If you are concerned about the virtual presence of your real estate agency, you ought to familiarise yourself with inbound marketing strategies. Not only is it essential to avoid being left behind in the race to win the client’s sympathy, but its use allows you to strengthen your online presence and improve your search engine positioning. Take note!
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Inbound marketing is a marketing discipline aimed at establishing close ties with your audience in the hope that, when the time comes to make a purchase or enquire about a product, they will trust you to do so, and you will be their first choice. Unlike other areas that are more focused on the commercial side, this area focusses on the relationship.
Explained in terms of cost, through inbound you are going to achieve a considerable reduction in the cost of capturing leads. As they feel they identity with your brand and have an emotional bond with it, you won’t have to insist or pressure your audience to come to you because they will do it organically.
Now you are probably asking yourself, how do I achieve this? The answer is easy to say, but not so easily done: through content creation. To do this you have several tools: social networks, your website, your corporate blog and email.
If you want to be successful, before you delve into the tools you have to spread your message, you need to think about the type of content to generate. As with your website, your physical office or shop, your shopping experience or your customer service, all interactions need to be of value and convey your brand.
If you burn through your network with irrelevant data or information that is not truthful, you will ruin your own reputation. It doesn’t matter if you can sell a property in half the time of your competitors, or if you are the best at finding the perfect property for every client. If you don’t communicate efficiently with your users, you will be making your competitors’ job easier without knowing it.
Furthermore, by creating quality content you are going to have a double impact: on the one hand, you will win the sympathies and closeness of visitors who have already shown interest. On the other hand, your website will be, little by little, positioned organically in the search engines.
Now the next question is: how do you create relevant and quality content for your potential clients? Through empathy. Commit yourself to getting to know the profile of the users you want to attract, identify their interests and desires, and make life easier for them, answering any questions and doubts they might have in relation to your brand and your sector. In marketing terms, this person if your buyer persona.
So that you understand better what we’re referring to, here’s an example. Imagine that the majority of properties that you have in your portfolio are properties in city-centres, which are much smaller and finished to the highest quality. Normally, these types of properties would be bought or rented by single professionals or professional couples without children.
This demographic has a very specific lifestyle and interests, different to those of families or retired couples. Creating content related to them will make it easier to capture their interest initially. However, the most important effect will come with time, when, having seen that you’re aware of what matters to them, they will come to identify with you.
Once this bond has been created, you will be the first real estate agency they come to, because they feel that in your business they will find the professionalism they expect. As you can see, this is a long term strategy rather than a long term one, but the results are worth it.
We have just seen that, in order for your inbound strategy to be effective, you need to personalize your communication. But you can refine it even further and personalize your messages to the different stages of the sales funnel, i.e. taking into account the stage of the buying decision process each buyer is in in the real estate sector.
This stage is the most general. In the first step, you need to attract attention and interest in your real estate agency. In order to achieve this, create quality content which solves the doubts of your potential customers and that, at the same time, underlines your brand values. Remember that this is not the time to talk explicitly about your products or to show your services.
Once you have cleared the first hurdle, and your audience knows you, it is time to gradually move them towards a more commercial approach. As a filter to find out if your customers are at this point, you can use forms to ask for more information and other contact systems. From here, you can make content more focussed on talking about the advantages of hiring your company for real estate transactions.
Making inbound content for people that have already shown interest and are in the decision making process is going to be easier for you, as in this moment they will have at least one direct contact with you. You could, for example, prepare guides explaining what life is like in certain areas or neighbourhoods, or even about the different types of mortgage and funding methods.
Once the operation has been closed, your marketing strategy doesn’t end there. Although it’s true that we buy houses less often than other consumer goods, you never know when you are going to have the chance to close another deal with the same client, or if they can recommend your work to family or friends. Follow deliberate strategies to maintain your relationship with them.
As you can see, inbound marketing combines customer service with proactively creating content that will be of interest to them. By using it, you will create an emotional bond that is hard to break.