Lead generation is the number one priority for any Real Estate company. That’s why budgets for marketing and sales departments have been growing rapidly each year. The problem is that the results gained do not always reflect the goals set, mostly because companies try every technique, they can lay their hands on, without actually preparing a thought-through strategy, to begin with. Instead of trying everything, companies should try to focus on the things that would work the best for their specific goals. That way they can focus their resources and budget on things that would bring the best results.
65% of businesses say generating traffic and leads is their biggest marketing challenge. (Hubspot)
Ask yourself – what do you need to do to set yourself apart from your competitors and create positive conversation about your brand? How can you increase your onboarding of clients and set your marketing budget correctly?
Master Automation
30% of marketers say having disparate data sources is a main reason why they can’t glean useful insights from customer data (GetBase)
Real Estate is all about connections. It’s about the communication you have with potential homebuyers and existing clients. With the shift of focus to customer-centric services, it is important to move away from Excel spreadsheets and manual data keeping in favour of new innovative automation tools. This is why real estate CRM systems have established themselves as a must-have marketing and sales tool in the past years. They don’t just allow you to have a 360-degree view of all your business processes but also help marketing managers in their everyday activities like social media management and email campaigns.
Marketers say that the biggest benefits of automation are saving time (74%), increased customer engagement (68%), more timely communications (58%) and increased opportunities including up-selling (58%). (Adestra)
With the help of an automation tool like a CRM System, your team gets the opportunity to manage leads from a central dashboard, guaranteeing rapid respond speed and data control. They get the chance to automate follow-ups and reminders, making sure they stay connected with all the clients and save time.
80% of marketers using automation software generate more leads; 77% convert more of those leads. (VB Insight, APSIS)
Thanks to insights collected by the system, they can customise their communications to be more personalised, raising client satisfaction levels and establishing stronger bonds. Last but not least, they can strategise better using the automatically generated reports, that show all the statistics they need in a straightforward way.
CRM Systems increases sales (by up to 29%), improves productivity(by up to 34%) and boost forecast accuracy (by 40%) (Salesforce)
Conquer the web
Your real estate website is the face of your company. Just like you make sure to look good for a client meeting, so should your website. It should be professional, informative and appealing, to catch your visitors’ attention the moment they land on it.
30% of mobile searches are related to a location. (Google, 2016) and local searches lead 50% of mobile users to visit stores within one day. (Google, 2018)
Optimising your website for the local market, providing information on it that brings value to the viewers, highlighting important information on what the areas your listings are in have to offer and insights that show the situation on the market, all help to make sure the visitor doesn’t go looking elsewhere.
Over 51% of smartphone users have discovered a new company or product while conducting a search on their smartphone. (Google, 2018)
Another important aspect of a successful real estate website is its mobile-friendliness. 4 out of 5 customers search for local information via their smartphones, which means that if your website isn’t mobile responsive you are losing a huge chunk of potential opportunities. You can test mobile responsiveness online via many different tools, like Google Mobile-Friendly Test.
64.6% of people click on Google ads when they are looking to buy an item online. (Wordstream, 2016)
Investing in retargeting tools or even Google ads can also play a big deal for onboarding. By placing ads on other online resources, you essentially recapture visitors’ attention and send them back to your website. And because these ads are customisable, you can target different audiences according to your business needs and goals. It’s a powerful technique that can help you generate more leads and also help your website’s SEO.
Embrace Emails
Email marketing is a powerful real estate onboarding technique that is here for the ages. By creating targeted messages that carry insightful, relevant information you will grow your database and raise brand awareness to new levels. With the help of modern email tools like MailChimp, you will be able to customise these messages, add visuals to them and analyse the response, to better understand your audience and personalise follow-ups. You can divide your subscribers into lists according to preferences and eliminate the chance of anyone getting information that will not be of interest to them.
Recipients are 75% more likely to click on emails from segmented campaigns than non-segmented campaigns. (MailChimp, 2017)
A CRM System can also come in handy in helping you to scale campaigns and keep a detailed database with comments on leads. It can even offer integration with MailChimp, thus allowing you to perform all the stages of the email campaign from one system.
51% of email marketers say email list segmentation is the most effective way to personalise lead nurturing. (Ascend2)
Emails that included the first name of the recipient in their subject line had higher clickthrough rates than emails that did not. (HubSpot, 2014)
Subdue your fear of Social media
Online adults aged 18-34 are most likely follow a brand via social networking (95%). (Source: MarketingSherpa)
Social media isn’t something to be scared of. Yes, it requires a different approach than traditional marketing. Yes, you need to invest in it to get results. But when you capture the essence of it, you will find that it is really quite simple to work with.
73% of consumers want to see posts about discounts and sales. 60% want to see posts that showcase new products and services. 59% want to see posts that teach something. (SproutSocial)
The main thing that you need to grasp about social media, is that it is all about engaging your viewers with information that carries value for them. You want to start and become part of conversations, educate and surprise. Show off your new listings and services, add videos, images and infographics, retweet interesting articles from other channels with your own opinion on them. Use hashtags and ads to attract new followers. Your goal is to be seen and to make an impact.
Posts with links to more information are the most preferred type of content on social media. 30% of consumers said that it’s the content they like to see most from brands on social. 18% preferred graphics and images, while 17% would like to see produced video. (SproutSocial)
Having an active online presence is going to make a huge difference to your onboarding. According to research, 45% of clients walked through a home found on social media, so if you are still not on it, you need to get on it asap. And if you are not sure where to start, we’ve got you covered with our Social Media 101 guide.
