Rising above other realtors in an overcrowded property market is challenging – keeping up with new trends, new tools, and new technology can seem like an impossible task. However, digitalization provides a unique opportunity to equalize the playing field with a wealth of digital tools to enhance how realtors communicate with customers, generate leads, and build brand awareness. The current pandemic emphasizes the importance of such tools as with most face-to-face activities on pause; people are flocking online for property searching, buying, and selling. Thus, now more than ever, a customized, data-driven digital strategy is essential to augmenting your real estate sales funnel and orchestrating engaging, customer-centric experiences in today’s competitive landscape.
Don’t miss your chance to catch up! Keep up with recent technology developments and read on for 3 Ways to Stand Out in the Digital Age as a Real Estate Agent.
1. Supercharge Your Social Media Strategy
It is your time to shine on social. Adopting a holistic social media strategy is a key factor in optimizing your digital strategy – 77% of all agents use social media to reach target audiences, with 47% finding higher quality leads via social media than other sources. The most common platforms used by agents are Facebook, Instagram , and LinkedIn, while realtors’ main questions on social media tend to be about differences between properties. All of this implies that focusing on bite-sized, informative content on your social media posts will allow you to capture your target audience’s attention.
Realtors can also use social media to appeal directly to their key audiences by targeting demographics, interests, and geographic location. Filters help to expand your reach among the people who really take an interest in your business. The benefit of paid social media ads is you can boost your content awareness and engagement to the most relevant audiences. This can further help build your brand awareness, profile and reputation, helping you find more leads, faster and smarter.
There are a couple of best practices that you should keep in mind when supercharging your social media:
- Strategize your posts by compiling a social media calendar and schedule what posts go out on which date – paying particular attention to holidays to create more relatable content.
- Diversify content, and do so regularly – for example, include infographics of the latest trends in the property market, best interior designs for different sizes of flats, and content related to listings, informational articles, or blogs.
- Host virtual tours live at the best time for your target leads.
- Post consistently at the same time of day – using data to inform when your leads and prospects are online which social media channel at what time. Don’t be afraid to post different content at different times across social media platforms!
- Invest in paid ads to build awareness of different posts and your account as a whole. This will help you target the most relevant audience and reach the low-hanging fruit.
2. Establish Your Position as a Real Estate Thought Leader with Value-Added Content
While social media is essential to building a presence online, to stand out as an industry leader, you can no longer only be vocal and active on social media. You need a website that adds credibility and substantiates your position as a leader in the industry. Websites are the focal point for online lead generation and act as a digital face for your business – it is where clients will go to vet you and competitors will go to research and investigate. Investing in a great website is essential to stand out amongst all the digital noise and diversify yourself from competitors within the market.
Using your website as a thought leadership platform will make you stand out as an industry leader by showing potential clients that you offer well-researched and considered informative content for free. There are a couple of ways to transform your website:
- Create blog posts around current key trends in real estate management and ensure your blog posts appear near the top of searches by including keywords from SEO analysis. This will improve engagement with your website and offer a more robust platform to build a community and a following.
- Record podcasts to showcase your expertise to potential leads as they land on your page. Hearing your take on the real estate market will help increase your credibility while embracing another medium can broaden your influence. Your website can become a great depository of podcasts and other similar tools you may use to expand your reach.
- Offer online tools, such as a mortgage calculator, for quick and easy ways to engage potential leads, and encourage them to spend more time on your website.
These steps will highlight to your potential leads that you are a leading real estate agent who is willing to go above and beyond to serve the community. For those with less time to set up a website, consider hiring a professional web-developer to curate your website, as this will guarantee your website follows best practices and is set up for success from the get-go.
3. Build a Virtual Community to Leverage the Network Effect
Developing relationships with your clients digitally is vital for making you stand out amongst an array of mass-market advertisements. Select your niche within real estate and focus on fostering genuine connections by adding social proof elements to your digital marketing content. This could mean showcasing your team members and successful client stories on your website and social media posts. The benefit of this is that you will create a community of brand advocates that will enable you to add an element of humanization to you or your agency, thereby allowing you to stand out in a crowd of faceless digital real estate agencies. This can lead to better promotion of your services from word-of-mouth marketing to peer-to-peer referrals, ultimately driving up your lead conversion rates and sales.
Hosting online events and webinars can also help you build a community around the same topic or interest. You would be providing people with opportunities to communicate and network with others on the same topics of interest. As 80% of people join virtual events for educational purposes, including informative and relevant advice, this could add extra value for potential leads as they consume free and useful information. This will enhance your reputation as you will be viewed as having a positive social impact on communities during these unprecedented times.
Distinguish Yourself in the New Real Estate Digital Ecosystem
Standing out in the digital ecosystem can be difficult amongst so much noise and competition. But, don’t worry, Property Raptor can help you shine by giving you the tools to impress and the time to create hyper-personalized engaging content. Our platform is built for real estate agents, to help automate frustratingly manual tasks, expedite day-to-day activities, and bring data front and center. With Property Raptor, you can get custom-built Web Portals with sleek, professional, and ready-to-use microsite templates that are easily customizable with your brand assets. Our web portals don’t just look good; they’re designed to capture all relevant lead activity from property search behavior, time spent viewing each listing and actions taken on the microsite. Beautifully designed to attract. Developed to convert.
Investing in a digital strategy is essential for generating qualified leads, and converting these leads in an overcrowded virtual marketplace. Making yourself stand out against competitors requires resilient digital systems that synergize effortlessly to help you establish more personal connections and deliver meaningful content to your key audiences.
Contact Property Raptor to find out how we can help you stand out in the digital age as a real estate agent: https://www.propertyraptor.com/contact/
