Why You Need Focus on Local Digital Marketing
In today’s digital world, most small and medium-sized real estate businesses make the mistake of copying the digital marketing strategies of the larger brokerages and real estate teams, which often entails a focus on more national digital marketing campaigns versus less local digital marketing for realtors.
Local marketing is a process realtors use to target clients within a specific distance of their physical location. This is particularly ideal for individual real estate agents and small-to-medium sized team, as it concentrates on a specific area and helps improve customer engagement and loyalty.
For this reason, realtors must incorporate local marketing into their digital lead generation strategy if they hope to grow truly. To achieve success with your local marketing for real estate strategy, you will need a mix of earned, owned, and paid media efforts.
This guide shall discuss all you need to know about earned, owned, and paid media marketing and how to combine local marketing with digital marketing to grow your real estate leads.
Owned Media
Owned media refers to any web property that your business owns and can control. These represent your real estate brand identity and are extensions of your entire brand. Common examples include websites, blogs, and various social media channels as local digital marketing for real estate agents
This is a great starting point for realtors that desire to kickstart their local marketing for real estate agents journey as it personifies your business’s values and voice while advertising your service or product. Your brand presence is extended with the more owned media you possess, as it increases the search engine visibility of your business.
Owned media content can either be entertaining, informative, or entertaining.
A few examples of your real estate business owned media include:
- Websites
- Blogs
- Social Media
- Webinars
- Email Marketing
- Virtual Web Series
For an example on just how important owned media content can be, in a study published by Statista Research Department 93% of home buyers used online websites when searching for a home in the United States.
Some steps can be taken to channel your owned media content to your local community.
Using Specific SEO Keywords
You can create local content on your real estate blog, and other owned media targeted to your local community by using keywords specific to your community. When you create a website or blog post, you can use these keywords to ensure that your business would be amongst the first results shown when people in your community search for these services.
Need some ideal for your real estate blog? Check out our 101 Ideas For Your Real Estate Blog
Creating Relatable Contents
Another way of targeting your owned media content to your local community is by creating social media content relatable to them. It can be creating a video that features a topic that is the “buzz” of the moment or creating content that ties into a local happening or occurrence. This gives your audience a fun, useful, and relatable experience.
Teaming Up with a Local Business
This entails multiple small businesses collaborating on social media marketing strategies – such as collaborating with a neighboring small business that offers a different service to people within real estate such a mortgage lender or interior designer.
Also partner to organize a social media contest and giveaway. Maybe even post their business on your owned media channels, and they will do the same for you. This taps into the network and audience of the other business and helps boost your brand reach and awareness.
Going Local on Social Media
Another great way of doing this is including local keywords in hashtags, tag locations, and geographic areas whenever you make a social media post on your real estate business accounts. Tag other relevant local business accounts in your post to achieve increased visibility. It is good practice to incorporate your local keywords in all your social media bios.
The key to seeing results from your owned media efforts is consistency. Always create and post current content on every one of your social media channels. Lastly, avoid depending on only one channel, create content for all your social media handles, SEO-driven website content, and organize events to establish yourself in your community.
Earned Media
Earned media is any publicity that is not generated by your business, but rather by organic means via social media fans, customers, bloggers, or journalists. This is a little trickier than owned media as it is not in your control. However, it is more rewarding than owned media when successfully deployed, especially because it is free.
Here are some examples:
- TV News Segment
- Newspaper Article
- Tweet
- Article on a Trade Publication
- Product Reviews
- Word of Mouth
- Testimonials on Social Media
- Influencer Shoutouts
- Awards/Badges (Google, Yelp, etc.)
How to Position Yourself to attract Earned Media Opportunities
Although earned media is always published by a third party, there are various ways businesses can better position themselves to attract earned media opportunities.
Create content worth sharing.
One of the best ways of attracting earned media opportunities is by putting out share-worthy content. Share-worthy content is anything that entertains, educates, or empowers your audience.
Interact with your social media followers.
Social media is a free way of connecting with your present and potential clients. You should dedicate time to interact with them individually. Several tools let you know when your brand is mentioned, jump into the conversation, and represent your brand positively.
Appreciate the followers with the most reaction on your posts, and regularly create an avenue for them to talk about their experiences you and how you can serve them better.
Connect With Influencers and Journalists
Influencers and journalists frequently receive lots of requests for mentions, interviews, and shout-outs to their vast followership. You should focus on building a rapport with them as this allow you to pitch them at the right time and increases the chances of your business getting a shout-out for more local digital marketing for realtors.
Develop Thought Leadership
This means having people consider you as an authority in your real estate niche. You can do this by building a blog and amplifying it through guest posting as additional local digital marketing for realtors.
Make your clients especially happy.
Buyer and seller clients do not become brand promoters and top referral avenues because of average service. To have them talk about your business on social media, you have to go above and beyond your service and exceed their expectations.
Doing this makes your customers love your business. The more customers love your business, the more likely they are to bring referrals, promote your business on social media, and ultimately remain loyal to your brand.
Other methods include:
- Encouraging your clients to post about their experience buying or selling their home.
- Partaking in relevant local events and festivals.
While getting earned media is quite difficult initially, the good news is that the exposure tends to snowball the moment you begin earning some positive exposure.
One influential review or testimonial or an appearance on one of the big media outlets would kickstart the journey, and in no time, your reach from earned media would be truly massive.
Phygital
Phygital marketing for real estate is how real estate businesses integrate their digital and physical marketing efforts to get more exposure and improve consumers’ experience.
Coined from the words digital and physical, Phygital leverages in-personal touchpoints supported by digital tools to give home buyers and sellers a unique, personalized, and stress-free experience.
As millennials and Generation Z continue to drive engagement with real estate on digital channels the importance of creating phygital touchpoints that combine the physical and digital into an omnichannel experience bigger than ever when it comes to offering local digital marketing for realtors.
Examples of phygital touchpoints include virtual reality tours that allow potential buyers to visually inhabit a real estate listing, virtual open house events online that allow potential buyers and sellers to walk through the home with you as you answer questions, and also the rise of social media as a channel for realtors to connect and build relationships with potential buyers and sellers online
Going phygital is also telling of just how innovative your real estate business is, which is a great sign to your community.
Are you struggling to grow your real estate business online? Read the 5 Reasons Why You Shouldn’t Ignore Real Estate Video Marketing
Paid Media
Paid media is the marketing that is paid for. It denotes marketing efforts that involve placements that are paid for such as print ads, social media ads, branded content, and PPC advertising.
Through paid media, businesses easily reach people that are already in search of similar services or product. It is a vital element of brand awareness and revenue growth for businesses, especially start-ups.
Various platforms offer advertising options to boost exposure. These include Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, and Twitter. The choice of platform depends on finding out where your target audience is most active and where they engage with similar brands.
Listed below are a few examples of paid media:
- Video ads
- Social media Ads
- Pay-per-click ads
- Out-of-Home Advertising (OOH)
- Display ads
- Retargeting
- Offline ads Postcards, flyers, billboards, magazines, etc
- Radio ads
- Influencer Partnerships
- Business Listings
The cost of paid media varies greatly depending on the channel you are advertising on. For example, while a full-page magazine placement would be really expensive, social media ads are relatively affordable. The ad duration also factors into the total price; an ad that runs for a day will cost less than one that runs for the entire month. However, the more your ad run, the more people it will reach.
While paid media might seem expensive, it is essential for any business marketing strategy to be considered complete as they bring your business in front of your target audience, right where they hang out and in record time.
In Summary
Every one of these media – owned, paid, and earned – plays a part and is important for an effective business marketing strategy. Owned media includes your most valuable content; however, its reach is considerably limited, especially for new businesses. Factoring in paid media into your marketing strategy amplifies your reach at the cost of a “few” dollars. Several tools let you monitor the results each of these channels brings in to help you decide which of them has the most benefits.
Editor’s note: This article was created by Kary Perry, Agent at eXp Realty. Information deemed reliable but is subject to change.
About Building Better Agents
At Building Better Agents, we are dedicated to helping agents build successful real estate careers. We help agents develop a plan, build a database, and work smarter to uncover the keys to success as a real estate agent. All without cold calling, door knocking, and chasing expired listings. Building Better Agents Leaders Kerry Lucasse and Kary Perry are proud to be agents with eXp Realty.
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