If you have been getting social media marketing tips for real estate agents, but you’re not clear on how exactly those tips will get you real estate leads, you’re so right!
Working on content marketing and social media marketing without a real estate marketing strategy is like putting the cart before the horse.
Real Estate Marketing Trends in 2020
When it comes to marketing trends in 2020, in my very humble opinion, we still don’t know many aspects, as we continue to cover new ground and confront unprecedented challenges triggered by the coronavirus pandemic.
However, we can take a look at 2019 numbers and get the facts that we already know.
- Homebuyers take virtual steps as part of their home buying process.
- Gone are the days of cold calling and knocking doors.
- Millennials now make up 66 percent of the market for first-time homebuyers, and 99 percent of those looking for homes use the internet to research properties.
- The hashtag #justlisted has 2.1 million posts on Instagram
House hunters now include g property-related hashtags and social media feeds in their searches, and that’s only the tip of the iceberg.
Winning the Race to Find Motivated Seller Leads in Social Media
You might think that the race to find motivated seller leads is very competitive. The good news! There are lot of opportunities!
You might think that the big players dominate the real estate digital market. While that is the case, real estate agents can benefit from developing their personal brand to stand out from the crowd.
Word of Mouth marketing impression results 5x more sales than a paid media impression, and people are 90% more likely to trust and buy from a brand recommended by a friend.
Motivated sellers will ask their friends. Because of this, you actually don’t know when those friends of friends are scrolling your page, considering contacting you.
The question becomes, not if, but when. That’s why you need to be ready to get leads and sales!
Let’s craft your wondrous social media marketing strategy.
1- Planning
To plan your visibility is like playing a game of chess; it requires focus, a strategy, and the right move at the right time.
A very simplistic way to cover this first part of your strategy is by asking yourself: where are you and what are your next benchmarks. The answers will help you set attainable goals.
- Do you need to build a personal brand? Yes? Then, you are in development mode. Your initial benchmark is getting this done.
- Do you have a personal brand but want to grow your audience? You are in growth mode. Your first benchmark is to increase your sphere of influence. Depending on where you start, your milestone should be 5x or 10x your number of personal contacts.
- Did you grow your social media channels, but there are no conversions? You are in optimization mode. Your benchmarks are associated with your lead generation and conversions.
Having a clear vision of where you are and where you want to be allows you to make strategic moves.
2- Presence
Let’s face it; evading social media presence is not an option – You want to target audience, you have to get them where they are, and it’s ‘online.’
Regardless of which of the 3 phases discussed above: development, growth, and optimization, your social media strategy needs to consider your online presence.
- If you are in development mode, then you need to build your presence. Putting yourself on social media is more complicated than it seems. Don’t overthink it. Work within your strengths. Instead of thinking you need to be everywhere to be successful, work to master one platform at a time.
- If you are in growth mode, your social media marketing strategy needs to consider how to generate more followers, engagement, reach, and reviews. This is all part of your online presence.
- If you are in optimization mode, your social media marketing strategy should consider ways to incorporate search engine marketing, search engine optimization, and paid traffic. There’s a good chance that you’re interested in running Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads. Just be aware that real estate ads have a different compliance process, as they are a special ad category.
Statistics show that it’s a make or break in a split of a second when it comes to online visitors establishing an opinion of your brand. Therefore, you have to be smart about how to make your online presence look appealing, reliable, and legit for the targeted audience.
3- People
Third in line but probably the most important P of them all – People. In other words, your targeted audience. Always remember consumers put brands on the map, not companies. I cannot emphasize enough how vital it is for you to base and build a reputation and persona of your product around your clientele.
To build a useful and appealing persona, you must consider some areas of focus.
- Are you marketing a specific age group?
- Are you marketing a specific real estate product?
- Are you marketing to buyers, sellers, or investors?
- Are you marketing to residential leads or commercial real estate leads?
Balancing Your Real Estate Content With Your Personal Content
It is advisable to use the 80/20 rule, also known as the ‘Pareto Principle.’ In social media marketing terms, you must use 80% of your interaction with the customer, i.e., conversations, content, and activities, to be useful and relatable to them.
You can utilize the remaining 20% for your real estate ads. Sharing trustworthy content with your audience, backed up with well-thought marketing claims, will establish your authority with trust amongst the masses.
Our Social Media Planner helps you plan your content and track your performance.
4- Product
Ever wondered what your audience thinks of what you do? As a real estate agent, you’re a service provider. But, have you thought about what is genuinely your service?
Think about ways to market your trust to gain authority in the marketplace. What are some of the professional qualifications that make you unique?
- Do you have certifications?
- Designations?
- Number of deals closed?
- Awards?
How do You Establish Trust as a New Real Estate Agent?
If you’re a new real estate agent, leverage your skills and background to make people remember you.
A powerful way to market yourself in a new field is by using your story. People buy your why.
Your real estate branding and your social media strategy should consider YOU as the product. Think of ways to get people to relate and connect with you first.
5- Placement
I would strongly suggest for you to address some factors while formulating your ideal social media placement strategy. You must know where your audience hangs out the most. There are several ways to find this out, such as asking yourself which social media you would visit if you were to find a new doctor or a new attorney? Or a more direct approach is to email your connections for their opinion.
You must also consider other factors like the time and resources that you have.
Can you get leads on Instagram? Yes, you can.
Tips to Get Real Estate Leads From Instagram
- Learn Instagram for Business so you can understand the best practices to get engagement from potential clients.
- Instagram transactions are mostly B2C, so don’t expect a big crowd of people to be excited about your real estate tips. This is normal for B2B content.
- Qualify your leads by having direct conversations with people.
- Use stories to communicate with users.
- Create a landing page for your Instagram so that people can learn more about you and your properties on their own time. This is the famous link in your bio.
- A real estate lead generation system works as long as you are willing to put the time and effort to network with people. Just like in real life.
6- Performance
When it comes to strategizing around performance, there are two leading roles: setting up your basic trackers and designing a series of events to go back and analyze your performance.
Remember the 3 phases we discussed above: development, growth, and optimization.
If you are just starting to develop your brand, set up a tracking system so you can pay attention to the following:
- Impressions – how many times the platform distributed your content
- Reach- how many people saw your content
- Engagement- how many people showed a reaction
If you’re in growth, then you’ll add another tier of elements to track. For example, if you are running Facebook Ads and Instagram Ads, you will pay attention to:
- Clicks to your website or landing page
- Cost per ads results
- Ads performance
For those in the optimization phase, your social media strategy needs a more robust content marketing strategy. Pay attention to:
- Your call to actions on your landing page
- Your content marketing campaigns
- Your email marketing performance
As long as you consider performance as part of your social media marketing strategy, even when you’re just using Facebook Insights and Instagram Insights, you are good to go.
If you’re looking for a system to track your performance from social media marketing, I recommend SEMRush.com. It allows you to integrate all your digital marketing channels in one place, so that you can see not only how your brand is growing, but your visibility as well. It also takes into consideration your competitors.
7- Process
Your wondrous social media strategy is almost done! Since you have created all of these projects to market your real estate business in social media, now it’s time to discuss your processes.
So what is a process, anyway? A process is a series of actions or steps taken to achieve a particular end.
Critical processes to consider:
- Content writing process.
- Reputation marketing process.
- Social media management process.
- Lead generation and lead management.
- Sales process.
Each process has steps. And each step can be worked either on a daily or weekly basis. That’s why you need to be strategic! Or else it will make you feel overwhelmed, and you will throw the towel in just a few weeks.
Here’s a checklist we shared on Instagram that covers what to do in social media daily and weekly! Remember to check out the Visibility Planner, your comprehensive planner to get your marketing done!
Your Social Media Marketing Plan
Now that you have a strategy, you are ready to put your social media marketing plan in place.
Instagram seems to be THE platform to pay attention now. So, jump in! If you have questions don’t hesitate to reach out.
Remember one thing: if you’re not having fun, you’re doing something wrong!
Conclusion
Now that you and I both know the 7 Ps of Social Media Marketing, it’s time to make strategic moves! Make sure that you have a solid game plan in place before you start. Planning is critical. All successful social media campaigns have a clear plan of execution. Having tracking methods in place allows you to effectively review each campaign and determine the achievement (or failure) of the campaign. With this information, you are ready to optimize your next plan. Remember that failures are a part of the process as you are learning your audience. There are important nuggets of knowledge to be gained.
Need more direction? I’m a click away! Let’s have a virtual coffee!
