Marketing the world over is going through revolutionary changes. Methods that were once highly relevant and rewarding are today being replaced by techniques based on the Internet and the digital environment. The traditional selling techniques and advertisement channels of real estate agents in Australia are passé; it is now more a matter of having a strong and visible online presence than saturation advertising in the print media or TV, radio and hoardings.
Buyers and sellers of property are no longer picking up the phone to call real estate agents from details that can be had from the Yellow Pages. Instead, they are now heading to websites of real estate agents to know more about offers and reading testimonials of past clients before deciding whether to deal with the agent. This has made digital marketing for real estate agents and brokers more critical than before.
Further, buyers and sellers of real estate have become more discerning, competitive, independent and desensitised than before. Now, they are taking out their smart-phones, searching online for hot properties in the market, talking to agents and arriving at purchase or sell decision. As a real estate agent, if your website does not rank high enough on the results pages of major search engines and does not have a robust online presence and visibility, you will be missing out on business opportunities. There lies the need for digital marketing in the real estate sector in Australia.
Here are some points or Florida real estate school that you can consider to enhance your digital presence with the assistance of a digital marketing company to further complement your current sales and marketing activities.
Being active on social media
Before going into the importance of social media marketing campaigns created especially for you by digital marketing agencies, a few statistics will tell you why it is so critical for you. Almost 8 in 10 Australians are on one social media platform or another. 59% of them access their social media sites every day and over a third check social media more than 5 times a day. Hence, if as a real estate agent your mission is to grab eyeballs for your site that will lead to higher conversions and sales, you cannot afford to miss out on social media marketing.
Social media, as the name suggests, is a method to connect with people at the social level. As an agent, you cannot focus on selling property only, you have to engage with buyers and bond with them by providing interesting and relevant content. It is necessary that you understand buyers’ needs and requirements and add value to your presence on social media through meaningful content. Try and explore content that demonstrates value instead of hard-sell.
Using social advertising
More and more agents are weaving social advertising into their overall digital marketing campaigns and you should not be an exception. This is how it works. Studies have shown that average buyers of property in Australia thoroughly research the market for about 30 to 60 days before making an offer. In this period, they will be using specific criteria to look for properties and based on it, they will be viewing multiple similar properties.
This is the data that you should be able to collect through digital marketing and use it to your advantage. You have to target potential buyers with properties they have been looking for and quickly strike a deal. Your digital marketing agency will use various techniques to grow your social audience and distribution lists through social marketing. This strategy will also galvanise passive browsers of property into real and interested ones, apart from being an excellent publicity exercise for you.
Optimising email marketing
There are various techniques that digital marketing agencies in Australia use on behalf of their clients in the real estate sector, but one of the approaches that have always given excellent results is email marketing. This is more so if you consider that on a global scale, email users are expected to cross 3 billion by the end of 2020. Customers too would like to use this channel to receive communication from you. This is because client experience is much personalised as with an email address in hand, you can send a message directly to the inbox, very quickly and without any costs.
The advantage of email marketing to get through to your prospective clients is that you do not have to depend only on text to get your message through. Emails can be embedded with pictures, info-graphics and even videos to send your message across. Email marketing has one of the highest ROI on the market spends as you have got the email addresses of only those who are interested in your real estate agency or have subscribed to your newsletter. Hence your digital marketing target will be towards a specific audience from whom you can always expect decisive action.
Responsive website
A good digital marketing agency in Australia like One Stop Media can take up your digital marketing campaign from scratch if necessary. This includes the very primary task of website design and development. An easy to navigate and attractive user-friendly site is critical if you want visitors to spend time on your site. Having a slow loading site is also detrimental for your business as visitors will quickly leave for your competitors’ sites.
In this instance, it is essential that you have a responsive site. It is one that is user-friendly regardless of the size of the screen that your site is being viewed on. Today, you can expect maximum traffic from smart-phone users and hence your site should be tuned to it. If you have a site that is equally responsive on desktops and laptops, tablets and smart-phones, you get the additional benefit of higher rankings on results pages of Google.
Incentives
As a real estate agent, you will be selling your service and not any goods or products. Hence, you might find it difficult to toss out discount codes to your clients through digital marketing efforts. But what you can do is to offer incentives to them for dealing with you. It is not necessary that it should be linked directly to buying or selling of property. You can consider free downloadable content in emails being sent or some free consultation on property matters. The question to ask is what will be enough to activate and encourage others to take action.
In a fascinating survey carried out by KPMG on a global scale, it was found that price cuts or promotions most influenced consumers in Australia, Canada, France, Belgium and New Zealand. 38% admitted that this was the primary factor in making a purchase decision. Keep this in mind when you are dealing with your clients in Australia.
Do not expect immediate results or success in the initial stages of a digital marketing campaign. If Onestop marketing agency adopts an optimised strategic approach, your ROI will increase gradually.
