We all know real estate agents should be advertising online. It’s key to building brand awareness, generating leads, promoting their listings, and gaining recognition as a top agent. As a brokerage, you also want to continually market your business in a way that will reach the masses and position you as the leader in your market. But, when it comes to digital marketing for your real estate brokerage, there is a lot to consider and the options are overwhelmingly endless. Not to mention, it can be a huge time suck for your team if you don’t utilize the right tools and strategies.
Here’s the run-down on how brokerages can tackle digital marketing, what to look for in digital advertising tools, how to support you agents’ marketing efforts, and why automated listing ads should be on any leading brokerage’s radar (yes, we’re talking about set-it-and-forget-it programs that automatically promote your brokerage’s listings).
Digital advertising is an opportunity for businesses to meet consumers where they already are – online. It’s estimated that 94 percent of millennials and 84 percent of baby boomers go online to search for a new home (Forbes), proving that your online presence means everything in today’s hot market. People are becoming more and more influenced by what they see online, and it’s imperative that your brand has an attention-grabbing presence.
Social media platforms such as Facebook and Instagram, as well as the audience networks that publish ads to hundreds of top sites enable you to get your brand in front of a massive audience. Marketing on social media also offers a unique opportunity to create a dialogue as people can engage with your ads, share with their friends, and comment about their great experience with your agents, all stretching your marketing dollars further.
So, where should you start when assessing how to tackle real estate digital marketing?
Step one is to get technology in place that will support and automate your efforts. You need to keep your brokerage brand relevant, even if you don’t have a huge marketing team to do so. Technology is your friend, and automation is key, so find a real estate digital marketing system that your agents can leverage, but that also supports your brokerages’ marketing strategy.
Here are a few things to look for in real estate digital advertising tools:
- No (or low) minimums
- High ROI on ad spend
- Automated reporting
- Simple, easy-to-use interface
- Integrated with your other systems
How do you support your agents with their real estate digital marketing efforts?
Your brokerage brand is at the heart of your value proposition. It’s why agents want to partner with you and why consumers want to work with your agents. Every time your agents market their business, they’re marketing your brokerage brand along with it. What would happen if you amplified that?
Co-marketing between brokerage and agents is a win-win strategy where agents receive valuable support from their brokerage, while the brokerage grows their brand and augments it’s recruiting and lead generation efforts. Imagine this: every time one of your agents promotes their listing, you pick up the tab for 25% of it. Their marketing dollars go further, your brand gets in front of more eyes, and their loyalty runs even deeper. Co-marketing is a leading strategy for brokerages that are focused on revenue growth and agent retention.
First, find the budget. Whether you have a healthy marketing budget that allows for digital marketing, or you need to shift funds around, consider how you can revamp your marketing strategy and budget to stay competitive in today’s market. A great place to start is by moving the bulk of your marketing funds from print to digital. Not only is digital advertising simpler, it’s easier to target and you’ll have better analytics to assess ROI.
To take things a step further, look for complete automation. That is, every time your brokerage wins a listing, it gets promoted online without anyone on your team having to valuable spend time managing it all.
Keep in mind, getting eyes on your brand and leads in the door is only the beginning. You then need to be able to back it up with a great brokerage website, effective lead nurture and routing process, and a seamless sales flow. Get on board with digital advertising that integrates with your technology stack, eases pain for your agents, leverages marketing dollars wisely, and helps you achieve your business goals.
