---

3 Ways to Boost Your Real Estate Marketing with Video

by Elizabeth Hines | Nov 20, 2018 | Blog, Content Marketing, Real Estate Marketing | 0 comments

Video marketing is no longer the wave of the future—it’s now. And it’s one of the best and most cost-effective ways to grow your social media audience and generate leads. 

If you’re a real estate marketer, you’re probably aware that one of the biggest industry trends in 2018 is the growing prevalence of video. Recent research from Social Media Examiner indicates that not only do nearly two-thirds (63%) of marketers use video content in their social media marketing, but 77% plan to increase video content within the next year.  

These days, most real estate searches start online—in fact, according to RESAAS, 67% of the real estate buyer’s journey is now done online. Since video is the most popular and most widely shared form of online content right now, it’s key to creating a positive first impression, and converting leads.  

Here are three ways that you can use video to give your real estate marketing efforts a boost. 

Show you know the area using real estate marketing with video 

Whether your properties are rural, urban, or suburban, displaying deep knowledge of your location and community is crucial to cultivating credibility. You can use real estate marketing with video to demonstrate your local credentials. Jason Hsiao, Chief Video Officer and Co-Founder of Animoto, suggests that “there’s no need to hire a team of videographers or invest in expensive equipment—a simple neighborhood overview or market update can demonstrate your expertise.” 

For example, Brothers Commercial Brokerage of New Jersey used Animoto to create a Facebook video detailing the history of a local building, tapping into a sense of nostalgia and pride of place. It received 14,000 views, as well as 129 shares, and helped engage a new segment of potential buyers and renters. 

Up your social media game 

Professionalism on Facebook and Instagram is all about presentation and finding the right balance of appealing to the personal, while maintaining a streamlined image for your brand. Effective use of video can go a long way to improving your social media presence. Creating videos, like the one Brothers Commercial Brokerage used, is cost-effective and prime fodder for sharing online. 

Instagram Stories lets you post videos in small, 15-second increments, and can be an ideal platform for quick video tours of units or properties. Because of  Facebook’s recent newsfeed changes, your best bet is to upload videos directly to Facebook’s platform, rather than sharing YouTube or other links.  

Establish your credibility and build your brand 

We live in a highly visual world, particularly when it comes to social media. Real estate marketing with video is an immediate and effective way to reach your audience and show them what makes your brand and properties special. “On social media, where competition is loud, video helps your brand cut through the noise and stay ahead of the curve,” says Hsiao.  

Video is an ideal way to connect with your market, establish your credentials, improve your social media engagement, drive traffic to your website, and generate leads. And best of all, videos don’t require a large financial investment, just some planning and creativity. Fuel your real estate marketing with video, starting today. 

Related posts: 

• 10 Social Media Statistics for Real Estate Marketers 2018 
• 4 Real Estate Marketing Trends 2018 
• How Inbound Marketing for Real Estate Works to Improve Sales

---

For More Creative Content, Break These 4 Rules

by Katie Russell | Aug 27, 2019 | Blog, Content Marketing, Real Estate Marketing | 0 comments

The best way to come up with engaging and creative content is to think outside the box and, sometimes, take risks. Here are 4 rules to break to produce truly creative content for real estate marketers. 

---

Highlights: 

• Produce creative content by throwing out the template approach and start thinking about what makes you stand out. 
• Don’t be afraid to showcase what you do best through different avenues, like customer or vendor testimonials. 
• When you’re committed to curiosity, you naturally become a learning organization and this learning leads to more creative content. 

---

With over 4 million blog posts published every day, you have to be really creative to drive traffic to your website and attract prospective tenants or buyers to your properties. Marketers may think they need to follow these rules, but in fact, you need to break them to craft creative content.  

1. Mirror competitors

While it’s true there might be trending topics that you will want to cover, you should think more about the value proposition of your specific property and put the focus there. This will help you write creative content that stands out from your competitors and is not repeating what “everyone else is doing.” Remember, your property is unique, so your content should be too. 

2. Marketing mindset

While your marketing team knows everything about your property, some of the best stories and blog content come from your other teams. Existing residents or buyers, property managers, neighborhood vendors, and local businesses often have a really good prospective or story to tell. Tap into those unique stories for creative (and personalized!) content. 

3. Keep it obvious

While there will definitely be some obvious things that stand out about your property that you’re going to want to highlight, sometimes the most creative content comes from a different perspective. For example, you may want to talk about events that are taking place near your property over the summer, like rock concerts, performance art, open-mic nights, or anything else that appeals to your buyer personas. Don’t be afraid to get specific and dig a little deeper; the result will be creative content that stands out to prospective tenants or buyers.  

4. Repeat success

 While it’s true you should look at the analytics and build upon content that has been successful in the past, you should also be taking some risks when you’re developing your content calendar. Build in a healthy mix of what’s worked for you in the past — what resonates with your target audience — and something new, out of left field. Real estate marketers need to keep experimenting. Audiences are constantly evolving, so your content should be too.  

Have you published creative content by thinking outside the box? Have you been successful?  

Related posts: 

• 4 Types of Content You Need to Sell Real Estate (Besides Listings) 
• Infographic: Content Marketing Statistics Every Real Estate Marketer Should Know 
• 10 Quick Ways to Grow Brand Awareness 

---

Top 5 Real Estate Marketing Tactics

by Katie Russell | Sep 3, 2019 | Blog, Content Marketing, Real Estate Marketing, Social Media | 0 comments

Here are 5 real estate marketing tactics to increase website traffic, user engagement and leads. 

As a real estate marketer, you’re always looking for ways to find more clients and grow your business. You already understand the need for a marketing strategy. But sometimes it’s challenging to identify the most effective marketing tactics to reach your audience.  

The following are 5 real estate marketing tactics that are especially useful for engaging with prospects for luxury development projects. 

1. Use AR and VR 

Images are central to all types of digital marketing but they’re absolutely crucial when it comes to real estate. If you want to showcase the best of your luxury properties, it’s essential to display compelling, high-quality photos. You can make your imagery stand out even more by using the latest technology such as AR and VR.  

 It’s now possible to give prospects a virtual tour of your properties using virtual reality (VR) or augmented reality (AR). VentureBeat asks if such technology will mean the end of open houses. There’s still a lot to be said for giving people live tours of properties, of course. But VR and AR can give non-local prospects (or busy nearby ones) a great introduction to your luxury properties. Unless you’re experienced with photography, hiring a skilled real estate photographer can be a worthwhile investment.  

2. Add Distinctive Features to Your Properties

Customers in the luxury real estate market like to see unique amenities that set a property apart from others. Quality photos are, for obvious reasons, the foundation of real estate marketing. As already noted, you can increase engagement by using creative and high-tech methods such as VR and AR. It also helps to have interesting and unique items to display in your photos (as well as videos).  

 Images of eye-catching details, decor, and amenities make your property memorable. Wellness amenities, for example, are quite popular in any type of luxury development. This includes yoga studios, meditation areas, tranquility-inducing artwork, and comfortable seating areas, off of which can be featured in your marketing. You can add many such elements without going to great trouble or expense. Repurpose existing spaces for a quick shot at little cost.  

3. Use Postcards for Website Traffic

Real estate professionals generally focus on digital marketing today — and for good reason. Digital ads, your website, social media, and email are the most direct and economical ways to reach your audience. This doesn’t mean you should completely ignore traditional, offline methods. Direct mail, especially postcards, can be an effective tool to supplement your digital efforts. Postcards are highly visible and relatively cheap to send. You can use them to send prospects to your website. 

4. Create Stories on Instagram or Facebook

The Stories feature on Instagram and Facebook lets you create targeted content for your luxury development prospects. This is spontaneous, short-lived content that your followers can see for 24 hours. You can use Stories to provide quick tours of properties, to discuss real estate trends, or to give advice to potential buyers or sellers. You can also create engaging polls and contests on Instagram and Facebook, and use Stories to promote them. If you want to amplify your reach, leverage paid advertising.  

5. Tap Into the Power of Video Marketing 

Videos are one of the best ways to reach your real estate prospects. People are consuming more and more videos, on YouTube, other video sharing sites such as Vimeo websites, and on social media. You can use videos to give tours of your properties or to discuss the real estate industry in general. There are several key benefits to video marketing for real estate. You can showcase properties, establish your credibility as an expert, and drive traffic to your website. Once you create a video, you can use it in multiple ways: upload it to YouTube, post it on your website, share it on social media, etc. 

 These are some of the best tactics to grow your luxury real estate business. And they all work even better in unison. A variety of methods build traffic and send prospects to the most appropriate place. Digital marketing is always evolving so it’s important to stay current with the very latest trends and tactics.  

Related posts:

• Top 5 Real Estate Marketing Influencers
• The Role of Social Media in Luxury Real Estate Marketing
• 4 Real Estate Marketing Trends 2018

---

Infographic: Top 3 Social Media Mistakes Real Estate Brands Still Make

by Katie Russell | Oct 8, 2019 | Blog, Content Marketing, Real Estate Marketing, Social Media | 0 comments

Social media is a valuable tool for real estate brands, but only if they use it to their best advantage and avoid these three common mistakes. 

---

Highlights: 

• Social media is one of the most effective ways to increase brand awareness and generate leads. 
• All social media channels have a differentiating quality that makes them appealing to specific audiences. Don’t try to tackle every platform, focus on where your target audience is spending time. 
• Real estate brands that succeed on social media are finding innovative and creative ways to engage and connect with their users. 

---

91% of real estate professionals use social media. And we all understand why. By 2019, it is estimated that there will be around 2.77 billion social media users around the globe. That’s a lot of potential customers. 

So it’s easy to understand why real estate brands are using social channels to boost their marketing efforts. Social media is an easy and effective way to increase your properties visibility and reach new audiences, but only if you use it correctly. 

Top three social media mistakes real estate brands make 

Made with Canva

Made with Canva

Mistake #1: Using objectives  

Marketers need to use strategy to effectively utilize social channels. With the constant updates and changes to social platforms, real estate brands need to plan out content, frequency of posts, and pillar topics. Instead of posting with objectives in mind — like increasing leads — try to create posts that reflect your brand, follow your style guidelines, and reflect your brand’s tone.  

A clear strategy can also help improve ROI. Almost two-thirds of marketers still struggle to prove their marketing efforts on social platforms are working. With a defined social media strategy, you can create specific goals, track and measure your efforts, and make changes when needed. 

Mistake #2: Popularity contest 

It’s easy to think that posting on all the most popular social channels is the best idea. Think again. Social media platforms have specific qualities that make them popular among audiences. Real estate marketers need to identify their target audience and find out what social channels they are using. 

The next step is to create content that aligns with those platforms. As marketers, we know how easy it is to post the same content across all platforms. The success behind social media is authenticity and engagement, so it’s important your posts reflect this. Create content, like video, that caters to social channels to help build brand awareness and loyalty. 

Mistake #3: Sales pitch 

Being overly “salesy” will make prospects run – maybe right into your competition. The best way to win buyers on social media is through engagement. Content that helps prospective buyers envision themselves in your property is what will increase your organic reach. Create innovative and informative content that stands out on social channels by telling your brand’s story. This unique perspective will help create an emotional connection will have a long-lasting impact on viewers and drive brand loyalty.  

Related posts: 

• 5 Creative Ways to Use Instagram Stories for your Luxury Real Estate Brand 
• Measure Social Media Success in Terms of Potential, not Dollar Amount 
• How to Use Social Media Hashtags in Real Estate Marketing 

---

The Metrics You Should Be Measuring in Real Estate Marketing (Hint: Not Vanity Metrics)

by Elizabeth Hines | Oct 10, 2017 | Blog, Data & Analytics, Pay-Per-Click and Social Advertising, Real Estate Marketing | 0 comments

Don’t waste your time reporting on vanity metrics, which won’t tell you whether you’ve achieved your ROI.

We all want to see the fruits of our labors. Whether renting a new property or launching a social media campaign, we look for instantaneous numbers that will affirm we made the right choices. But here’s the problem: not all metrics are created equal.

So-called vanity metrics are measurements that have no bearing on your bottom line but can give you an inflated sense of success. Generally, they are easy to calculate but are influenced by too many factors — and are too vulnerable to random external events — to be reliable.

Website visits and number of subscribers are two classic examples. A spike in homepage hits may be the result of your marketing efforts, or it may be because of ghost spam. (Or both.) Regardless, more visits do not necessarily correlate to increased revenue — just more visits. In the same vein, having 100,000 email subscribers means nothing if only 1% are opening them. You actually could be losing money in terms of resources allocated if the emails aren’t helping drive sales.

Investment vs. vanity metrics

That’s why it’s crucial to focus on return on investment instead of vanity metrics. You could waste hours reviewing a hundred different analytics that tell you nothing about how revenue was affected by a particular effort. Or, worse, you could use vanity metrics to justify decisions that don’t achieve their ROI.

As a simplified example: say you spend $1,000 on a display ad for a new apartment complex targeting established professionals on a local news website, and your analytics report that 100 people clicked through. This sounds like success! But don’t celebrate just yet. When you dig past the vanity metric, you find an extremely high bounce rate. That means most of those click-throughs left your site immediately, neither engaging with your property nor moving any closer to becoming a tenant. In fact, you find that only one click-through converts. Was it worth paying $1,000 for this one potential tenant? Probably not.

But say you ran another $1,000 display ad, one that targets a younger audience than you think your property fits. Only 20 visitors clicked through, which sounds less successful than the other ad. But when you follow those 20 click-throughs, you find that 5 ended up renting units, meaning the ad pays for itself many times over. You’ve also learned that perhaps a younger audience is more suited than you thought to your property. The ROI proves that the vanity metric was quite misleading in this case.

Metrics that help you make decisions

Lean-startup pioneer Eric Reis, who coined the term vanity metrics, said, “The only metrics that entrepreneurs should invest energy in collecting are those that help them make decisions.” In other words, measure the things that will tell you if an effort was profitable so you know where to put your time and money.

While vanity metrics tell you nothing about your bottom line, ROI can help you determine whether it was worth spending your resources in a particular way. This is extremely useful on platforms like blogs and social media, where things are constantly changing. Using ROI as a litmus test, you can keep experimenting and making sure you’re using these tools effectively. Tracking a vanity metric like number of followers, which is likely to build over time regardless, gives you no indication of which experiments were successful and which weren’t.

Your resources are limited, so it’s crucial to evaluate your efforts with meaningful numbers that illustrate their effect on your bottom line. Calculating ROI might take some time — both in the few extra minutes to do the math and the amount of time that needs to pass before all the data is available — but that number will be infinitely more valuable to you than any vanity metric on your Google Analytics report.

Related posts:

• Social Media Can Be a Strategic Weapon in Real Estate Marketing
• How Pay-Per-Click Helped This Property Get 54 Leads
• Learn How Content Marketing Increased Real Estate Sales by 37% in 90 Days