8 Real Estate Marketing Ideas: Strategies & Plans for Real Estate Developers
Project Luciana - image courtesy of Black Haus
Real estate developers must consider both creativity and readability when marketing their homes, hotels, and other properties. If you’re in the real estate industry, you have the option to engage your audience through a variety of eye-catching media––including email marketing, web design, social media, paid ads, quality photography and videography, and more.
Strategic real estate marketing plans that incorporate all these moving parts allow real estate developers to utilize their creativity, track marketing progress, and make necessary adjustments along the way to better connect with potential clients. But where can real estate developers get started?
In this article, we’ll go over eight real estate marketing ideas to help you engage your target audience with compelling and comprehensive messaging. These strategies are sure to generate buzz about your properties and generate new leads that display genuine interest.
Here are our top real estate business marketing ideas to get your properties in the spotlight.
Image courtesy of K-Studio
What is your target demographic?
Knowing your target demographic is a foundational step in investigating your real estate development project and designing your marketing efforts for the right people. To discern this target demographic, ask yourself: Who are my potential clients? Am I working with first-time buyers? Does my property attract high-net-worth families seeking an additional home? Do I get the most attention from investors?
Knowing your audience will help you create targeted property marketing materials and identify the proper channels to reach your targets.
Below are effective real estate marketing techniques that you can use to better understand your target demographics:
Using census data - You can glean a lot of information about local demographics by looking at the relevant census data. Statistics from the census are made publicly available, and allow you to observe trends about age, gender, income, and education levels of those living in a specified area. Plus, it can be tuned to reveal information about local housing markets, such as sale prices.
Researching the competition - Learning about your target demographic might involve peeking at your competitors to see who they chose to target with their marketing efforts. If this sounds shady, don’t be alarmed; it’s actually a common tactic that 90% of Fortune 500 companies use to gain an advantage over competitors in a given space. With the proper approach, competitor intelligence can offer valuable insights about who might be interested in buying or renting in your area.
Creating buyer/tenant profiles - Another way to deepen your understanding of your target demographic is to create tenant profiles. These “character sheets” often involve creating a fictional character that represents your ideal customer, and describing their attributes in a written format. Once you have a tenant profile, you can analyze their characteristics and better understand what type of real estate marketing strategy might appeal to them.
Conducting surveys - Sending out voluntary surveys to current or prospective clients is a great way to better identify their desires, needs, and obstacles. You can distribute these surveys by email, traditional post, or in person to increase engagement. Insights from the results might be more telling than even census data.
Analyzing your website traffic - If you use a website to market your property, you have the option to review site traffic to learn about your audience. For example, you can see how visitors found your site, what terms they’re searching for, and which pages they spend the most time reading.
Image courtesy of Georg Roske
What to include in your marketing strategy?
Once you have solid information on your target market, you can design a tailored marketing strategy for real estate success. These marketing strategies for real estate projects tend to focus on getting people talking about the properties. Here are some ways you can stir up some buzz:
Video courtesy of Illa Bimini
1. Web design
A strong web presence is critical for any business, and even more so for real estate developer marketing. Your website is likely one of the first places potential buyers will see when they want to learn more about you and your properties. Further, it’s the hub of your property content marketing, where the most prominent information about your company should be front and center.
Aesthetically, your website design should be professional and modern to deliver clear information. The content itself should be well-written and informative, complemented by high-quality photos and videos that bring your properties to life. Together, this design paints a complete picture of your offerings for potential buyers.
But having a great website isn't just about looking good—it's about standing out, capturing attention, and conveying your unique attributes. Try to incorporate the latest real estate marketing trends on your web pages by adding your own special twist. One way to do this is by focusing on what makes your properties different from others on the market, and then presenting that unique difference in a novel, but engaging format.
When building your website, you should also consider:
User experience - Your website should be easy to use and provide a positive experience. This includes being mobile-friendly as a growing percentage of people are using their smartphones to browse properties compared to desktop computers. According to Statista, mobile devices generated 54.4% of global website traffic in the first quarter of 2021, underscoring the importance of improving the mobile experience.
Search engine optimization - When making a website, you should also consider search engine optimization (SEO), or how your site can rank higher on search engine results pages (SERPs) like Google results. Improving your SEO might involve speeding up loading times or optimizing content to include specific keywords, making those web pages more likely to be seen by potential customers.
Call-to-action - A clear message makes it easier for potential customers to get in touch. Placing your contact information on every webpage with a strong call-to-action (CTA) message will encourage people to reach out. The best messages are to the point.
Image courtesy of Plann
2. Social media
To reach your target audience, become active on the social media platforms your audience uses. You might uncover data about your audience’s social media habits by using tools like Hootsuite Insights which reports platform popularity among certain demographics. Once you know where your audience is most active, you can create a social media strategy that engages those platforms.
Your social media strategy must reinforce your branding at every opportunity. For inspiration, look to Villa Bella Canggu’s real estate Instagram account. Note the strong visual branding as every photo uses colors from a central palette.
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram are great places to research and implement your real estate advertising ideas. You can think of these platforms as virtual real estate agents: targeting potential customers with ads for your properties.
Image courtesy of Mikael Blomkvist
3. Email marketing
Email marketing is another great way to stay in touch with potential customers, build trust, and keep them updated on your latest real estate listings. You can use email to send out monthly newsletters, share new listing information, and run special promotions.
When building up an email list, try to add the addresses of those already viewing properties in the area. To source these addresses, you can purchase the data in batches, or integrate sign-up tools on your websites that allow users to voluntarily offer their information.
Once you have a list of email addresses, you can make a plan for sending out monthly newsletters. In these regular communications, be sure to include info on your latest property listings, open houses, and any promotions or discounts you're running.
A nice feature of email marketing is the ability to easily track how many people open or click through each email. This gives you an idea of how effective your emails are and what elements can be modified to drive engagement.
Image courtesy of graphic designer Anica van der Merwe for Hotel Luce, Italy
4. Branding
Your real estate branding should be consistent across your marketing materials, including your website, social media accounts, email newsletters, and print materials. Your branding should include your company logo and a consistent color scheme and font.
In every effective marketing plan, real estate branding should appeal to the target demographic straight away. If you run a hospitality brand, you know how crucial first impressions are. The same applies to branding in real estate development. Your logo, color scheme, and overall design should make a memorable first impression that tells potential customers who you are and what you're about.
For example, Baccarat Residences in Miami uses their distinctive logo on each page and sticks to a consistent color palette so their branding is communicated right away, no matter which webpage a visitor lands on first. Branding might also focus on the heritage of your building, as in The OWO in London.
To boost branding and marketing for real estate company aesthetics, consider:
Color scheme - The colors you choose for your website and marketing materials must be consistent and reflect your brand identity. For example, luxury real estate developers might use black and white for a classic look, or gold and silver for a more opulent tone.
Font - Your font choice should resonate with your brand, while prioritizing readability. For example, a young, hip audience might resonate with a modern font, whereas a more traditional audience might prefer classic serif fonts.
Logo - A logo should be simple, recognizable, and easy to remember. Reiterating your logo on all of your materials will help it stick in consumers’ minds.
Business details - Be sure to include your website, email address, and phone number throughout your marketing plan for real estate so it’s convenient for potential customers to reach out when your materials grab their attention.
Image courtesy of The Somewhere Studio
5. SEO and content marketing
SEO (search engine optimization) is a process of modifying your website so it ranks higher on search engines’ results. The higher your website ranks, the more likely people are to find it.
SEO is a complex process, often involving professional consultation, but there are a few simple things you can do to improve your website's ranking, including:
Using keyword-rich titles and descriptions. For example, use a location-based keyword such as “Residences in Caribbean,” like Montage Cay Residences does.
Creating high-quality content
Optimizing your website for mobile
Building backlinks to your website
To use content to boost your SEO, you should create and share media relevant to your target market. For example, writing blog posts, designing infographics, or sharing short videos that link to your website are all ways to attract potential customers and improve SEO.
When making this targeted content, be sure to include keywords related to your target market. Tools like Google AdWords Keyword Planner can help you find the perfect keywords to climb those search results. Once you have a list of target keywords, you can work on devising content that naturally uses those keywords.
Whether you create blog posts, infographics, eBooks, or videos, a pipeline of targeted content will diversify your online presence, bring in interested customers, and increase your website traffic.
6. CRO - Conversion Rate Optimization
Conversion rate optimization (CRO), like SEO, is about improving your website. However, CRO focuses on increasing the percentage of visitors who take action, like setting up a consultation. Testing CRO involves playing with different elements of the website to see what design choices lead to the most improvement.
CRO strategies may include:
A/B testing: This strategy refers to testing two different options on a webpage to see which one performs better. You can do this by sending different headlines, images, or call-to-action buttons to two test groups and comparing the results.
User testing: This involves asking individuals to test out your website and then watching how they interact with it. You can use a tool like UserTesting.com to find participants for these tests.
Heat mapping: This is a type of tracking that allows you to see where users click on your website. You can do this with a tool like Crazy Egg. Heat mapping can help you see what parts of your website draw the most attention.
The goal of CRO is to increase the amount of visitors who decide to take action on your website. This might look like an email newsletter sign-up, a request for more information, or the decision to purchase a property.
One tried-and-true way to optimize conversions is to test out the placement of your call-to-action buttons, especially on your website. For inspiration, look to Number One Ballsbridge, which places its CTA (register here) on the first screen of its website to increase clicks.
Image courtesy of Slide Process
7. Build a funnel
A funnel is a pathway designed to guide potential customers through your marketing campaign. It starts with a wide opening, which is raising brand awareness to as many people as possible. Then, it moves to a narrower section, where marketing materials focus on building interest in the properties. Finally, it moves to the action end of the funnel, where the most interested people take steps toward making a purchase.
The goal of a funnel is to help potential customers along your marketing campaign and end with a sale. By creating a funnel, you can track the progress of potential customers and see where they tend to lose interest. This will inform where you should adjust your campaign to convert more people into sales.
You can see an example of an effective real estate marketing sales funnel in action on the website of the Muse Residences in Miami.
Starting from the top is awareness - by describing the building itself as well as a project summary.
Moving down, the website captures interest by displaying amenities, features, images of the apartments, and more.
As website visitors continue down the page, they move through the funnel to consideration, where the website displays full prices & floor plans.
Lastly, the website presents a conversion opportunity via the bottom right button where a client can schedule a presentation via Zoom or in person
Image courtesy of Gester Digital
8. Paid Ads
Real estate paid ads are a lead generation method that matches your content with your target demographic through a paid service. A key benefit of this approach is that it actively searches for potential customers who aren’t necessarily looking up your properties––and does so for a small price. When using paid ads, you consider the following:
Create ad groups for each of your properties. This will allow you to target people who are interested in specific properties
Target keywords that are relevant to your properties. You can use a tool like Google AdWords Keyword Planner to help you find your ideal keywords.
Create ads that are relevant to your target keywords. Your ads should be clear, concise, and include a compelling call to action.
Monitor your results. Keep track of your leads and conversions to see how effective the ads are.
Paid ads are an excellent way to generate leads, but should be used in conjunction with other marketing activities like SEO and content marketing to maximize results.
The Spectrum of Real Estate Marketing Ideas
The possibilities to engage with your target market are endless; from traditional paper ads to innovative social media campaigns. Some additional marketing ideas for real estate to consider include:
Cold prospecting: including email, direct mail, and phone call campaigns
Referral marketing
Affiliate marketing
High-quality photography and videography
We can get your real estate marketing moving!
At Proven Partners, we specialize in real estate marketing. We can help you develop a real estate development marketing strategy that is sure to generate leads and grow your business.
We offer a wide range of services, including strategic branding, website design, SEO, content marketing, and social media marketing.
If you're looking for help with your real estate marketing strategies, we can provide you with the tools and resources you need to succeed.
Contact Proven Partners today to learn more about our services and how we can help you grow your business.
