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Paid Digital Advertising: A Beginner’s Guide for Real Estate Marketers
Paid digital advertising can help accelerate your content marketing efforts so that your content gets in front of prospective buyers and renters faster than would happen organically.
We are strong believers in content marketing. Build it, and they will come — or, in content-marketing speak, publish quality content, and buyers will come to you. But, content marketing takes time to bear fruit. There’s not much you can do about that.
Except paid digital advertising.
By investing in paid digital advertising, you can boost the reach of your posts, display ads, and videos. Pair quality content with a comprehensive digital advertising strategy, and you will be in a position to drive more traffic, create more brand visibility, and sell or lease more properties.
Your peers understand this. Within the first quarter of 2017, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, Snapchat, and Pinterest saw a 61.5% increase in paid media spend. And that’s only going to increase through 2018.
So where do you start? Here are three places to get started in using paid digital advertising to help market your property.
3 paid digital advertising platforms
1) Display ads
Display ads are the paid advertisements that appear in front of users on website pages in the form of graphics. Unlike text-based ads, display advertising relies on elements such as images, audio, and video to communicate an advertising message. Display ads are commonly referred to as banner ads, but they don’t always take banner form. They can come in all shapes and sizes, and can appear anywhere on a webpage.
Benefits: Because digital ads are visual, they can be customized with your logo, message, images of properties, or an offer to help increase brand awareness. You have the ability to use graphics, video, and audio to really stand out and highlight your properties. Display ads also allow users the ability to target a specific audience. You control which sites they appear on, which geographic area they appear in, and which demographic or niche market they appear to — all valuable tools for the real estate marketer.
2) Sponsored social media posts
There are sponsored posts plus other ad opportunities like Facebook like campaigns, website click ads, and lead ads.
Social media is a natural place to begin if you’re looking to get into paid digital advertising, particularly for the real estate industry. A good starting point is Facebook. The social media giant’s social ad revenue was more than $9.16 billion in Q2 2017 alone. And it doesn’t stop there. Twitter brought in $548 million in social media advertising revenue in the same period, and Snapchat is expected to reach over $895.5 million in ad revenue in 2017.
More specifically, three of the most useful types of sponsored social media posts for real estate marketing are:
- Facebook Like Campaigns: These campaigns are aimed directly at increasing the number of likes for a Facebook page, targeting people who might be interested in your brand and the posts you share on Facebook.
- Facebook Website Click Ads: These are ads that point people on Facebook to your website, or even the listings for specific properties.
- Facebook Lead Ads: These ads allow users to request information, estimates, or newsletters without leaving Facebook. Requiring fewer steps of prospective leads increases conversion rates.
Benefits: Running paid social ads allows you to reach a large audience at a low cost. You pay based on the type of ad you’re running. For example, if you’re looking to drive brand awareness, you’ll incur a CPM (Cost Per 1,000 Impressions). And not only are the ads relatively inexpensive to run, they’re not expensive to create. You get all of this plus the ability to target your specific audience, reaching people that are interested in learning about the properties you have to offer.
3) Google AdWords
Google AdWords places your website as one of the top results on a search engine results page (SERP) when a user searches for certain keywords of your choice. When a user clicks the AdWords link or calls your business using that link, you incur a charge (pay-per-click). Otherwise, impressions are free.
Google’s most recent update involves changes to the so-called “3-pack,” or the listing of three related local businesses on a search results page. Many users rely on the 3-pack to discover businesses in their area that offer the products and services they are seeking. This is particularly helpful for users searching for local real estate. And real estate copanies get the benefit of many additional leads and investors when they appear in the 3-pack.
Benefits: The biggest benefit of Google AdWords is its speed. You appear in a top spot in a user’s search results, meaning you are one of the first things a user sees when searching for a specific location or property keyword. That’s another good point: Google AdWords allows you to focus on people who are searching for what you have to offer, so you don’t pay for a bunch of wasted impressions — particularly valuable in real estate marketing, where geography is key. AdWords also gives you real-time reports to track your ad’s success. A dashboard shows information related to each campaign, such as the ads clicked, keywords entered by website visitors, cost of clicks and much more.
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Using Content Marketing to Market and Sell Luxury Real Estate
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6 Signs It’s Time to Consider Outsourcing Your Real Estate Marketing
Take an honest assessment of these 6 areas to see if outsourcing your real estate marketing might be a smart move.
Real estate companies are increasingly open to outsourcing real estate management because it allows them to focus on their core competencies while improving effectiveness. So why not apply the same rationale to bolster your marketing efforts? Don’t be afraid to look outside the box for the marketing tools you need to succeed.
As your competitors’ marketing budgets continue to climb, your company needs expertise on your side to get the most out of your marketing dollars — and that’s especially true in the digital space. Content marketing can be very challenging for novices and seasoned marketers alike. Blogging, paid search and social advertising, email marketing, social media management: there’s a lot to juggle. That’s why many real estate15 companies are outsourcing some — or all — of their marketing programs.
Have you considered outsourcing as an option? Maybe it’s time you did. Parsing out certain projects on an as-needed basis to an outside firm can help you comfortably navigate and succeed in the marketing world.
6 signs you should outsource your real estate marketing
Assess your staff in these six areas to determine if it’s time to explore outsourcing your real estate marketing efforts.
1) “Wait, what’s going on with social media now?”
Do you feel like you are always reacting to marketing trends instead of planning for them? You need to be one step ahead of what’s coming, especially in fast-changing spaces like social media, in order to meet your customers where they are.
Learning best practices and new tools can be challenging, especially if you’re time strapped. Using an outside firm with expertise across the spectrum — and whose job depends on knowing the newest platforms and media — will give you an edge over competitors.
2) Everyone is at capacity.
Is your current marketing team able to take on new projects easily, without compromising existing responsibilities? If your staff has great ideas but not the resources to initiate them or follow through, you need to find a way to fix that.
Consider breaking off projects to an outside firm, even on a trial basis to test the waters. Plus if you outsource to experts, you won’t have to reinvent the wheel in-house or risk being off trend.
3) You lack time for proper strategizing and assessment.
Do you have a unified marketing strategy in place with a way to measure objectives and results? If you’re too busy keeping up with day-to-day work to step back and plan, then regularly assess how things are going, consider outsourcing.
Creating a strategy with short- and long-term goals is essential to marketing success. Using an agency to create a roadmap for you — and then to track progress — will free you up to focus on running your business. Also, an objective audit of your practices can be truly beneficial and will only improve your strategies.
3) You only have time to focus on one or two platforms/areas/ideas.
Are your marketing channels diversified? Your marketing reach needs to extend to all avenues, particularly in the digital world. Outsourcing SEO, paid search and social advertising, blogging and social media projects is a relatively easy task to manage and is absolutely essential for success in the current world.
4) You can’t afford another hire.
Are you on a tight budget? If your budget doesn’t allow for hiring and training key staff, outsourcing your marketing needs is a way to grow your reach and accomplish your goals without generating overhead such as training costs, benefits or payroll expenses. It’s also a way to try out new projects and programs to see if they stick.
5) You don’t have time for professional development.
Is there a skill set you and your employees want to advance? Gauge the temperature of your existing staff to ensure everyone’s needs are being met. Retaining top talent isn’t easy, so keep in mind that you don’t want existing employees to be concerned about their job security.
Identity each in-house staff member’s strengths and interests, and cultivate them. Strengthen what you have but look to complete your marketing toolkit with the available expertise.
Related posts:
- When Traditional Real Estate Marketing Methods Stop Working, Try Digital Marketing
- 5 Tips for Building a Successful Real Estate Social Media Marketing Program
- Using Content Marketing to Market and Sell Luxury Real Estate
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How to Use Instagram for Real Estate Marketing
Instagram is a natural fit for real estate. Here’s what you need to know about using Instagram for real estate marketing.
Highlights:
- Instagram content needs to be consistent in tone and timing, visually appealing and engaging.
- Instagram Stories and Highlights are ideal ways for real estate marketers to give users a look into their brand.
- Hashtags promote engagement and raise brand awareness.
With its highly visual platform, robust Stories feature, and growing user base, Instagram is a natural fit for real estate marketing. The platform boasts over 500 million users and 4.2 billion likes per month. Used strategically, it’s an ideal place to showcase your properties and brand.
Real estate marketers should be aware that Instagram requires a different content and posting strategy from Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, or other social media platforms. For example, engagement on Instagram is ten times higher than it is for Facebook, and the demographic is substantially more affluent — making it a no-brainer for luxury real estate.
In general, marketers have been relatively slow to adopt Instagram for real estate marketing, a puzzling reality given its overall popularity and natural fit for the visual nature of real estate. But savvy marketers, like these five real estate accounts for example, have figured out how to use this platform to great success.
Instagram for real estate marketing — the right kind of content
Instagram is a fantastic platform for engaging users. But to get the most out of it, it’s important for real estate marketers to post the right kind of content. Obviously, Instagram is a highly visual medium. It lends itself to beautiful, arresting images, and pitchy hashtags.
Keep your content and visual style consistent. Your profile is your calling card on the platform and should reflect the overall tone you want to set for your brand. This also means posting content at a consistent rate, ideally 2-3 times a day.
Chances are, you’ve had fun playing with Instagram filters. But you may not know that certain lighting and color presets perform better than others. According to Iconosquare, the most popular filters currently on Instagram include Clarendon, Juno, Lark, and Ludwig — and they really do have an impact on engagement.
In order to determine the best types of content to engage your target audience, keep an eye on your competitor and peer brands’ presence on the platform. You can also make use of Instagram analytics tools to track, analyze, and benchmark your Instagram content.
Instagram Stories and Highlights
When the feature was first introduced, Instagram Stories was a gamechanger for the ways in which users interact on social media. Stories are sequences of content that users post to their Instagram accounts over a 24-hour period. Besides photos, Stories can include videos, live and prerecorded, as well as Boomerangs, seconds-long motion clips that play forward and backward.
Stories can also be customized with various design tools, including stickers and filters. Notably for real estate marketers, these tools include location tags, as well as time, weather, or holiday greetings. Audiences can view the Stories of the users they follow within the 24-hour window after they are posted. They can find users with active Stories by scrolling the user icons at the top of the app. Or users can tell their followers that they’ve posted a story by tagging them, which notifies them through a direct message.
For brands, Stories offer the invaluable feature of having metrics wrapped into the experience. The feature allows you to track not only how many views your story has received, but exactly which users have viewed it, and how they interacted with it.
In addition to its Stories feature, Instagram now lets users create a featured group of “Highlights” in various categories on their profile. Stories have only a 24-hour lifespan, so featuring your most effective Stories clips in Highlights gives them a second life, and a chance to engage future followers.
Hashtags
One of the most effective ways to grow your Instagram following is to use hashtags effectively. Since Instagram gives users the ability to follow hashtags that interest them, and they function as links to other relevant content, choosing the right hashtags is the ideal way to reach and engage your target audience.
Keep an eye on accounts of peer brands, to stay up to date with the best hashtags to be using. The most effective hashtags are short, memorable, and easy to read. You can also use a free online tool like InconoSquare or Websta to find relevant hashtags for the real estate industry. For much more, check out our guide to using hashtags for real estate marketing.
If you want engagement, engage
It’s easy to forget that the fundamental benefit of social media is that it’s social. Users want to be part of a conversation. Encourage your followers to interact with you on all your social media platforms, including Instagram. This means responding to comments and brand mentions, as well as engaging with your followers’ content.
Starting and fostering a conversation with your followers and peer brands on Instagram is a key to getting the most out of this platform. Encouraging interaction helps drive brand awareness, and lead generation for your properties. Now, the time has come for you to master Instagram for real estate marketing.
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Using Messaging Platforms for Real Estate to Deliver Content
The 4 biggest messaging platforms now have more users than the 4 biggest social media platforms. Here’s how marketers are leveraging messaging platforms for real estate to deliver content to target audiences.
Gone are the days when social messaging platforms were just about chatting or making plans with family and friends. You might be surprised to learn that “the combined total monthly active user count of the top 4 messaging apps has grown to 4.1 billion in 2018.”
Just to put that in perspective, that’s well over half of the world’s population and — perhaps even more strikingly — dwarfs the 2.19 billion monthly active users that Facebook reported in the first quarter of 2018.
It’s official: Social messaging platforms have surpassed “traditional” social media when it comes to active users. Not only that, marketers are taking notice, and beginning to think about how to leverage messaging platforms for real estate to deliver content to target audiences.
Popular social messaging apps include, for instance, WhatsApp, Viber, Line, Snapchat, and Facebook Messenger.
Tip: Use conversational content on messaging platforms for real estate
As you might expect, a key element in the successful use of using social messaging platforms is to tell your story conversationally. This means tailoring your content to the specific wants or needs of your target audience, creating a compelling narrative with your content, rather than an overt sales pitch.
This kind of storytelling is fundamental to content marketing.
“Messaging and chatbots represent the next logical extension of the content marketing mission,” writes Chris Frascella of the Content Marketing Institute.
According to Thomas Husson of Forbes, “Messaging apps will introduce a paradigm shift for marketers where interactive and contextual conversations will replace ad broadcasting. New conversational interfaces will drive deeper relationships between consumers and brands.”
You may be thinking that this is all well and good for marketing products, but how does it apply to real estate marketing? The truth is, if you have a content marketing strategy in place, chances are, you have a story to tell, and these are tools to help you do it.
Chatbots
Enter chatbots, the technology to turn your content into conversations. Chances are, you’ve already come face-to-screen with a chatbot and may not have even known it.
These computer programs simulate human conversation using auditory or textual methods. Basically, it’s software that communicates with your target audience inside a messaging app. Chatbots are already changing the way businesses interact with their prospects — and with each other.
If you’re thinking that you’re about to be replaced by a robot, relax. AI technology that could take the place of human interaction won’t happen anytime soon. Chatbots are a tool, and they need to be fed content and trained by human marketing professionals.
Tips for using chatbots
The first step is adapting your content for use in a chatbot conversation.
“You can’t just duplicate existing content in your conversational scripts,” says Frascella.
While the goals for your content are the same, the way it is delivered is different. That requires a shift in how it’s structured.
It’s also important to be mindful of timing. Because chatbots require users to opt into conversations, retaining permission to access your audience in this way depends largely on content and timing. This means delivering engaging, meaningful, and valuable content at regular intervals, but not intrusively.
For more ideas on creating a chatbot, check out this post.
Social messaging platforms for real estate are opening new doors for you to deliver personalized content straight to your target audience. Make the most of this opportunity!
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- 10 Social Media Statistics for Real Estate Marketers 2018
- Good Real Estate Marketing Gets Personal
- Social Media Trends for 2018 Real Estate Marketers Need to Know
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4 Real Estate Marketing Trends 2018
These 4 takeaways from Placester’s 2018 Real Estate Marketing Survey give us an idea of real estate marketing trends to keep an eye on.
Digital marketing platform Placester recently published the results of its 2018 Real Estate Marketing Survey. The survey, which collected data from hundreds of real estate professionals nationwide, contains valuable information for benchmarking your marketing efforts in “an industry ready to invest more time, money, and energy toward online marketing and generating more leads.”
We’ve pulled out the top 4 takeaways from the survey here. Interestingly, these real estate marketing trends align with those we are seeing with our clients as well.
In general, real estate marketers are focused on leads: acquiring valid potential buyers and then turning them into sales. It makes sense, then, that many are turning to content marketing as a strategy, as it can be a highly effective lead-generation engine. Read on for more.
4 real estate marketing trends to watch
1) A focus on lead generation, nurturing, and conversion.
You can learn a lot from looking at the aggregate goals for the industry.
When asked about their top objective for 2018, 40.3% of survey respondents name generating more new leads than in 2017. Additionally, 23% look to improve on last year’s client conversion rate, 21.8% cited focus on the quality of leads earned, and 14.9% are aiming to learn how to better nurture and qualify prospects.
The bottom line: real estate professionals are focusing on generating, nurturing, and converting leads.
2) Challenges
As with looking at objectives, having an understanding of industry-wide challenges also offers valuable insight.
46.4% of survey respondents said that generating enough high-quality leads is the biggest marketing challenge they face in 2018. Rounding out the list, 24.9% are concerned about finding the right marketing tools to use; 23.4% cite converting leads into new business; and 5.3% are worried about analyzing their marketing performance.
Just as lead generation is a top priority for the majority of respondents, it’s also the top concern for real estate professionals.
3) Video
One of the most popular marketing tactics for greater exposure in 2018 is video.
When asked what part video will play in overall marketing strategy, 49.5% of respondents indicated that it would be a focal point. 43.7% said they would use it some of the time, while only 6.8% indicated that video didn’t interest them at all.
The real estate industry is embracing the power of video marketing. And the good news is, you don’t need expensive camera, lighting, or a production studio — your smartphone can be just as effective for creating video content for your social media outlets.
4) Social media
Which brings us to social media.
When asked which social media network they will use most, a whopping 84.6% of respondents pointed to Facebook, with 11.9% saying Instagram, 1.6% saying Twitter, and 1% respectively for Pinterest and Snapchat.
Facebook is ideal for real estate marketing in many ways. Its large user base makes it a go-to network, as well as its robust mobile presence, with location-specific advertising and sophisticated algorithms to help you reach your target audience.
What real estate marketing trends are you keeping an eye on this year?
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- Social Media Trends for 2018 Real Estate Marketers Need to Know
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