Sean Clancy SEO director Edge Online
With the number of licensed real estate agents in the country continuously growing, a real estate professional like you needs to bring your A-game to your marketing strategies to stand out among the competition!
Fortunately, the digital space has allowed more marketing methods to emerge. Couple this with a little creativity and your properties will be selling like hotcakes!
Ready to level up your marketing game? Check out these 22 creative real estate marketing tactics!
Have a mega open house tour that will leave your guests in awe
Invite everyone in your database, the neighbors, and every potential buyer that matches your target market. With a promise of good food and a good time!
Then bring out your alas to bringing the life in your open house tour. Invite food trucks or catering services. Bring some music to the venue. If you’re inviting prospects with kids, a bounce house is a must!
Tip: Since this is a mega open house tour, limit your showing to just one open house. With a limited schedule, more people will show up.
https://ctt.ac/3GbTd [click-to-tweet]
Give a virtual tour
If you want to convince your leads more that this property is worth their every penny, immerse them with a virtual tour.
In these tours, the layout of the property is laid out in a 3D view, where they can interact with the video to check each area of the house.
These tours also give prospects from foreign countries to check out the property first before they hop on a plane and ask for a tour!
See these VR tour samples for inspirations:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jcvI-MAWc2U
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yFr4mnMwhZ8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hKypb8cBuUM
Try out experiential marketing
Experiential marketing is all about building a connection with your leads and network, with the intent that they’ll associate you or your property with a positive experience. Which, hopefully, will lead them to do business with you.
Partner with local brands
Building rapport in the local community can help you build credibility as a buyer/seller’s advocate. And more exposure for your brand, too.
You can partner with local builders and work a partnership where in exchange for free or discounted repairs/remodels, you’ll advertise them to potential clients.
Or a local furniture shop, where you can put in a good word about them in exchange for lending you a piece of furniture to complete the property’s looks.
You can also work a deal with local businesses, like local diners for example, where you’ll provide them with supplies with your branding on them.
Read More: How AI will Change the Game for Influencer Marketing
Get on Snapchat
Facebook is getting saturated, so you should try out undiscovered social media gems like Snapchat.
The competition here is low, but the scope of audience is wide!
Partner with an influencer
The challenge here is to find an influencer that matches your target market, but once you find the perfect influencer, you can earn a positive brand image and more leads!
Hire a professional photographer/videographer
Professionally-captured photos of your listing make a lasting impression, and positive impressions mean higher sales price!
When you hire a professional photographer, you’re not only saving time but also with extra costs brought by amateur photos.
Plus, you want to highlight all the good angles and lightings of the property. A professional photographer has the eye and skills for that.
Remember, no matter how gorgeous your property looks in person, if prospects are not convinced with the photos they see of it online, then don’t expect appointments for tours.
Show the highlights of your properties on Pinterest boards
What better way to create lists of good photos of your listings with brief-but-concise information than on Pinterest?
With the 250 million active users on Pinterest, it’s the ideal platform to showcase your listings visually and attract more leads in the process!
You can create a Pinterest board for your listing, say per area, then create a sub board for more photos of each property.
Go with videos for your marketing materials
Real estate professionals have embraced video marketing since it provided better results for their efforts, particularly in response and engagement rate, and will continue to do so.
They also allow more ways to advertise and educate your target market in a personalized and more entertaining manner.
Pay attention to the pieces of furniture in your property before posting it online
Bring more life to the property and attract the right leads by placing pieces of furniture in different areas of the property that matches its theme.
For instance, you can opt for steel or metallic style furniture for a modern look.
Or champagne-drowned furniture for a luxurious and royal look.
And if you’re targeting millennials, be sure to highlight aesthetics of the property. These people love visually appealing photos!
But of course, you don’t have to spend too much to get the look you’re advertising. You can shop at thrift stores for unique items or partner with local furniture shops (see idea #4).
Add more luxury vibes to your property with drone shots
If you have the budget to go extra with your property marketing, opt for this one. Drone shots can provide better views of the property at different angles, in a cinematic way. Amenities are highlighted too, whether in aerial view or up close.
Speaking of budget, drone photography can be quite expensive, so it’s more suitable for real estate agents with luxurious listings targeted to high-class buyers.
It’s also ideal to hire professional drone photographers/videographers to save more and get the best drone shots of your listings.
Sell a property by letting potential buyers visualize their life on the property
Buyers take interest in a property if they see it fit for their lifestyle, so help them visualize it in your listing.
What it would be like for someone like your target buyer to live a day in the property? Is it a peaceful one, or a life with the bustle of the metropolitan life?
You can try this idea by collaborating with an influencer (see idea #6). Or hire an actor that matches the looks and personality of your target market, and shoot a lifestyle video in the property.
Take this one from The Logan and Bernard Group:
List the property on Airbnb and let buyers experience a day or two there
Speaking of sneak peek, here’s another idea you can try to let potential buyers visualize their life in your listing.
Let your prospects have first-hand experience with the property so they will be more convinced that it’s the perfect investment for him/her.
It’s a more helpful experience than just walking them through around the house in an hour or less!
To ensure that only interested prospects will book the property, emphasize it on the description.
Note: Be sure to ask for the owner’s permission first before you do this!
Powerful emotional words + worth-every-penny features = a powerful copy that can increase a property’s worth
In marketing, power words are your ultimate weapons to invoke emotions of your leads and add more punch to your copy.
Which leads to more social shares, clickthrough rate, and web traffic.
Match these words with highlights of your listing, and you’ll see a surge in properties sold, even at a price higher than the market price!
It doesn’t have to be full of flair or wittiness. Even simple words can bring you tremendous sales.
For a list of these power words, check this article.
Become the digital mayor of your farm area
Mayors are known as the father figure of a town, whose major responsibility includes taking care of their people by knowing his municipality well.
And that’s what exactly you need to be – an authority that knows their industry and area well, both to market your listings/service and nurture your farm area.
Clients also feel more convinced (and impressed!) when their agent knows the area of the property well.
You can also check out Park Bench, a platform that helps you claim your title as the go-to agent in your local area.
Create landing pages with home valuation tools
Entice your leads more to engage with you by incorporating a lead generation tool on your landing page. One of the best tools for real estate landing pages are home valuation tools.
You can have a small section on your website where a website visitor will only enter their ad. They have to provide their email address next so you can deliver them the results.
With this, you’ve provided free information, and you’ve got a new subscriber in your email list, whose open to receiving more information from you!
Increase your response rate on Facebook with Messenger Chatbots
Are you receiving plenty of messages that can easily be answered by someone else? If so, implementing a Messenger chatbot may be ideal for your business.
You can use tools online that makes chatbot implementation easier or work with a software developer. Whichever you choose, make sure to create answer templates for questions like these:
- What are the available listings within [name of area]?
- Which houses are in this price range?
- What do I need to do to prepare my home for selling?
And of course, don’t forget to monitor the messages you’re receiving. Not all messages can be answered by chatbots.
Read More: 3 Ways Mobile Technology is Changing the Brick-and-Mortar Experience
Use social listening tools
It’s not enough that you get your name out in the industry. You need to pay attention to what people are saying about you so you could address concerns about your service.
Since social media have made freedom of speech easier, this is where you need to be on watch.
Social listening branches to two routines – monitoring:
- Mentions of your brands
- Competitor’s social media standing
- News and updates on keywords related to your industry
With social listening, you could also get ideas on how to improve your performance as a real estate agent, and even how to improve your listings!
Keep in touch with your clients even after the closing
70% of clients forget the agent they hired a year after closing.
If you don’t want your clients to become a part of these numbers, make yourself relevant to them, even after your transaction is done.
Share relevant information, videos, articles on social media that would be useful for the new homeowners.
Email them with resources you come across the net, and/or new listings you’ve got. Maybe they’re looking to buy again!
Keep them updated with the latest on their new community.
https://ctt.ac/eG8a9 [click-to-tweet]
Celebrate achievements with clients on social media
Just closed? New property bought? Announce them on social media! Just ensure you have your client’s permission.
People feel a tinge of pride and contentment when they’re featured on a business’ social media feed, especially if it’s good news that involves them.
It also gives a more humane touch to your social media presence, that you’re not just all photos of listings and real estate tips and news.
Encourage more people to refer you to their contacts
You want these sources to continue sending clients your way, so keep them motivated with rewards.
You can work on a refer-a-friend program where they’ll get $10 or gift cards for every referral (and an additional reward if the referral is successful).
Or an affiliate program, where bloggers and influencers will include affiliate links on their content, and they’ll earn rewards/privileges for every referral.
Whichever referral program you use, make sure it’s discoverable by website visitors, your social media followers, your present and previous clients and other contacts.
Host an event in the property that matches your target market
Entice your target market to check out the property themselves by inviting them to an event hosted in the property you’re selling. This way, they could see that the property is the perfect investment for them.
If you’re targeting families, why not host a BBQ party?
If you’re targeting people with luxurious lifestyles, you can host a gallery night or a cocktail party.
The events could also incorporate a good memory with the place, which convinces potential buyers more to invest in the property!
Creative marketing strategies + tracking and evaluation of results = more success in the future
At the end of the day, you want to make sure the campaigns you’re running are effective for your real estate business.
Because some of these tactics may work better than the others, and you want to leverage that to your future marketing strategies.
Track your results and evaluate its performance to answer the ultimate post-marketing question:
Did you gain a huge ROI and more leads and sales with the strategy?
Read More: Eye Rolls at Pre-Rolls: How to Escape the Trap of Annoying Ads
