From Showing to Selling: The Realtor’s Guide to Real Estate Marketing

What is Real Estate Marketing?

If you’re new to marketing, the concept is quite simple. You want to get your offer (read: your real estate services and the properties you have listed) in front of your target audience. Just about any effort to achieve that goal falls into the marketing category.

The Internet is making the real estate market more manageable and accessible than ever. Real estate agents with any marketing experience can quickly learn how to market their listings and services with the help of digital tools like artificial intelligence (AI), social media, online real estate listing platforms, and more.

All of these digital marketing techniques can easily be paired with tried-and-true traditional real estate marketing techniques, such as hosting open houses, posting signage, and the like.

The Basics of Successful Real Estate Marketing

Although the techniques and tools we’ve mentioned make marketing easy, it’s important to keep strategy at the forefront of your efforts. Everything you do should push you toward a specific goal and address your target audience’s needs.

Let’s take a moment to understand these two essential components of successful real estate marketing.

Goal Setting: Be SMART

SMART goal-setting is a technique that involves creating specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound goals. This technique can be used for personal development, career planning, and project management, but it’s particularly helpful when creating marketing campaigns.

For each campaign you run, be sure to define the SMART components so it’s easy to plan, execute, stay on track, and assess success.

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Know Your Target Audience

A considerable part of marketing is ensuring that you’re effectively reaching your target audience. With that, if you want to reach the right people, you must know precisely who you’re talking to.

It’s worth taking some time to define your target audience. Take some time to understand your target audience’s demographics, interests, and preferences, using data from your market research and customer feedback to create detailed profiles. You can use these profiles to guide your content and marketing strategies.

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The real estate inventory is pretty diverse in many markets, so you’ll likely need to build different audience profiles for different types of properties. However, as you sell more homes, you’ll find that the profiles you’ve built are reusable.

For example, marketing a multi-million-dollar property may require hosting open houses or brokers opens with high-profile invite lists. On the other hand, pushing the MLS listing to sites like Zillow and Realtor.com is sufficient for selling a one-bedroom condo.

Digital Marketing

Since 44% of buyers begin their searches online, digital marketing is necessary for real estate agents. Let’s explore some online marketing techniques you can leverage to grow your real estate business and sell homes more efficiently.

Online Listing Platforms

One of a real estate agent’s most valuable marketing techniques is leveraging real estate-specific listing platforms.

Some of the most popular online listing platforms for selling and renting properties include Zillow, Realtor.com, and Apartments.com. These platforms provide a wide reach, user-friendly interfaces, and comprehensive property information for both buyers and sellers.

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Since these platforms pull information from the MLS, ensuring that your MLS listings are optimized with the information potential buyers seek is crucial.

They’ll want to see all of the home’s specs, high-quality images, information on the neighborhood, descriptions of recent upgrades, and other information that may influence their decision to buy.

Virtual Staging and Tours

Part of optimizing your listings on online platforms is ensuring that the photos of the home are strategically styled. Virtual Staging AI is just what you need if the home is empty or needs sprucing up.

Virtual staging technology creates beautifully styled renderings of rooms in minutes. It’s much more cost-effective and time-effective than traditional staging. Plus, photos can easily be updated to appeal to different aesthetic preferences.

Here’s an example of how Virtual Staging AI can turn an empty bedroom into a beautifully staged photo with farmhouse-style furniture in under 30 seconds.

Virtually Rendered by Virtual Staging AI

Not a fan of the farmhouse style? Choose from seven other styles that suit your client’s fancy. From midcentury to industrial, there’s a style for every potential buyer.

Similarly, virtual tours are a great way to enhance property listings and create a more immersive experience for potential buyers.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a digital marketing technique that leverages search engines to put your content in front of people who are searching for relevant keywords.

There are a few ways to go with SEO for real estate (since you can leverage different search engines for different use cases).

SEO, in the traditional sense, is a long-term game. Optimizing for more general search engines like Google or Bing is more useful when you use it to market your real estate services rather than specific listings.

Some useful keyword research tools for SEO include Ahrefs, Semrush, AnswerThePublic, BuzzSumo, Keywords Everywhere, and SpyFu. These tools provide data on which keywords people are searching for so you can define your strategy accordingly.

However, you can optimize your listings on platforms like Realtor.com or Zillow to appear for queries with related criteria. This involves indicating different features of the property, including the number of bedrooms, number of bathrooms, square footage, amenities, and so forth.

Optimize Your Website

Optimizing your website is crucial for your SEO efforts to be effective. Rather than just plugging keywords into a landing page and hoping for the best, you’ll need to optimize your entire website with the language and user experience your target audience needs to convert.

Begin by imagining the user journey.

• What information do they need to take those next steps?
• What do you want the user to take away from your site?
• What action do you want them to take?

Take the answers to these questions to inform your site map and the content on each page, down to the CTAs.

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In addition to the keyword research tools we shared above, it’s worth exploring some SEO content checkers and editors, such as Frase, Content Harmony, and Yoast.

Remember that these tools should serve as a guide, not a crutch. If you feel a tool is pushing you to stuff keywords, always prioritize creating a pleasant reading experience where the language flows naturally.

Optimize Your Google Business Profile

Local SEO is very important for realtors. You can put your business on the map by setting up a Google Business Profile. When your profile is configured correctly, potential clients will be shown your business when they Google “realtor near me” or “realtors in [your area].”

To ensure accuracy and visibility, it’s important to optimize your Google Business Profile by updating all key information, such as business hours, contact details, and business categories. It’s also wise to add high-quality photos to make the profile more attractive.

Be sure to encourage positive reviews from satisfied customers to enhance your profile further. We’ll talk a little more about the importance of collecting reviews later in this article.

Social Media

Maintaining a professional and consistent online presence through social media can contribute to the growth of your personal brand. Creating valuable content on platforms like Facebook and Instagram allows you to connect with your community and build thought leadership.

Here’s a great example from Taylor Wilson, a local realtor in Franklin, Tennessee, who turns to Instagram to showcase her expertise in helping families find their dream homes.

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Leveraging social media in this way makes it more organic when promoting your listings on these platforms.

Paid Ads

Paid ads are another great way to market your real estate business. This is a great technique since it lets you get very specific with your targeting.

Several platforms offer paid ad services, including social media ads and Google Ads. The difference between these advertising options mostly comes down to where the ads are displayed.

With social media, the ads are displayed on whichever social media platform you sponsor a post on. Facebook, LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok are all popular options, so you can choose the ones that make the most sense based on your target market. On the other hand, Google Ads can be displayed on different websites that accept ads, YouTube, and search result pages on Google.

Some real estate platforms, including Zillow, also offer paid advertising opportunities. Using these services is very valuable since their algorithms are equipped to promote your listings based on the prospective buyer’s indicated preferences.

Ask for Reviews

Social proof is critical for service-based businesses. As a realtor, asking for reviews of your service on Google, Yelp, or real estate-specific sites is a great way to build your reputation.

Positive reviews show prospective clients that you’re a reliable and trustworthy provider for all their real estate needs. It’ll also help prospective clients learn more about the experience of working with you and your areas of expertise.

Email Marketing

Email marketing is another excellent tool for real estate agents who are looking to connect with more clients or find buyers for their listings. This technique can be used to cultivate and maintain relationships with a target audience, generate leads, and drive sales.

Building an email list with contacts who you’ve worked with or communicated with is great for carrying out warm campaigns. You can stay in contact with these people through newsletters, promotional emails, and even market updates that feature some of your listings.

Here’s a snippet of a newsletter from Pineapple Homes Hawaii that shares a helpful infographic with subscribers about the benefits of working with a real estate agent when purchasing a home.

Traditional Marketing

Real estate is one industry where traditional marketing tactics still go a long way. Here are a few tried-and-true techniques you can use to market your listings and your real estate services.

Open Houses

Open houses are a very popular way to get potential buyers in the doors of a property. These laidback events provide a casual, social setting where people can explore the home, meet neighbors, and get to know the selling agent.

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The key to throwing a great open house is to ensure the environment is welcoming. Ensure the property is clean, neutral, and inviting, and it’ll practically sell itself!

Pro tip: Share your business card with prospective buyers before they leave.

Signage

Physical signs are great for capturing the attention of prospective buyers who are cruising through the neighborhood. Signage also lets neighbors know that a home is available in their community so they can give a heads-up to their friends and family interested in moving to the area.

In addition to signs in front of homes, signage on vehicles, billboards, bus stops, benches, and so forth are also quite valuable in real estate. In fact, nearly half of homebuyers report that signage played a role in their homebuying process.

Partner with Local Businesses

Community is everything for a service-based business, so building relationships with local businesses is a great way to increase brand visibility and customer base.

Some benefits of strategic partnerships include mutual referrals, shared marketing efforts, and community involvement.

Ask for Referrals

We talked about collecting reviews as a way to build social proof for your brand as a realtor. You can build on the power of social proof by tapping into word-of-mouth marketing for your business.

Referrals are a great way to land new clients since a personal recommendation from a friend or colleague carries much weight. While, in many cases, referrals happen organically, it’s worth reminding past clients how valuable their recommendations are for your business.

Start by listing people who could potentially provide a referral for your services. Think of loyal clients and people who have been happy with your services in the past.

Reach out to these contacts and explain that you are seeking referrals to grow your client base. Be sure to describe the type of referrals you are looking for and remind them of the specific services you offer to make it easier for them to provide relevant recommendations.

Elevate Your Real Estate Marketing with Virtual Staging AI

Using a mix of digital and traditional real estate marketing ideas will help you grow your real estate business.

So many digital marketing tools are available to real estate professionals, ranging from virtual staging technology to real estate platforms for publishing listings. It’s wise to tap into all of these resources to create more awareness of the properties you’re selling to make more sales.

Virtually Rendered by Virtual Staging AI

It’s time to start using virtual staging AI as part of your real estate marketing strategy! Head over to Virtual Staging AI’s home page and upload an image of a room to try this powerful software for free.