Newspaper ads won’t cut it any longer. You need to be publishing educational, branded, email, and entrepreneurial content to sell real estate.
There’s something reassuring about the tried and true. Traditional marketing methods have worked for generations — why not trust that they will continue to be all you need? But, in today’s digital world, you can’t afford to just create a listing, place an ad in a magazine, and hope all your units sell.
The good news is that content marketing opens up interesting, innovative, and exciting possibilities, not only for spreading awareness about your properties, but for shaping your company’s brand and corporate personality. We think that once you embrace content marketing, you won’t look back.
As you start experimenting with this type of marketing, here are 4 types of content you need to sell real estate.
4 types of content you need to sell real estate
1) Educational content
One of the fundamental principals of content marketing in the real estate industry is that your most valuable commodity is not your properties, but your expertise and thought leadership. We often hear our clients worry that publishing educational content is “giving away trade secrets.” While this is an understandable fear, it’s time to abandon it.
Creating content that educates your audience. For example, a piece about finding investment opportunities for your target client base establishes you as a trusted source of useful information. And it means your readers are far more likely to become your clients.
2) Branded content
Creating effective branded content is all about ensuring that your audience is “consistently seeing your name, style, and thoughts,” while avoiding “being too promotional and one of those spammy real estate-types,” writes Forbes contributor Steve Olenski.
James Becker, CEO and founder of Fusion Growth Partners, suggests that the “story” of a brand should be at the root of all content and marketing efforts: “The story can create an almost tangible expectation for the reader to the level of service and authentic connection they will receive as a client.”
3) Email content
Getting email content marketing right can be tricky. Of course, step one is gathering an email list. Olenski suggests that “when you think about your email marketing strategy, your first thought should be: ‘What content or experience can I create that will make someone give me their email?’”
Once you’ve established a list of emails, you can experiment with different copy, and refine your list, segmenting it into different buyer types. Email marketing is a great place to experiment with automation.
4) Entrepreneurial content
“Real estate is similar to entrepreneurship in that it requires sourcing projects and adding value through the process,” writes Olenski. For example, According to Joe Pierson, CEO of BigKeyRealestate, “[Brands] should try to tap into the huge income potential of people who work in tech by framing real estate as an entrepreneurial endeavor suitable for their backgrounds. This … could open up a wealth of new buyers to work with.”
The bottom line is that content marketing is about generating value for customers and telling the kind of story that cements your reputation as a trusted knowledge source.
How do you use content to sell real estate?
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