Over the past few years, we – as a real estate digital marketing agency – have been a witness to phenomenal changes in the way Realtors and property investors market their services.
Real estate marketing for Realtors used to be limited to door knocking and cold calling. Fast forward to 2022, virtual and augmented reality, 3D tours and artificial intelligence (AI) are some of the technologies dominating the marketing scene in this industry. It is despite the fact that the real estate industry is usually very slow to adapt to changes. Most real estate professionals prefer to rely on ‘old wisdom’ since such a huge amount of money is involved in each and every transaction.
Today, if you are not leveraging the latest technology and marketing tools, you are at the risk of losing business to your ‘ahead-of-the-curve’ competitors. If you are not tech-savvy, following these changes may seem overwhelming but believe me the technology has made marketing for Realtors and real estate investors a lot easier. You can now generate leads without even leaving your office and put the process on autopilot.
In this guide, I am going to list 38 most popular real estate marketing ideas and tips with examples that are guaranteed to help you generate more leads in 2022 and beyond:
Table of Contents
Building your real estate marketing foundation
The following ideas will help you build a real estate marketing foundation:
-
Set up a website
Your real estate website is the most important marketing tool. Whether you want to promote your content on social media or run a Google Ads PPC campaign, you will get the best results only if you have a website or landing pages. The traffic from all your free and paid promotions will be diverted to your website where you will have a conversion funnel in place. Once a person visits your website, you can show him or her your promotions any time you want with paid retargeting campaigns. This conversion funnel helps you convert random website visitors into paying customers.
If you don’t have a website yet and want to set up one on a shoe-string budget, check out my guide: how to set up an SEO-friendly and conversion-optimized real estate website in 30 minutes or less.
Real also: Best hosting for real estate websites [2022 update]
Read also: Real Estate WordPress Themes 2022: Which Ones Are Best & Why
-
Promote your business with Google Ads (PPC marketing)
For real estate professionals getting stated with online marketing, I believe the most cost-effective tool to generate high-quality leads is Google Ads (formally known as Google Adwords).
Many Realtors and investors market their business on Facebook, but they don’t leverage Google Ads. It’s a huge mistake. With Facebook limiting targeting options for housing ads, Google Adwords is the fastest way to generate leads.
Check out our detailed guides on Google Ads for real estate professionals below:
- The Proven Method to Using Google Adwords for Real Estate Leads
- Killer Google PPC Ads for Real Estate Investors in 11 Easy Steps
- What Does PPC Mean in Real Estate Marketing?
- Definitive Guide to Lowering Real Estate PPC Cost in 2022
- Definitive Guide to Researching Real Estate PPC Keywords
- Ultimate Guide to Real Estate Google Ads Extensions [Examples]
- Guide to Negative Keywords List for Real Estate Google Ads
-
Leverage Facebook marketing
Facebook is the most popular social media platform in the world and it’s extremely important that you start leveraging its popularity the day you start promoting your business online.
You can explore nearly 100 Facebook marketing tips in the following detailed guide (with examples):
94 Facebook Marketing Tips for Real Estate Agents: The Complete List
The guide explains how to set up your page, what type of content you should post and which features you should utilize for a better organic reach.
-
Get leads with Facebook ads
Cost-effectiveness, high engagement rates, and a wide range of targeting options are some of the advantages of promoting your real estate business with Facebook Ads.
Check out the following detailed guides to learn how to promote your business with Facebook Ads and why this is one of the best marketing tools for Realtors and investors:
- Advanced Guide to Real Estate Facebook Ads: Examples & Tips
- Your Unlimited Source of Facebook Ad Copy Ideas for Real Estate
- Facebook’s Special Ads Category for Real Estate: Definitive Guide
- The Perfect Facebook Ads Funnel Formula for Real Estate
- 4 Best Facebook Advertising Practices for Real Estate Professionals
- 3 Best Features of Facebook Advertising for Real Estate
- 4 Ways to Make Facebook Ads Profitable for Real Estate in 2022
- 20 ways to collect real estate leads with Facebook ads
- Best Facebook ads placement strategy for real estate
- How much should you budget for real estate Facebook Ads?
- Facebook advertising: Best targeting options for realtors
- How can real estate agents lower their Facebook advertising cost?
- Luxury Real State Marketing with Facebook Ads: The Definite Guide
-
Instagram marketing
If you are promoting starter homes for young people, you should definitely consider Instagram marketing. Instagram has a better organic reach than Facebook when it comes to visual content.
If you want to advertise or market your real estate business on Instagram, check out the following guide:
Instagram Marketing for Real Estate: Complete Guide [2022 update]
-
YouTube marketing
Video marketing is the best way to reach your prospects and engage with them in 2022. If you want to keep the cost of your video marketing low and leverage the reach of the world’s second most popular search engine, you should definitely leverage YouTube marketing.
Check out the guide below to learn how to market your real estate business on YouTube:
-
YouTube Advertising
With YouTube ads, you can show promotional videos to your prospective clients. The best thing about YouTube ads is that you pay only if a person has viewed a video for a certain amount of time in a Cost-per-View (CPV) bidding strategy.
Check out my guide on YouTube Advertising for Real estate to learn the step-by-step process to run your on this video marketing platform successfully.
-
Search engine optimization (SEO)
Search engine optimization (SEO) helps you rank your website content higher in Google search results. It means that the people will find your content while performing searches for homes and real estate services in their area.
SEO is the best way to generate leads organically. While PPC campaigns such as Google Ads help you start generating real leads instantly, SEO is a long-term strategy. You won’t reap the benefits of your SEO efforts instantly, but once your content start ranking in Google, leader generation will be on autopilot.
Here are some detailed guides which will help you get started with real estate SEO:
- SEO Audit of Real Estate Website: Complete Guide
- Local SEO for real estate leads: Complete guide
- The Ultimate List of Real Estate Keywords for PPC and SEO
- 5 Real Estate SEO Trends that Are Working Great in 2022
- 5 apps to skyrocket local SEO for your real estate business
- Three killer strategies to boost local SEO for real estate agents
-
Blogging
Blogging offers several benefits. It’s the most effective way to boost your website’s SEO. It helps you engage with your new and existing clients. You can establish yourself as a neighborhood and real estate expert with the help of blogging. And most importantly, it will help you generate more content for your social media profiles including Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, Linked-in and Pinterest.
You can repurpose the content of your blog and turn them into YouTube videos and educate your prospective clients of the home buying and selling and real estate investment process.
Here is a blogging guide you should check out and follow the tips to make blogging content SEO-friendly.
Step-by-Step Guide to Writing SEO-friendly Real Estate Blog Posts
-
Real estate content marketing
Content marketing goes beyond creating valuable and relevant content on a regular basis. You need to create content and then distribute it to a clearly defined audience.
What it basically means is that you need to create content that your readers find helpful, informative and valuable and then make sure that it reaches the right audience. In the context of a website, it means that you publish great content and drive traffic to your website to ensure that the content is found by relevant audience. The quality of the website traffic is more important than the quantity.
While any home buyer will find a generic home buying guide helpful, if your target audience is first-time home buyers, you may make the content relevant by including information about the challenges particularly faced by first-time home buyers.
It’s a very basic example, but you get the idea. For an effective content marketing:
- Your content should be relevant to a clearly defined audience
- It should provide valuable information
- You should distribute it to your defined audience
The goal of content marketing is to put your audience through a sales funnel and turn random visitors to your website and social media profiles into paying customers.
-
Email marketing
Email marketing is considered one of the most effective marketing methods for getting new leads and staying in touch with the cold ones.
- Create lead magnets for property buyers, sellers and investors
- Promote your lead magnets through your website, Google and Facebook Ads.
- Once people start subscribing to the email list in exchange for the lead magnet, make sure that you are creating different email lists for sellers, buyers and investors. It’s called audience segmentation in email marketing.
- Create a drip email campaign. A drip email campaign consists of a welcome email and a sequence of emails that educates your prospects about buying, selling or investing in real estate.
- Use an email marketing automation software to send out emails after pre-defined intervals.
- Send out weekly or monthly newsletters with information about market trends, real estate tips etc.
- Send out property listings on a weekly basis.
- Share testimonials and reviews from former clients
These are the most basic and absolutely important real estate marketing ideas that you should implement right away.
You can’t launch an effective email marketing campaign without a website. Similarly, a website won’t be as effective as it can potentially be unless you leverage content marketing and publish blog posts on a regular basis. If you publish blog posts, you will have a lot of valuable content to share on your social media profiles. You can also repurpose this content into videos, podcasts, eBooks and webinars to get more leads. So, it’s important that you leverage all the real estate marketing ideas mentioned above.
Increasing engagement with your prospects
-
Home valuation calculator
If you are trying to capture home seller leads, you should definitely have a home valuation calculator on your website. It helps sellers get an estimate of their property’s estimated value instantly. Many home buyers also use home valuation calculator to estimate the value of a home that they are planning to purchase.
Once a lead enters the home address, he or she is asked to enter their email address to access the home valuation report.
-
Latest and featured listings (IDX integration)
You can display the latest and featured listings in different neighborhoods in your city. If a lead wants to get listing updates, they are asked to subscribe and share their email address with you.
-
Add social share buttons
Your website visitors should be able to share your content easily on their social media profiles including Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, WhatsApp and email. You can add social share buttons to home listings and blog content.
-
Host live Q&A
You can go live on Facebook and YouTube to host live Q&A sessions with your prospects. You can send an email to all the people on your email list to attend the Q&A session. You can also promote it on your social media profiles or with Facebook, Instagram and Google Ads.
Read also: Facebook live for real estate leads: the complete guide
-
Online quizzes and competitions
Quora gets millions of visitors because it’s great place where people can have their questions answered.
It indicates people love quizzes and competitions. You can host quizzes and competitions about your local real estate market or home buying or selling process and challenge people to test their knowledge. These quizzes can be designed in a way that it gives you more information about the prospects including which neighborhoods are their favorites, how much down payment they have, what their credit score is, and if they are pre-approved.
-
Be active in relevant forums and online communities
A great way to engage with your prospects to be active in online communities and forums such as Reddit and Quora. For real estate investors, BiggerPockets is a great community forum to be active in.
Answer questions posted by home buyers, sellers and newbie investors in these online forums and communities. You can also answer questions related to lifestyle, demographics, relocation, and amenities in different neighborhoods of your city.
You can leave links to different relevant pages of your website in these forums to drive traffic to your website.
Generating new real estate leads
Following are some lead sources we have already discussed:
- Create a Facebook Page and post useful content (textual as well as visual content) on a regular basis
- Create an Instagram profile
- Set up a YouTube channel
- Start running Facebook Ads
- Start getting leads with Google Ads,
- Run Instagram Ads
- Launch a YouTube advertising campaign
Here are a few other platforms you can leverage for getting new leads
-
Facebook messenger
Chatbot marketing is growing in popularity because it’s very effective.
And when it comes to chatbot marketing, Facebook Messenger is the best tool.
You can easily have a Facebook Messenger chatbot set up on your website. This makes it extremely easy for people to connect with you in real time with Facebook Messenger.
Check out the following guide to learn more about Facebook Messenger chatbot marketing for real estate agents and investors.
-
Text messaging
Studies indicate that about 62% of home buyers prefer to receive property listing info via text messaging; however, only 5% of real estate agents communicate with their clients by SMS. It indicates a very few Realtors are leveraging text messaging despite the fact it’s as effective as email marketing. You can gain a competitive advantage by engaging with your prospects with text messaging.
If your website is built on the world’s most popular CMS – WordPress, there are many free and premium plugins that you can install to set up text messaging. The visitors simply click a button on your website and send you a text message.
-
Create lead magnets for your website
Lead magnets are visual or textual content that you share with your prospective clients in exchange for their content information. These lead magnets can be used for paid promotions as well as for converting random visitors (traffic from organic or social media platform) into loyal website visitors and eventually paying clients.
Here are a few must-have real estate lead magnets for Realtors and investors:
- Instant home valuation calculator
- Listing alert for each neighborhood in your target market
- A comprehensive home buying guide (eBook or course)
- A comprehensive home selling guide (eBook or course)
- List of homes with a specific price range
- Real estate market trends newsletter
-
Detailed neighborhood guides
People want to know more about their desired neighborhood and its features before buying a home there. You should create detailed neighborhood profiles and make sure that you distribute them to your target audience through paid and free promotions.
Here is a guide to learn how to create neighborhood profiles:
How to create awesome neighborhood guides for real estate leads
Increasing brand awareness
-
Create a Google My Business profile
If you want to promote your business on Google free of cost, setting up a Google My Business profile is a must. A GoB profile for your real estate business will not only help you get more exposure in search engine results, but also make it easier for people to navigate to your office and to collect information about your services online.
Here is a recent guide we published on some latest GoB features for real estate professionals:
5 New Must-Know Google My Business Features for Realtors
-
Retargeting ads on Google and Facebook
After a person has left your website, he or she will likely forget about your brand immediately. Retargeting ads are an excellent way to promote your brand to your past website visitors. With retargeting campaigns, you use simple Javascript code to anonymously ‘follow’ your audience all over the Web.
For example, let’s say I visited your website and left without signing up for your newsletter. You can show me Facebook and Google Ads whenever I sign into my personal Facebook profile, visit other websites what that Google Adsense enabled or perform a search on Google.
-
Lifestyle videos
Sharing home improvement, décor, staging and lifestyle videos with your prospective clients on a regular basis can help you create brand awareness. Thousands of YouTube channels with millions of followers and the popularity of HGTV are an evidence how engaging these types of videos can be.
-
Branded videos
Create branded videos that shows your expertise, knowledge and experience in real estate and promote it with social media marketing and email marketing. For example, you can use a branded video as a cover video for your Facebook page.
-
Display advertising
You can run Facebook and Google with different types of objectives. One of the objectives is brand awareness. You can run brand awareness ads on Facebook, Google, Instagram and YouTube where you pay for per-thousand impressions (CPM) or per thousand video views. You can promote your branded videos and other types of branded content with display advertising.
-
Influencer marketing
Make a list of most popular bloggers and local social media celebrities and collaborate with them to promote your brand. You may have to invest a bit in influencer marketing, but studies indicate that it eventually pays off if your objective to create brand awareness.
Traditional marketing methods
-
Leverage your sphere of influence
The people in your sphere of influence can play a vital role in the growth of your business. Make sure that they know you are there whenever they or someone in their sphere of influence need real estate services. You can send them emails and texts or get in touch with them with the help of social media.
-
Network with local businesses
Network with the owners of popular restaurants, clubs, bars, and other local businesses in your area. Feature them in your real estate blog and neighborhood guides. You can also organize local events in partnership with them. Local events are often covered by blogs and newspapers. Your brand will get exposure, and at the time, you can leverage your relationship with local businesses to get referrals.
-
Get quoted in local newspapers
The surefire way to establish yourself as a real estate expert is to get featured in local newspapers. Whenever there is a major development that can influence the local real estate market or prices in your target neighborhoods, make sure to share your unique opinion about it with journalists and editors. Write a basic press release and email it to local newspapers and magazines. Don’t get disheartened if the majority of these press releases are rejected. If you are quoted in an article, make sure to share it on social media and website and through email newsletter.
-
Networking
Many veteran real estate professionals consider social media a superficial way of promoting a business. They believe that real networking is what builds your reputation in a community.
Make sure that you participate in community events and meet as many people as possible on a regular basis. Partner with non-profit organizations and volunteer for community causes. You should care about the community that you serve.
Over to you
As you can see you need to leverage both – the latest digital marketing tools and traditional marketing methods – to dominate your local real estate market in 2022 and beyond.
Instead of approaching these marketing methods individually, think of creating comprehensive marketing campaigns to accelerate the growth of your business.
Let me know in comments if you have any feedback or questions.
