Archive for the "Content Marketing" Category
7 Ways Content Marketing Helps Sell Luxury Real Estate
Do you sell luxury real estate? Are you using content marketing? Here are 7 reasons you should.
It’s no secret that, when it comes to driving luxury real estate sales, content marketing works. According to Placester’s 2018 Real Estate Marketing Strategy Survey Report, 42.1% of real estate professionals surveyed plan to experiment with developing new types of content they haven’t tried. And a whopping 94.1% plan to focus on creating new and unique content for their websites.
So how exactly does content marketing help you sell luxury real estate? Here are 7 ways, just to name a few.
7 ways content marketing helps sell luxury real estate
1) Connect with qualified buyers.
Luxury buyers are highly likely to do purchasing research online. A robust digital and social media presence creates a virtual touch point to connect with affluent buyers.
2) Broaden brand awareness.
According to Sprout Social’s Consumer Engagement Index, which ranks industries by engagement from customers on social media, the real estate industry is second overall in terms of inbound engagement relative to audience size. As hyper-connected buyers engage with your relevant, quality content online, they share with their networks, and your content starts working for you exponentially.
3) Drive traffic to your property website.
Since 93% of all online experiences begin with a search engine, and 75% of searchers don’t click beyond the first page of search results, SEO is crucial for driving traffic to your property’s page. As search engine algorithms evolve, quality content is more and more important in making sure buyers find your property among top results.
4) Communicate real-time updates to potential buyers.
Through social media, particularly through the use of video content or live stories, you can get real-time updates to luxury buyers about project timelines, availability, construction progress, neighborhood news, and promotions.
5) Generate leads.
Content marketing helps drive qualified buyers to your site. According to a spokesperson for New York City-based Corcoran Real Estate Group, since adopting a robust content marketing strategy, “the quality of the referral traffic back into our main website has significantly improved. And not only are we seeing more traffic coming in, but visitors coming in from social media sites are staying longer and looking at more things.”
6) Nurture leads.
Content marketing — particularly a well-planned, automated email strategy — is a highly efficient and effective way to develop relationships with buyers at every stage of the sales process. HubSpot recently reported that businesses using marketing automation to nurture leads received a 451% increase in qualified leads. That’s right: 451%.
7) Sell your neighborhood.
Blog content focused on neighborhood amenities, seasonal recreational activities, area restaurants, etc. can help highlight factors that make your properties attractive to affluent buyers.
As Fronetics’ Director of Strategy Jennifer Hart Yim writes, “Content marketing is a new approach to an old strategy — one that’s putting real estate marketers in charge of the way potential buyers interact with their properties.”
Do you use content marketing to sell luxury real estate?
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?
Archive for the "Content Marketing" Category
10 Quick Ways to Grow Brand Awareness
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?
Archive for the "Content Marketing" Category
5 Marketing Automation Ideas for Real Estate
Real estate marketers using marketing automation can save time and money while increasing leads, conversions, and overall marketing success.
One of the biggest marketing trends this year is automation. HubSpot recently reported that businesses using marketing automation to nurture leads received a whopping 451% increase in qualified leads. So how can real estate marketing professionals reap these benefits while saving time and money on their efforts?
If you’re using it right, marketing automation software can deliver real-time, personalized messages to prospective buyers and renters at every step of the lead-generation process. You can tailor custom email messages based on indicated interests, streamline social media efforts with scheduled posts, evaluate the success of your efforts, and adjust your strategy accordingly.
Check out these five ways that marketing automation can help you sell real estate, with suggested tools for each idea.
5 marketing automation ideas for real estate
1) Social media
Keeping your posts on multiple platforms up to date, consistent, and engaging can be a major time drain. Automating your social media marketing efforts lets you plan ahead and schedule updates on some or all of your social media channels, and lets you easily strategize about peak posting times.
Suggested tool: Sprout Social
2) Email
Having a segmented email list — sorted by when someone joined the list, what emails they’ve opened, their demographics, etc. — is key. This way, you can ensure you’re sending the most relevant information to your prospects, keeping them invested (and keeping you out of their spam folder). Once you set up a template, plugging in your content is easy. You’re able to manage your contact list and schedule emails in advance.
Suggested tool: MailChimp
3) Text messages
There’s a good chance you’re reading this on your cell phone, and, if not, it’s probably close by. Savvy marketers are taking advantage of the ubiquitous nature of mobile devices and using texting to reach audiences with a short message that they’re highly likely to read.
Suggested tool: TextMarks
4) Direct mail
While any number of virtual marketing platforms are beneficial, direct mail is still a powerful tool for real estate. It can be highly time-consuming to manage direct mail campaigns and mailing lists, but automation software that lets you generate geographically or demographically targeted mailing lists can help you reach your ideal audience.
Suggested tool: TriggerMarketing
5) Lead generation and nurturing
Converting website visitors to leads is always the goal, but it often comes with a back-breaking load of time-consuming labor. The right software lets you move your prospect through the sales funnel automatically, sending emails to educate them on the next steps, and scheduling them for viewings.
Suggested tool: SmartZip
What marketing automation tools are you using in your real estate marketing?
Related posts:
- What Metrics Should You Track in Real Estate Marketing?
- Social Media Can Be a Strategic Weapon in Real Estate Marketing
- When Traditional Real Estate Marketing Methods Stop Working, Try Digital Marketing
Archive for the "Content Marketing" Category
4 Ways a Blog Can Help You Sell Real Estate
A blog can help you sell real estate by increasing search engine visibility, building relationships and trust, and nurturing leads.
You might think that it seems silly to keep up a blog for your property or real estate company. Blogging can be a significant time investment, and you may wonder who would even want to read your blog after all. But blogs do so much more for real estate than provide news and updates to a small community of interested parties.
A small investment of time and resources can mean big gains for your business. Every time you publish a blog post, you increase the chances that a user searching the internet for real estate will find your website. Here’s why.
4 ways a blog can help you sell real estate
1) Increasing search engine visibility
Search engine algorithms are getting more and more sophisticated. As they do, your site’s content becomes increasingly important.
Your content helps inform search engines about your site, improving your rank in relevant search queries (people who are searching for properties or companies like yours). As you choose content for your blog posts, be mindful of the search topics for which you want to rank highly. Every time you publish a post, you create a new chance to reach someone looking for a property like yours.
2) Building relationships
As your blog starts to gain visibility, you might find that other bloggers will start interacting with you. This can be an amazing asset.
Real estate is an industry built on collaboration. Cultivating good and lasting relationships with partners and prospects helps you build credibility in the industry.
Take a little time each day to read relevant industry blogs — and if you find them particularly relevant or interesting, share them.
3) Nurturing leads
Blog content is ideal to share (and link to) in email or social media marketing campaigns. It can help undecided leads learn more about your property and sway them in a positive direction.
Create segmented lists of email addresses based on the needs and interests of the different groups you’re trying to reach, and send targeted content from your blog their way. Sharing your blog posts on your social media accounts helps give validity and authority to your company, as you disseminate content you created yourself.
4) Becoming a trusted resource
We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: Content marketing is all about being a resource for your audience. At the end of the day, your expertise and ideas are at least as valuable as your properties. 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:
- Drive More Traffic and Generate More Leads with Your Real Estate Blog with our Editorial Calendar Template
- Social Media Trends for 2018 Real Estate Marketers Need to Know
- How Will Facebook Marketplace Housing Affect Real Estate Marketers?
Archive for the "Content Marketing" Category
Using Online Virtual Tours to Sell and Lease Property
These 4 tips will help you create virtual tours that drive prospective buyers and tenants to buy or lease your properties.
As a real estate marketer, one of the most powerful tools at your disposal is the imagination of your potential buyers and renters. You’re most likely to sell them on your property when they can envision themselves in the space.
Today, nearly all prospective buyers and tenants research properties online before visiting them in person. This is great if you have a strong digital presence. It’s unfortunate for the many properties that are underrepresented by dated websites and listings. And, for those with adequate web presences — even if your content is decent, prospects may be crossing your property off their list if they can’t imagine themselves in your space.
Enter the virtual tour.
A virtual tour gives potential buyers and renters the chance to fully immerse and imagine themselves in your property. Virtual tours help prospects fall in love with places before they’ve even visited. They are becoming almost as important as any showing or open house in today’s market.
As more and more real estate marketers hop on the virtual tour bandwagon, it’s important to keep pace, and make sure your offerings are hitting the right marks. The National Association of Realtors published a list of ways to dress up your virtual tours. We’re summarizing the key takeaways below.
4 tips for creating property-moving virtual tours
1. Create an interactive floor plan.
Vendors like TourVista, Flyinside.com, VHT, MapsAlive, and floorplansonline allow you to create interactive floor plans, so your buyers and renters can get a sense of how the space is laid out. You can display an illustrated map, allowing users to click on areas of the floor plan to see an image or, better yet, a video clip from that perspective.
2. Guide them to the improvements.
Rather than relying on your buyers to imagine how new carpets or cabinets would look, show them. Tools like Obeo’s StyleDesigner allow you to virtually decorate your space, send the images to prospects, or allow them to do the decorating themselves.
3. Use plenty of high-quality images.
The more photos you include, the more effective your virtual tour will be. Using high-definition photos allows your clients to experience your property even more realistically. This goes for photos within the property and photos of the neighborhood, views, and surrounding city or town.
4. Use 3-D.
Microsoft rolled out its Photosynth stitching technology several years ago, taking two dimensional images and re-rendering them in a navigable 3-D image. You can create these renderings with pictures from any digital camera or mobile device and free software from Microsoft. Your buyers and renters can navigate through the property from the comfort of their living room sofas.
Related posts:
- Social Media Trends for 2018 Real Estate Marketers Need to Know
- Social Media Can Be a Strategic Weapon in Real Estate Marketing
- 4 Steps to Building a Successful DIY Content Marketing Strategy for Real Estate
Archive for the "Content Marketing" Category
Drive More Traffic and Generate More Leads with Your Real Estate Blog with our Editorial Calendar Template
Our Editorial Calendar Template will hold you accountable to your content strategy.
Having a documented strategy is critical for content marketing success. An important extension of that idea is making sure your blog content is well-organized and aligns closely with your content strategy.
We have created a blog editorial calendar template to help you organize and improve your real estate content marketing efforts. This template is designed to keep you on track as you develop content that will attract and engage your prospects and customers. It will help you map out your content in a strategic manner, maximize productivity, and keep you organized. It includes weekly and monthly worksheets, as well as an ideas worksheet for tracking blog post ideas.
Why do you need an editorial calendar?
Having an editorial calendar gives structure to your blogging efforts. It’s a commitment to your potential investors, and gives you built-in accountability for your overall real estate marketing strategy.
The editorial calendar is a dynamic, internal document that will help your team determine what activities you’ll focus on, and when they’ll be completed. This enables you to optimize how you connect and engage potential buyers and tenants with your blog content.
Organized week-by-week, an editorial calendar makes it easy to visualize your marketing strategy, ensuring consistently scheduled blog posts and a diversity of topics.
Beyond scheduling blog posts, the use of an editorial calendar keeps other essential considerations front of mind. By including related information — such as keyword assignments, target persona(s), and associated promotions or calls-to-action — will make your editorial calendar an indispensable guide to your blogging success.
We’ve created this template to guide your blogging efforts. Designed to keep you on track as you develop content that will attract and engage potential buyers and renters, our free template will help you map out your content in a strategic manner, maximize productivity, and keep you organized.
Download the free resource below.
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