As an estate agent, you know that you need to stand out from the competition to be successful.
One way to do this is by using content marketing to attract new clients and boost your business.
In this blog post, we’ll discuss some of the best ways estate agents can use content marketing to their advantage. So read on for helpful tips and advice!
Go where your customers are
Increasingly, customers are active on social media.
The Internet has transformed how we buy and sell property, with property portals increasingly the first port of call.
Social media and a broader content marketing strategy can work wonders for your estate agency business, assuming it’s done well.
Done poorly, and your online activity might be actively discouraging prospective customers from contacting your business.
Creative and consistent
In our experience, effective digital content is creative and consistent.
Creativity is essential to stand out from the crowd. As Seth Godin said in his book Purple Cow:
The key to success is to find a way to stand out – to be the purple cow in a field of monochrome Holsteins.
Instead of advertising, you need to be innovating. Different is better than better.
Adding value
The foundation of a successful content marketing plan is adding value to your customers.
You can add value by answering questions and educating and entertaining those who engage with your content.
The content you create and publish as an estate agent should include tips for selling property, what to look for when buying a home, questions to ask your estate agent, local market insights and knowledge.
Don’t be afraid to be aspirational too. We know how many prospective buyers enjoy browsing through ‘property porn’; exploit the voyeuristic side of your local market by sharing content about ultra-expensive homes.
Keep your content fresh by including insights from related fields, including interior design and building.
You can borrow authority by adding expert tips from respected local experts, either as guest blogs on your website or mini-interviews.
Starting conversations
The ultimate goal of content marketing for an estate agent is to get new conversations started.
With local competition for listings, you want to position your business as the go-to trusted authority when selling a home in your neighbourhood.
We often see estate agents focus their content solely on the properties they are selling, missing a significant opportunity to add value to customers and elevate their authority simultaneously.
Start with a knowledge of your audience in mind. No estate agent wants to sell every type of home for every kind of seller.
Have a clear picture of the attributes of your perfect customers, and then tailor your content to speak directly to them.
Don’t get hung up on vanity metrics such as follower count or the number of ‘likes’ your posts attract. All that truly matters is conversations started as a result of your content.
Hyper-local content
The more local your content, the more effective it will be.
It’s wrong to assume that you can dominate a large geographical area unless you have branches in each locality or perhaps a huge marketing budget so you can afford to saturate your brand across multiple locations.
Get involved in your local community. You need to be highly visible as the preferred local estate agent, which means sponsoring and supporting events and using social media to amplify your sponsorship efforts.
Don’t neglect other local businesses, either. There’s a good chance that the customers already frequenting some of your neighbouring businesses will be perfect for you. Collaborate!
Channel selection
Before diving into a content marketing strategy, consider which channels to use.
There are so many options for sharing content that it can quickly become overwhelming to keep up with each one.
Pick two or three core channels, places where your research tells you that your ideal customers’ hang out’, and focus on distributing content on those.
While newer channels like TikTok can appear trendy and fast-growing, it’s a waste of your time and effort to produce content on these platforms if your ideal customers are not there.
Get visual
Marketing for estate agents is and should involve visual content. Sure, you could start a podcast about the local market, but it is much harder to describe a particular property’s beauty than to share a photo or video.
Video content should form the basis for your marketing as an estate agent.
It’s increasingly simple to produce high-quality videos, and they are far more engaging than static photos or words.
You can readily repurpose video content to share on different social media platforms too.
Don’t focus your video content entirely on the properties you are selling, but bring your agents and business to life with Q&A sessions or interviews with others.
Paid advertising
With the organic reach from social media content continuing to decline, you will need to consider paid online advertising to ensure your content reaches its intended audience.
Let the platforms do the heavy lifting by running hyper-local advertising campaigns and then repeating the campaigns to target those who previously engaged.
We know that a customer has to experience a brand on multiple occasions before they are comfortable taking some action, so use cheap social media advertising to repeatedly target those who engage with your content or visit your website.
Ultimately though, content marketing for estate agents requires commitment.
You need to drive consistency into your content creation and distribution, ideally with a content calendar to keep you on track.
Not all of your digital content needs to be professionally produced; we see brilliant results from a mix of high-quality content and more ‘raw’ content, giving customers a look at what happens behind the scenes.
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Estate agents are no strangers to competition.
To be successful, you need to set yourself apart from the other agents in your area. One way to do this is by using content marketing.
Content marketing can help attract new clients and boost your business. But it’s not as easy as it sounds.
You need to create content that is creative and consistent if you want to see results.
Luckily, we’re here to help. We have a wealth of experience creating content for small businesses in the Surrey Hills.
What will you do to create a content marketing strategy for your business? Let us know how we can help!
