Internet Best Practices for Real Estate Agents
In a lot of ways, technology has been at the forefront in transforming the ‘landscape’ of the real estate industry over the past few years. If you recall the days prior to the virtual tours, card-less transactions, and online listings, it’ll be hard to look past how much the business has benefited from the improved efficiency that has come with digital media. As online advertising innovator, Lucas Donat, said, “The internet affords businesses a level of relationship with consumers that’s previously unfathomable. With the right strategy and even just the basic online tools, you can access a wider range of prospects without investing a hefty amount of your time and resources.” Like many other industries, the shift towards digital has empowered real estate agents to do more with less. While the internet has opened up a lot of doors for realtors, not all agents take advantage of these new opportunities. In this blog, we’ll go over some internet best practices for real estate agents.
Taking Advantage of Internet Marketing
Imagine what top-performing professionals can do once they bring their business online. The possibility to not just earn more, but also turn their brand into a full-blown business is right there for the taking. With social media, blogging, YouTube, and other mediums becoming increasingly popular, realtors have more chances than ever to tell their story and promote their services. Agents can utilize paid and organic communications to reach audiences that they’ve never been able to reach before. Today’s agents can even geo-target individuals based on the areas in which they want to do business. Here are a few innovative ways to utilize the latest in digital marketing for real estate agents in today’s climate:
- Run Facebook ads for your listings to audiences in the surrounding areas.
- Upload video walkthroughs of homes to your social channels
- Write blogs about how to buy and sell homes in specific regions
- Engage with people on social to stay top of mind
Regardless of where you’re coming from as a real estate agent, going online is the way to go if you want to push your career forward. With that being said, we summed up a few internet best practices that will help you build a killer online marketing strategy.
Build Your Email Prospects and Buyers List
You may not turn a prospect into a house buyer overnight, but if you can somehow secure their contact details, you’re giving yourself a chance to make an impression as a real estate expert over several weeks or months (or even years) through structured email campaigns. Email can also be an effective tool for open house invitations, offering useful tips to people in transition, and monthly or quarterly market updates. Simple touches over extended periods of time don’t take much effort, but can help you stay in front of potential clients as they prepare for their next home search. Furthermore, having a rich email list with good newsletter content should also help you establish yourself as an authority in your local market.
Build a Personal Website
The initial investment you’ll make to purchase a domain and build a website can equate to hundreds, if not thousands, of leads for years to come. Since the typical property search now begins online, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t be in the mix with a professional website. While social media and online listings are great venues to begin your campaign, a website adds credibility and allows you to customize your listings to make them more appealing and unique. Just be sure to proactively participate in the design process of your site. Take note that prospective houses are inherently visual and must be seen in their best light to attract viewers. Therefore, the design must be fluid, and your images and texts must be responsive in both desktop computers and phones.
Have Social Media Presence
Despite coming off a pretty challenging year, Facebook is still looking like the go-to-social media platform for real estate agents . Organic campaigns, which are simply promotions without paid ads, has took a significant hit in each of the last few updates, but even then, it’s hard to ignore that the social networking giant still has a little over 2 billion users that all niche can take advantage of. On the other side of the spectrum is LinkedIn, which is best for building your professional network. It’s a perfect platform to launch yourself as a subject-matter expert as well. In fact, more agents are using LinkedIn to showcase their successes, posting to their following when they close deals. This helps strengthen their credibility in the professional world. In addition, you should also try your hand in Twitter and Instagram if you want to put an extra emphasis on your visual campaigns and promotions. Moreover, Instagram is very user-friendly. Coupled with the fact that it’s mainly accessed on mobile devices, you can understand why it leads to higher levels of engagement — increasing views, strengthening branding, and if targeted well, generating leads.
Keep Track of Your Metrics
Measuring the success of your campaigns is key to maximizing your success online moving forward. You might find yourself overwhelmed at first, but you’re probably well aware that all numbers do lead to the all-important conversion. Bear in mind that you must consistently identify and track your online engagement metrics to better understand which strategies are worked and which should be replaced or tweaked. There are also factors like engagement, followers, and shares where you will find small wins that can also be leveraged when running your next campaign.
Need More Help?
Looking for more help taking advantage of various digital tools in the context of real estate? 360training.com offers real estate continuing education courses that help agents renew their license and stay updated on the latest best practices across a variety of different topics, platforms, and channels.
