Real estate is a tough business with a lot of competition. The way through this dilemma is through smart and well-planned marketing strategies.
And this can only be done via really experienced individuals in the field that are willing to devote their 24/7 efforts to bring your vision to reality.
In this blog, we will share with you how to choose the real estate digital marketing agency that will take your business from good to great, and from great to dazzling.
So, without further ado, let’s get started.
First of all, why working with a real estate digital marketing agency?
Every business or starting startup has its vision and objective that it’s looking forward to accomplishing. For a business to thrive, there are many dimensions to the equation, you need to work on:
- The Infrastructure of your business; You definitely don’t want to build your whole institution on a shaky clumsy foundation.
- Employing real talents that will contribute effectively to your firm.
- The Business Processes; Like order fulfillment, or others.
And many other aspects and duties that you will have to work on to guarantee great results.
So, you have a lot to do and still thinking you might be able to market your business the right way? This just doesn’t sound right, not to anybody. Not even to Elon Musk who said “Work every waking hour.”
Marketing utterly relies on the audience. For example, if your audience is youngsters, then you might want to conduct your marketing campaigns and be seen on Snapchat, Instagram, and TikTok.
And since this a real estate business, you want to be seen by adults or business executives, so, you will have to be working on LinkedIn, Facebook (Facebook ads has a wonderful ROI, recommended for any business), and Google search.
For busy real estate business owners, it will be hard with all the effort consumed to follow all the new trends and the new marketing tactics that pop up every day.
What they need is a real estate digital marketing agency with fully devoted team members that work and follow on a 24/7 basis all the new trends and work on conducting campaigns that generate leads and later loyal customers.
Now after telling you why you should hire a digital marketing agency for your real estate business, here is exactly what the real estate digital marketing agencies will be willing to offer you.
How the real estate digital marketing agencies help you?
The major concern and objective for a marketing agency is to improve your online presence, and subsequently increase your sales by taking advantage of the different existent marketing tactics to ultimately increase your customer base.
Real estate digital marketing agencies, or any type of digital marketing agency in general, tend to do that through various ways and services:
Market Research
Here, real estate digital marketing agencies start from scratch. Market Research is the process that aims to understand and classify the target market, or audience, of the client, to later be able to choose which platform will most probably include the target audience of the client.
Ultimately, after doing the market research and deciding which platforms to better use (as it is real estate, it is mostly Google ads, LinkedIn, and Facebook), the real estate digital marketing agency starts to plan for the campaigns and study the current trends to have the most exposure.
Web Design
For a real estate digital marketing company, the primary target is to solidify your digital strategies and online presence. Still, some real estate marketing agencies can provide the service of web design.
Yet it may seems not a marketing-related service, web designing can increase your credibility in front of your customers, make your presence unique and remarkable, and set you apart from your competition.
SEO
So that you know, SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization; basically it what gets you found on Google by searchers. Simply put, real estate digital marketing agencies make sure to optimize the SEO of your current articles so that they are ranked higher on Google.
Sometimes, if you don’t have qualified writers, keyword researchers, and marketers, real estate digital marketing agencies will write your SEO-optimized content.
By that, your business will have its disclosure so that you can find your potential customers and later be able to develop and grow.
Facebook Advertisement
Facebook ranks first regarding the number of online users, with over 2.45 billion users online every day.
This gigantic social media platform is the mutual avenue among all the businesses where it proves and shares its presence. In other words, you have to have a solid marketing plan to prove your existence and online presence on Facebook, so you can last longer and generate revenue.
Real Estate digital marketing agencies, only the experienced ones, can book you a first-degree flight through all the 2.45 billion users, if you wish. And by that, your real estate business will evolve from being a national, slightly observed firm to an international corporation that deals with clients all over the world.
Google Ads
Normally, when people have a problem or don’t understand something, they tend to search about it on Google. Google Ads is simply making your article, the one that answers your target audience’s question, at the top of the page after clicking “enter.”
According to SEOTribunal.com, Google handles over 5.6 billion searches every day, which is a gigantic number. So, imagine having a percentage of this huge number focused on your business. Imagine how many loyal customers you can make just by that.
Still, making Google ads that actually make a difference to your entity requires an experienced team of full-fledged marketers behind the desk planning for it.
Email Marketing
Ever wondered what generates the highest ROI? Well, you probably guessed it. It is Email Marketing.
Facebook, LinkedIn, in addition to the other platforms, has this primary role to collect email addresses.
Here is what happens next:
- All of the email addresses are sorted in a list. This email list is what can be called “Target E-mails.”
- All the e-mails receive the different offers, discounts, or new lands, apartments, and other areas that match their needs.
The real estate digital marketing agencies can use to target every single email address on that list to buy or rent a specific land or apartment, etc.
But let’s get back for a second to the “Email.” The emails sent must be professionally formulated and written to adhere to the possible customer’s needs.
Now, the million-dollar question:
Are your potential customers turning into customers any time soon? Or, are they taking the action your business needs them to take?
To answer that question, answer this question: Ever heard of the term CRO?
It is an abbreviation for Conversion Rate Optimization and basically, it what majorly makes your visitors take the action you want them to take.
In fact, if you worked with your CRO, or hired a real estate digital marketing agency to do that for you, then you just answered the first asked question with: YES, your potential customers will soon be Customers.
Real estate marketing agencies can do their best so you can have a suitable website user experience, (UX) as well as other elements that boost your generation and conversion of leads.
Some real estate marketing agencies are more capable and specialized in collecting the visitor’s data, targeting them, and the identification of the conversion matrix than the others.
Now, after knowing what a real estate digital marketing agency provides for you, here are some questions that you should ask and search for before even hiring a real estate digital marketing agency.
What are the RIGHT questions to ask while choosing a real estate digital marketing agency?
There are a lot of marketing agencies that work in the real estate sector. To know which to hire, you have two steps you must take:
- Know what kind of services from the mentioned above they provide, and look for their portfolio.
- Look for answers to the next questions, and accordingly, make your decision.
Have you specified your company’s marketing requirements?
For you to choose the real estate digital marketing agency that really works in your favor, you will have to inspect your own marketing requirements.
For example, do you need SEO? Analytics? CRO? PPC? Or what?
This question is normally answered with a close look at your own team and asking: Can my team conduct, effectively strategize, and optimize the most effective campaigns and marketing strategies that will actually work?
The second question will be: Do my team have the time to plan, search, and work in the marketing area?
If the answer to both questions is No, well then, you need to hire a real estate digital marketing agency, the sooner the better.
Now the next question will be.
What are their metrics or KPIs?
What might seem irrelevant or unimportant to an experienced real estate digital marketing agency will be the vanity metric. The vanity metric is simply like the number of likes you get on a Facebook Post for instance; or in other words, useless numbers that are not paralleled with your sales or how good or adhering your campaigns are.
As a real estate business owner, you will be looking for more sales, not more likes or meaningless engagement that will get you nowhere. So, if you are working with a real estate marketing agency that charges you extra cash just because they increased your likes without boosting your sales, you better let it go off.
If you want to choose a real estate digital marketing agency that actually makes a difference in your business and develop your game, you should consider…
The most important metrics or KPIs in a real estate digital marketing agency (Or any digital marketing agency in general):
1-The Time Spent on your Site:
One of Google’s favorite metrics. It implies how much your visitors spend on your site, in minutes. The more the relevancy of your content to your visitors’ specific needs and inquiries, the more time they will be spending on your website, the higher conversions that can take place.
Page Speed, another factor that can affect how much time your visitors spend on your site. Basically, it is how your page and content load. You can track this factor using Google analytics (through the average duration statistic part. (Image to the google analytics part that shows the ASP)
So, if you want to hire a real estate digital marketing agency and would like to see how their page is working and whether it is doing as well as the description they have on their blog. This is one of the metrics you can use to test an agency’s credibility.
Page speed is directly related to the increase in the time spent on the site, and with time, the rate of conversions.
If the real estate marketing agency’s website you are seeing takes more time than the average (6.8 seconds) then, that will be a crystal clear sign to start going the other direction.
This is one of the most leading metrics that the real estate digital marketing agency you are hiring should have. Because, again, if your page is loading slower than the average, you will have very low conversions.
2- Bounce Rate.
As the name may imply, it is the percentage of your visitors that leave your site as soon as they land on your page. This metric is a huge indication and face-slap that your content is not that relevant to your visitors, which will later mean no conversions and later, no sales.
The real estate digital marketing agency you are hiring must have that metric within their job description, because it can change more than you ever think.
3-Cost Per Click (CPC):
Normally for campaigns, you have to run paid ads. CPC is basically a purchasing model where you pay every time your ad is clicked.
When the value of your CPC is high, that indicates that your ad is not relevant or optimized to the target audience that you have specified while making the ad.
The real estate agency you are hiring must know how to utilize this metric.
4-Click-Through Rate (CTR):
CTR is basically one of the most important, vital, and vibrant metrics. It measures the number of clicks your ad has to the total number of impressions it received.
A high CTR means that your ad is doing very well, but, if it has a low CTR then it means you need to understand your target audience better, and then do one of three things:
- Create different headlines.
- Create different Copies.
- Choose more catchy and well-optimized images.
- Change the whole offer.
Or simply, do it all over again.
If you don’t have the experience or the time to really study your target audience and teach yourself how to make a relatable copy that will create the sales you are looking forward to, then what you need is a real estate digital marketing company that has this metric and experienced in this area.
Now for the next question you should ask to hire a top-notch real estate digital marketing agency.
2-What do they promise? |And what are they really willing to offer?|
Bottom line: There is a lot of scammers online; fake agencies, and freelance internet marketers who will be willing to do anything and lie just to land the deal.
At some time in your real estate business route, you will have to deal with such kinds of individuals and agencies who don’t have any idea of what they are talking about, unless you haven’t met them already.
And here is what could follow: They can charge you more and more money and claim that the results won’t come after one night. In fact, good results don’t really come fast, but those scammers know for a fact that it will never come.
Here is the question that can help you expose those scammers while interviewing them: What is your secret recipe for a successful campaign? Or what are your comprehensive fully-dimensional digital strategies that can expect good results?
There is a great article written by Arsham Mirshah from Social Media Examiner “5 Ways to Uncover Scammy SEO Agencies,” a good question to ask to know the difference between a scammer and the real deal will be “How are you going to help with content creation?”
The answer to this question from a legit real estate digital marketing agency perspective will be:
“
First of all, we will make a keyword-rich content calendar with the headlines that provide us with the framework of the content. The keywords will adhere to your vision and stick to your mission. Ideally, we will provide the keywords (Primary and Secondary) and you will provide the content. But, if you lack writers we will have our writers in the real estate department work in your content.
For the content that you already have on your pages, we will make sure to have our SEO experts proofread and optimize the current content to have a better chance of ranking higher at Google.
”
Now, to the third question you should ask…
3-What do they Charge?
We have discussed many questions in this blog, besides what we just answered, that you can use to filtrate scammers from satisfying real estate digital marketers.
In addition,
According to Neil Patel: “A great SEO will never charge low prices. If you’re hunting for a discount, chances are you’ll end up with an SEO who cuts corners and hurts your site in the long run.”
So, if a marketing agency is charging low prices, this is the most common red flags that you should watch out for.
Briefly, if an agency is charging you low prices, it means that they are narrowing the margins of their services and just don’t do their best, or don’t have the good experienced workers in their team.
On the other side, if an agency charges higher prices, it means that they are willing to put on the work, do their best, and treat you with generosity, because well, they can afford it.
After asking these questions, here are some aspects to think about before hiring your real estate digital marketing agency.
What aspects should you reconsider before choosing a real estate digital marketing agency?
Hiring a Real estate digital marketing company is a major step to take, it can either help you generate the ROI that keeps the ship sailing forward towards evolvement and solid online presence, or, will waste your money, time, and your credibility in the process.
Why Credibility?
Imagine that you hired a scamming real estate marketing agency and it decided to publish a campaign on Facebook. Of course it will be asking you for money for the paid ads.
Then, the ads that are published are rather inconvenient to the target audience or just non-engaging copies.
So:
- Losing Money with no ROI |✔|
- Losing your Credibility, bit by bit. |✔|
- Losing time, which will affect you greatly if you are just getting started. |✔|
Now, to put it all together. Before hiring a real estate digital marketing agency, here is what you should do:
- Specify your marketing requirements precisely.
- Understand your target market from all perspectives and dimensions.
- Look for every agency’s out most valuable metrics, how they work on them, and how they run their business in general.
- Watch out for those two words “Guaranteed” and “Promise” regarding marketing results. Because they can take months to come out as planned, or nearly close to it.
- Know that the less they charge the lower the values they offer.
- Look after the answer of every and each question asked before, then make your decision after.
These are the aspects that you should consider and the things you must do to make sure you find your matching real estate digital marketing agency.
Links:
Neil Patel https://neilpatel.com/blog/17-seo-myths-that-you-should-never-follow/
5 ways to uncover scammy SEO agencies