Digital Marketing For Real Estate: Everything You Need To Know

With the emergence of the digital era, our way of purchasing and decision making has changed completely. It has opened limitless possibilities that were not there before. It was only a few decades ago when buying properties was considered to be a posh affair. Only the rich people of the society had the financial backing to invest in various luxury properties.

Not just that, but even the entire process of buying a property was a lengthy and a complicated one. Back then buyers had to desperately look for a reliable broker who could get them a good deal which seemed to be a tedious task. Home seekers also had to collect tons of documents and sign them in order to complete the purchasing process. However, with the rise of the digital age, all this has become talks of the past.

Today, most home seekers are known to look for properties online. The whole process of finding and buying a property has become a lot easier now. Buyers can look for their ideal property on the net and even shortlist the ones they like.

All this can be done sitting at the comfort of the house. According to statistics, it has been found that around 92% of the buyers search for properties online. Nowadays, home seekers search for the property online and check out the apartment before, they physically visit the property to see it.

Majority of the population today takes active participation on the web. There is a number of active internet users than ever before. This has opened new and unique opportunities for real estate developers. It is because of this reason that it has become increasingly important for them to fully make use of digital media in order to engage their audience online.

The real estate industry has been completely revolutionized by digital marketing. Today, buyers are doing extensive research on the net before, actually investing in a particular home project. Not just that, but buyers are also searching for sellers and broker agents online. In such a situation, it has become extremely important for real estate developers to incorporate the need for digital marketing into their real estate business.

Considering the latest trends, it can be said that digital marketing has become a mandatory part of the real estate industry. Therefore, every real estate organization is expected to have an online presence which must be optimized through digital communication. Having said that, now let’s take a closer look at the importance of digital marketing for real estate. We will also be looking into some other important details about digital marketing and the real estate industry.

Benefits Of Digital Marketing For Real Estate

Marketing techniques tend to evolve from time to time which is known to have a strong impact on the ways a product or service is promoted by a brand. For example, the rise of digital marketing has completely transformed the marketing world. If you are a digital marketing practitioner, you probably already know the benefits that you can avail from digital marketing.

Digital marketing for Real estate developers is not only increasing in urban areas but it is also evolving in the rural zones as well. However, there are only very few property developers who are familiar with the numerous benefits that can be achieved from the combination of digital marketing and real estate.

The majority of the property developers are yet to realize and take full advantage of digital marketing for their real estate business. Some of the major benefits of combining digital marketing with real estate are discussed below.

1. Increased Exposure

Housing projects are known to vary in location, size, and cost. Therefore, having a full proof digital marketing strategy for your real estate business will help you to increase your overall reach. Not only that, but you can also customize your reach in order to direct it at a more targeted market.

 

2. Lower Costs

As you already know construction business is a business that requires a lot of investment. Therefore, making use of digital marketing can prove to be more cost effective for you. It allows you to promote your business at a much lower rate in comparison to traditional marketing. This is one of the biggest reasons why real estate developers are making greater use of digital marketing strategies more than traditional marketing.

 

3. Creative License

Digital platforms allow property developers to showcase their products through a number of different ways in the online Marketplace. From Independent houses to apartments, they can showcase it all in the online Marketplace with the help of digital marketing.

 

4. Performance Analysis

Out of the many benefits offered by real estate digital marketing, one important benefit is that it helps you to monitor the performance of an advertisement in the online Marketplace. This in return helps the property developers to understand the marketing techniques that are the best working for them and the ones that need improvement.

 

5. Brand Building

Not just real estate, but for any type of business to achieve success it is important that they have a reputable and strong presence in the market. The real estate industry is a vast one and therefore, there is a strong need for you to have a strong presence in the industry.

 

This can be achieved with the help of digital marketing for real estate, as it is considered to be one of the best brand building techniques by marketers. Digital marketing can help you to have a strong online presence which is obviously going to be beneficial for your business.

3 Goals Of Every Real Estate Digital Marketing Plan

Whether it be a real estate business or any other business, in order to get success in the digital space you need to first achieve the three goals. The three important goals that every real estate digital marketer should have included:

 

• Building The Brand

In order to build your brand, you need to have a strong online presence. In order to establish a strong online presence, you need to focus on three important things including creating a website, SEO practice and creating a blog.

 

• Acquiring Customers

The next important goal is to acquire customers for your real estate business. just having an online presence won’t help you, if your customers are not aware of your presence. You need to get the word out there among the audience. in other words, you need to promote your business so that people get to know about your existence. This can be done with the help of various advertising campaigns.

 

• Customer Engagement

The third most important goal is to get your customers engaged. You need to generate new customers and retain the existing ones in order to make your real estate business a successful one.

 

The most effective tool for customer engagement in social media. In today’s, time it is considered to be one of the best tools for engaging your customers. There are a number of popular social media sites that you can use for your business. Of course, Facebook being on the top. There is an endless list of social media trends that you can follow in order to benefit your real estate business.

How Can Real Estate Developers In India Engage With The Internet Users?

When it comes to digital platform, whether it be Facebook or Twitter, Indians have a fairly large presence on all of these digital platforms. Majority of the population access these digital platforms through their mobile phones. For instance, Facebook nearly has 240 million users in India who access the site from their phones.

With such a huge number of users actively participating in the digital platforms, it provides great opportunities for the real estate developers to engage their consumers in the most efficient way. With the help of the social media analytics, real estate developers are able to better understand their consumers and therefore, create more efficient campaign plans.

The usage of internet in India has been growing since, the time it has been introduced to the world. However, there are two main reasons that have further lead to the growth of internet users in India. One is the availability of cheap smartphones and the launch of the Reliance Jio service. Both these factors have a huge role to play in the sudden growth of internet users in the country.

Thanks to Reliance Jio for providing affordable data plans which have made India, one of the largest consumers of data in the whole world. This clearly means that the number of internet users is only going to increase in the country which will provide great benefits to the real estate developers. However, the real estate developers are expected to make use of digital marketing in a better way so that they are able to engage their consumers more effectively.

How Can Real Estate Developers Use Digital Marketing To Engage With The Indian Consumers?

The tremendous growth in the number of internet users in the country has brought in new opportunities for property developers. They are all set to leverage the power of digital marketing for real estate business. Now the question is how do real estate developers make use of digital marketing to engage their consumers in India? We have answered this question in the pointers listed below.

 

• Mobile Users Targeted Campaigns

If India is compared with the rest of the internet users in the world, you will notice that most users from other countries made use of computers and then shifted to the use of mobile phones for surfing the net. However, the scene for the Indian users is completely different as they never adopted the pattern that is followed globally.

In other words, Indian internet users have completely skipped the computer stage. According to data, Indians tend to access the internet from their phones around 80% of the time. This is why it is important for real estate developers to create sites that are responsive in nature. This will allow the users to access the site even from their phones. To engage the Indian audience in the right way, this is actually a very important thing to consider.

 

• Personalized Marketing Strategies

Content created by real estate developers should be valuable to the home buyers. In order to create such content, it is important for the property developers to know who their customers are. It is expected that by the end of 2020, around 40% of internet users are going to women. This means that property developers are required to create content that is appealing to women.

For example, around 60% of the audience who search for car related information was women. Having a good understanding of who your audience is can help you to create relevant content for your audience. This will make sure that they will find your content valuable. This is actually an important step towards building a strong relationship with your consumers.

 

• Optimizing Brands For Voice Search

It is true that voice search in India is still in its nascent stage but it is expected to grow in the coming years. According to Google, around 28% of the searches made are voice searches. What makes it even more promising is that there has been a 400% growth in Hindi voice search. Voice search has a powerful impact on SEO. This is because people don’t have the habit of using keywords while speaking naturally.

This may be a challenging thing for the property developers as they have to look for new ways in order to become more visible to their consumers through voice search results.

 

• Making Use Of Regional Language

The number of regional language speaking web users are growing at a faster rate than the English speaking ones. In other words, English speaking web users are still static in the country while the other half is increasing at an alarming rate. This is the result of the penetration of the internet service in tier 2 and 3 cities including villages.

According to Google, around 30% of internet users in India belong to rural areas. In order to establish a strong relationship with the home seekers, it is important for the property developers to make use of regional language more. Speaking of which, Tamil is the most popular regional language that is used by the most number of internet users in the country. After Tamil, Hindi is the second most popular regional language.

 

• Promoting Two-Way Communication

In order to connect with your audience better, you need to encourage a two-way conversation. Well, this is where digital marketing proves to be of great help to the property developers. It allows them to interact with their customers and also get feedback from them. This two-way conversation helps the property developers to engage their audience in a better way.

However, in order to encourage meaningful communication, it is important for the developers to understand who their audience is, what interests them and what are they concerned about.

 

• Making Use Of Google Ads ‘Missed Call’ Extension

If you want to increase your conversion and click-through rates both at the same time, you need to add call extensions to your ads. But the problem with this is that most of the mobile internet users in the country are from smaller towns and cities. This may stop them from contacting your business as the call rates charges are higher. In order to address this concern, Google Ads has introduced the Missed Call feature. This allows the users to place a call which is immediately cut as it connects.

After the missed call has been received by the system, the user will immediately get an automated call which will then connect them to the business, directly. A call from Google will be received by the business at the same time. Once both the parties are on the call, they will be connected after which they can interact with each other. With the help of this feature, property developers can engage potential customers in a far more effective way. Not just that, but this will also help them to track conversions as well.

 

The digital marketing budget for the real estate developers may have increased, but a complete shift to digital marketing from traditional marketing still has a long way to go.

5 Effective SEO Strategies For Real Estate Developers

For any online business, SEO is perhaps the most important thing. SEO or Search Engine Optimisation is defined as a process that is used to improve the ranking of your website in the search engine results page. With the help of an effective SEO strategy, you can rank your website higher in the results page of the search engine.

SEO is known to bring in a lot of benefits including increased traffic, leads and sales. This is why it is important for every property developer to pay more attention to their SEO practice. We have discussed 5 effective SEO strategies that can prove to be helpful for your real estate online business.

1. Creating A Mobile Friendly Website

Now that the internet has become a common household name, more and more house seekers rely on the internet when it comes to buying a property. Majority of the home seekers use their mobile phones to look for houses on the web. Therefore, in order to get the attention of your customers you need to take your business online.

Not just that, but you also need to make sure that your website is mobile friendly. This is particularly important because the majority of the people in India access the internet through their mobile phones. Your website should be working seamlessly both on a mobile phone and desktop. This basically means that all the content on your website including images, videos and landing pages, everything needs to be optimized for mobile viewing.

 

2. Pay More Attention To Local Keywords And SEO Tactics

Since the majority of your customers are looking for houses from their mobile phones, it is important that you pay more attention to local SEO tactics. For Real estate developers, local SEO is a bit different from regular SEO. This is because realtors need to make their SEO tactics based on the local pack of the search engine results.

In order to make your SEO tactics into the local pack, you need to make use of local real estate search terms and keywords for your content. This helps you to improve the rank of your website on the search engine results page.

 

3. Optimize Your Website Content

As already, discussed earlier, the majority of the home buyers search the internet in order to check houses. Around 90% of home seekers rely on the internet in order to meet their housing needs. Nearly 53% of the buyers start their search on a search engine.

Therefore, it becomes increasingly important for the realtors to optimize their website content so that they can improve the ranking of their website. According to data, around 55% of searchers tend to check only the first three results of the search engine. So if your website doesn’t rank in the top three, you will lose out on customers.

SEO mainly revolves around the use of keywords. However, not all keywords are created equal. When it comes to choosing the right keywords, there are two important things that you need to consider. One is the search intent and the other is search volume. You can make use of an SEO tool in order to find the ideal keyword for your real estate website.

 

4. Make Use Of Video, Photos, And VR

Gone are the days when people were all about textual content. Today, people are more interested in visuals. Visuals can help customers to know everything about a housing project even before physically visiting it. You can make use of features like high-quality images and 3-D virtual tours in order to make your property presentation more engaging for your customers. This will help you get more potential customers easily.

According to data, the use of high-resolution images and videos can help you increase your sales by up to 44%. In addition, 89% of the home seekers find visual content like photos to be helpful in deciding whether they want to buy the property or not.

5. Share Your Real Estate Blog On Social Media Sites

Blogs are considered to be very important for every type of business. If you want to benefit your real estate business, you should consider investing in a blog site. Create a real estate blog site for your business. This is the best form of content marketing that you can invest in. However, creating just a blog won’t help you, if you don’t spread the word.

What you can do is share your blog content on various social media sites like Facebook and the like. This will help you to reach your word out there. However, you need to make sure that your blog site contains relevant information.

 

Blogs don’t always mean textual content. You can also add images and videos in order to make them more appealing and informative to your customers. For example, testimonials can serve to be a great bet as most customers tend to trust online testimonials. Therefore, you should make videos of happy customers and post it on your blog site.

5 Ways For Realtors To Use Digital Marketing To Increase Sales

If you have been in the real estate business for long, you have surely felt the major shift that has taken place. Homeowners nowadays, look for houses in a completely different way. Gone are the days when a home buyer needed to hire a broker to check properties. In this digital age, the majority of the home buyers are relying on the internet to check and buy new properties. It is because of this reason that digital marketing has become so important for realtors.

In order to promote your real estate business online, you need to come up with effective digital marketing strategies that prove to be beneficial for you. To help you out, we have discussed 5 tips following which you can increase your sales with the help of digital marketing.

1. Pay-Per-Click Advertising

PPC or Pay-Per-Click advertising is considered to be one of the best digital marketing strategies. With the help of PPC advertising, you can get new leads. Every time someone clicks on the ad, you get paid for it.

This digital marketing strategy is considered to be an ideal one for the property developers who in search of potential customers. By potential customers, we mean buyers who are actually interested in buying a new house. Facebook ads or Google Ads are mainly targeted towards the audience who have searched for correlated keywords in the search engine.

 

2. Virtual Tours

Virtual tours can work wonders for your real estate business if it is done right. Customers these days are all about visual content and there can be nothing better than a virtual tour of the property. With the help of this excellent digital marketing strategy, you are sure to get success. Virtual tours not only provides video content to the consumers but it also gives them a brief idea about how the property actually looks like and what it has to offer to them.

Taking the right decision while buying a property is a difficult task. However, it is your responsibility to make the entire process as simple as you can. If you are to use virtual tours successfully, you should try out these tips:

• Make use of the real footage of the house.
• Make sure that the video is an interactive one.
• The virtual tour should be in 3-D.
• Make the virtual tour user-friendly.

 

3. Social Media Marketing

In order to survive in this world of cut-throat competition, you definitely need to formulate a social media marketing strategy that can help you promote your real estate business more effectively. Posting regular real estate based posts on Facebook is not enough. You need to have a full-proof social media marketing strategy in order to promote your business. Some useful content that you should post on social media sites include:

• Informative and relevant blog posts
• Success stories
• Team Bios
• Case studies
• Existing or new listings

Creating a successful social media marketing strategy is not an easy task. It takes a lot of effort to formulate an effective strategy that is sure to bear results. The key to developing an effective social media marketing plan is to post varied content and to post regularly.

 

4. Email Campaign

No matter whatever business you are running, developing an email campaign is always beneficial. It is considered to be an important tool with the help of which you can get new leads. Not just that, but it also helps you to stay relevant with your old and existing customers.

A well-developed email campaign will help you to identify potential customers based on their previous actions and engagements with you. In order to make your email campaign, a success you need to make sure that you are content is relevant to your customers. This will stroke the interest of your customers to click open mail and go through the information provided in it.

 

5. User-Friendly Website

In order to promote your real estate business online, it is important for you to have a user-friendly website. Having a user-friendly website means it is more likely to retain the interest of your customers. It is often seen that a visitor leaves the website if he is unable to navigate the site easily. If you wish to keep your customers engaged you need to have a website with a user-friendly interface.

 

Apart from being user-friendly you also need to make sure that you develop a website that is optimized for mobile viewing. This is important because the majority of home seekers are known to access the internet using their mobile phones. So if you don’t have a mobile-friendly website, it will become difficult for your customers to browse through your site from their mobile devices.

Tips To Improve Your Real Estate Digital Marketing Tactics

Here are a few tips and tricks that you can apply in order to improve your real estate digital marketing tactics.

1. Post Relevant Content

In order to get the attention of your customers, you need to post relevant content. High-value content is what gets the attention of the customers. You need to make sure that your content contains important information that may prove to be valuable for your customers. In addition, you also need to make it a point to update your blog site once every week. Try to include images and videos in order to make your real estate blog content even more eye-catching.

 

2. Develop Buyer Profiles

By buyer profiles, we mean the ideal customers that you are targeting through your content. What you should do id collect every vital information about your customers. For example, who they are, what they do, their average salary and other important things that are likely to influence their decision-making process. This will help you to understand your customers better.

 

3. Improve Your SEO

SEO is perhaps the most important things for your online real estate business. Therefore, there is every need for you to pay more attention to your SEO practice. With the help of a good SEO practice, you can improve the rankings of your real estate website. Not just that, but it will also drive more traffic to your site.

This in return will increase the sales. In order to improve your SEO, you need to focus on related keywords. Make sure that you make use of these keywords in your blog content.

 

4. Take Digital Marketing Training

In order to promote your real estate business online, you need to have the right digital marketing skills. Since, the modern marketplace is a competitive place, the need to possess digital marketing skills has become increasingly important. So if you wish your business to be a successful one you should consider investing in digital marketing training. This will ensure that you have the right skillset to support your business. Also, it will help you to face your competition.

 

Top Real Estate Digital Marketing Trends To Know About

The real estate industry is continuously evolving and thus, it’s catching up with new trends from time to time. If you are in the real estate business and trying to promote your business in the digital space, you should probably go through the list of these digital marketing trends in the real estate industry. This will give you an idea of what is to be done for your benefit.

1. It Is Important To Be Mobile Friendly

According to records, mobile made purchases have out-performed computer made purchases. This basically indicates that the majority of buyers uses their mobile devices in order to surf the internet and make purchases.

This is why it is important for real estate business to have a mobile friendly website so that customers are able to browse through the site comfortably. However, if this is not the case, they will simply leave your site and not come back.

 

2. Quality Website Content Is Everything

If you are to run a successful real estate business online you need to keep a track of your website’s performance. You need to keep a check whether your website is going down in its performance or not. If you notice any such thing, you are required to take the necessary steps in order to push the performance of your website. One of the best ways to keep this from happening is to develop quality website content. If you post only high-quality content on your site, it will help you to maintain the overall performance of your site.

 

3. Get An App

Today, everything has an app. no matter what type of business you are running, having an app can benefit you in a number of ways. With the help of an easy to use real estate app, you can generate millions easily. This is one of the rising trends that is followed by the realtors out there. If you too wish to take advantage of it, get an app for your business.

 

4. Make Use Of Social Media

Social media has become an integral part of any business. Just like any other business even real estate needs to be promoted on social media sites. Since social media sites have a wider reach, it will help you to promote your business more effectively. In other words, you will be able to reach a number of audience at the same. Not just that, but it will also help you to target a more potent group of customers. No wonder, social media marketing is considered to be so important by the brands.

 

5. Target All Search Engines

When it comes to search engines, Google is the first name that pops in our mind. Google is undoubted, the best search engine out there. However, that doesn’t mean that you will ignore the other search engines. If you have to promote your real estate business more effectively you need to target all the search engines out there. Other than Google, Yahoo and Bing are the two most important search engines which you need to target.

 

After going through the above discussion, it can be concluded that home buyers have become more dependent on the internet to meet their housing needs. Therefore, it has become important for the realtors to take their business online.

With the help of an effective digital marketing plan, a property can get the word out there. Not just that, but it also helps him to get more potential clients who are genuinely interested in the offer. All you need to do is to make sure that your real estate digital marketing is on point and the rest of the things will automatically fall in its right place.