Real Estate Digital Marketing – What, Why, and How?

What Is Digital Marketing in Real Estate?

Real estate digital marketing refers to a sales strategy that uses the Internet and other digital technologies to sell properties. It leverages various online opportunities to promote your real estate business. After all, the online world serves as a borderless global marketplace that allows unhinged interactions between users from diverse backgrounds.

Keep in mind that a real estate digital marketing strategy transcends traditional advertising strategies by overriding several inhibitory factors like time and location.

The Need for Professional Help

When you partner with a real estate digital marketing agency, you can seamlessly connect with prospects from anywhere in the world through electronic channels like websites, social media, and email. Fortunately, several professional agencies offer result-driven digital marketing services for real estate companies.

Real estate digital marketing agencies work as outsourced experts who can help your business grow exponentially using strategies like search engine optimization (SEO), content marketing, social media marketing, paid advertising, and web development. You can focus on other aspects of your business while these professionals develop and execute effective marketing plans.

Why Implement a Digital Marketing Strategy for Real Estate?

The online ecosystem is a thriving community of active users, and according to Statista, their number stood at around 5.45 billion as of July 2024. This makes it an ideal place to look for leads.

Two key factors set the stage for implementing a successful real estate digital marketing strategy – the necessity of housing and an ample supply of potential buyers. However, these very factors make the real estate market highly competitive. Consequently, whether you’re a realtor or property owner, it is in your best interest to understand how digital marketing can help you attract the attention of prospective buyers.

In this largely digitized world, you need to understand that so is your target audience. According to a 2024 report by the National Association of REALTORS, 52% of buyers found the homes they purchased online, as compared to 28% through real estate agents. These figures demonstrate how crucial digital marketing is to the buyer and seller.

If you’re a real estate agent or a realtor, you may expect almost all your clients to carry out online background checks before contacting you. In a sense, your digital marketing plan is like a spokesperson who offers preliminary information to willing buyers. It satisfies their initial curiosity and leads them to you. This is why you need to create a solid online presence backed by a result-driven real estate digital marketing strategy.

The beauty of digital marketing is that it offers various avenues for successfully connecting with potential buyers. From simple to sophisticated or even trendy, digital marketing strategies are so diverse that you can easily find one that works well for you.

Digital marketing for real estate is also notorious for its precision. Data-driven algorithms that span multiple marketing channels like targeted advertising and tailored search engine results enable high levels of accuracy. With today’s technologies and the availability of data, it has never been easier to digitize your business.

Other Benefits of Digital Marketing for Real Estate

Implementing the right digital marketing strategies for real estate can help you reach out to wider audiences, improve brand awareness, and attract high-quality leads that convert into sales.

Targets a Wider Audience

One obvious area where digital marketing of real estate outshines more traditional methods is its wider reach. Local newspapers, billboards, and banners, while effective in their own right, are all forms of localized advertising. They primarily cater to consumers within a specific location. However, digital marketing advertises to a global audience.

As long as you have access to the necessary tools and technologies, potential buyers from all over the world may view your property listings online. Fortunately, cyberspace offers multiple avenues for expanding your client base. Some of these include social media engagement, paid advertising, and organic web traffic through search engine results pages (SERPs).

Increases Brand Visibility

A larger and more engaged audience is the perfect equation for brand recognition. The more people know about your business and the easier the access, the more they can interact with it. By connecting with a larger audience, your business enjoys higher engagement and, inevitably, better recognition. With digital marketing, you develop a strong online presence that stays relevant to your target market. Simultaneously, you increase brand awareness.

Offers Comfort and Ease

Digital marketing for real estate companies gives them a powerful and convenient way to advertise different services. Web users enjoy interacting with businesses that meet their needs using captivating techniques. By embracing technology and implementing a good real estate digital marketing strategy, you can offer various interesting and compelling solutions to potential buyers.

Additionally, it eases your workload by digitizing otherwise tedious assignments. For instance, real estate demands rigorous paperwork. Going digital gives you an easy means to reduce printing expenses and reinvest the money in better alternatives. Automating some administrative processes is also an option.

Keeps You Ahead of the Competition

Given the competitiveness that’s part of the real estate industry, effective digital marketing helps you gain the upper hand over your competitors. With the high levels of ease and engagement that digitization offers, cutting-edge cyber solutions effortlessly captivate and convert audiences.

It comes as no surprise that many realtors have already embraced digital marketing and it would be a mistake to lag behind while others forge ahead. With an effective digital marketing strategy, you can stay competitive and grow your business exponentially.

Attracts Potential Buyers With Established Interests

Digital marketing helps you target potential buyers who are already in the market looking for property to buy. Statistics reveal that a large percentage of willing buyers are already scouring the Internet for available properties. This makes marketing your real estate business online a great way to connect with ready buyers.

In addition, by bypassing the disinterested broader market, you eliminate bad leads and unprofitable business interactions. It is fair to say, then, that the best real estate digital marketing strategies enable you to streamline your efforts so you may find your target audience and attract high-quality leads easily.

How Is Digital Marketing Used in Real Estate?

If you’re wondering how to do digital marketing for real estate, know that the process is time-consuming and it requires adequate knowledge. As a result, if you don’t have an in-house team, partnering with a real estate digital marketing agency might be in your best interest. If you wish to implement a real estate digital marketing strategy on your own, you need to pay attention to some crucial aspects.

Optimize Your Website

A business website is a vital component of any digital marketing strategy. As your online brand ambassador, it represents your business by conveying who you are and what you do to web visitors. Often, websites serve as the first point of contact for businesses, which makes it important that they leave lasting impressions.

Websites are of particular importance in the real estate industry because they serve as digital brochures. When potential buyers search the Internet for available properties, your website should address their queries quickly and efficiently.

An optimized website has user interface (UI) and user experience (UX) working in tandem to create a positive brand experience. It should tick certain boxes like easy navigation, accessibility, speed, and mobile responsiveness.

User-friendliness is non-negotiable when it comes to web design and development. Visitors should find their way around without easily feeling frustrated. Besides, your website should have a responsive design so it adapts well to mobile devices.

According to Data Portal’s Digital 2023: Global Overview Report, mobile phones remain the dominant device for Internet use across most developing economies and a close second in developed ones. They account for over half of all website traffic worldwide. This is why you must optimize your website for mobile devices.

Online customer service begins with showing visitors a good time as they browse your website. It should feature exhaustive information about your property listings. Before prospects schedule in-person meetings, your website should give them all the important details of the property.

You may also offer virtual tours of your listings so buyers can get a better feel of the properties they wish to purchase. The goal is to provide buyers with a premium and productive experience so they leave your website feeling satisfied.

Use SEO to Your Advantage

Search engine optimization (SEO) is at the heart of most digital marketing strategies for real estate businesses, and it is perhaps the best way to generate leads. With so many people searching for properties online, SEO holds the potential to catapult you to the top of their search results.

How it works is simple. Web users rely on search engines like Google and Bing to help them sift through vast amounts of data for information that is relevant to their search queries. Search engines, on their part, function on certain optimization principles that allow them to offer the most relevant and reliable results to their users. This is why your aim should be to make it to the first page of search results.

Backlinko’s click-through rate (CTR) analysis of four million Google search results revealed only 0.63% of web users got to page two of the results. Essentially, most people limit their inquiries to page one. If you want good visibility, your website needs to appear on the coveted first page of search results and SEO helps you get there.

You need to invest in keyword research, especially for local SEO. This is because most property-related search queries contain specific locations. For instance, they can come in the form of “houses in X” or “apartments near X”. Local SEO is advisable since it tailors your property listings to specific localities, thereby making them visible to interested buyers. You may also consider publishing SEO-based articles, blog posts, and reviews about real estate or the home-buying process.

By using the right keywords, you can attract web users whose interests align with yours. Besides, SEO principles that apply to content marketing also apply to social media. Ensure that you caption your posts with the relevant keywords and hashtags. These contribute to higher visibility.

Leverage Social Media

Social media marketing wields a powerhouse of influence within the digital marketing space. Given that more than half of the world’s population uses social networking platforms, not only are they a hub for networking, but they also boast a vibrant digital marketplace. With elements such as #hashtags, viral content sharing, and the likes, social media promotes your business on a global scale, which makes advertising your business rather exciting.

An additional benefit of social media is that algorithms curate content. These technologies tailor social media feeds by relevance. For instance, if a user has a history of interacting with real estate businesses and other related posts online, the algorithm assumes that real estate is important to the user. Consequently, the user gets more content suggestions relating to real estate. By advertising on social media, the algorithms showcase your real estate portfolio to interested users.

Creating business accounts across different social media platforms, particularly photo and video-sharing ones like Facebook and Instagram, is ideal. Regularly post about new listings and open houses so people can follow your updates easily. In addition, your posts should be immersive. Don’t just rely on shabby photos and videos. Instead, get a professional photographer to take flattering shots of the properties.

Remember to use relevant hashtags so your posts get more visibility. For instance, you may use the hashtag #condosinnyc for a condominium available in New York City. Social media users who search for those keywords can then find your posts.

Conclusion

Any business aiming for online success needs to understand how the digital marketplace works. For real estate, the herculean task of rousing customers’ interest is typically a nonissue because most prospective buyers already search online. You only need to leverage the right channels for them to notice you.

With an effective real estate digital marketing strategy, you not only build client engagement but also record increased customer satisfaction. For thorough strategizing, you may hire a digital agency that specializes in real estate, and its expertise can help you achieve your business goals in a streamlined manner.