Archive for the "Social Media" Category
Why You Should Always Respond to User Reviews
A new study shows companies that respond to user reviews get better ratings overall.
It’s not really news to point out that buyers and renters are likely to consider online reviews when making decisions about properties. In fact, more than 80% of Americans seek a recommendation when making a purchase of any kind.
All this is great for real estate — when the reviews are good. But stay in business long enough, and a few bad reviews are inevitable.
So what do you do when reviews go bad?
A brand new study from Harvard Business Review (HBR) shows that businesses that respond to reviews get better ratings overall. This means that bad reviews don’t necessarily spell disaster — but they do mean that you should incorporate a response plan into your overall marketing strategy.
Replying to reviews is a important part of online reputation management, which is especially crucial in the real estate world, where companies live and die by their reputation.
How does responding to reviews improve your online reputation?
To examine this question, Assistant Professor of Marketing at University of Southern California Marshall School of Business Davide Proserpio and Assistant Professor of Marketing at Boston University Questrom School of Business Giorgos Zervas looked at tens of thousands of hotel reviews and responses from TripAdvisor.
What they found was that “when hotels start responding, they receive 12% more reviews and their ratings increase, on average, by 0.12 stars.” While 0.12 may not seem like a lot, in the scale of TripAdvisor’s 5 star system, where ratings are rounded to the nearest half star, it has a significant impact on customers’ perceptions.
Proserpio and Zervas found that “approximately one-third of the hotels we studied increased their rounded ratings by half a star or more within six months of their first management response.”
Why is it that the hotels started to get more and better reviews when management started responding?
The researchers examined every facet of the data to rule out other factors that would undermine causality, and found that, in fact, “improved ratings can be directly linked to management responses,” rather than improvements made to facilities or services.
To explain it, the researchers make the analogy of eating at your favorite restaurant, and your meal arrives late. You complain to your dinner companions, but when the manager checks in seconds later and asks how everything is, “for a moment, you consider complaining, but instead choose to avoid confrontation and focus on enjoying the rest of your meal.” Essentially, by humanizing your presence on review sites, you discourage potentially awkward online interactions.
The researchers conclude, “While negative reviews are unavoidable, our work shows that managers can actively participate in shaping their firms’ online reputations. By monitoring and responding to reviews, a manager can make sure that when negative reviews come in — as they inevitably will — they can respond constructively and maybe even raise their firm’s rating along the way.”
Related posts:
- Social Media Can Be a Strategic Weapon in Real Estate Marketing
- Using Online Virtual Tours to Sell and Lease Property
- Why You Should Benchmark Real Estate Marketing Against Competitive Properties
Archive for the "Social Media" Category
5 Luxury Real Estate Brands that Use Content Marketing to Sell Property
Some of the biggest names in luxury real estate use content marketing to sell property.
Content marketing and luxury real estate are a match made in heaven. It’s an extremely powerful tool to attract visitors, convert them into leads, and convert leads to deals.
That’s largely because real estate buyers — especially luxury real estate buyers — are more connected than ever before. They have a proliferation of digital tools available to them with which to make purchase decisions. Smart real estate brands understand this reality and can use it to their advantage. How? It’s called content marketing.
Developers use content marketing to sell luxury real estate by creating high-quality, original content that attracts potential buyers searching the internet. It helps them grow brand awareness, drive traffic to the property website, and generate and nurture leads.
To give you some inspiration, here are 5 luxury real estate brands who have seen their sales transform as a result of adopting a content marketing strategy.
5 luxury brands to use content marketing to sell property
1) Corcoran Real Estate Group
Corcoran Real Estate Group has embraced content marketing and seen significant benefits. The New York City-based real estate brand increased their social media efforts and started posting two blog posts a week.
A spokesperson for the company says, “The main thing we’ve seen is that 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 — something we had also seen with search engines, but not in such large numbers.”
2) Long & Foster
Long & Foster is using a beautifully designed e-magazine to showcase luxury properties through an extensive online campaign targeting luxury clients. The online campaign drives traffic to the e-book and the website.
3) William Lyon Homes
William Lyons Homes connects available luxury properties to over 6,000 people through a multitude of social media platforms. This residential home builder links social followers to relevant articles, outside press coverage, and traditional marketing resources that serve to build on the lifestyle brand of each property.
4) Extell
Like Corcoran, Extell recognizes the value of blog content to attract visitors and nurture leads. The New York firm uses its blog to highlight not only its building with luxury condo units for sale, but also additional relevant information such as neighborhood amenities, seasonal local weather, and area restaurants.
5) Millennium Partners
Millennium Partners sells luxury real estate in the hottest markets across the United States. The firm has embraced content marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy. Millennium Tower’s Facebook page not only shares construction progress, sales information, and related press coverage, but neighborhood amenities, industry trends, and an array of visual content that’s more often than not shared widely by followers.
These are just a few of the many luxury brands that use content marketing to sell real estate. They’re meeting buyers where they are — in the digital space. If you’re not there, too, you’re missing out.
Related posts:
- 7 Ways Content Marketing Helps Sell Luxury Real Estate
- Social Media Trends for 2018 Real Estate Marketers Need to Know
- Social Media Can Be a Strategic Weapon in Real Estate Marketing
Archive for the "Social Media" 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 "Social Media" 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 "Social Media" 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 "Social Media" 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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