In today’s digital age, the Web is an ever-present hub where consumers have instant access to information and can be influenced by what they find online. In turn, real estate marketers now have access to consumer demographics like location, age, income, employer, interests and other data to more precisely target their core audience. Here, Patty McNease, Director of Marketing for Homes.com reveals six tactics that brokers and agents can use to connect with consumers and boost their niche marketing.
RISMedia: What Are the Best Ways for Brokers and Agents to Dominate Their Local Market?
Patty McNease: While brokers and agents define their customers, they should also hone in on that one specific area or niche that they excel in, focus their branding and messaging around that and explore the following six tactics to connect with consumers and dominate their local market.
Facebook’s ‘Boost Posts’ – This option allows advertisers to promote a post or message to potential buyers and sellers. Connect with your target audience by selecting demographic criteria like location and age, and then specify your budget and time frame. Take advantage of this option to promote a new blog post, a customer testimonial or each event in the listing cycle. For instance, once you’ve taken on a new listing, create a “coming soon” message about the property to drum up interest. Promote it again once the listing is on the market and when you’ve sold that home. Finally, showcase it again with the message, “Interested in selling your home? Call me!”
Upload Email Database to Facebook – Stay top of mind with your contacts by uploading your email database to your Facebook profile. While you may not have personal connections with every one of your email contacts, Facebook finds their profiles so you can advertise to them even though you’re not connected as friends. This is a great way to put your brand in front of people who like and trust you, and even those you’ve only encountered once. It reminds them that you still exist and plants the seed that they should call you when the time is right.
Retargeting – With this intuitive approach to advertising, you can increase your exposure and conversion rates with ads that target previous site visitors. If you’ve visited sites like Zappos or Amazon, you know all too well that the products you’ve researched there can crop up later as ads on Facebook, the site where you check the local weather and even national news sites. Using this tactic, buyers and sellers who have recently visited your real estate site to shop for homes can then be tracked so you can drive your ads to that person across social media and other sites they subsequently visit. By being everywhere they are online, you’ll not only increase your exposure, but the consumer is apt to think that you’re trustworthy and successful.
YouTube – As the second largest search engine, it’s imperative that real estate brokers and agents have a presence on YouTube (Social Media Today). While producing videos can be intimidating, advertisers can instead target buyers and sellers by purchasing display ads such as pre-roll ads that are viewed before a video plays, or alongside the videos and within the search results. Plus, YouTube provides data and analytics about who you’re reaching and who’s actually watching your video ads. Your YouTube channel is also a fantastic forum to upload your listing videos and property tours.
LinkedIn – This site is often perceived as the “dark horse” of social sites because it’s a professional networking site. Business professionals are buyers and sellers too, and this ad platform similarly allows agents and brokers to use text or post promotions to target their core audience based on profession, job title, employer and other demographic and geographic criteria.
Twitter – Running an ad on Twitter yields solid conversion rates. Similar to the other platforms, you can target your campaigns according to several demographic measures. If the consumer is interested in your ad, they simply take one step to click a button, and their contact information is then distributed to the advertiser without having to complete multiple form fields.
For more local advertising best practices, download Homes.com’s “Rise to the Top: Be the Local Expert!,” a guide for growing your business with a strong local presence by visiting http://bit.ly/realestateexpert.
