Real Estate Marketing Trends in 2021 to Make You Stand Out
2020 was a year of adaptations. In real estate, we saw home showings go from in-person to virtual and traditional ways of marketing a home had to go more digital. For many, 2020 was one of their best years in real estate. As we continue to evolve on the ‘new normal’ there are many items to adopt to make you, as a real estate professional, stand out amongst your competitors so your 2021 is even better than your 2020.
Social Media
We have already seen a shift in social media marketing for real estate – it is becoming the new norm and leveraging this shift puts you in front of more people. Embrace the technology! People are still working from home, increased time spent on perusing social media, and the want or need to move into a new space is sending more prospective clients to find real estate agents to find someone that will fit their needs! Therefore, it is crucial to have a strong online presence.
Facebook is a great tool to target specific people within demographics, geographic areas and interest with your specially curated ads that are attention grabbing and direct. It is cost-effective, where you can set your ad spend to $5 a day and depending on your page likes and where you are located, could reach hundreds of prospects. Another great thing about social media marketing with Facebook is the ability to measure your clicks, impressions, and conversions through the business center, it allows remarketing that enables you to retarget recent website visitors – this could yield a higher conversion rate and help build a consistent audience base and a referral base.
Virtual Tours
Virtual tours are the new ways to show a home. Prospective buyers usually want to see a video and pictures of the home, both exterior and interior shots. The exterior video allows for the prospective buyers to visualize their curb appeal, look at the property lines, and what the surrounding neighborhood looks like. Interiorly, this allows the prospective buyers to visualize their new space and dream about how the house would be a home for them.
Quality is key though – you will want to produce a high-quality video through the use of a drone, hire a videographer, or use specific software to create a seamless, high-quality, aesthetically pleasing video to showcase the truly special selling points of the home or property.
Content Marketing
To be most effective, posting content 3-4 times a week is highly encouraged and finding that ‘sweet spot’ of most effective time to publish is going to take some trial and error – so don’t get discouraged if you feel like the time spent on your marketing isn’t getting you anywhere. It is. Strategies to think about when creating content is to utilize YouTube, create blogs for your website in order to rank highly on Google, create email templates to let clients know of upcoming houses that will be on the market, have a monthly newsletter, etc. This keeps you routinely in homes and have a higher chance of being called on when a prospective client wants to make a move or have questions. The best thing about having these items? The automation that follows them.
When you create content marketing, you can schedule post them at the beginning of each month and then forget about it. SproutSocial and other marketing tools are beneficial for social media campaigns. Although, I recommend you checking in every few days to make sure the content is posting and at the end of the month, look at your stats. There are various tools to trigger marketing automations for emails – Mailchimp is one of them and almost all should include how many people are looking at your content, how many times they’ve pressed a link, and whether it’s been shared.
If 2020 has taught us anything, it is to adapt to the current situations – the traditional ways of advertising a house still works but to set yourself above the competition, consider including some of the above recommendations for hit your goal for 2021 and to stay ahead of the curve.
All information provided in this publication is for informational and educational purposes only, and in no way is any of the content contained herein to be construed as financial, investment, or legal advice or instruction. CrossCountry Mortgage, LLC (“CrossCountry”) does not guarantee the quality, accuracy, completeness or timelines of the information in this publication. While efforts are made to verify the information provided, the information should not be assumed to be error free. Some information in the publication may have been provided by third parties and has not necessarily been verified by CrossCountry.