6 Ways Real Estate Agents Can Use Digital Marketing to Increase Sales

As a real estate agent, you might have noticed a big shift in the last several years. Clients are researching the local market online and finding their ideal agent via Facebook, Google or any other platform. For those realtors who are ahead of the game, digital marketing became their main source of clients.

From brand awareness and generating leads to nurturing and closing the deal. The real estate industry is now heavily reliant on digital marketing.

The importance of Digital Marketing for Real Estate Agents

Social Media platforms were the main game-changer for real estate agents who want to be noticed online. Taking Facebook as an example, it allows to build a highly relevant personal profile to stand out. Not to mention, most of the realtors have their own Facebook Business Pages where they share news, blogs and industry insights along with their contact information and website.

Approximately 85% of real estate agents in the U.S. are using digital marketing to build their brand. The real question is how they can stand out to be the local real estate influencer?

There is no single solution for it, as digital marketing is evolving and new platforms are “born” (take a look at Tik Tok). However, there are ways to jump-start your digital marketing from scratch and start building your brand online.

Develop a user-friendly website

Simply said, the agents’ website is their “digital personality”. Most of the potential clients will conduct extensive research to find the best realtor to fit their needs.

Try to be as descriptive as possible: create multiple pages explaining your areas of expertise, do not afraid to show off and talk about rewards you got. You need to build trust and rapport is visitors to be able to move them to the next stage – consideration.

We suggest our clients go hard on content – write blog posts on market updates, insights, buyer and seller tips. Blog content also helps to rank higher on Google Result Page and capture potential warm leads.

Spend time on SEO

According to Moz, results on the first page receive between 71% to 93% of all clicks. But being on the first page is not enough because only the top 5 results receive nearly 67% of all clicks. This means you have to be within the first 5 results of the search page in order to get the traffic. 

Here are some Search Engine Optimization tips you can use to improve your website today

• Write long articles (3000 words minimum)
• Use Alt tags for images
• Make sure you have internal links on every page
• Optimize mobile usability
• Make your website secure with SSL certificate
• Acquire high-quality backlinks

If you are curious to learn more about SEO, we have a separate blog post for you!

Get yourself a CRM Platform

We cannot stress enough how important it is to have a place where you store all of your potential clients. If you just starting digital marketing, you might be using Google Sheets or Excel to store your leads. There is nothing wrong with that if you have 10-20 clients.

But how will you handle follow-ups, tasks, calls with a database of 1000+ leads? It is somewhat possible but you will spend 80% of your time updating the sheet.

A CRM platform will help you keep the leads database organized. Most CRMs offer a built-in email automation feature. You can segment your leads and depend on the marketing stage, you can send them automated emails/text messages and assign funnel stages. It will help you improve your results significantly. 

DESA team has created its own CRM platform specifically designed for agents and brokerages. It includes:

• Visual Overview Dashboard
• Landing Page Creation
• Lead Capturing Right from Facebook Ads 
• Custom Forms & Surveys
• Calendar Integration
• Inbound Phone Systems
• Automatic Email, Text Messaging & Custom Newsletters
• And Much More!

To learn more, feel free to Download a PDF file.

Invest in Buyer & Seller Email Sequence

Developing strategic email & text campaigns allow real estate agents to keep in touch with existing and prospective clients as well as give opportunities to consistently broadcast marketing messages to their email list in bulk.

Have you ever received emails from the brand you had a touchpoint with? Have you even opened them?

I am sure that you have tons of different promotional emails in your inbox. But I doubt you opened each of it. And that is totally normal behaviour towards emails.

However, whenever you are being sent a promotional email, you see from which brand it is and it stays in your head for some time. And whenever you are ready to buy any product, you will most likely find that brand email in your inbox and visit their website to complete a purchase.

This is exactly why automatic email nurturing for real estate agents is super crucial. For all of our clients, we create custom email & text sequences that are being sent for the next 180 days. And again, these are all automatic emails and requires zero effort from the real estate agent.

Create Facebook/Instagram Business Page

The real estate market is highly dependent on social media platforms. Those days are gone, when real estate agents used to spend huge budgets on traditional marketing tactics such as cold calling, television advertisements, pamphlets, etc.

Similar to the website, Facebook and Instagram are also important in building brand and raise awareness. Within those platforms, you can share contact information (phone, email, website link), videos and images (open house, lifestyle) and much more.

With relevant hashtags, you can get noticed by potential clients across Instagram and get free buyer/seller leads.

Advertise on Facebook

Traditionally, agents relied on channels such as direct mail, networking, referrals, and social events. The Internet has changed the world and we need to adapt our digital marketing strategy accordingly.

With the help of Facebook ads, you are able to reach a highly relevant audience using interest targeting (plus age, gender and location).

Facebook lead generation ads for real estate agents can complement if not completely remove their traditional advertisement and save tons of money and time.