The Complete Guide to Real Estate Digital Marketing 2021

Stage 1 : This is the Awareness Stage.

A buyer is out there with a set of preferences looking for his/her home. As a brand, it is important you meet your potential buyer halfway. To achieve this, it is important to execute search ads with relevant keywords, which will help the ads feature in the top three list.

Google search ads are an excellent way of making a powerful first impression.

Many times, people already know your brand and search using its name. However, if that's not the case, then it's your job to reach out to them while they're browsing.

Stage 2 :  We're now in the Discovery Stage.

You’ve already made an introduction. It is now time to entice your potential buyer with informative & educational content about your project.

At the same time, have an omnipresent CTA in the form of an online booking tab or a call now/enquire now button.

Stage 3 :  Next comes the Consideration stage.

From this point onwards, the journey can split into outcomes. The first outcome is quite straightforward – the user contacts you directly using the CTA you've provided.

The second outcome is that, after visiting your landing page, the user may not take any action. But this still gives you a lot to work with. This is where your remarketing strategy comes into play and helps you garner a response from these users, thus turning them into leads eventually.

Stage 4 :  Next up, we're now in the Analysis stage.

Here, the user has shortlisted you as one of their potential purchases and is a hot lead for your sales team. In this stage, you have the users' phone numbers & email addresses to work with.

It is important that you educate your leads on how they can make the purchase. If your properties are under construction, you can talk about the Benefits of investing in an under-construction property such as comparatively lower cost, more room for customisation, etc.

Apart from this, you can also talk about what your customers can expect in your after-sales services. One of the top priorities in this stage is to have your leads schedule a site visit (multiple if necessary). The content in emailers & SMS must have a CTA for scheduling the same along with a limited period offer to help create a sense of urgency. E.g. discounts, attractive giveaways, Benefits of visiting the site etc.

Stage 5 : Finally, we're in the purchase & loyalty stage.

This is where you make a successful sale. However, it's not the end of the line for you! Now's the time you share your customer's positive buying experience with the world. This is done with the help of customer testimonials and can be published on your landing page, social media handles and in your other content offerings as well.

You can also help your customers earn some prizes by providing them with referral schemes.

CTR (Click-through rate): A better click-through means your ads and ad-communication are relevant, appealing.

Time on site: A better engaging website, a blog will longer time on site and eventually better conversion.

Conversion ratio on website: This is how you will calculate your ROI. You are recommended to use Google Analytics to track events and goal conversions/ eCommerce conversions on your website. Today software also goes ahead and measure conversions across devices giving you a better understanding of how a user navigates before they end up buying.

Cost per conversion: Basis the conversions tracked and money spent on advertising, comes your cost per conversion. Again it boils down to the ROI you get for your campaigns.

A good digital marketer measures all of these metrics, an excellent one utilizes them in real-time. But are you sure you have the correct definition for the metric you track? Do these definitions vary by industry? Let's take one metric – Conversion Ratio and discuss it in relation to the Real Estate industry.

Understanding what a conversion is and how to track one?

Definition of conversion differs by industry.So for an eCommerce site – it means a purchase online, for a ticketing site it means a booking, for a SAAS company it means a subscription to their software, for a blogger it could mean a subscription to their RSS feed, or for a Facebook page it could be alike.

What does it mean for industries where the buying cycle is long and the actual sale cannot happen online?

Real estate buying is majorly an offline process. Also, it's a long one, involves multiple contact points (online, offline and personal) with the customer. With ever-growing internet penetration, the information presented by companies on their website, user-generated content available via social discovery – real estate buying has changed a lot. Today the research happens online, the first level of convincing can be done online. But the actual sale – that still happens offline.

So for a marketer or as a company – someone submitting a lead on your website, someone making a phone call to enquire is not an end-conversion. Some may even say a booking (customer giving the booking amount) is not an end-conversion. Companies typically see 10% cancellations, which means your end conversion is an AGREEMENT. Website conversion is certainly an important metric when you measure your communication or website design, information architecture or for that matter how engaging your product is. But building a media plan based on a wrongly interpreted ROI of online conversions; can be misleading and could result in wastage of funds.

What does this tell us?

It's important to understand the different stages that lead to an end conversion. Not just understand but track them, measure conversion ratios on your website and each of these stages. We need to measure campaign ROI for each of these stages. For example, “how many site visits did I have from the Google Adwords NRI campaign we ran last month?” Or something like “We had an excellent conversion ratio on our website for our TOI campaign, did we actually get the bookings? What was the cost per booking?”. A good real estate marketer needs to have answers to these questions. We need to understand that getting leads from a campaign is not our end goal; how many of those leads were qualified, how many actually went ahead and booked – is what matters!

Strong lead nurturing strategy

In today’s information age where the audience is constantly researching on digital channels, it is imperative to enable interaction, make dialogue or have a conversation. In the case of digital marketing solutions, brand engagement can be through various means blogs, communities, groups, blogs, emails, forums or on social media.

Engagement helps in building amiability, loyalty and a sense of dependability among the audience. There needs to be a well thought out real estate marketing strategy for engagement in terms of the way in which interest can be generated, for example, showing a video about the essence of the property and what it signifies, infographics, running contests etc. The technology and the platform of engagement also need to be thought out: it could be social media, blogs or flash media. Lastly, the most important aspect when it comes to engagement is the kind of conversation initiated and the objective of that conversation.

In the real estate marketplace, the above-mentioned engagement tactics play a crucial role as the purchase decision takes a long time as compared to other industries. This will enable real estate firms to establish the top of the mind recall and also help in building a word of mouth strategy.

Extensive marketing on vertical search engines

For any real estate firm, property portals such as IndiaProperty, Makaan, 99acres etc. are in top Google searches. There is a huge influx of traffic on these websites and they offer free as well as paid listing for properties along with advertisements. However, developers should also conduct a thorough research about their target audience traffic on these websites and then market accordingly. Companies can also research their competitors and get a sense of which competitor is aggressively marketing on such platforms.

The most important element in marketing on these websites is the communication i.e the ad copy, use of call to actions, use of keywords and clean images of properties in order to give your target audience a clear picture about the company’s product and offerings.

SEM and advertising

Marketers have often committed mistakes in ad copies, budgeting, targeting and most of the times, they have made a mistake of having a common advertising and SEM strategy. This can be improved in three ways:

Keyword targeting

In order to target your audience effectively, Google Adwords and Ubersuggest can provide with the right keywords. The use of Webmasters and Google Analytics for a long term can help in optimizing your keywords data and help in understanding audience behaviour and your most valued keywords.

The next step would be to analyze which are the most successful keywords and expand on those common variations. Marketers should also consider long-tail keywords which have good potential to get in more revenue as they usually have low competition and specifically targeted by visitors who are interested in buying. Guerilla marketing is a technique used in targeting, wherein locations and competitor keywords are used for improving brand search.

Ad Copies

Ad copies need to be developed by considering the needs of the prospects with a major focus on the headline, as David Ogilvy once said: “On an average, five times as many people read the headline, read the body copy.” Ad copies built out of the targeted keywords need to be precise, crisp and crystal clear. Another crucial aspect of ad copies is mentioning CTA’s. Any ad copy without a CTA is incomplete. CTAs help in pushing the audience in making the right decisions, it helps in identifying your real customers.

Making personalized communication through ads which highlight the buyer’s unmet needs always makes a larger impact.

A/B Testing

This process will help in understanding which ad copy is performing. Every aspect of the ad copy including the content, CTA, colour combinations or even the headlines is put under the scanner in order to get a complete understanding of the performance. The objective here is to make use of the best copy with the best elements and have personalized communication with the prospect.

Video Marketing

Video has become the biggest form of consumption in content marketing on every platform. More than 45% of people watch at least an hour of video on Facebook per day. Video marketing plays a crucial role in real estate marketing, especially in a country like India where trust is a major concern.

Showcasing properties on video through various channels is a way of establishing a strong brand identity and also to cultivate brand loyalty among your customers. As compared to television ads video marketing is way cheaper with better returns as you have a higher probability of conversion through these ads. Today real estate marketers are showing their creativity by using different elements apart from just showing the properties.

Having an emotional connection with the brand

Brands which have an emotional connect with their target audience develop a personalized relationship with their audience. There is a sense of trust, reliability and also forms a strong brand identity. Having a clearly defined brand persona creates strong brand loyalty.

Social media groups, blogs, articles, user communities play an essential role in developing a relationship with the target audience. Real estate being such an involved product, brands need to be aware of the interest levels of their audience in order to provide them with an enhanced buyer experience. Having a dialogue with your audience results in better engagement and strong brand recall.

The sheer reach of Facebook

Facebook has an unparalleled reach in India. A staggering 77 million Indian residents use Facebook on a daily basis. Compare this with the widely-popular Times of India newspaper, which has a daily circulation of only 8.57 million.

Facebook is a mass media

Facebook is not just social media, but also an integral part of mass media. Potential buyers and developers are discovering each other every day because of their news feed. On average, people visit their news feed about 14 times a day. On the news feed, buyers are discovering content as they scroll. This content means something to the buyers – either brands that they or their friends are following – and not something that is forced upon them like traditional advertising mediums.

Facebook efficiently fulfils the basic goals of real estate

The three basic goals of any real estate developer are – brand awareness, driving traffic to the website, leads and enquiries. And Facebook fulfils all of these goals satisfactorily as it enjoys seamless cross-device functionality, creates a seamless lead capture experience on mobile, and finds potential customers who look like your best customers.

Accurate targeting with Facebook

Facebook is identity-based since it has all the relevant information of an individual. Apart from this, it also monitors a user's activity, behaviour, preferences, etc. which helps in designing campaigns for acquiring quality leads and thereby reducing wastage on impressions.

Track your performance with Pixel

One of the best features of Facebook is its ability to monitor how your ads are performing. With Pixel, conversion tracking, optimization and remarketing become effortless. Pixel helps advertisers track how many people visited their page in the last few days, how much time did they spend there, etc. This way, you can tailor your campaigns to target only those audiences that spent the maximum time. Ultimately, Pixel can be utilized to design better targeting.

Facebook segments your audience better

Core audience: The core audience is basically the group of people who are targeted using the information provided by them – demographics, interests, behaviours, etc.

Custom audience: A custom audience is essentially a list of existing customers. A database of people who are either leads or who have purchased your project.

Lookalike audience: With lookalike audiences, you have the ability to find new people who might display keenness in your project because their demographic and behaviour is similar to your existing customers.

Facebook as a lead generation tool

Lead generation is a crucial objective for ad agencies to attract a customer towards a product or service. Facebook is one of the most sought-after mediums for achieving this objective due to the versatility and efficiency of its ads, and the tremendous customer reach it provides. It is also flexible enough to be used at every decision point along the way.

So what are those decision points?
– Awareness: When a Facebook user is informed about a product or service
– Consideration: When a user shows interest, clicks on the ads fill out a form, and turns into a lead
– Conversion: When a lead is convinced about a product or service and turns into a buyer

Build a Wholesome and Informative Social Media Experience

For buyers, details about the locality and the town are of equal importance as the property itself. They would be delighted to know the wholesome picture before they make any hefty real estate purchases.

Your real estate social media marketing strategy must feature the best and the worst of all the aspects of a property and its surroundings. Upscale your social media handle and give your buyers more than the basic demographic statistics and help them understand the kind of markets you cater to.

This helps you engage your target audience effectively and even builds credibility. Use official social media handles of the cities you serve in your social media posts to promote your listings. If an official social media account picks up on your posts, they may re-share your post with their broader audience base, working wonders for your outreach.

Curate the Best Mix of Social Media Platforms to Suit Your Needs

The nature of the product or service being sold and the audience demographic must define the mix of social media platforms a realtor must use for marketing.

The wide variety of social media networks at your disposal may confuse you when it comes to promoting your real estate business. Choose social media avenues wherein your target demographics and persona are adequately represented.

For example, LinkedIn is an unconventional social network for real estate, with millions of users representing multiple demographics. Another unusual pick for real estate social media marketing is Pinterest. Most Pinterest users use it to explore, and realtors must feature beautiful pictures of their portfolio properties to draw the user's attention on the channel. Make it a point to share your contact information on all social media handles to promote direct communication. Additionally, you can also engage your audience by sharing valuable home improvement and interior design tips.

Be Consistent with Real Estate Social Media Marketing

Social media channels often boast of subscribers that range in billions and include celebrated brands and businesses and the general public. Most popular brands have a strong social media presence of these networks and overshadow the presence of small companies trying to build communities of followers for themselves.

Budding realtors can establish an influential social media presence by consistently publishing relevant and relatable content of their social media handles. All social media channels have an ideal number of posts per day; real estate business must use this knowledge for their own advantage. Regardless of whether it is Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, or Snapchat, publishing consistency can help you win followers and create engagement. It is best to come up with a pre-planned content calendar for all the channels you wish to leverage.

Monetize Your Real Estate Social Media Marketing Campaign

In the past, real estate businesses enjoyed great success using social media to publish both paid and organic content. Realtors must optimize their social media posts and ads for the best results. Social media ads are a dynamic way to reach out to your target segment through social media networks. With high algorithm formatting, social media ads can educate real estate business owners about how their advertising should be targeted.

Leverage the Power of Social Media Analytics Tools

Real estate businesses must monitor data and analyze results to brush up their social media strategy. Social media analytics can help realtors keep a strict track of the performance of the content they publish. They can develop insights about what kind of content works for what kind of audience, what's the best time to post content on different social media platforms and what maximizes audience engagement. In short, leveraging social media analytics helps them see which social media channel is of most value to their business.

Results from the analytical tools can help real estate businesses improve both their organic and paid social strategies. Businesses can tailor future content and messaging for their real estate social media marketing in a planned manner to maximize their outcomes.

Marketing Solutions

Marketing functions cover all the four stages of the consumer lifecycle phases. It includes solutions ranging from ad automation to consumer engagement portals.

Pre-sales & Sales Solutions

The pre-sales & sales solutions cover the middle two sections of the funnel. Technology solutions at both the stages strengthen and simplify sales functions.

Channel Partner Solutions

Solutions for the channel partners also follow the same two stages as above. The technology features allow complete transparency and help in the successful management of channel partner operations.

CRM Solutions

Generic CRMs fail to provide the features and solutions that an integrated strategy needs. Covering the last two stages, our CRM solutions provide tools and features for a holistic booking and nurturing platform for customers.

Implementing Vertical-Focused Solutions

Once the components of the system have been laid down, the next step is the implementation of this system. Successful system implementation requires:

Choosing a vertical-focused solution and then tailoring those solutions to fit internal requirements is a cost-effective and efficient option for real estate builders. It offers a low cost of ownership with innovative industry solutions and faster go-to-live timeline.