locally placed strategic marketing campaigns aimed at your target local audience. Increase your online presence. Use this increased online visibility to connect with your target customers.

Locally targeted advertising strategies such as petrol pump advertising, combined with having a strong online presence maximising digital marketing by targeting and engaging with your local customer base; leads to successful results. These strategic approaches to marketing your estate agent business can lead your customers right to your website and right through your door and subsequently right through a new door of their own, quite literally, via your residential property marketing agency!