If marketing is simply the act of promoting and selling products or services, all estate agents are also marketers!
While the property portals remain a major part of attracting potential clients, estate agents also need to turn their attention to a real estate property marketing plan that works elsewhere.
A good marketing strategy will attract potential clients before they even need your services so that when they are ready, your estate agency is first in mind. In order to do this, estate agents should be aware and mindful of the marketing funnel.
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What Is The Marketing Funnel For Estate Agents?
The Marketing Funnel describes a customer’s journey from the point where they find out about a business to the point where they “buy”.
These days there are variations of the marketing funnel but all basically tell the same story. Customers go through a process before buying; they find out about you, they become convinced that they want to buy from you and only then do they actually buy from you.
| Awareness | Attracting customers: making them aware that you provide a solution to their problem. |
| Interest | Making it easy for customers to want to engage your services. This is where you work on building trust, likeability and confidence. |
| Desire | As above. |
| Action | Where customers “buy” or instruct you. |
When you are creating your real estate marketing strategy, you should consider all of the parts of the funnel – not just the part where you SELL!
In this blog we’ll cover some creative ways for estate agents to use property marketing at each part of the funnel. You can also download our FREE list of 50 property marketing ideas for 2020 by clicking here.
Property Marketing For Awareness: Attracting Clients
This part of your marketing strategy is about making it easy for potential clients to find you and be attracted to you.
1. Professional Photography
Professional property photography is the standard for property marketing. Properties listed with professional photography generate more leads but vendors also expect to see the same standard when visiting your website or other online profiles.
Professional property images work so well because they make an instantly good impression. An attractive images makes someone want to click into you listing, scroll down on your website or like an image on social media.
If you are not currently using professionally taken and edited photos, you should consider making the switch.
2. Smart Viewings
Buyers and sellers appreciate VR property marketing like smart viewings.
Smart viewings enable someone to view a property from anywhere at any time. Buyers love them because they provide a better sense of the property. Vendors love them because they reduce wasted viewings. And estate agents love them for that same reason.
Incorporating smart viewings into your real estate marketing will really separate you from the pack and will stand out to vendors and buyers alike.
To find out more about VR property marketing, have a read of this.
3. Location Based SEO
Using better visual content like professional photography and virtual reality property marketing is great for catching the eye of potential clients but how can you ensure that they find you in the first place?
Make sure you can easily be found in search.
SEO is the activities connected with ensuring your website appears highly in relevant searches. For example, if someone searches “estate agents near me”, you want your website to show up.
Location based SEO is all about focusing your efforts on appearing high in searches relating to your local area. As most of your clients will likely be within your local area, this is very important for estate agents.
Property Marketing For Interest & Desire: Making It Easy For People To Want To Engage Your Services
This part of your marketing plan is crucial. Estate agents are among the least trusted professionals in the UK and finding a trustworthy estate agents is one of most people’s biggest concerns when buying or selling a home.
Your marketing efforts in this part of the funnel will encourage people to trust you more, like you more and be inclined to instruct you.
4. Email Marketing For Estate Agents
Over 90% of people check their email everyday. This makes email a great place for you to get in front of potential clients.
The mistake many businesses including estate agents make is to email someone ONLY when they want to sell.
A smart marketing plan will include regular emails that add value. As most of your potential clients are probably local, this could be providing information about local events or news or sharing blogs that include information they are looking for.
5. Hosting a Community Event
It’s likely that most of your real estate marketing plan will focus on digital marketing, there is still a place for offline efforts.
A community event is a great way to get in front of your potential clients, to collect their contact details and to build trust in the local community.
A community event could be anything from a family fun day to hosting a community paper shredding drive.
Estate agents may want to consider using Facebook ads to promote their community event and get it in front of as many people as possible. It may even be possible to offer free tickets in exchange for contact details so that you can use these in other marketing efforts in the future (this of course would have to be subject to GDPR rules).
6. Start A Blog
A blog has a number of good purposes. For one, creating content can be really good for SEO. You can read more about this in our SEO blog here.
Blog posts can also be very effective in adding value and building on your relationship with potential clients. For a blog to be effective, it’s important to write about things that the vendors or buyers you want to nurture care about.
You can narrow down on these topics by doing keyword research, by asking around or you may have some good ideas from your experiences. The key though is to not just sell and blog about what you think is interesting.
Once you have blog content, consider sharing it in your email blasts and on your social media. It’s also good practice to schedule regular blogging!
Read more about blogging in our content marketing blog here.
Property Marketing For Action: Winning Clients
This is the final part of the funnel. People will take different amounts of time to get to the point where they feel ready to act. Some will visit your website once and be ready, others will have engaged with you several times through emails or offline events before they are ready to engage you.
Either way, effective marketing at this point is about making it EASY for people to take action.
7. Clear CTAs
A CTA is a call to action. These are generally buttons or other web links that instruct someone to take action. Sometimes people need to be prompted to do what you want them to do; whether that’s “call us now” or “get a free valuation”.
To be effective, it should be EASY for someone to find your calls to action.
Real estate agents should include regular invitations for someone to take the next step on their website, in their portal descriptions, on their social media posts and in blogs! Everywhere.
8. Compelling Reasons To Take Action Now
Why should someone you choose you and why do it now?
The easier you can make answering this question, the better. Providing a compelling reason for someone to take action may be providing access to a limited offer or because you’re throwing in an added bonus.
Whatever it is, when you provide a compelling reason you give people instant gratification and a reason to pick you over someone else/
Don’t forget to make your compelling reason clear so that people know it exists!
There are a whole host of things to consider when creating your real estate marketing plan. However you choose to tackle marketing, remember to think customer first and to build a relationship of trust and likeability so that choosing you over another agency is a no brainer.
Download our mammoth list of 50 property marketing ideas for more inspiration here.
