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Ultimate Real Estate Lead Generation Guide

Mon, 23 Sep 2019 19:50:00 GMT

If “location, location, location” is the life’s blood of the real estate industry, then lead generation is the bone marrow. Its importance cannot be overstated. It’s simple. If you don’t generate real estate leads , then you will fail. It is also important to note that relying on buying leads from sites like Zillow will quickly eat up any profits you generate. At up to $60 per lead , you will wind up in the poor house before securing your first commission.

As an example, consider that the average return on good real estate leads is about 4 percent. That means that you will get four sales per 100 leads. Your typical commission on a home is 3 percent after splitting with buyer’s agent. So, let’s say you sell four homes for an average price of $150,000. That’s a total of $600,000. You and the listing company get 3 percent of that, which is $20,000. The company will take part of that for overhead, and you will likely pay 30 percent of what’s left for you in taxes. Then, you might have your own overhead to pay. Those 100 leads cost you $6,000. You can easily see how it will become a state of diminishing returns very quickly.

You might think, “Well, I will sell more than four homes a year, so I will be all right!” The sad fact of the matter is that 20 percent of all available real estate agents make 80 percent of the sales, so many agents, particularly rookies, will only sell between four and six homes a year.

What does all this mean? It means you have to generate your own leads rather than buying them from other companies . Is it hard, sometimes frustrating work? Yes, it is. But, it is absolutely necessary for the development of a thriving real estate business.

SEO and Real Estate Lead Generation

Because there is no John Williamson to hand you promising leads, unless you do your homework, you’ll wind up like Shelley Levene instead of Ricky Roma. SEO is the key to generating the best real estate leads.

What is Realtor SEO?

SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s a method of using well-researched keywords, strategically placed in documents on the internet, to attract the attention of people interested in the topic for which you are attempting to generate web traffic. In our case, that means people interested in real estate.

What Is a Lead?

Leads are simply people who might, or might not, buy or sell a piece of property over which you have authority. Because they will have contacted you for information, to place an offer, or “just to think about it,” they are no longer considered “cold prospects.” Calling leads is much more profitable than cold calling.

Lead Generation Basics

Real estate lead generation is not about browbeating leads, getting in their collective faces, or hard selling them all the time. It is best for you to take lead generation slowly as a long-term project. The idea is to make contact with each lead, talk to that person, gradually get to know that person, and develop a long-term business relationship with that person.

Developing such leads is as important as it is because even if they don’t actually buy or sell a home through you, they might, if you’ve done your job properly, refer people who do buy from or sell to you. Generating and tending leads is like raising orchids. It’s painstaking and can result in disaster at the first wrong move. But, done right, it yields incredibly beautiful blooms. The referrals you get are the seeds of new orchids.

Cultivating new leads means calling to check up on them after a while. See if their needs are being met. You can invite them out for coffee to talk about it. It’d also be a good idea to remember their spouses’ and kids’ names, their birthdays, their anniversaries, and other information about them. If you have to keep a “virtual Rolodex” with information about each lead, do it. It adds a personal touch to all of your business interactions.

You have to know where to look to find leads too. It really isn’t as difficult as it seems. They are, after all, all around us. You can find them on social media, through website forms, and checking real-estate listing websites.

How SEO Connects

People who look up real estate transactions online usually enter the same keywords into Google as others. These might include “homes for sale,” “cheap homes for sale,” or even “top-rated real estate agents.” A simple way to find out what people are looking for is to go to Google and enter “real estate deals in [insert your city name here].” Let’s say you live in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. Once you enter “real estate deals in Eau Claire, Wisconsin,” scroll to the bottom of the page. That’s where the related searches are listed. A couple in this case include “homes for sale Eau Claire WI,” “Eau Claire homes for sale by owner,” and “condos for sale in Eau Claire WI.” These are all examples of keywords to include in your website copy.

Of course, real estate SEO is more complex than that. The most important club in the SEO bag is the concept of backlinks . Backlinks are links from other, high-ranking webpages that connect back to your website. The emphasis here is on “high-ranking.” Google and other leading search engines will give your website more credence if there is a high percentage of high-ranking websites linked back to you.

That doesn’t mean that you have to have dozens of links back to your website. In fact, having four or five top performers linking back to you will be far more impressive than a whack of small fry doing the same thing. By being selective in the backlinking process, you also cut down on the possibility of spam. Spam will show up on Google’s algorithms, too, and it is a veritable “website killer.” Be extra cautious about links you accept. Do your research into the real estate companies who want to backlink to you.

As you rise in prominence online, others might contact you to backlink to them . This is a prime and fertile ground for you to generate and cultivate new leads. Do the same kind of research on the real estate companies that want you to link back to them. Linking to the wrong company can be as killing as letting spam into yours.

A word of caution: Steer clear of “black hat SEO.” That’s the practice of exploiting the technical aspects of the internet to drive traffic rather than relying on human interaction. Usually, people buy links full of stuffed keywords regarding real estate, and the links go to pages full of nonsense or unrelated content.

It’s an even bigger website killer than spam. It’s not illegal, but it will get you banned from Google or other search engines, which will be a death knell for your web presence and, by extension, your real estate business. There is no “easy way” when it comes to SEO. Sure, the processes are easy enough, but they take diligence, savvy, and creativity to bring to fruition, and that takes time.

Real Estate Google Adwords

Successful real estate marketing companies leverage the power of Google Adwords to their best advantage. You spend real money to get the keywords you want here, but it’s on the up-and-up and not like black hat SEO. You bid on these keywords in an auction, and the highest bidder gets access to the particular keyword upon which the bidder bid.

For example, let’s say a person entered “homes for sale.” Before this moment, several real estate marketing companies will have entered their bids for the term “homes for sale.” If Google sees that search term, or terms that are closely associated with it, then it will trigger an auction.

Each entrant into an auction has two attributes that Google recognizes: maximum bid and quality score. Your quality score is the score Google assigns to your website. Google multiples your quality score by the amount you bid to generate your ad rank. You can readily see that, unless you want to spend large amounts of money, you will have to have a high-quality website to bid effectively.

Let’s look at an example. Suppose there are three companies looking to do real estate lead generation. Call them A, B, and C. A’s website is poor and only has a quality score of two. B’s website is stellar and has a quality score of eight. C’s website is middle-of-the-road with a quality score of five. If B bids $20, B’s score will be 160. To equal B’s score, A will have to bid $80, and C will have to bid $32. Let’s say A and C don’t bid that much, and B wins the auction.

Further, let’s say that A bid $40 and achieved a score of 80 and that C bid $30 and achieved a score of 150. Google uses these statistics to determine how much you pay. Remember, your bid is you maximum bid. If you win the auction, you will almost always pay less than your maximum bid. Google then applies the following equation:

Your final price = (the ad rank of the person just below you/your quality score) + $0.01. So, in our example, B’s price would be (150/8) + $0.01 = $18.76 instead of the maximum bid B made of $20. By having a great website, B saved $1.24 on that one impression. That’s $1,240 saved on every thousand auctions, and each time B wins, B’s website is listed very highly on the Google results the searcher looking for “homes for sale” sees.

By contrast, a Super Bowl ad, which lasts only for 30 seconds and isn’t specifically targeted to people who are interested in your product, would set you back $5.2 million. That’s a far cry from spending 20 grand to reach 1,000 people who have already shown interest in buying or selling a home with you as the agent.

Different Adwords Options and Text Techniques

You can configure your Adwords to boost your sales, leads, or website traffic. Enterprising and wise real estate professionals do a combination of all three. You may have all the real esate leads you need right now, but boosting your website traffic might yield a fresh crop of leads later down the road.

When creating your ads through Google Adwords, you need to create dynamite text that speaks directly to the people you want to reach. Getting your ad in the right place is great, but how will it fare if the text is all wrong? There are some general rules of thumb.

1. Make Them Feel.

By appealing to their emotions, you create a visceral response. Most people act on emotion instead of logic, so focusing on that is a good way to attract them. For example, speak to the homey characteristics of the possible properties that interest your prospective home buyers. If you’ve done the right kind of information collecting, you already know what those characteristics are, and they might be something like “great place to raise a family,” “spacious family room for game night,” or similar. When you design your website copy, ask yourself this question: Why would someone search for keywords that apply to these particular characteristics? Build your copy around that reason. If it doesn’t match, rewrite the copy. It will be time well-spent.

The second question you should ask yourself is, “What do these people think they deserve from me?” When you compose the copy, be sure to make potential customers feel as if your services and the homes to which you provide them access are both something they deserve. That kind of emotional connection is at the heart of almost all successful business relationships.

2. Logic Has a Place Too.

Even though most purchases are made through emotion, some people approach their buying and selling logically. Many of those rely on emotions too. Balancing the two is tricky. As you’re appealing to their collective guts, you also have to show that you’re on the ball. That involves anticipating their real estate questions, wants, and needs and inserting text that answers those items without the leads having to ask them or declare them.

Secondarily, try to anticipate the reasons why your leads wouldn’t want to sell or buy homes through you. Provide text on your website that addresses those objections before the potential customers raise them. One of their most popular questions is, inevitably, “How much?” They could mean the cost of the home they wish to buy, how much their home will fetch, and what your fee and commissions are. Include statistics regarding both the real estate trends in the area and your ability to maximize either their purchasing power or sale price, whichever is applicable.

3. Take Advantage of Expanded Text Ads.

Once you have your website running on all cylinders, you want people to notice your well-placed ads and click through to your website. When Google eliminated the right-side text ads in searches, businesses could work with more space. That’s why you now get 45 more characters for your ads that appear in your leads’ Google searches.

An added advantage of this change is that the ads now appear the same on both desktop and mobile platforms. Sure, they’ll word wrap based on the size of the screen, but there won’t be two versions anymore. In all cases, they are more visible than the standard ads. Wordstream also notes that real estate agents who use these Expanded Ads close 12 percent more on mobile platforms than standard ads. That will mean a huge chunk of change in your pocket if you close five deals instead of four.

Social Media and Lead Generation

Social media aren’t the kings of lead generation the way they once were, but they are still valuable channels from which you can gather leads. The chief technique at play here is pay-per-click advertising, or PPC. PPC is sort of like the internet version of highway billboards. Instead of people searching things out, they instead see them as they surf the internet, interact with friends and family on Facebook, tweet, or any of the other methods of online communication.

The way it works is simple: You pay Facebook, Twitter, your email provider, or search engine every time a user clicks your ad to go to your website. The amount a business pays per click varies widely, depending on the industry. In real estate, clicks will usually cost from $1 to $4 per click. If you get lots of clicks, then you will have to have a fairly large PPC budget. With that many clicks, however, one good lead who buys a luxury home will offset your budget and then some.

Remember, your return on leads is usually 4 percent. If you get 1,000 clicks at $4 each, you spend $4,000. Let’s say you get 2 percent of those 1,000 people to come to you for a real estate transaction That’s 20 people. If 4 percent of them close on a home, that’s one of 20. If you sell that home for only $250,000, your 3 percent commission is $7,500. You just spent $4,000 to make $7,500. Assuming you pay 30 percent of that in taxes and overhead, you still clear $5,250, making your profit $1,250. That number goes up as the prices of the homes you help people buy and sell go up. So, PPC is a terrific tool for real estate agents.

On social media, by necessity, the ads will be short on text and long on images. By creating visually stunning ads that showcase your best properties, you increase the likelihood that a Facebook user looking for a real estate deal will click the ad. If the user likes it enough, that user might share it too. If that happens, even if you don’t generate a lead then, you might in the future because everyone on that user’s friend’s list will see the ad too.

There was a shampoo ad in the 1970s where the lady in the ad said, “I told two friends, and they told two friends, and so on, and so on …” This sharing on social media is the 21st-century equivalent. Real estate agents of the past would be very happy to have that kind of quick real estate marketing back in the day.

One of the added benefits of social media PPC is the “free lead.” Let’s say a Facebook user is happily surfing away and sees your ad. Further, let’s say the user doesn’t click the ad and, later in the day, remembers the gorgeous home that was featured as a photo in the ad. Even though that user didn’t click through right away, that user could go to Google later and enter your business name or “real estate agents of [your city].” The user will find you organically instead of reaching you by clicking. You gained that person’s interest even without a click and, basically, for free.

As your real estate business grows, so will your PPC campaign. Instead of paying per click, you might advance into “cost per mille,” which is “cost per 1,000 impressions.” You will have already developed a large traffic stream across many channels when you advance into this area.

Social Media Ad Tactics

Facebook provides you with a veritable smorgasbord of ways to classify people through interests, preferences, age groups, and “likes.” You can tailor your ads to fit these various demographics and be sure to be giving the right information about the right properties to the right group. The old advertising adage of, “You don’t pitch Geritol to teenagers,” applies here as well. If someone likes split-level ranch houses, don’t show that person Victorian homes.

To find out what you need to know, you should use the Audience Insight tool. You enter interests and various keywords and then press “enter.” The tool will parse these and will provide you with statistics regarding groups of people who are interested in the combination of keywords you entered. It will also sort by age group and gender. When you build your Facebook ads, ensure that they are shown to the demographics the tool recommends. When it comes to real estate data, you could enter terms like “low closing costs,” “favorable interest rates,” “luxury homes,” “good schools in the neighborhood,” and the like.

The Custom Audience Editor lets you target people who have had some form of contact with your brand in the past. One such group is “people who have visited your website.” You can tailor content for these people specifically in an effort to entice them back to your website.

If you have collected leads’ email addresses or phone numbers through your information gathering, you can use the Customer File option as well. This lets you send relevant real estate content through Facebook and through email. It’s not spam because these customers have already indicated interest in buying or selling homes and might have already shown interest in you too.

One of the interesting facets of the Customer File tool is the Lifetime Value extension. With this neat feature, you can create a “lookalike” client. You input data from a group of your clients, such as whether or not they performed a real estate transaction, how much they spent, what you expect them to spend in the future, and demographics information.

You should include all lead and client types, even ones that were part of a negative experience for one reason or another, because the Facebook software will parse them all together to create the most realistic lookalike possible. Then, the Customer File tool scours Facebook to find people whose demographic information, location, and self-professed real estate interests align with the client properties of the lookalike.

Data Mining on Facebook to Find Potential Leads

One of the most powerful information-gathering tools on Facebook is the Facebook Pixel. You use the Pixel tool on Facebook to create a small snippet of code that you then install on your website. The Pixel is like a backlink to your Facebook ads and your Facebook business page. The Pixel places and follows cookies in the browsers of potential leads and clients and relays that information to you.

The Pixel will even track your potential clients across their devices to see how they interact with your website in multiple channels. Further, it stores that information for future reference, which allows you to contact the potential client at a later date. You can drill down quite far using the Pixel. For example, let’s say your customer checks out a house from a certain neighborhood on your website by clicking through a Facebook ad that showed a picture of that house. For whatever reason, that person decided not to act upon it.

Six months later, a very similar house in an equally good neighborhood comes up for sale. With the data the Pixel gathers, it can retarget that potential client by showing a photo of that new house. You don’t even have to tell it to do it. It just does it on its own. That client may be interested in buying a house now, so the Facebook Pixel acts like a miniature real estate marketing firm at your beck and call.

Nothing Is More Crucial Than Information

As you can see, generating leads is all about gleaning information about people and using that information to good effect. A successful lead generation campaign will use all of the tactics above to get that information, collate it, and act upon it. With only about 4 percent of leads panning out, the more leads you have, the more deals you will help your clients close. In stark terms of reality, more leads equals more cash in your pocket.

Building a Team

Although the thought of the “lone wolf” real estate agent against the world has a bit of charm, most successful agents build a team. Having such a team reduces the stress on each member because the whole team can work for each other’s benefit. If “Joe the Realtor” generates a bevy of good real estate leads for new agents and gives a few of them to each of his team members, the whole company will benefit.

The more the team generates quality leads and closes deals while providing world-class customer service to its clients, the more that those clients will refer future clients to the business. With the power of the internet at its disposal, the team can consist of real estate professionals from anywhere in the United States, which gives the business the chance to branch out into different markets.

Because team members must be dedicated to one another to succeed as a group, each member has a vested interest in seeing others, including newbies, succeed. Therefore, real estate teams are fantastic training grounds for developing skills and techniques and “learning the ropes.” When you are an experienced team leader, you become a mentor to your charges too. You can teach them not only the “tricks of the sales trade” but also the “tricks of the lead gathering trade.”

Remember the 80/20 trope? When you have a team of go-getters committed to each other’s success, that’s a lot of the “80 percent” that you are getting for your team. If you’re running a crackerjack team and still doing your own work, it’s not unheard of for you to be making seven figures consistently if you focus on both your real estate seller leads and your real estate buyer leads.

Being able to generate real estate leads at scale will enable you to build a real estate team or brokerage. This is the end goal, as you will be able to earn money passively. Working less and earning more is always the goal.

The Final Word

As you can see, lead generation has come a long way since the days of pounding the pavement knocking on doors. If your business has the scope, the entire United States is reachable through various online techniques and information gathering strategies. You have to be internet savvy to make best use of these techniques and strategies, so it would likely be a good idea for you to take a class in that subject or hire a real estate marketing agency.

Although the preceding are quite a few methods, there are still more to explore. Use your imagination and be creative. Good luck!

The post Ultimate Real Estate Lead Generation Guide appeared first on Bravo Demand .

Facebook Advertisement: How Much Should You Invest In?

Tue, 21 May 2019 17:30:00 GMT

As a real estate agent, you may have some questions about using social networking sites such as Facebook to boost service referral or product sales. One of them can be “how much does Facebook advertising cost?”

While most sites tell that the costs depend, there is actually a baseline you can start from. The details below will enlighten you important things you need to know about Facebook Ads including its costs.

If you use CPC method (Cost Per Click), the average cost for Facebook Ads is around $0.27 for each click. However, if you consider CPM or Cost Per Thousand Impressions, the price for your ad can be $7 or more.

But, there’s more you need to know beyond just knowing the average cost.

Factors Affecting The Facebook Ads Cost

It is true that Facebook Advertising cost for each project depends on some factors. Listed below are some of the key factors influencing the total cost of the advertisements:

Ad Objectives

In every Facebook ad platform, there are various goals or objectives to decide on. Each type of ad type and the goal you set has distinct KPIs. They are showcased depending on the result you desire. In other words, the kind of objective will allow Facebook to target the people to show the ads.

There are three common objectives to choose from:

For example, if your goal is to gain more traffic to your site, Facebook chooses those “clicky” audiences to show the ad to. Otherwise, the ads may be shown to those who convert if you aim for leads.

Ad Auction

Another factor that influences the cost of your Facebook Advertising is an auction and the bid. The reality in this Facebook Ads Auction is that the spot goes to the ad value than on high bidding. The value gains:

– Ad Relevance and The Quality (Taken from the Facebook users testimonials; Checking the relevance on how Facebook identifies your audience)

– Ad Bid ( The monetary bid you provide)

– Estimated Action Rate (Calculated based on how Facebook estimates if each person can accomplish the goal you have selected)

Facebook has stated that it strives on the following when delivering advertisements:

To meet these goals, holding an auction is done to present both interests. Thus, advertisers will be able to reach their target markets based on what they need and what the company provides. It is completely different from traditional auctions.

How Ad Bids Influence the Final Cost

Your Bid affects the final Facebook Advertisement cost in two ways – Manual and Automatic.

With automatic bid amount, you allow Facebook to set a specific bid for you to get more post engagements at a great price. On the other hand, the manual bid amount enters a bid depending on the type of post engagements that are right for you.

Facebook tells its advertisers to stay focused on ROI than of low cost. With Facebook ads, the higher the bidding, the more access to the best people you want to target.

Audience

Your target audience for your business ads on Facebook definitely affects the end cost. This means that to get lower cost, your audience must be relevant.

For instance, you own a home services business. Your goal is to create and show an ad for roof replacement services. You decided that the target audience will be those who are looking for home improvement.

While it seems to be a good idea for you, it is certainly wrong. Why?

Choosing “home improvement” alone as your qualifier means that your advertisements will be seen by everybody who has specified their interests on home improvement. It may include individuals who stay in an apartment building, those who are not homeowners and others who are simply indulged in watching clips about flipping houses and so on.

Ad Quality

If you will select two main things that can reduce your Facebook ads cost, you can have Ad Quality first and then Audience.

Facebook is like an online diary. The content may include random information about discovering new things and catching up with those that got their interests. Most of these online diaries are made to escape boredom.

Take note that such a mindset can make or break your ads. Since this is about “see” platform, typical ad copies you see in search results may not go beyond. Thus, you are spending too much ads cost.

The key is to make your Facebook Advertisements visually appealing and interesting. Furthermore, you should not forget to consider these criteria:

– Your ads must catch the user’s interest

– Your ads must invoke your user’s emotion

– Your ads must encourage the user to take action

Ads Relevance Score by Facebook

Again, Facebook gives high value to the relevance of your user. Such relevance is scored from 1 to 10, 10 as the highest. Based on the platform, the relevance score will be computed according to the negative and positive feedback that an ad receives from the target customer.

If your ad has more positive customer interactions, it will gain a higher relevance score. The positive indicators will be based on factors like conversions, video views, and objectives. The score will be updated once customers provide feedback and interest on your ad. In other words, boost your ad relevance score to cut down on your end cost.

Your Business Industry

In this factor, the industry your business is in and the kind of service or product you offer also affect your Facebook advertising cost. For example, selling a Rolex watch will give you a higher cost per result than you sell a fitness trial for 30 days.

Final Thoughts

By looking at the details provided above, the best solution is to hire an expert in creating relevant Facebook Ads for you. Find someone who can do it especially if you are a new business advertiser on Facebook. Choosing the right marketing partner will save you time and money.

The post Facebook Advertisement: How Much Should You Invest In? appeared first on Bravo Demand .

A Guide on Real Estate SEO with Tips to Help You Get Started

Thu, 02 May 2019 19:37:00 GMT

Generating quality traffic to your website is never easy. Here, you’ll need a very effective SEO strategy that matches your niche. This guide will focus on the real estate industry.

Quality traffic means a lot to your business. Your success will depend on numerous things. First, you’ll need to know the best way to use a real estate website and the best local SEO technique to generate more traffic for your own business.

Before anything else, we must learn first what real estate SEO is.

Real Estate SEO Defined

It pertains to the results that show up in search engines if someone looks for a professional who can help him sell or buy a house. To understand how it works, put yourself in the shoes of a customer. Imagine that you’re planning to buy a house. You chose a location and the type of property you want to have.

A homebuyer often gets started in surfing the web using Google. He may use a search phrase like “house for sale in Phoenix AZ.” Then he will start looking for a property that matches his needs and expectations and contacts the broker.

In that scene, you might be assuming that the person will just stumble on your website and choose one of the properties you have been selling. But that is not always the case. SERP’s layout has changed. It became harder for business owners to get noticed on the web.

Since there more and more individuals and businesses that compete for real estate sales, you should consider more the importance of SEO and how your business can benefit from it. In the past, creating a website and publishing content are enough to rank high in SERPS.

But now, you need a more effective SEO strategy to rank higher and get into the first few pages of the search engine result pages (SERPS). You can rank higher by using important keywords that generate qualified leads.

What’s the Importance of SEO for a Real Estate Agent Like You?

SEO is a big part of your success within the highly competitive real estate world. Since you have thousands of competitors online and even offline, you have to know to come up with a great SEO strategy. With this, generating quality traffic and leads to your website will be easy because your brand will be known to millions of people worldwide.

Today, people are looking for what they need using the internet. They buy clothes, shoes, devices, appliances, and even real estate properties through the web. Therefore, make sure they will find you and your business online.

SEO Tips to Help You Generate More Traffic and Leads for Higher Sales

You must bear in mind the 3 pillars: Local SEO, Onsite SEO, and Offsite SEO.

Tips for Local SEO

#1. Optimizing Your Page on Local Google My Business

Be sure your business is in Google-supported business platforms. When a potential client searches for a local business, he may likely see the map pack that features Google My Business pages like this one:

Be sure your business is a part of this. Also, be sure your profile is comprehensive and always up-to-date. Include the following:

How to Get Real Estate Leads – The 5 Step Digital Strategy

Wed, 06 Mar 2019 11:21:00 GMT

The online real estate market has never been more competitive, and it can be difficult to make your real estate business stand out in the crowd. If you are struggling to gain the traffic, leads, conversions and revenue that you know your real estate business deserves, it might be time to generate a digital strategy to get some leads for your site.

In this article, we will run through five of the steps you can take to generate high quality leads for your real estate site. This loose digital strategy can be used by any real estate business to increase revenue and gain valuable visibility on the real estate digital market.

1. Create a Real Estate Blog

Creating a focused real estate blog as an off-shoot from your main site is a fantastic way of generating qualified leads and heavy traffic flow to your real estate web site. As well as generating tones of focused traffic for your site, blogs can be fantastic for giving your brand some authority in the industry. Real Estate Blogs are very important in generating qualified leads and reflecting the current buying trends on the market. By publishing blog posts that are relevant to frequently searched niches and trends in the real estate market, you can capitalize on trends and generate targeted traffic.

One of the main reasons that real estate blogging is so important is that blogging increases traffic flow and adds weight to your brand. By publishing functional, in-demand, high quality blog content, you will automatically add authority to your business whilst gaining affiliates and interested consumers within the market.

2. Invest in Your Social Media Presence

Social Media is undoubtedly the best platform on which to reach and engage with your target audience. Active social media engagement is essential for any real estate marketing strategy because social media is so ubiquitous in the industry itself. Most real estate buyers will be influenced by social media and maintaining a strong social media presence is the best way to generate leads.

Creating and maintaining a strong identity for your brand on social media is essential for generating qualified leads and reaching the widest possible audience. Luckily, it could not be simpler to make the most out of social media marketing for real estate.

By posting content on the main popular social media platforms such as Twitter, Facebook, Instagram and Pinterest, you will be racking up traffic, leads and conversions like you could never imagine.

3. Gauge Your Target Market

Figuring out where and who your target market is is perhaps the most crucial part of any real estate digital marketing strategy. Locating your audience and identifying their browsing behaviors is an essential element of any marketing strategy, and the key to success in real estate marketing.

The best place to start is with the organic leads that you have generated naturally. These could be business peers, past clients, affiliates of past clients or those within your existing client network. By branching off a proven, loyal and real-world organic market, you are more likely to find your target market online.

A great way to harness the demographics and behaviors of consumers is via social media, and this is where maintaining a social media presence is so important to any marketing strategy. Platforms such as Facebook Ads and Google offer detailed breakdowns of user behavior, enabling you to optimize and focus content as you need to.

4. Make a ‘Strengthening Strategy’

Once you have located and engaged with a large bank of your ideal clients, it is important not to rest on your laurels. Even though you now have a long list of past and potential customers, the battle is far from over. In fact, it is only just beginning.

It is crucial to keep your target market engaged and interested once you have made contact and got them on board. This is why it is so important to formulate some kind of ‘strengthening strategy,’ designed to maintain contact with your clients and keep them engaged and active with your brand.

Some of the ways that you can strengthen your relationship with your bank of clients whilst pulling in new customers from your focused target market include emails, updates, offers and incentives. By making sure you provide users with a steady (but not over-bearing) stream of high quality, useful and functional content relating to their specific real estate interests, you are sure to keep them loyal to your business.

5. Develop a Long-Term Lead Strategy

Once you have done all the hard work of building your social media presence, client base, blog portfolio and initial boom of leads, it is time to formulate a long-term plan to keep the qualified leads coming in at a steady rate. The good news is, it’s a little easier to strategize in this way when your brand is already somewhat established.

A great way of planning ahead and preparing for the future is by creating content ahead of time. By creating content that falls into a pre-determined and fixed marketing strategy, you can jump the gun and always stay one step ahead of competitors in the real estate market.

As well as creating content in advance, you can create boiler-plates, templates and plans which can be re-used, optimized and re-marketed with each wave of new clients. This is also especially useful for re-targeting in social media and email marketing, where highly personalized pre-written emails can be sent out automatically.

We hope that our five-step list has been helpful for you, and that you might be able to adopt this digital strategy to generate more leads for your real estate business. By sticking to these five broad steps, you should be able to increase the rate of traffic, conversions and qualified leads for your real estate site. These steps are a fool-proof way to ensure that your real estate brand maintains presence on the market and continues to generate high quality leads.

The post How to Get Real Estate Leads – The 5 Step Digital Strategy appeared first on Bravo Demand .

5 Real Estate Marketing Tools You Should Be Using in 2019

Wed, 06 Mar 2019 11:15:00 GMT

There has never been more demand and competition in the real estate industry. For any real estate marketer or estate agent working in the industry today, there are certain tools that one must use in order to stay ahead of competitors and keep up with the evolving marketplace.

From content management to project organization to email marketing, social media, video marketing and beyond, there are many layers to real estate marketing in 2019. In this list, we will run through just five of the best digital tools that any real estate marketer should be using in 2019.

Here is our list of the 5 Real Estate Marketing Tools You Should Be Using in 2019.

1. Canva

Canva is a must-have marketing tool for anyone working in real estate. It is a streamlined DIY marketing tool that enables users to custom-make their own high-quality marketing content with minimal fuss and hassle.

Canva is an effective and popular online graphic design tool that allows even the most inexperienced of laymen to create their own stunning real estate marketing campaigns. Built with simplicity and accessibility in mind, Canva is made using a basic drag and drop interface that anyone can quickly learn to master. With a wide range of import/export options, layouts, graphics, media and fonts to choose from, the real estate world really is your oyster with Canva. And, if it couldn’t get any better, Canva is especially suited to real estate agents, with a wide selection of real estate templates available including social media graphics, real estate brochure templates and real estate flyer templates.

2. Trello

Trello is an effective task management tool that has become massively popular with those working in the real estate sector for a reason. Trello enables easy organization and collaborative task management services via easy to digest project boards.

Trello allows real estate agents or business owners to track the progress of each project and more easily manage the momentum of the company workload. This tool is especially suited to the real estate sector, and even features custom made real estate Trello boards for those in a rush.

Once you create a board, you can create different lists for different stages of the project and drag and drop Trello cards under the different lists as needed. These update in real-time! With boards being regularly updated in real time, Trello enables users to drag and drop Trello cards in various lists (or sub-sections) within each project. This allows for multi-faceted management and layered organization.

3. Animoto

Animoto is a fantastic real estate video app that is simply essential for any real estate marketer in 2019. Video marketing has never been more important, and video marketing is often an essential element of any integrated real estate marketing campaign.

Animoto is a reliable and easy to use one stop shop for real estate video marketing. Animoto allows users to quickly and effortlessly make high quality real estate marketing videos including property listings videos and professional standard testimonial videos.

Featuring a wide range of ready-made storyboards, music, media and video templates to choose from, you don’t have to be a Hollywood director to craft a real estate marketing video of a high professional quality when using Animoto. It could not be easier to create your dream real estate video with Animoto. To get the process underway, all you have to is upload your chosen media, either a video or images. Once your content has been uploaded, you can use the simple drag and drop interface to edit and create your video.

4. Mailchimp

Mailchimp is an established tech tool that is used by countless businesses on a global scale. While Mailchimp is an established office tool that you are probably already more than familiar with, you may not be aware of its potential as a powerful and efficient real estate marketing tool.

Mailchimp is a simple email marketing platform that allows those in the real estate sector to create and send out professional content in a personal, customized way. Mailchimp enables users to craft letters, emails, updates and messages of a high professional standard without the use of any external developers or graphic designers.

With a wide range of perfect templates to choose from, which you can edit or configure as you please, Mailchimp takes the stress and hassle out of creating an email marketing campaign. Because it is a marketing automation platform, the Mailchimp software also enables real estate businesses to create email campaigns, retarget web visitors and much more.

5. DocuSign

DocuSign is a simple yet incredibly useful tool for anyone working in real estate. Although this is not specifically a digital marketing tool, it can come in handy in endless marketing situations, especially in real estate where timing can be so crucial to a deal. While it may not help you get traffic or conversions, DocuSign is certainly useful in that it can speed up transaction times and enable efficient storage and organization of files, invoices and transactions on the digital cloud. This adds extra security and peace of mind when dealing with sensitive, big scale transactions or making deals with clients who are geographically far away.

In short, DocuSign enables real estate marketers to transfer and sign files and documents with maximum security and minimum stress, anytime, anywhere and on whatever device they see fit. DocuSign is a crucial tool for any estate agent or real estate marketer who is sick of dealing with mounds of paperwork and slow transaction times due to human error. A simple yet useful gem for any real estate marketer in 2019. This has been our list of the 5 Real Estate Marketing Tools You Should Be Using in 2019. We hope that this list comes in handy, and that any digital real estate marketers reading this might be able to improve their work by using some of these tools. Thanks for reading, and happy marketing!

The post 5 Real Estate Marketing Tools You Should Be Using in 2019 appeared first on Bravo Demand .

7 Killer Real Estate Marketing Ideas to Grow Your Sales

Wed, 06 Mar 2019 11:00:00 GMT

It is essential to keep your real estate brand relevant in order to grow your sales. The digital real estate market is highly crowded and competitive, and it is essential to strategize and make your real estate business unique in order to pull in the traffic and sales you need. Here is our list of 7 Killer Real Estate Marketing Ideas to Grow Your Sales this year and keep your real estate business fresh.

1. Formulate an Unbeatable Offer

Often, the best way to make your real estate marketing campaign work is by tempting traffic in with an initial ‘welcome’ offer, deal or promotion. Offers are a fantastic way of bringing in qualified traffic to the site, especially when used as part of a wider, focused marketing strategy.

If you are struggling to gain conversions or in need of more qualified leads coming into your website, it might be worth thinking of some kind of offer or promotion to pull new users in. This could include promotions such as low/no deposit properties, flash sales or user incentives.

Offering goods or services in exchange for compliance with a service has been proven as a successful marketing strategy, and is a great way to grow your business and generate the qualified leads you need.

2. Make Sure Your Used Images & Photos Are Top Quality

It can be argued that high quality photography is the corner stone of any real estate marketing campaign, and that the images you use to sell a property can make or break a sale. Success in the digital real estate market is heavily reliant on fantastic photography because potential buyers often base their choices on images alone.

Choose the wrong photos and you could find your business suffering as a result. This is why it is essential for any real estate marketer to ensure that they are using the best images possible to promote their brand and the properties for sale within your business.

From your website landing page to your choice of ad imagery and the banners you use in emails, it is crucial to make sure that you are using the most flattering and attractive photos and images that you can find.Whether you choose to hire an in-house photographer or graphics design team or you outsource the work to an agency or photography specialist, you are sure to see a boost in traffic, interest and revenue for your business.

3. Monitor the Competition

The real estate industry is highly competitive, and never more so than it is today with digital marketing and social media. A great way to grow your own business is to check out the competition and monitor the trends, peaks and troughs in the real estate game.

By keeping up with the latest tech, promotions and marketing techniques used by your competitors, you have a better chance of finding a gap in the market and getting your business one step ahead of the crowd. This way, you can avoid mistakes without making them yourself and stay ahead of the curve.

4. Harness the Power of Social Media

Social Media is perhaps the most influential and engaging platform on which to advertise or market your real estate business. There has never been a higher potential market than now, and it has never been easier to target your campaigns to a focused audience of qualified leads than it is on social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter.

By making sure that your real estate marketing business is fully tuned in with social media and visible on all of the major social media platforms, you will dramatically increase your potential audience and customer base. By building focused real estate marketing strategies within platforms like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Instagram and Google Plus, you can reach a highly targeted audience of qualified leads based on demographic data.

Social Media is especially useful for real estate marketers because the real estate market and social media are both fuelled by photos. It has never been easier to find an audience by using high quality images shared on parallel social media platforms.

5. Enable Virtual Property Tours

For many buyers, it’s all about speed. By allowing clients to take a virtual tour of the property that they are interested in, you can dramatically cut down on time. Without the need to book physical viewings, you’ll have more time to complete rapid transactions and grow your business.

Virtual property tours are also great for clients because it shows that your business is transparent and that there are no hidden bad surprises with the property.

Virtual tours are now fairly common in real estate web sites, however it is still mainly the big real estate brands that use this feature. By enabling virtual tours on your site, you will automatically raise your brand and ensure that your site is fully up to date.

6. Optimize or Re-Write Your Site

Any business should always be optimizing and improving their site to ensure that it remains functional, relevant and up to date. This is never truer than in the real estate market, which is constantly fluctuating.
By optimizing your existing site, rewriting your site or even creating a new site from scratch, you can dramatically enhance the style, identity and efficiency of your brand whilst boosting your rate of traffic, lead generation and revenue.

Optimizing and re-marketing your real estate web site is great way of pulling in new clients and breathing new life into your brand, gaining interest from past customers.

7. Enable Call Tracking

Call tracking should be an essential component of any digital real estate marketing strategy. Call tracking enables you to pinpoint which ads from your PPC campaigns have gathered the most interest from qualified leads.

Call tracking enables real estate marketers to retarget clients and boost traffic by capitalizing on past successes and optimize content that has not performed so well.

Call tracking can dramatically boost your success rate in any real estate PPC campaign, which can exponentially increase in hits with each new invigoration of the campaign.

We hope that our list of 7 killer real estate marketing ideas has been helpful, and that some of these tips and tricks will come in handy when you’re formulating your next real estate marketing strategy.

The post 7 Killer Real Estate Marketing Ideas to Grow Your Sales appeared first on Bravo Demand .