If you want to grow brand awareness, or ensure potential buyers know your property exists, try these strategies.
If you’re building a new property, or just rebranding an old one with a bad reputation, you want to get the word out quickly about what your project is all about. It’s called brand awareness.
For real estate developers and property management companies, brand awareness means that your target buyers (or tenants) know that your property exists. They understand the lifestyle that the property offers.
To grow brand awareness requires a proactive approach. Some companies turn to traditional methods, such as billboards. But it’s important to think about your digital strategy, as well, since the vast majority of real estate research occurs online.
Check out these 10 ways to use content marketing to grow brand awareness quickly.
10 ways to grow brand awareness — fast
1) Establish your brand.
To grow brand awareness, you must first have a brand. This, generally, is the message of your property describing the kind of lifestyle it affords people who live there.
You need concrete creative assets, like a logo and images, and other non-tangibles, like taglines and a defined look and feel. You also need a consistent brand message, which you should develop based on detailed buyer personas laid out as part of the brand-creation process. If you’re selling luxury condos, for example, all of these assets, the tone and voice of your marketing collateral, and even the platforms you decide to participate in should reflect a sense of sophistication and elegance.
Take the time to develop your full brand story, so that you have something (a lifestyle that transcends brick and mortar) to sell to prospective buyers and renters.
2) Start a blog.
You might think that it seems silly to keep up a blog for your property. Who would even want to read it? But a blog can actually help you sell real estate by increasing the amount of traffic search engines send to your website.
The more you publish, the higher you’ll rank with search engines. And every time you publish a blog post, you increase the chances that a user searching the internet for real estate will find your website.
Blogs also help tell your brand story. They help buyers imagine themselves in your space. They nurture leads and build trust among potential buyers. In a recent audit of a client’s website, we found that people who read the blog converted at an almost 30% higher rate than other web traffic. That’s significant.
3) Become a resource.
Bear with me on this one. But I’ve seen this work many, many times.
Content marketing is all about being a trusted resource for your audience. Ditch the blatant sales pitch in your content and think about how you can help your target buyers instead.
Offer guidance on purchasing a home, information about your property’s neighborhood, or tips on upcoming events in the area. You’ll build trust with your current audience and provide them with content they’re more likely to share with their friends and followers. And that is how you grow brand awareness.
4) Make sharing easy.
This is a great way to let your successes go to work for you. Make it easy for your audience and followers to share your content with their networks. Give them sharing options for email, social media — heck, put share links on anything and everything. Social media is a powerful tool in selling real estate. Don’t underuse it.
5) Start content partnerships.
Again, this is all about leveraging other people’s audiences to spread the word about your property and brand.
Reach out to local real estate media sites and blogs to see if you can author a post for them. See if a local interior designer or financial planning professional would like to write a guest-post series for your blog, and ask them to share it on their social media accounts. Basically, create two-way content partnerships where you will ensure that your brand’s name will come across the screens of an influencer’s audiences.
6) Partner with local businesses.
By its nature, real estate is a location-oriented industry. You can partner with businesses in your area to hold seminars or festivals, sponsor sports teams, and donate to charity events.
This works in the digital world as well. On social media, promote the opening of new neighborhood restaurants, and congratulate nearby businesses when they win local best-of awards. Join online charity challenges to support local causes. Build your digital network of local businesses and organizations so that your brand becomes synonymous with the neighborhood wherever locals browse online.
7) Hold social media contests.
Everybody loves to win a contest. Use your social media platforms to create contests in which followers submit a photo or video, and let other users vote for their favorites. Contestants will share the link with their networks, and your brand awareness grows exponentially.
8) Try paid social advertising.
Facebook and Twitter ads are relatively cheap, and both platforms do a great job of making sure your content gets to your target audience. You can set metrics, and customize your preferences for targeted audience in a huge variety of ways.
9) Leverage influencer marketing.
Think beyond buyers themselves. Who influences them when it comes to making major purchases? Beyond family, financial professionals, interior designers, and, of course, brokers represent strong spheres of influence in the real estate space.
Create targeted campaigns to reach these influencers via email, social media, and digital advertising. Getting your name in front of them is one step in the direction of getting your brand on potential buyers’ minds.
10) Get visual with your content.
I mentioned blogging before as an excellent way to drive traffic to your website. But don’t stop with just words.
Virtual tours, infographics, videos, and other highly visual media are not only great for engaging your current audience. They’re also more likely to be shared by your followers with their networks. Again, when people share your content, you grow brand awareness.
How do you grow brand awareness for your properties?
Related posts:
- 4 Ways a Blog Can Help You Sell Real Estate
- Social Media Trends for 2018 Real Estate Marketers Need to Know
- What Metrics Should You Track in Real Estate Marketing?
