Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Real estate agents depend on powerful marketing strategies to engage buyers and close sales. In the age of digital marketing, for-sale signs on front lawns are no longer enough to convince sellers to choose a particular agent and to attract homebuyers. Technology-based marketing strategies like content marketing can set agents apart in a crowded marketplace and help them grow their businesses.
Content marketing in the real estate sector is about more than pitching properties to potential buyers. As an integral part of a comprehensive marketing strategy, this approach “provides useful and relevant content to your prospects and customers.”
The goal is to establish relationships that will eventually lead to sales. Content marketing helps build brand awareness, allows leading real estate agents to establish their authority within the sector, and generates leads.
By pursuing content marketing, real estate professionals grow their reputation and lay the foundation for future sales.
Related: How To Build a Strong Real Estate Brand Online and Increase Trust With Clients
1. Identify target audiences and buyer personas
Before disseminating content, real estate businesses must define their target audiences and buyer personas. Without that step, the information risks getting lost and potentially alienating its audience.
For example, a young family looking to purchase their first home will look for different information than a couple of empty-nesters looking to downsize once their kids have left home. Real estate firms may be targeting both market segments. However, to reach them effectively, they must tailor their messages and choose their marketing channels wisely.
Determining audiences and personas goes beyond demographics. The most effective marketers understand their audiences’ interests and address their pain points.
Related: Know Your Audience, Conquer the Market — The Importance of Buyer Personas in Franchise Marketing
2. Create compelling visual content
The term content marketing is often used synonymously with blogs and social media posts. However, visual content often has a greater impact when it comes to showcasing property.
High-quality images of an apartment or a house are the most basic form of visual content. Virtual tours or drone videos can attract even more attention and capture potential buyers’ imagination.
Both options allow real estate agents to tell a story rather than sell a property. Imagine discovering a property for the first time: put yourself in the viewer’s position and tell the story of their journey in a video. Another creative option would be to stage a day in the life of a family in their new home, highlighting how this particular property meets their needs.
3. Leverage video marketing
In recent years, video marketing has been one of the main growth areas within content marketing. Explainer video company Wyzowl found in a survey that more than 90% of businesses used video as a marketing tool, and just under 90% considered it an important part of their content marketing strategy.
In 2023 In the United States alone, businesses are likely to spend nearly $85 billion on video advertising in 2024, an increase of 9.9% compared to 2023. Consumers have embraced video content, too.
Regarding real estate, videos can simply showcase a property better than still images. No matter how many images an agent or a photographer takes, they may miss an element of tying those images together. Aside from walkthroughs, neighborhood tours and client testimonials also make for exciting video content.
Interactive and virtual content are taking these developments one step further. Innovative applications can help real estate professionals create tours that allow viewers to choose the direction they move in when viewing a property online.
Related: 3 Emerging Trends Shaping the Future of Real Estate
4. Blogging and thought leadership
So far, this article has focused on visual content, but it would be wrong to discount written content for a real estate agent’s content marketing strategy. Blogs and thought leadership pieces allow companies and their key team members to establish themselves as experts in their field.
Depending on target audiences, content covering market trends, sharing homebuying tips, or offering guides to specific neighborhoods can work very well. The key to successful blogs and leadership pieces is understanding what the audience wants. Ask yourself what information your potential buyers cannot find elsewhere, think about their pain points, and address those.
5. Social media
Few content marketing strategies would be complete without the inclusion of social media channels. Social media platforms offer estate agents a chance to connect directly to their customers, distribute content, and engage with their audiences.
Social media offers excellent opportunities to share visual and written content that may otherwise have remained undiscovered. To harness the power of social media effectively, estate agencies need to ensure that the platform’s and the content’s audiences are well matched. Facebook may be the most popular platform for real estate agents now, but this may change as different generations enter the property market. Aside from platform choice, consistency is another critical component of a successful social media marketing strategy.
How to measure success and iteration
One of the biggest advantages of digital marketing channels over their more traditional counterparts is the ability to measure success.
Start by defining the key performance indicators that you want to measure. For videos, this could be the number of views or comments. For blog posts, it could be comments and shares or a growth in traffic to your website.
Not every content piece will be highly effective. Regular performance assessment and measurement allow real estate agents to adapt and iterate their content to make it even more relevant for their audiences.
Content marketing is a highly cost-effective part of a real estate agent’s marketing strategy that can help create and increase brand awareness and build relationships with key audiences. Both visual and written content can deliver excellent results in the real estate sector. To further improve the impact of a campaign, real estate marketers need to measure the performance of their content and fine-tune their approach as necessary.