Wow, the term ‘global pandemic’ was something that never really entered my consciousness. Of course, I was aware of the concept, but I never in my wildest dreams ever thought it would become a reality…but here we are!

Certainly, when the pandemic first hit Australia and we were forced indoors, the media was constantly talking about the imminent crash of the real estate market. Yes, it has come off a bit in many markets right across Australia, and it will probably dip even further over the coming months, but according the experts, we are still finding that in the majority of our capital cities and regions across Australia, dwelling prices are are still up on where they were last year.

Anyway, I don’t need to be telling you that as you are living and breathing real estate in your local market, you know what’s going on better than I do…What I do want to talk about today is how to create a content marketing strategy for real estate agents that can help grow your business during and post COVID-19, that will enable you to connect with your local community, position you as a thought leader in the area and help generate leads for you and your business this year and into 2021.

Here are 10 results driven real estate marketing strategies and trends to be aware of in 2020 and beyond to help grow your real estate business.

1. Educate your community with your content

As you know content has been king in real estate for a long time and it will continue to be going forward. Why is it so important in this industry? The reason is simple. Your brand is the content you create. Specifically, the video content, audio, written and visual content that is shared with people. Content ensures:

• You or your real estate website can be found in search results – this is critical for when potential clients are doing their online research to determine who will be added to their agent short list
• Constant flow of fresh social media content
• Brand awareness – to help your chances of being considered for a property appraisal
• Drive traffic to your agent website / social pages / mobile devices
• Able to compete with your competitors and importantly so they don’t dominate when potential clients are online
• Position your real estate brand as the local thought leader
• Capture leads and identify leads
• Nurture leads through the sales funnel
• Stand out from other real estate agents and real estate agencies

If you as an agent or an agency, don’t have depth in your digital content, you have no voice, you can’t be found online, and it is harder for you get onto the short list of agents who are invited into the living room for an appraisal. In order to stand out, you need to create content that is relevant, authoritative, community centric and educational. This is not just a stream of property listings, think about an informational blog post, market updates, listicles, selling guides in your local area, customer stories, investing checklists…the list goes on and on.

2. Update your high performing content

As you most probably know, Google prefers fresh content and they hero sites that provide fresh content to their readers, so if you have some older articles on your blog that have been popular in the past, spending time rejuvenating the content with simple tweaks and updates, and changing the date to represent a newer version, will help with your search engine optimization …. And save you time on creating new high-quality content.

3. Use more video and create episodic content

Video will continue to be a must have tactic in 2020 and beyond. In fact, according to Wyzowl 82% of IP traffic in 2021 will be video, so having a strong presence here is a must do. So, get in front of your smart phone and start filming.

If you’re looking to really make a go of video content and stand out from other real estate agents, jumping onto the growing trend of ‘serialised content’ is a great idea. So far only larger enterprises are using this in their business plans, but that doesn’t need to be the case. You don’t need a huge production budget, you just need to find your unique angle that captures the attention of your audience.

Serialised / episodic content may not be the best way to create instant clicks, it is however key to creating more long-term fan loyalty. This fan loyalty helps establish a subconscious positive association with you and your brand. It keeps you top of mind and creates a warm-fuzzy feeling.

Episodic content is less salesy and more creative and inspires a longer lifespan. If the content is ‘evergreen’ and doesn’t date, it is more likely to be shared, gain organic exposure and remain impactful for years. Plus, one video can create up to 20 micro content pieces which fuels your content strategy for an entire month!

Just think about that, 1 hours’ worth of work a month filming an episode can provide you with an entire month’s worth of content…This is an amazing way to save both time and money. I’ll talk more about this in my next post as I am passionate about this being the way of the future for agents who want to differentiate themselves in the digital content landscape and create a scalable and successful real estate marketing strategy.

4. Get into live streaming

Live streaming is on the rise. Why? Because it’s free, it’s easy to produce, it’s authentic, it offers a great user experience and people love it. Consider live streaming your auctions, open homes, market updates etc. Live content has the ability to generate greater impressions than posts added to newsfeeds and it’s worth giving it a go.

5. Social media marketing – Pay to play

If you’re not doing it already, don’t just add your social posts to Facebook, Instagram and YouTube, and do nothing with them, as only a tiny percentage of your followers will actually see it. To make an impact you need to spend some of your marketing budget on promoting your posts on each social media platform.

Instagram and Facebook Advertising

You have a few options. Let’s look at Facebook first. Boosting a post on Facebook is the simplest way to promote a post – you specify who you want to reach, your budget and how long you want the ad to run for. However, if you really want to get smart, you need to create ads in Facebook Ads Manager. This offers you the opportunity to customise your adverts across both Facebook and Instagram and have much more control and insight into your ads performance. You can:

• Choose different ad placements such in Facebook news feeds, side ads, messenger ads, Instagram ad, Instagram stories, instant articles etc
• Use specific objectives that align with your business goals, such as page engagement, conversion, lead generation, awareness etc
• More options for creative and ability to add call to action buttons to drive your audience to take action
• Target audiences. With Facebook ads you can promote your ads to a specific target market, create audiences from your own database, people with certain interests, audiences that have visited your website, or even specific pages on your website, lookalike audiences and loads more
• Great reporting and insights – Facebook Ads Manager has a powerful reporting back end so you can track exactly how your ads are performing and make changes easily.

YouTube advertising

If you have video’s, spending money promoting it on YouTube will enable you to connect and reach a targeted audience based on a range of criteria such as keywords, location, demographics, topics people search, customer match, similar audiences, remarketing audiences – or in other words people who visited your page but didn’t convert and of course audiences with particular interests. It is quick and easy to set adverts up in YouTube and with strong reporting options, you can track results, costs and budgets and modify as needed.

It can be confusing setting these ad accounts up, but once you have set yourself up and you’ve had a few goes at it, you’ll see that they are a great management tool and if constantly monitored and optimised can produce great results.

6. Focus on Local SEO with Google My Business

Make sure you prioritise Google My Business, this is a free tool that allows businesses to manage their online presence across Google including search and maps and will have a direct impact on your search engine optimisation. It’s the first-place people turn to when looking for a real estate agent and it is an easy way to help raise awareness of you and your office and to drive leads.

Many real estate agents have claimed a Google My Business listing, but only a small percentage have optimised it. Make sure you have added the basic information about your business such as name, address, phone number, website.

After this has been added, you can start to personalise your listing with content that is on your real estate website; add a description, profile picture, video to showcase your business, specify its category and attributes. Make sure when adding your attributes you consider your keywords in your copy (but make sure you don’t overdo it here though). Finally, ask your previous clients for reviews as Google loves these.

By providing depth of information to Google on your Google My Business, their algorithms will have a better understanding of your capabilities and offerings and more likely to include you in relevant search results.

7. Build local lead magnets / downloads

This is gold for lead generation. As we have spoken about many times, homeowners who are looking to buy or sell, spend considerable time online doing their research into the local market, local agents…they really try to absorb as much information as possible. If you are offering a valuable download, that promises to answer all or a truckload of their questions, readers will happily give you their email address in return for such a high value content piece.

The gold is you capture their data, and you know that they are a warm sales lead. If they are on your database – it’s is worth a friendly call, but if they are a new warm lead, feeding them into an automated email nurture program is a good way to continue the conversation…more on this next.

8. Create and set up automated email marketing campaigns

Once you have captured a prospects email address, via a download or form on your website, keep them in the sales funnel with a series of personalised, hyper-local and relevant nurture emails. Once your emails are written and set up you can turn it on and forget about it – it really is set and forget!

Jumping back to the point on episodic content, if you have created great dateless content as part of a video series this is ideal for emails and a great way to connect with prospects in a unique and engaging way.

9. Prepare for voice technology, chatbots and pop-ups

Continuing on from last year, voice search and chatbots are on the rise. Chatbots offer you the opportunity to cut costs and convert visitors into leads by answering FAQ’s on your site. In addition, with the increasing use of Siri, Alexa and Google Assistant, ensuring your content uses natural language can help the search engines find you and your content. If you or your agency can be found via voice search it is going to be more successful than invasive ads.

If you don’t want to go down the path of adding a chatbot, consider adding a pop up to specific pages on your website and promote your eBook/lead magnet. An easy addition like this is a great way to capture data and feed them into your sales funnel.

10. Repurpose your content

What does this mean I hear you say? Basically, this means taking a video, eBook, podcast etc and turning that one piece of content into a whole lot of other content such as articles, social posts, memes, etc.

This is a great way to scale up your content without having to create new content each time. You do need to keep in mind where you are sharing the content and make sure the format and style fits the platform.

At Localiz we can help you repurpose your content and can work with you to create a strategy that enables you to spend only 1 hour producing a key piece of content each month that we can turn into a month’s worth of content for all your channels.

A final word: I hope this article has given you some insight into some key digital marketing strategies that can help focus your efforts and boost your real estate marketing strategy during and post COVID-19. As you can tell all of these marketing ideas rely on content and of course the team at Localiz would love to help you create and implement a customised local business strategy with lead generation at its core. Connect with us here.