How Digital Marketing is Taking Real Estate to New Heights

As one of the biggest employment sectors in the country, the real estate market has great opportunities for new people coming into the business. However, some elements of this business have changed in recent years. For instance, the way people search for properties to buy, and the factors that influence their decisions to buy or sell, have all changed. Digital marketing has expanded this industry; and also introduced new ways of conducting business. In this article, we mention some of the ways that digital marketing has influenced real estate, bright MLS NJ, while also giving you advice on how to build a real estate business in a highly competitive market.  

Make Your Website SEO-Friendly

When setting up your website, have a list of specific keywords and phrases that you want to be indexed in search engines like Google and Bing. To do this, you must research some of the words that you think web users will type on their search engines, and then figure out the right placement for these words. This is not too different than when you’re searching for specific services online. Just get into the mindset of your preferred customer and help guide them to your website. Remember, search engine page ranking takes a lot of work, but without it, you won’t get much traffic from online searches. Here are the most critical areas of SEO:

• On-page SEO

This is where you put relevant keywords on your web pages so that search traffic leads to your site. So, in this case, you want something along the lines of “real estate agent”, or “realtors in [your city]”. 

• Off-page SEO

This refers to inbound links that lead people back to your website. To build your off-page SEO, you will need to do a lot of guest-blogging or hire someone to write content for you on different platforms and have a link to your website included there. Well-authored content will generate significant leads, and it could boost your real estate business. 

• Technical SEO 

The technical parts include things like meta tags, which are essentially roadmaps to your site that search engines will follow. You also need a highly responsive website, which an SEO agency can help you with.  

Making Sure Your Website is Mobile-Friendly

Smartphones take up more web traffic than computers, so it’s no surprise that search engines now rank websites based on the level of their mobile compatibility. As you set up your real estate website, keep in mind that your target audience is people who are partial to mobile-friendly websites, and they expect a high level of readability, with clear, concise information about what the site is about. Use this as a guide and it will help you figure out what should go into the website. 

Posting Relevant Content, Videos, and Social Media Posts

Content marketing has been written about for a long time now, and even now it is still the most important aspect of online marketing. You want to create content that people find engaging, and to do this, you need a clear understanding of your audience. As a Realtor, you may be taking this to mean that you need a ton of articles on houses; but this is not necessarily the case. The goal is to engage with people, and you do this by creating interesting material, even if it’s not about houses. To give you an idea, here’s how to create content online:

• Blogging

Create blogs that talk about various topics that may relate in some way to your business. So for instance, you can talk about some of the new and exciting technologies in the real estate business, or how a drop in crime rates has increased home purchases in your city. You can also offer useful tips for first-time buyers, like the common mistakes they should avoid, and so on. 

• Create Virtual Tours

New buyers have come to expect this as a feature on every Realtor website, so you might as well integrate virtual tours on your website. A virtual tour allows a potential buyer to view a listed house by virtual reality technology, and it can be very compelling, so this is just one more way to increase revenue for your business. 

• Create Videos, Pictures 

Do you have some free time on your hands? Take this time to create videos and images that you know will generate traffic. Most of your web visitors prefer to watch short videos than to read text, so whenever possible, use video to communicate with your audiences, and have some beautiful photographs of the houses you’re selling. 

• Post in Social Media

Social media marketing can make or break your business, and this is not unique to real estate. There are close to four billion social media users globally, and one thing they all have in common is that they like to share content online. Having this in mind, you want to create content that users find interesting and shareable. Have a personal and business account on all major social media sites and use these accounts to post highly attractive pictures and videos of the homes you want to be sold, and other relevant material.  

Include Pay-Per-Click Advertising

The point of having paid ads on your website is to have some other way to generate conversions and new leads. Paid ads are highly effective at generating traffic because you can use them to target a more specific audience in ways that other methods can’t. So to help you drive traffic to your website, use the following:

• Pay-Per-Click

It works on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, and many other platforms. This will give you a way to reach a broader audience, where you can specify age, locality, demographics, and so on. 

• Google Ads

This is perhaps the most common platform for paid ads. It is powered by Google and it lets you place adverts for your business at the top of Google SERPs, and you have to pay whenever a user clicks on your ad. 

Hire a Freelancer Digital Marketer

There are many benefits to hiring professional digital marketers. For starters, you will have more time to focus on other areas of your business. But more importantly, these people have tons of experience and many relationships they built over the years, which they can leverage to help get your name out there. The quality of the content will also be guaranteed, and this is an important element because any low-quality or generic content will reflect poorly on your business.  A company that is just starting out in e-commerce will need help creating good marketing strategies, and a digital marketer specializes in this. Digital marketing companies differ in some of the strategies they use, and it’s worth mentioning that a large agency won’t always give you the results you want. A smaller agency can invest more time on your company, and they may be able to create a more compelling advertising campaign on your behalf. 

Conclusion

Take time to learn the ropes, and be open to getting help from experienced marketers. Growing a real estate business in a digital age presents unique challenges and opportunities, and you can avoid some of the challenges by becoming familiar with your audience. Good luck!