Online marketing can be an overwhelming task for real estate agents because of the things to keep track of, and strategies needed to change to be successful in the digital world. However, one thing remains unchanged: you can’t target your leads without an effective online marketing strategy.
The following are the top 5 things a real estate agent needs to effectively run their online marketing strategy today.
You need a converting website and landing page
Before you jump in on the online industry, you need to have a converting website and landing page. The first thing every real estate agent needs is an online presence. Thus, you should have a website dedicated to helping you find leads, convert them into calls or emails, and collect their information which will help you for your future marketing campaigns.
Remember, for you to be successful with your online marketing, it’s important to start building your website. A worthy real estate agent has a call to action page that can encourage your audience to fill out your online form. You also need to have a conversion funnel that converts leads into cold calls and emails as this will help you to effectively run your online marketing.
It’s important to keep your website easy to navigate and can adapt to any devices used by your customers. You should also include different types of content in your website like images, videos, testimonials, blogs, etc.
You need targeted marketing campaigns that generate leads
Having a website isn’t enough to get leads, you also need to have targeted marketing campaigns that generate leads. Every real estate agent should create a highly targeted advertising campaign through different online platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, Google’s Display Network, so when people search for mortgage-related terms, your adverts appear on their screens. Your adverts must be personalized based on information from previous customers who were looking for homes with similar characteristics.
Using a real estate agent’s own email list is one of the most effective marketing campaigns a real estate agent can run. It has a very high conversion rate because it tells them you already care about them and aren't just attempting to sell them something on them right away.
You need a multi-channel follow-up system for your leads
If you don't keep track of things properly after all of your hard efforts, none of it will matter. Having a proper lead management system in place, such as SMS, email tracking software, or communication tools, will help you keep track of your customer’s journey. For example, when someone leaves their information with you, they are automatically routed to the next step in your process, ensuring that there is no time lag between when they fill out their form on your website and when they are contacted by someone from the company.
You will need a long term nurture campaign
A long-term nurturing campaign is one of the strategies to follow up with leads. A new lead may not be ready to buy right away, but that doesn't mean they won't months later after seeing all of your automated marketing messages in their inbox or on their phone every day for a period of time.
These types of campaigns take some time to set up because you'll need specific templates and databases full of information about each person who leaves contact information with you so that it doesn't feel like spam when people get emails from 'Real Estate Agent Joe Schmo' on a daily basis; however, it will pay off in the long run.
You need to know YOUR numbers
When launching an ad campaign, real estate agents need to know their numbers: If your marketing effort is successful, your phone should be ringing off the line.
Once your marketing effort successfully paid off, being able to track the people who came to your website – the moment they land on your website until they are ready to purchase is essential. By doing this, you can further target them by optimizing ads that are specifically made for their needs and removing the ones that don’t.
However, if you are a real estate agent who is too focused on the cost per lead you get from your ad campaigns or the amount you invest in your online marketing, you're one of the following types:
- You are not yet ready to grow your business
- You lack confidence in your ability to close clients and all of your efforts will be in vain
- You don’t know what you are doing
Nonetheless, that is not the end of the road for those types of real estate agents. We've worked with real estate agents who had a lot of questions and concerns about online marketing, but with the appropriate tools, training, and marketing specialists on their side, they were able to achieve great results.
Determine your customer’s Lifetime Value
You must understand the Life Time Value of your customers (LTV). It represents the entire amount of money a customer is likely to spend with your company throughout their lifetime.
Assume you earn $16,000 from each transaction. And your customer refinances his loan three times throughout the loan's term. As a result, your customer's LTV is $48,000. Keep in mind that this does not yet include any miscellaneous fees you receive per customer.
Maybe you are wondering why it is important to know your customer's Lifetime Value? The answer is simple, the LTV of your average customer will give you an insight into your return on investment (ROI) and the worth of the leads you’re obtaining from your digital marketing investment. It will also provide you with an estimation of how much money you are willing to spend on online marketing. That is why determining your customer’s Lifetime Value will give you a heads up on your business online.
Consider this scenario:
Suppose you have 400 target markets in your community. During the first month of running the ad campaign, you have converted 10% of those people into leads, resulting in 40 potential homebuyers. Now let's be more conservative here and assume that 5% of those leads will turn into customers, which is 2.
So you've closed roughly $7.8K in upfront income from refinancing in less than a month, with a remaining LTV of $7.8K for each of your new customers. This doesn't even take into account the real estate agent’s continuous trail commission/income.
So, because we're utilizing conservative conversion rates, there's an even better chance of getting more clients. Plus, through your nurture programs, you have the chance to close another 15% to 20% of the remaining prospects.
You get how it works now? Great! It’s now time for you to start your online marketing.
