“Real estate agent near me,” “Best real estate agents in Manhattan,” or “top realtors in San Antonio.”
These are only a few of the many common queries that thousands of people type on the Internet every day to find an agent to help them with their home buying, selling, or renting needs. But have you ever wondered who shows up on their search results?
Doesn’t matter if the searcher’s your next-door neighbor or someone at the far end of the city. Google only rewards agents who speak its language, digital marketing, and leaves the rest waiting silently in the shadows. In other words, if your neighbor searches for an agent online, Google will connect them with agents who have invested in digital marketing, not the ones who simply rely on word-of-mouth or outdated tactics.
So, for agents who want to appear in search results, digital marketing for real estate is an absolute must. In this guide, we’ll discuss the top 10 digital marketing practices that you can add to your real estate marketing strategies to build a strong social presence. They include:
- Creating and claiming your business in Google;
- Launching a website;
- Writing beneficial blogs;
- Establishing your brand’s online presence;
- Investing in social media;
- Entering online real estate communities;
- Running paid online ads;
- Running email campaigns;
- Hosting relevant webinars; and,
- Making use of AI for content and photo generation/editing.
Let’s dive in!
Best Digital Marketing Practices in Real Estate
Claim your business on Google Maps
Verifying your business profile on Google Maps is a key, initial step to showing up at the top of search results and kickstarting digital marketing for real estate. It helps Google and other search engines understand who you are, what you do, and where you’re located. When someone searches for an agent in your area, your name’s more likely to appear in Google’s suggestions.
Therefore, whether you’re a member of a big real estate company or an independent agent, make sure you have a Google My Business Profile and claim your business.
Launch a suitable website
This is truly a given, but a website lets you showcase your work, educate your audience, and connect with clients. These days, a business with no website is like a person with no name. You barely exist.
Keep in mind that you don’t have to create a massive e-commerce platform like Amazon or a global social network like Facebook. A simple, well-designed, and user-friendly site that highlights your services and expertise can make all the difference in attracting and retaining clients.
Also, you don’t need to take on the work alone. Real estate-focused digital marketing agencies can design your website and offer continuous support. And don’t worry too much about the costs. Sure, you’ll have to spend money, but it’s a worthwhile investment that delivers far more value than you expect.
Write blogs on real estate and related topics
Tenants, buyers, and sellers have countless questions about renting, buying, or selling properties. Besides, there are things you, as a real estate agent, know that can help them manage their issues more smoothly.
Based on your experience working with clients, you can make a list of common challenges they face, practical tips to overcome them, and answers to frequently asked questions that can guide them through each step of the process.
While explaining those intricacies, you can highlight your services and how you can help handle the details, avoid common pitfalls, and provide expert guidance at every step.
This is a topic for another time, but make sure you follow digital marketing and SEO (search engine optimization) rules and best practices when writing your blogs.
Take your brand online and watch it thrive
Even if you don’t know much about digital marketing for real estate agents, chances are you’ve heard about guest posting or guest blogging. Simply put, guest posting is the practice of writing and publishing blog posts on other websites to reach a wider audience, build credibility, and drive traffic back to your own website. All you need to do is find a few “high-authority” real estate websites and ask the owners to publish your blog post.
If you think this is gonna be time-consuming or you might be overcharged, you can again get help from your digital marketing agency. If you invest in real estate guest posting, you’ll see increased website traffic, better search engine rankings, and more potential clients reaching out to you in no time.
Also, you can list your business on local listings and use local SEO to attract more clients. Wherever you live, there are online listings, commonly referred to as directories, where you can submit your info to let others learn about your services and contact you for help.
Invest in social media
Social media sites may have started as hubs for fun and connection, but they’ve steadily grown into key marketplaces for sharing ideas, promoting products, and offering services. YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, Reddit, X, and others are all filled with potential clients looking for solutions, inspiration, and trusted professionals like you.
Take your time and explore these spaces. Then, pick one or two platforms and start engaging with members. Create a channel and post real estate-related content such as property tours, home-buying tips, market updates, and answers to home-buying questions.
Depending on the platform you choose, your content can be in the form of written posts, photos, videos, or a combination of all.
Join real estate communities
Let’s say you pick YouTube and start creating content for your audience. While this is a highly valuable goal, it shouldn’t stop you from participating in real estate discussions across other communities. Remember, wherever there’s real estate talk, you must be present and actively engaged.
To be active in such discussions, many real estate agents have turned to social listening, the practice of using bots to monitor and analyze conversations, mentions, and trends on social media. These automated tools are highly This way, instead of spending hours to find real estate-related discussions, those agents get all related discussions, no matter the platform, listed for them in one place. To learn more about social listening and how it works, read this blog.
Opt for paid ads
Digital marketing for real estate can take various forms with some taking longer than others to take effect. Launching a real estate website, for instance, may take one or more years to show measurable results. A social media channel may require even more time to convert followers into clients.
Meanwhile, there are other short-term approaches like targeted ads that can generate quick leads. Such ads appear above all search results guaranteeing higher online visibility. So, if you want quick results, you can promote your services using paid ads.
- Choose a platform where you want to run your ad;
- Choose the keywords you want to rank for;
- Set a budget;
- Follow the guidelines to the ad format;
- Select your target audience;
- Launch the campaign; and,
- Track results to optimize the ad if needed.
Run email campaigns
Another short-term practical digital marketing strategy for real estate agents is to run email campaigns. These are targeted emails with specific content you send to a curated list of prospects and clients to showcase properties, announce open houses, or provide helpful information to nurture relationships.
You might be wondering where to get those email addresses! Well, one option is to partner with real estate lead generation platforms like Realtor.com. You can also purchase verified email lists from trusted providers such as ZoomInfo or Datanyze.
Then, you can buy an email marketing tool and start targeting audiences. If you’re wondering how these tools work and what features they have, have a read here.
Host webinars and online events
All the real estate digital marketing strategies discussed above are indeed worth the investment, but they lack one essential element: Real-time, face-to-face communication with potential clients. In other cases, first, you should write the blog post, create the video, or compose the email and, sometime later, your audience will see it.
A real-time event like an online webinar, on the other hand, provides an opportunity for direct communication between you and your audience. Therefore, you can answer questions in real-time, address concerns immediately, and build trust by proving your expertise in a live, interactive setting.
It’s also a great place to introduce your website or social media channels and get the audience’s contact info for future campaigns.
Make use of artificial intelligence
A few years back, you might have had to hire a full-time assistant to help you with these real estate digital marketing strategies, but today, AI-powered tools can handle much of the work by automating tasks like content creation, email campaigns, social media management, lead generation, and much more.
As a matter of fact, the idea of using AI for real estate marketing is no longer futuristic. It’s a practical solution that allows agents to work smarter, reach wider audiences, and deliver results faster than ever before.
From listing descriptions to task management to photo generation, AI tools galore for any and all needs you as a real estate agent or company may have. Have a look around to see which tools best fit your needs.
Ready to Digitize Your Marketing Efforts?
The importance of digital marketing in real estate’s clear to everyone. For many agents, the main barriers to using these strategies are the perceived costs and the time commitment involved.
Regarding the expenses, many affordable tools and platforms are available today that deliver high value for minimal investment. As for the time commitment, automation tools powered by AI can significantly reduce the effort required.
So, set your goals, choose your tools, and start building a strong online presence that attracts clients and drives your real estate business forward.
FAQs
The cost of real estate digital marketing varies widely based on several factors, including the strategies you use, whether you outsource tasks to agencies or manage them in-house, and the scale of your campaigns.
For instance, social media marketing can be cost-effective with organic efforts, but running paid ads may cost you $500 to $5,000 per month. SEO services typically cost between $1,000 and $3,000 per month if outsourced, while video marketing expenses depend on production quality, starting at a few hundred dollars per video.
