Online Marketing is an essential ingredient for the success of any real estate agent. The top online marketing tips for real estate agents come in many different forms. When implemented correctly, strategic and innovative real estate marketing ideas give real estate agents a big advantage over their competition. It is important for real estate agents to understand what they should be doing in terms of online marketing and how they should do it. Here are our top online marketing tips for real estate to give you an edge on the competition.
Give More Than You Receive
Whether you are posting on social media or writing a blog, one of the most important things a real estate agent can do is give more than he receives. Provide value to your customers as much as possible. Ask yourself, how can you provide value to your audience and what can you do for the community? The more you give the more both you and your customers win. People are not always here to be sold. People don’t buy or sell houses every day. If you just try to sell, this can annoy people and you can even lose clients. By providing value, you are more likely to form and develop relationships, get a referral, establish yourself as an expert, gain more traffic and make more money. If you want to sell more, give more!
Utilize Social Media
Some of the top online marketing tips for real estate agents include social media. If you are not utilizing social media, now is the time to start. People are on social media all the time now. Some people are afraid of social because they don’t have much experience or know how they should use it. You should not be afraid. Want to gain friends? Be friendly. Want to earn likes? Do likeable things. Want to engage your audience? Be engaging. It is important to understand that people aren’t on social media to be sold. They are on social media to be social, connect with friends and others with similar interests, share information and receive information. Think of social media as a cocktail party. Do you go to a party and shout, “Buy my product!”? Do you try to talk to every person, or have a few great conversations? Are you helpful and provide valuable information with no expectation with getting anything in return? Or do you avoid social interaction altogether because you are uncomfortable.
People are more likely to do business with people they like, and are eager to introduce their friends to each other. You should be friendly, likeable, social and deeply passionate. Be informed about vital topics and provide value. Answer questions with questions. You should also listen. Listening is very important to social. You can learn a lot about your target market by just listening. Also, be that person people like and are inspired by. How can you do this? Post valuable information, ask questions, be visual, give credit, make the right friends and provide news. Lastly, friends don’t like friends that just talk about themselves. Share content that is not yours that provides value to your audience or do things that help others. The secret of selling on social media is giving more than you receive.
Social Media Advertising
Social media is NOT free! You need to understand that. Social communities are restricting your abilities. For example, a study was found that the average Facebook organic reach was between 5 and 11 percent based upon the size of your page. Organic reach refers to how many people you can reach for free on Facebook by posting to your page. Social communities are also taking away influence principles that can help your brand. An example of this would be friend-of-friend visibility on Facebook. Person A interacts with your brand and that person’s friends see person A’s activity in their newsfeed. If people see someone doing something they might do the same thing. So if one of your friends likes a page and you see it, you might do the same.
The good news is you can advertise as part of your top online marketing tips for real estate agents. Social advertising has become very advanced. Social advertising is one of the most important things you can do. You can reach a large number of people, gain a lot more likes, show social endorsements and target the right people. And you can even make your advertisements look organic (free). So you could have a Facebook advertisement appear in newsfeeds that is highly targeted. Social advertising is very effective. If you are not advertising now on social, you will be in the future.
Optimize For SEO
Search engine optimization is now very important. People are using the web to find real estate agents, houses, information and more. Your website and social pages should be optimized for SEO. Yes, social impacts SEO. Your page titles and meta tags should be filled out correctly with best practices for SEO. You should think, what topics would my target market be searching and how would they search it? You should also be blogging about important topics for your target market and sharing your blog posts on your social channels. Blogging is very important for SEO. Blogging can help you provide value to your customers, establish yourself as an authority figure, drive traffic to your website and accomplish goals. People use Google most of the time for information. So keep that in mind when optimizing for SEO and writing blogs. Lastly, you should think local. Local can have a huge impact on SEO. Make sure you are optimizing for local SEO.
Gather Online Reviews
Peer recommendations are one of the most powerful influences on consumer decisions. This can be part of your arsenal of top online marketing tips for real estate agents. With people being online and using search engines, your online reviews can make or break a lead’s decisions. You should take advantage of this. Chances are your competition is not. This could be a big factor for choosing you over your competition. Also, get recommendations multiple places online. Post testimonials on your website. Ask for reviews on your Facebook, Google+, and LinkedIn page. People may come across your Facebook page before your website. It is important to have reviews in multiple places.
