Implementing a robust digital marketing strategy is vital for real estate agencies to connect with modern home buyers and sellers. With the majority of property searches starting online, having a strong online presence across key digital channels is now a prerequisite to compete and grow your agency.
This comprehensive guide explores the array of impactful digital marketing tactics and best practices real estate professionals should leverage to boost visibility, generate more qualified leads, and ultimately drive more sales.
Optimizing Your Real Estate Website
Your agency’s website serves as the keystone of your digital marketing efforts. Make sure it follows search engine and user-friendly best practices:
- Mobile-friendly – Ensure a positive mobile experience on smartphones and tablets.
- Local SEO – Optimize for local searches with your agency name, location, and area keywords.
- Listings database – Feature an MLS search page for browsing available property listings.
- Calls-to-action – Include clickable phone numbers, email links, valuation requests, viewing requests and other lead gen forms.
- Page speed – Test and improve website loading speeds for better engagement.
- Search visibility – Follow technical SEO standards and create unique local content to boost organic rankings.
Harnessing the Power of Search Engine Optimization
Leveraging search engine optimization (SEO) strategies helps home buyers find your agency organically when searching relevant real estate terms:
- Keyword research – Identify high-volume, high-intent search terms property shoppers use and target those topics.
- Local SEO – Optimize for local keywords including city, neighborhoods, landmarks and your office location.
- Content marketing – Publish listings, local guides, tips for home sellers, market updates, and other value-added content to attract searchers.
- Technical SEO – Implement site enhancements to improve indexation, speed, structure data markup and other technical ranking factors.
- Link building – Secure links from directories, partner agencies, and community sites to increase domain authority.
- Reviews and citations – Generate more online reviews and consistent NAP citations to build local trust and search prominence.
Pay-Per-Click Advertising
Pay-per-click platforms like Google Ads allow agencies to advertise directly to users searching for properties for sale in your market:
- Location targeting – Set your campaign or ad group target location to your city/region.
- Keyword targeting – Tailor ad groups around buyer keywords for prices, amenities, neighborhoods.
- Search remarketing – Remarket visitors who previously searched real estate terms but didn’t click your site.
- Ad extensions – Use extensions like location, call and affiliate location extensions.
- Conversion tracking – Install tracking pixels to monitor conversions from calls, form fills, virtual tours and more.
- Advanced bidding – Enable strategies like target CPA bidding to maximize conversions within budget.
- Audience targeting – Create custom audiences of previous site visitors or target lookalike audiences.
Capitalizing on Social Media Platforms
Actively maintaining company and agent profiles on leading social media networks helps nurture an engaged audience:
- Company pages – Create and routinely update your agency’s Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn and other social pages.
- Agent profiles – Have agents establish optimized profiles highlighting their expertise.
- Community engagement – Interact with followers and share local events, sponsorships and happenings to humanize your brand.
- Paid promotions – Invest in social media ads to get your listing and content in front of interested property seekers right within their feed.
- Hashtag marketing – Participate in popular local hashtags to tap into conversations.
- Encourage reviews – Prompt clients to leave social testimonials to build credibility. Reviews are very influential for real estate.
- Lead generation – Add lead gen call-to-action posts, Lead Forms, Click-to-Messenger ads and other tactics to harvest new leads from social platforms.
Email Marketing
Email allows for more personalized, targeted outreach to prospects. Key email strategies include:
- New listing alerts – Send the latest home listings tailored to subscriber preferences for neighborhood, price, beds/baths etc.
- Nurture sequences – Develop automated email drips with tips and content to nurture buyers and sellers.
- Just listed/just sold – Notify residents when you’ve listed or sold a home in their neighborhood.
- Market reports – Provide statistics, analysis and insights on local conditions with email newsletters.
- Retargeting emails – Follow up with recent website visitors who left without contacting you.
- Personalization – Customize emails using merge tags, buyer/seller segmentation and more.
- Tracking and optimization – Track email performance metrics and optimize copy/content, lists and send times accordingly.
Individual Agent Websites
In tandem with a main real estate agency website, ensure each agent has an optimized individual website:
- Contact and bio – List agent’s name, photo, specialty areas, credentials, contact info, and professional bio.
- Featured listings – Display the agent’s active sale and purchase listings.
- Local optimization – Target local searches with their name, brokerage and surrounding region they serve.
- Client reviews – Showcase testimonials from past buyer and seller clients.
- Lead generation – Include lead gen forms, click-to-call, chat widgets and scheduling links to facilitate inquiries.
- IDX integration – Pull MLS listings automatically onto their site to populate with latest inventory.
- Blogging – Have agents publish articles highlighting local insights to build organic traffic.
- Technical SEO – Ensure site follows SEO best practices for speed, responsiveness, metadata etc.
Incorporating Video
Video marketing helps real estate agencies make emotional connections through sight, sound and motion:
- Property videos – Professionally filmed listing videos give in-depth virtual tours.
- Neighborhood videos – Create mini video profiles of popular communities.
- Agent introduction videos – Humanize your agents with intro videos about them.
- Market update videos – Film short video recaps of statistics and local conditions.
- Client testimonials – Get video reviews from happy buyers describing their experience.
- Behind-the-scenes – Provide a “day in the life” look into your agency’s daily operations.
- Specialized formats – Tailor edits into vertical, square, cinematic videos tailored for different platforms.
- YouTube channel – Create an owned YouTube channel to aggregate your video library in one home.
Facebook and Instagram Advertising
Facebook and Instagram ads allow targeted messaging to motivate buyers and sellers right within their social feeds:
- Location and interest targeting – Target local geography and buyer/seller interests and demographics.
- Creative A/B testing – Test different images, captions, videos and calls-to-action to raise engagement.
- Lead generation – Run lead ad campaigns with Lead Forms to capture contacts.
- Lookalike audiences – Find new people who share qualities with your current customers using lookalikes.
- Retargeting – Remotely advertise to past website visitors or previous video viewers to re-engage them.
- Detailed analytics – Track impressions, reach, CTR, conversions, cost per lead and other key metrics to optimize ads.
- Video ads – Incorporate video into campaigns as they perform exceptionally well on Facebook and Instagram.
- Messenger – Use click-to-Messenger ads, bots and messaging to instantly connect with prospects.
Amplifying Reach Through Social Content
Distributing relevant social media content provides added visibility and engagement:
- Share your newest listings, agent spotlights, market reports and other website content on social profiles.
- Promote key content with paid boosting to expand reach.
- Encourage community sharing and engagement.
- Leverage hashtags for discoverability.
- Use social to amplify your SEO content and drive referral traffic.
- Post natively formatted video content.
- Engage and cross-promote with complementary neighborhood pages and groups.
Retargeting Ads
Retargeting ads allow you to re-engage with past visitors across the web:
- Site retargeting – Target people who visited your website but left without converting.
- Search retargeting – Show ads to users who previously searched real estate terms on Google but didn’t click your site.
- Social retargeting – Reach visitors who engaged with your social content but aren’t followers yet.
- Custom audience retargeting – Create audiences of people who interacted with specific listings or engaged in other ways.
- Contextual retargeting – Place ads on real estate and home-related websites.
- Messaging testing – Experiment with different ad creative, offers and text to motivate specific audiences.
Monitoring Local Listings & Citations
Maintaining complete, consistent NAP listings across key local directories improves local SEO authority:
- Google My Business
- Apple Maps
- Facebook Business Page
- Yelp, Yellowpages and other top directories
- City directories, chamber sites and community calendars
- Local real estate sites like Zillow, Realtor.com and Trulia
- Review platforms like G2 and Feefo
Also claim and optimize listings on any niche rental property sites relevant in your locale. Monitor local citations using Moz Local to fix inconsistencies.
Analytics & Multi-channel Attribution
Robust analytics help gauge campaign ROI and optimize your digital mix:
- Implement UTM campaign tracking to measure site traffic by source, medium and other parameters.
- Integrate your site analytics with your CRM platform to connect leadTouchpoints and activity history to conversions.
- Use call tracking numbers unique to each campaign to measure phone call lead generation.
- Adopt multi-touch attribution modeling to account for multiple influences in conversion paths, not just last clicks.
- Build custom reports and dashboards tailored to your key performance indicators and priority conversion funnels.
- Apply insights to shift budget across high-ROI digital platforms and campaigns.
Synergy Ads – Combined Facebook and Google Ads
A proven approach is coordinating Facebook and Google Ads together into a unified cross-channel strategy, which we call “Synergy Ads”. This fusion provides expanded reach and demand generation from social media paired with the high-intent website traffic sourced through Google search.
The combined effect significantly amplifies results, connecting you with more of the right prospective buyers and home sellers in your area while converting them into engaged leads at a fraction of mass-media advertising costs.
We are experts in managing holistic digital marketing and specifically architecting Synergy Ad campaigns tailored for each client’s unique local market. Contact us today to learn how we can deploy these tactics together to attract more prospects, generate leads, and boost your real estate sales.