Content Marketing is one of the cheapest and most effective ways to get targeted visitors hitting your website and social pages and driving leads into your sales funnel.

But with nearly every real estate agent creating similar digital content and promoting it via the same online channels, standing out and generating leads in a sea of content sameness is getting harder and harder. The content marketing funnel has broken

Hi I’m Sarah Lefebvre, Founder of Localiz and for the last 10 years I’ve led the Digital Content Strategy for 2 of Australia’s largest real estate groups…in fact my strategy underpinned 3 REB Digital Presence of the year awards.

I’ve created content strategies for individual agents and offices and collectively my content programs have found 1000’s of leads for office sales funnels.

This series is all about me sharing what I’ve learnt the hard way to teach you how to take your content marketing to the next level.

Today I’m going to take you through how the content marketing landscape has changed for real estate agents over the last year or so and where the biggest untapped opportunity lies for you.

OK so let’s revisit the idea that the content marketing funnel has broken

When I first started out, only a handful of agents and agencies were tapping into the power of content marketing.  Very few were creating a regular blog and sharing it across more than one channel or creating lead magnets and email nurture programs to identify leads. Only the best were using SEO well and video was not on the radar.

Nowadays, the majority of savvy agents have a pretty comprehensive content marketing strategy. They’re on social media, they’re blogging regularly, they may have a download to capture data, their nurturing leads…they are leveraging the power of content to drive leads into their business.

But what I am seeing is as every good real estate agent is pretty much creating the same type of content and distributing it via the same channels, it’s  getting harder to stand out in a sea of sameness.

It’s getting harder to get attention but it’s getting more and more important that you do.

What do I mean by that?

A few years ago, a homeowner looking to sell invited 4-5 agents into the living room, today homeowners only invite an average of 1-2 agents in the door.

Why? Because they have already done their research online and have pretty much decided who they’re going to choose to sell their home.

Without a strong digital content strategy, you just won’t be found when people search online, and without a program that ensures you stand out from your competitors you’re going to be missing out on a lot of business.

And trend isn’t just in real estate space.

• According to Harvard Bus School The cost of getting consumers attention is increasing 7-9x per year
• Consumers now only trust those who are close to them not just peer to peer
• Consumers need to be educated and entertained to build trust with a brand, can’t just grab their attention they actually need to be invested in you and your brand
• The cost to acquire customers is up 50% over the last 5 years – that’s huge!

The bottom line is Content marketing is critical to your success as an agent but the results from content marketing that were possible a few year ago are getting much harder to achieve.

What we are seeing now is, without first-hand experiences and significant time invested with a brand, the consumer doesn’t trust its marketing enough to take action.

And this is even more the case with highly emotional decisions like who is going to sell my home or manage my investment property.

Whilst this sounds very doom and gloom, the good news is you really have the single biggest opportunity to drive career success and company growth while engaging your community like no other real estate brand.

And this is where episodic content or what’s also called a branded series fits in.

Episodic content is the ultimate content marketing strategy enabling you to you be more creative, tell your story, connect with your community, scale your content across all your digital channels and drive a steady flow of leads into your business.

Instead of worrying about what you’re going to blog about, or share on your socials, smart agents will focus on creating episodic content and putting on their film director hats, because this is the ideal way to accelerate visibility, build trust within your community, drive shorter sales cycles and to be able to scale your content. Plus, your competitors aren’t doing it yet, so you can own this space.

As Jay Acunzo, a pioneer in episodic content says, ‘Marketing is no longer about grabbing attention. It’s all about holding it.

And the best agents today will understand that marketing isn’t about who arrives on your site or on your social pages is actually about those who stay and stay connected to your brand.

And episodic content is the perfect solution for this.

In my next blog I’ll take you through exactly what episodic content is, the benefits of it and why it’s so perfect for real estate agents and offices.

I hope to see you then.