Real estate digital marketing can help agents and property developers stand out from the competition, engage with buyers and sellers and drive revenues.
History suggests the concept of land ownership dates back to the New Stone Age, when people first started coming together and living in settlements. It would take centuries before home ownership and the widespread buying and selling of real estate took hold in the 1900s, when mortgages were invented.
Since then, real estate marketing has gone through its own, much faster evolution, from word-of-mouth referrals from trusted family, friends and associates to advertising via print, television and radio to modern advertising and digital real estate marketing.
In 2024, the U.S.-based National Association of Realtors reports that more than half of home buyers found their home online. This is true for all generations.
For real estate professionals, real estate digital marketing is proving to be an increasingly effective way to reach more potential buyers and sellers, set yourself apart from the competition, build trust and buy and sell more properties. For example, video – a key tool in digital real estate marketing – helps build an important emotional connection with users, who are twice as likely to share video content with their friends than any other type of content.
What is real estate digital marketing?
Real estate digital marketing is more than just having an online presence. An easy-to-navigate website and vibrant social media channels are table stakes in today’s digital world, where consumers are already online doing much of the traditional “legwork” when it comes to buying and selling real estate.
Effective real estate digital marketing requires a holistic strategy across channels that builds awareness, expands your reach, guides potential clients across each stage of the buying journey, builds loyalty and ultimately drives sales. More than this, effective real estate digital marketing integrates with traditional marketing tools such as print, direct mail, radio, TV, PR and in-person interactions.
The benefits of using real estate digital marketing
Real estate digital marketing helps:
- Capture and maintain a potential client’s attention.
- Provide a streamlined experience for buyers, who can easily “tour” properties online when it’s most convenient for them.
- Save time and money. Digital content can be reshared, customized and updated.
- Answer client questions.
- Build trust and a personal connection with clients even before you meet.
- Connect with people ready to buy and/or sell.
Effective real estate digital marketing strategies
One of the big benefits of using real estate digital marketing is the variety of ways real estate professionals can reach and engage potential clients all along their buying/selling journey.
Organic outreach
Social media
Social media platforms are a natural marketing tool for real estate professionals to increase awareness, boost interest and drive sales. It’s easy to see why. They can create a digital portfolio of listings, post about their achievements, record live walkthroughs of properties, offer insider tips, share industry trends and highlight customer testimonials.
Content marketing
Effective content marketing can help you stand out as a thought leader in the real estate industry and your business stand out from your competitors. By tailoring your digital storytelling to build a connection with your intended audience, you can quickly demonstrate you understand their unique needs. The content itself can take the form of blogs, articles, social media posts, ebooks, infographics, videos or podcasts. Visual storytelling in particular is gaining traction, with short-form immersive mobile-first, long-form and live videos emerging as top trends in content marketing more broadly.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
SEO is a digital marketing strategy to help improve rankings on search engine results pages (SERPs). Top SERPs rankings help drive traffic to your website. SEO doesn’t just drive more traffic – it drives the right traffic: relevant, high-intent users and prospects. One of the best ways to attract relevant users is by employing the right keywords. These are the words and terms your target audience is most likely to use when conducting a search for the type of property they’re after.
Video content
Creating virtual tours and 360-degree videos to take potential clients through a property are the most common use of video in real estate digital marketing, but there are many types of videos real estate professionals can use to set themselves apart.
- Introduction videos are an effective way to show people your personality, highlight your skills and why they would want to work with you. Introducing yourself via video also helps build a rapport with potential clients.
- Social media videos can help market a specific property, showcase properties you’ve sold or highlight testimonials from happy clients.
- Customer testimonial videos help generate interest and build trust and credibility.
- Listing videos (e.g., 360-degree tours) give people the chance to immerse themselves in a space without being there.
- Personalized property and neighbourhood video tours allow you to walk through the property and highlight the features that will mean the most for your target buyer.
- Educational videos can help address common concerns and specific topics, and make the buying/selling process easier.
- Recruiting and training videos for new agents help attract and onboard new team members.
Email marketing
More than 4.4 billion people use email – a number that continues to grow – making it a critical tool in real estate digital marketing and a highly effective way to engage with potential clients, build trust and create meaningful connections. Email marketing can take several forms, including simple updates, regular email newsletters designed to keep you top of mind and promotional emails to turn the spotlight on special events. Another big benefit: the ability to be precise in your messaging based on how people have come to your mailing list.
Chatbots, AI assistants, augmented reality and virtual reality
Using leading-edge technologies will help enhance the online experience of visitors/potential customers to your website and free up your agents’ time so they can focus on existing clients. For example, chatbots and AI assistants can immediately answer common questions and requests, such as open house times and scheduling a viewing.
Both augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) are emerging as effective tools in experiential marketing. AR is a screen that allows you to add digital elements on top of what you’re seeing in your actual physical environment. In real estate digital marketing, it is being used to help buyers envision in real time the renovations they’d like to make and how they would live in a space (i.e., where they’d place furniture). VR is a computer-generated environment that allows users to have an immersive 360-degree experience in a virtual space. In real estate digital marketing, users can take virtual tours at their own pace, seeing details that video tours aren’t able to capture.
Paid online advertising
Complement organic outreach by investing in paid online advertising. There are many types of paid digital advertising including:
Pay-per-click (PPC) ads
These ads appear on social media, SERPs and websites, and in email campaigns and apps. They allow you to set a budget and employ precise targeting.
Search engine marketing (SEM) ads
These advertising campaigns run on a search engine’s results pages and are managed via the search engine’s advertising platform. Real estate professionals can choose from a number of bidding strategies, set budgets, create text and more. The biggest benefit of paid search advertising is it allows you to target high-intent users.
Social media ads
Nearly five billion people around the world use social media. These channels present an important opportunity to reach your target audience where they like to spend their time: on their social feeds. Most social media platforms offer tools and advertising products to help brands tell their stories and promote their products directly on their channels. Unlike organic posts, these ads are sponsored and include PPC advertising, branded content and display ads.
Video ads
The use of video in advertising continues to grow in popularity for good reason: video ads are informative, fun, shareable, flexible and affordable. Most importantly, they drive better engagement.
Email ads
Eighty-two per cent of consumers open emails from businesses and 76 per cent of email subscribers have purchased products promoted in email marketing. Email ads are sent via web mail and can be used to turn the spotlight on properties coming up for sale. Incorporating video can improve click-through rates (CTRs) by up to 300 per cent.
Retargeting Ads
Retargeting is a marketing tactic where you serve online ads to people who have shown interest in your company by visiting your website or engaging with your social media channels but haven’t made a purchase or responded to your call-to-action. Retargeting ad campaigns use tracking pixels or tags on your social channels or website to create a picture of how individual users have interacted with your site but showing you such information as where they landed, the pages they visited and products they clicked on. When these users leave your site, all the information collected is used to present them with relevant ads on their preferred social media channels to keep your brand and products top of mind. As potential clients continue to see your real estate firm as they go about their day, they begin to view you as an expert. This increases the likelihood they will return to your site.
Real estate digital marketing is an important way for companies to build awareness, generate interest, expand their reach with high-intent potential clients and collect critical analytical data to inform and improve marketing campaigns. It is the next evolution of real estate marketing and can help set you apart in a highly competitive market.
