Content marketing feels like it was made for the real estate industry. It revolves around shareable, interesting, and fun topics. Something as simple as a video walkthrough can become viral online if you do it right.
In this guide, we’ll tell you all about real estate content marketing. We’ll share some tips for success and even give you some real estate content ideas to get you started.
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What is content marketing?
Content marketing refers to creating branded shareable material — such as blog posts, social posts, images, emails, or videos — with the hope of going viral and getting a lot of shares.
Even though your content should be branded, with content marketing you won’t be explicitly promoting your business. Additionally, you won’t be talking to a specific person – your content can be seen, and shared, by anyone on the internet.
Why does real estate content marketing matter?
Why should you spend any time considering content marketing ideas for real estate? Content marketing works, and it’s a huge deal in this industry. It’s a surefire way to build your brand, grow your sales, and connect you with more clients.
Demonstrating your experience
First and foremost, it shows your experience within your industry. When people are looking to buy, sell, or rent a home, they need a knowledgeable pro in their corner. If they stumble across your content, they start to view you as a viable candidate to help them.
This is also the leading reason why most real estate content ideas aren’t too “sales-y”. You’re not trying to solely sell someone on your services, you’re looking to first convince them that you know what you’re talking about.
Connect you with more people
The internet is a really big place. When you upload content to social media, you have the potential to connect with billions of people. That’s how many active social media accounts there are across the world.
Compare that to a billboard you buy on the side of a highway. It might get thousands of views in any given week. The order of magnitude is hard to comprehend when you talk about content marketing.
Every person that lays eyes on your online content can be a potential customer.
Build brand awareness
People’s real estate needs are unpredictable. You probably know by this point that someone uninterested in selling their home can be quickly convinced if you pitch them the idea correctly.
The bottom line is that you don’t know when someone will decide they need a high-quality real estate company. This is why brand awareness is so important.
Brand awareness is when someone associates a certain industry or quality with your company. For example, when you think of a coffee chain that’s high-quality, specialty, and highly-customizable, you might think of Starbucks. They’re a great example of brand awareness.
For your company, you want locals to immediately think of your name when they think about buying, selling, or renting a home.
By rolling out a successful content marketing campaign, you’ll build your brand awareness. People will start associating you with high-quality real estate knowledge. That eventually translates to people picking your company for their real estate needs.
Types of content marketing for real estate agencies
Content marketing in any industry has a wide range of different ways that it can present itself. Real estate content ideas come in a few different flavors. Here are some options that you can incorporate into your business model:
General educational content
A broad category includes sharing educational content with your target customer base. If you’re targeting homebuyers, then you might share content that dives into the home buying experience, what to look for, what to avoid, and what real estate agents do during the process.
A lot of people on the internet don’t know the information that you do. This is your opportunity to show your experience in action and present content that teaches people about real estate and keeps things interesting.
If you publish an article that lifts the curtain and tells the reader more about what you do, then they’ll trust you. You can convert a reader into a client pretty easily once you establish your knowledge of the industry.
The secret is to keep this type of content within your industry. Talking about different types of coffee won’t attract the right people, so you want to stay on brand.
Market analysis
When you do market analysis, you might want to put your findings together. Make an easily-digestible piece that the everyday person can understand.
This type of localized analysis can get heavily shared within your region. Most people don’t know about their local real estate market, so your insight can help them make a decision.
Home maintenance tips
Putting together home maintenance tips is a great strategy if you buy or sell homes. You’ll be put in front of people who own a home. If that’s your target audience, then this is great news.
These types of tips can be pretty universal, so you can address a broad audience that can later convert into clients. It’s also a topic that many people need help in.
When a first-time homeowner encounters a clogged sink, they might take to the internet to try to find a solution before calling a plumber. This is where you can come in.
Video or pictorial walkthroughs
A big part of your business revolves around walkthroughs. One content strategy in real estate email marketing is to create video or pictorial walkthroughs of the properties you have listed.
These walkthroughs give someone a cool way to tour a home, and they give you more traffic. These work well if you have a 3D virtual tour posted on your site.
An interested party can keep revisiting a walkthrough, and they can share it with family and friends to get their input. This boosts the views that you get and makes even more people familiar with your company.
After learning about these types of content, you might be wondering what they look like in action.
Real estate content ideas to get more clients
Now that you know more about why content creation is so important, let’s talk about different ideas you can use. In this section, you’ll learn some useful real estate content ideas.
Monthly real estate newsletter
Putting together a monthly real estate newsletter is quickly becoming the industry norm. In this newsletter, you have an opportunity to talk about upcoming changes and things to promote for your business.
This is a short-form email that will be sent out monthly to people on your real estate mailing list. The big reason is to remind people about you and tell them about changes in your company that might interest them.
Many companies use a newsletter to push a certain product or service. In your case, these newsletters can quickly mention a few of your listings that you want to move.
Run an updated blog
A blog is one of the best ways to improve your online presence. If your blog incorporates real estate SEO, then you might quickly become the first result when prospective buyers search for real estate agents in their area.
If you didn’t know, SEO stands for search engine optimization. It’s when you tailor your content to be Google-friendly and show up on more people’s searches. By providing well-written, industry-specific knowledge that targets a few key phrases or words, you can improve your Google ranking.
The better your site ranks on Google, the more people will discover your company. Many companies choose to host their blog directly on their website so viewers can find their way to their services and products for sale.
Stay active on social media
Just like a well-run blog, proper use of social media for your real estate company can completely change your business.
The goal of your social media accounts is to create content that goes viral and gets many shares and views. The more people see your content, the more likely you are to appear in front of the right person.
Your profile should be built around driving people to your site for more information and to close the deal. Anything you post should require no more than two or three clicks to lead the viewer right to your site.
Start a YouTube channel
One of the more popular real estate content ideas is to start a YouTube channel. This channel can do anything you’d like within the world of real estate.
Many realtors will upload video walkthroughs of different properties, essentially acting like a virtual showing.
You might also put together videos that highlight the buying process, what to look for when touring a property, and other industry-specific knowledge. Here, you’ll have a great opportunity to showcase your knowledge in the world of real estate.
Again, you want your YouTube channel to be linked to your main website where people can connect with you and you can make a sale. If your content is interesting and shows your experience, people will trust you and choose you for their next move.
Make helpful infographics
infographics can be posted on social media, your real estate website, or through your newsletter. An infographic is simply a piece of content that explains something within a single image. The image is set up to be easily shareable and connected to your business.
An example might be a graphic that shows a tour inspection checklist for a rental property. Use your personal experience to highlight things that a prospective renter should look for while touring a rental unit. At the bottom of the infographic, add your company’s name and some way that they can find you (usually a website or email).
You can make as many infographics as you’d like, but each one should focus on a specific topic or idea. Post them wherever and whenever you want to, and watch the new business come streaming in.
Tips for your content marketing strategy
If you want to find success in your content marketing campaign, there are some tips to keep in mind.
Understand your target audience
First and foremost, understand who you’re talking to. All of your content should be written with a certain person in mind. You’re looking for prospective homeowners within a certain salary range who are interested in a certain location. You might even have a list of hobbies that help you sell a property.
For example, a property near a golf course should be targeted at people who show an interest in golfing.
You already know how to sell a home to someone in a one-on-one setting: just convert that into your content marketing. Pretend you’re having a conversation with someone and visualize the types of things they’ll want to hear.
This helps you not only build a marketing strategy, but also helps you carry one out in the long run.
Be consistent
Consistency is key when you’re posting content. You don’t want to overburden your followers with a new post every hour, but you want to give them enough new content to keep them interested.
You should never compromise the quality of your content in an effort to be more consistent. Viewers will turn away if your content doesn’t have a high enough level of quality.
Put yourself in your viewers’ shoes
This idea plays nicely with the first tip on this list: change your perspective as you’re making content. Imagine what someone would want to read and what would interest them.
If you always approach a post from your viewer’s point of view, you’ll have a better chance of delivering worthwhile content. After all, if your content isn’t worth reading, it’s not worth making.
Make goals
Content marketing can become the driving force behind your operation if you do it correctly. A good way to help with your success is to start out with some goals in mind.
Goals should be measurable, attainable, and have a clear path to achieve them.
Most of your goals should revolve around making your real estate company more money. This could translate to a certain number of interactions with your content, an increase in overall sales, or more people giving you their contact info.
Remember your goal
Some companies fall into a cycle and wind up just posting content for the sake of posting. If you forget the reason behind the content, you’ll never achieve the goals you set. The only reason you made goals was to follow through with them and achieve success.
Before posting something, ask yourself how this post brings you closer to the goals you set. Consistent posting of high-quality, interesting-to-read posts can increase your interactions, lead to more sales, and result in more clients.
We always suggest writing your goals somewhere around the office that can be easily referenced. It’s nice to get the constant reminder so your content stays on track.
Get help coming up with new ideas
Writer’s block doesn’t just affect novelists. As you make more content, you might run into a wall and need help coming up with new ideas.
If you’re in this situation, look for influence around you. A good place to start is to see what the experts in your industry are doing. Places like NAR, Houzz, Home Advisor, and Housing Wire have a ton of well-performing content.
Take a look at their blog page, for example, and see what interesting ideas they’re talking about. If you have a unique point of view that you can introduce with this content, write your own blog post.
It’s very important to avoid plagiarism. Not only is it immoral and illegal, but it will hurt how you show up on a Google search. Google has an anti-plagiarism policy that results in a black mark on your website.
There’s nothing wrong with using others’ content as a means of inspiration, but you can’t copy and post their content anywhere on your site unless you’re quoting a small blurb and giving proper attribution.
Start slow and take your time learning
We can’t stress this point enough. You are not in a race. The real estate market isn’t going anywhere, and the internet will still be there tomorrow. This means you have time to slow down and learn at a comfortable pace.
Rushing content and trying to get immediate results will do nothing but hurt you.
Every challenge you run into is a learning opportunity. Try to figure out why that piece of content didn’t work as well as you’d hoped it would. Determine the best type of content to post, where to put it, and when to release it. You can also do some trial-and-error to see what level of consistency works best for you.
Start with one social media account
Playing off the previous tip, it’s also a good idea to start with just one social media account. Twitter or Facebook is usually a good place to start.
If you make an account on every platform and try to keep up, you’ll get burnt out and overwhelmed. Put all of your social media focus into just one platform. When you have it running smoothly, you can move to the next one.
Each platform has a different base of users who are looking for certain content. Each one comes with its own struggles, so be prepared for a long process.
Learn other ways to get more real estate clients
Content marketing can help you find more clients in the future. It can be a fun way to express yourself and showcase your industry knowledge. Remember to take it slow and keep your goals in mind. In the future, if you get stuck coming up with real estate content ideas, you can always reference this post. And, if you need more ways to help your real estate business, take a look at our other posts and download your copy of The Download. It’s our free online marketing handbook for real estate.
