Archive for Katie Russell
Twitter and Real Estate Marketing: 3 Tips to Get You Started
Thinking of using Twitter to market your real estate brand? The social media platform helps build brand awareness and boost engagement. Here are three tips to get you started with Twitter and real estate marketing.
Highlights:
- When real estate brands are looking to grow audiences, increase brand awareness, and boost engagement, social media is an ideal place to start.
- It’s key to have a strategy that outlines the methods by which you will target, reach and engage prospects. It also helps to keep tweets in line with brand messaging.
- using social media for real estate marketing is a great way to start a conversation, exchange advice, and create a lasting relationship with prospects.
When you think about social media, you think about people. Social media platforms have skyrocketed in popularity due to its ability to connect people, and this is why social media has become such a valuable asset to marketers.
When real estate brands are looking to grow audiences, increase brand awareness, and boost engagement, social media is an ideal place to start. But it’s not as easy as signing up and pushing out a few tweets. Here are three tips every real estate brand needs to know about using Twitter to market your next project.
Three tips to get real estate marketers started on Twitter
1. Start with a strategy
Marketers are often tempted to jump right in and start shooting out tweets. But as with any digital marketing effort, it’s best to start with a plan. A strategy outlines the methods by which you will target, reach and engage prospects. It also helps to keep tweets in line with brand messaging.
Make sure your Twitter and real estate marketing strategy includes a content calendar that’s full of valuable, informative content. Don’t be afraid to think outside of the box when it comes to marketing. The largest percentage of users on Twitter are millennials (not surprising), so make sure your content calendar includes topics that readers find interesting: hot spots in your property’s neighborhood, seasonal community events, and features from your property.
2. Use visuals (including video)
Twitter is all about the visual. In fact, tweets with pictures or videos receive 18% more likes and 150% more retweets. Since video is the most popular and most widely shared form of online content right now, it’s smart marketing to incorporate video into your tweets. Think about supporting your content through visually appealing videos, such as quick interviews, breaking news updates, or even how-to demonstrations, infographics and pictures. You’ll be making a lasting impression, attracting new followers and driving traffic to your website.
3. Engage
Don’t be shy! Once you’ve started tweeting and gain followers, get in there and start engaging. Ask questions, like, and re-tweet posts. Just remember to keep your engagement informative by focusing on insightful and interesting content.
We encourage our real estate clients to show what makes their brand unique when engaging with followers. This honest view into your company allows followers to feel comfortable with your brand and easier to engage with. Like I mentioned before, social media and real estate share the ability to connect people. Don’t be afraid to show the “human” side of your brand.
These three strategies will help get you started with Twitter and real estate marketing. With the right strategies, using social media for real estate marketing is a great way to start a conversation, exchange advice, and create a lasting relationship with prospects. Looking for more tips on creating or updating your social media strategy? Shoot us an email.
Related posts:
- The Top 3 Social Media Mistakes Real Estate Brands Still Make
- 5 Tips for Building a Successful Real Estate Social Media Marketing Program
- Infographic: Real Estate Social Media Marketing Strategies
Archive for Katie Russell
5 Real Estate Marketing Strategies for 2019
Keeping up with the constant changes can be incredibly tough on real estate marketers — these 5 strategies for real estate marketing are what you need to be doing right now.
Highlights:
- Make sure your website is optimized; it’s the center of your digital assets.
- Today’s market is increasingly visual: invest in virtual tours and professional photography to make your properties stand out.
- Content marketing, such as blogging, is the most effective tool at your disposal.
Real estate marketers, we know your job isn’t easy. With today’s fiercely competitive market, not to mention the seemingly constant changes brought about by technology, it’s easy to be left breathless. But to set your business apart from the pack, it’s crucial to stay on top of the changes taking place and hone a robust marketing strategy.
We’ve put together these five failsafe strategies that real estate marketers should be adopting right now.
Five real estate marketing strategies that are bound to work in 2019
1. Build an excellent website
Some things are timeless. While content marketing trends will continue to shift and evolve, the need for a quality, strategically designed website is here to stay. Your website is the nexus of your digital assets and is on the frontlines when it comes to capturing leads. Having a website that’s visually appealing, easily navigable, and content– and information-rich means better SEO, higher quality leads, and overall success.
Writing for Forbes, software engineer R.L. Adams suggests not to “bombard visitors with too many ads all over the place and ensure that it’s a site that people want to continue to check back on with fresh content and properties added regularly.”
2. Create virtual tours
Creating virtual tours for your properties is an investment, but it’s never been more worthwhile than it is now. In our increasingly visual culture (recent research indicates that the millennial demographic overwhelmingly favors visual content online), giving potential buyers and renters a detailed, interactive look at your properties is a no-brainer.
Looking for tips on creating virtual tours? Check out this post.
3. Invest in professional real estate photography
These days, everyone with a smartphone is a would-be photographer. With the ease and convenience of snapping high-quality photos with your phone, hiring a professional photographer can seem like a questionable investment. It isn’t. Again, in this highly visual culture, photos of your properties have never been more important. A professional photographer who specializes in real estate and who is also well-versed in editing will go a long way.
4. Blog
We’ve said it before, and we’ll certainly say it again: A blog helps you sell real estate. Among the many benefits of adding a blog to your site are increased search engine visibility, enhanced customer and industry relationships, better lead nurturing, and a boosted reputation. With a blog, you’re offering value to your customers separate and outside of your properties — in turn, you’ll see your sales boosted.
5. Start digital marketing
Inbound marketing, like digital marketing, is about prioritizing the needs of your audience over a sales pitch. When it comes to real estate, digital marketing has proven time and again to be far more effective than overt sales pitches. A robust digital marketing strategy includes a blog, social media presence, informational guides and case studies, email marketing, and more.
Even as technology and trends shift, your expertise and ideas are at least as valuable as your properties. At the end of the day, people want to hire trustworthy and knowledgeable real estate experts. If you can answer the needs and questions of your potential buyers and renters, you cultivate lasting and fruitful relationships with them.
Related posts:
- Using Online Virtual Tours to Sell and Lease Property
- Infographic: Statistics that Prove Why Your Real Estate Marketing Needs to Include a Blog
- Drive More Traffic and Generate More Leads with Your Real Estate Blog with our Editorial Calendar Template
Archive for Katie Russell
The Role of Social Media in Luxury Real Estate Marketing
In the ultra-competitive field of luxury real estate marketing, social media can be your secret weapon. Here’s how these platforms can help set your brand apart, and drive conversions.
Highlights:
- Social media is an ideal place to create and share your brand narrative.
- With social media usage consistently on the rise, these platforms help lead users to your website.
- The visual nature of social platforms like Facebook and Instagram is ideal for marketing luxury real estate.
Luxury real estate doesn’t exactly sell itself — if you’re a marketer, you’re well aware of this fact! The relatively limited customer base and highly competitive field make it crucial for luxury real estate brands to set themselves and their properties above the pack. When it comes to marketing luxury real estate, social media can be your best friend.
Of course, social media marketing and real estate are a match made in heaven. Real estate is inherently personal, even at the corporate and luxury levels, and marketers can use social media to great effect in cultivating productive relationships with leads. Here are four ways social media can boost your luxury real estate marketing efforts.
4 Ways Social Media Can Help with Luxury Real Estate Marketing
1. Tell the story of your brand
Luxury real estate marketing depends on telling the unique story of your brand — your brand narrative. Social media provides an ideal platform for creating and sharing your brand narrative. Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are all highly visual networks, perfect for giving your followers and inside look at your authentic luxury brand.
Use photos and videos to show off your luxury properties, and to capture the look and feel of your corporate personality. (If you’re looking for some extra inspiration, these 5 Instagram accounts are killing it at Instagram marketing.) Let your brand’s identity and unique personality shine through in both your visual and written social media content.
2. Cultivate relationships
When it comes to marketing luxury real estate on social media, perhaps the most important, and most often forgotten aspect is the “social.” The amazing thing about these platforms is that they allow marketers not just to share branded content, but to interact with followers, building lasting relationships.
Take advantage of this tremendous opportunity that social media offers. Encourage your followers to engage with you through comments, photo competitions, and questions. When your followers interact with your content, be sure to reply! Go above and beyond by taking the time to interact with content posted by your audience, peer brands, or luxury real estate influencers. Trust us, these small efforts will pay off in a big way.
3. Drive traffic to your website
Used effectively, social media is a great way to drive organic traffic to your website. Consider this: while relatively few people spend time online browsing luxury real estate websites, the average person spends about 135 minutes per day on social media. Like it or not, these platforms are becoming our primary sources for news, socialization, and branded content.
An active social media presence lets you meet your luxury real estate clientele where they are and draw them to your other digital assets. The content you post should be entertaining and engaging, and help guide followers to your website, generating leads and conversions.
4. Boost SEO
Getting people to your website depends largely on search engine optimization (SEO). What many real estate marketers aren’t aware of is that SEO can actually be improved by your social media presence. Yes, the content on your website is critical, but having a well-rounded online presence also factors into search engine algorithms and can help you move towards that coveted top spot.
Sharing your content on social media, for example, helps to build up a network of backlinks, which are one of the top factors that algorithms use to determine search engine rank. Not only that, social media platforms are ideal places to share information about your luxury real estate brand, such as name, address, and phone number. Believe it or not, keeping these simple pieces of information accurate and up to date in multiple locations online strengthens your SEO.
The bottom line
Luxury real estate marketing is a fiercely competitive field, but used effectively, social media offers a key set of tools to set your brand apart. Invest in a strategic social media marketing campaign, and watch your brand awareness, reputation, and conversion rate grow.
Related Posts:
- 5 Real Estate Instagram Accounts You Should be Following
- The Top 3 Social Media Mistakes Real Estate Brands Still Make
- Infographic: Real Estate Social Media Marketing Strategies
Archive for Katie Russell
How to Explain Content Marketing ROI to Win (or Keep) Buy-In
Proving content marketing ROI can seem like a daunting task for real estate marketers, but finding and analyzing the right metrics effectively is crucial to measuring ROI, and ensuring buy-in.
Highlights:
- Talking about marketing as if it’s an art rather than a science does a disservice to your department and to your brand as a whole.
- Make sure your executives understand the nature and goals of your marketing strategy.
- The right metrics will help you track ROI, and justify executive buy-in.
Accountability and showing a solid return on investment (ROI) is everything when it comes to ensuring that your business is allocating adequate resources to marketing your brand and properties. And let’s face it, too many executives think that marketing is, at best, about supporting sales or, at worst, a department that exists to paste logos onto coffee mugs.
Writing for Marketo, Content Marketing Specialist Bryson Runser points out that as an “informed marketer, it’s your duty to infuse credibility into your organization by way of meaningful metrics that tie directly to your top and bottom line.” While the C-suite famously cares nothing about internal marketing metrics like Facebook likes or click-through rate, metrics are crucial to the success of marketing real estate. Not only that, effective use of metrics is the best way to establish the function and importance of the marketing department within your organization.
Get your audience on the same page
Before we dive into the nitty-gritty of proving content marketing ROI for the C-suite, it’s important to acknowledge that content marketing hasn’t been around all that long. It’s only in the past decade that the real estate industry has been reshaped by digital and content marketing. This means that you can’t necessarily count on the fact that your organization’s higher-ups understand exactly what content marketing is.
Take the time to make sure your executives understand not only the definition of content marketing, but also how it will help your real estate brand grow and your business achieve various specific goals. Content marketing expert Julia McCoy suggests using approachable metaphors, such as “content marketing is a vehicle, and content marketing strategy is the engine. The vehicle takes you to your destination only if the engine is in good shape.”
Numbers don’t lie
One of the main aspects of the “crisis of accountability” is a problematic view of what marketing is: “if marketing leaders insist that marketing is an art and not a science,” Runser writes,”then the department will remain isolated from other groups.” Establishing that content marketing is not only dependent upon data, but can also be measured, is key to changing that perception.
“Marketing must be able to justify their expenditures as investments in revenue and growth,” writes Runser. Of course, it’s partly a chicken-and-egg issue, since getting to the point of being able to talk about expenditures in this way does require investment from the top of your business.
We know that measuring the impact of content marketing can be tricky. But it’s not impossible. The first step is determining the right metrics to track. For more detailed ideas and analysis, check out this post, which details how to determine and use metrics for real estate marketers to measure the impact of content marketing on brand awareness.
Why are you reporting?
Collecting and reporting on content marketing ROI can feel like you’re spinning your wheels and collecting meaningless data. But it’s crucial to keep metrics focused on the main goal: to enable you and your business to make decisions that improve your marketing efforts. “This is the difference between backward-looking measurement and decision-focused management,” says Runser.
Data for the sake of data doesn’t do any good. Data should be used to shape insights, which in turn informs priorities and actions for your business. We’ve written before about the dangers of vanity metrics, which have no bearing on your bottom line but can give you an inflated sense of success.
It’s very easy to fall into the trap of meaningless data collection, especially when marketers are often struggling to prove their worthiness to the C-suite. But using metrics to improve marketing’s performance will go a long way towards winning over executives. “[B]y aligning data measurements with your company’s strategic objectives,” Runser writes, “it will be easier to allocate resources by revenue impact.”
Related posts:
- What Metrics Should You Track in Real Estate Marketing?
- The Metrics You Should Be Measuring in Real Estate Marketing (Hint: Not Vanity Metrics)
- Social Media Can Be a Strategic Weapon in Real Estate Marketing
Archive for Katie Russell
Top 5 Blogs for Real Estate Marketers
Blogs are an ideal source of knowledge and insights for real estate marketing professionals. Here are our favorite five blogs for real estate marketers to follow.
Highlights:
- Up-to-date knowledge is crucial for real estate marketers.
- Following the right blogs sets you up for success and keeps you aware of conversations in the industry.
- These five blogs for real estate marketers are our favorite sources of knowledge and insights.
Promoting your properties, growing your business, converting leads — it’s all about having the knowledge-base that shapes your strategies and solutions. There’s always something new to learn in real estate marketing. We think this makes it an incredibly exciting field — but we also know that it can be equally overwhelming.
If you know where to look, there’s a vibrant conversation going on among real estate marketers as an ever-growing field of ideas is being generated and discussed. We’ve compiled this list of our five favorite blogs for real estate marketers that we think you should be following, too. These are ideal places for information and ideas about overall best practices, social media use, writing effective content, and more.
5 blogs for real estate marketers
1. Propmodo Real Estate
Propmodo Real Estate is the place for cutting-edge insights into how technology is changing the way commercial real estate is acquired, managed, and used. This multimedia site follows people, practices, and tools that are shaping the business of real estate.
A few of our favorite posts include a discussion of the commercial real estate sector’s embrace of lease automation, and “Viral Marketing and Buzz Marketing: What is Better for Real Estate Business?”
2. BombBomb
Like Propmodo, BombBomb’s blog is real estate-specific and dedicated to building relationships through video to create more opportunities in email, text, and social media. It’s particularly strong on email marketing, which is still the most profitable form of marketing online.
We love what BombBomb has to say about the nuts and bolts aspects of real estate marketing, but they also have some great think pieces. For example, a recent post and podcast episode on “Trust, Neuroscience, and the Customer Experience” explored the neuroscience behind trusting relationships with clients, the nature of trust itself, and how to cultivate it.
3. HubSpot Marketing
HubSpot Marketing is a phenomenal resource for all content marketers, including real estate marketers. It covers everything you need to know to become a marketing whiz. Topics include SEO, blogging, social media, lead generation, email marketing, lead management, analytics, and more.
These experts in content marketing may not be writing specifically about real estate, but we have them on the list, since it’s worthwhile for real estate marketers to be aware of the larger ideas and solutions being discussed as it pertains to content marketing.
4. Geek Estate
A good choice for the tech-savvy marketer, Geek Estate focuses on what’s happening in real estate technology — for example, the changes happening with Zillow and Trulia. This is a great resource for being on the cutting-edge of upcoming trends.
Geek Estate is a private community of real estate technologists, innovators, and founders. Much of their content requires a subscription, and membership could be well worth your while. The blog has recently tackled the subject of “Uberizing Real Estate with Zillow Offers.”
5. Social Media Today
Like Hubspot, Social Media Today isn’t specifically focused on real estate. However, it’s a great go-to resource for all things social media, a crucial topic for real estate marketers. The blog frequently features insights from leaders in the field. And SMT’s team of influencers covers topics including social media developments, trending, social marketing, digital strategy, and content marketing.
SMT is a particularly good source of up-to-the-minute news from the social media and larger tech sector. The site keeps closely abreast of the latest developments, and keeps a roundup of social media updates separately archived for easy perusal.
Read them all or pick your favorite — you’ll benefit from increasing your knowledge.
Related Posts:
- Infographic: Real Estate Social Media Marketing Strategies
- A Visual Guide to Social Media Posting Frequency for Real Estate
- Video: Top Real Estate Marketing Trends 2019
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