Emerging Technology in Advertising, Product Management, SEO

Many people love to flick through property images online – they’re well shot, usually highly aspirational and give you an insight into your neighbours lives – but these images are more than just property-porn, and should be used to their fullest beyond just on the property listing on major portals like realestate.com.au and domain.com.au.  

Real Estate companies are a bit of a special case when it comes to digital marketing because their primary customer is not the one you immediately think of – the buyer. Even though real estate companies spend a lot of money advertising to the buyer, their primary source of income is the seller but some do not optimise their homepage for that user.  

Speaking to all your customers

One of the first things we always begin a conversation with is establishing who your most important user is, and then optimising your website to speak to that person in the first instance – or we review your website user experience in other words. In the case of real estate that person is the vendor. So, rather than having the ability to search for a property as the top item in the content hierarchy – you should first have the ability to search for an agent or office. Champion your office location contact details and think through the content of the agent profile – always with the vendor in mind.

 

Targeting customers who know they want to sell

If you are spending money on Search Engine Marketing (SEM) make sure that you’re getting a good return from it by designing a landing page that is specific to your campaign. Keep it simple, on brand and with one clear call to action. SEM is a great way to put yourself in front of customers who already know that they want to sell their house but what if you want to reach customers who haven’t yet made that decision?

 

Targeting customers who don’t know they want to sell

Using data and technology to find new customers (programmatic media advertising) is a great way to target potential vendors. Use digital platforms to find users according to their demographics and behaviour, meaning your brand is front of mind when they decide to sell their house.

 

Targeting customers who don’t know they want to buy

If you’re trying to sell a home that is high-end, which typically would have a long sale cycle because of its high value (and therefore lower number of customers who can actually afford to buy it), doing your own programmatic media campaigns is a brilliant way to reach those customers wherever they are browsing on the internet – not where you think they might be. It’s a low-cost, easily trackable means of advertising, which comes with the added advantage of then being able to understand in real-time who is interacting with your ad and from that create new lookalike audiences, thereby exposing your ad to more potential buyers.

 

Making sure you join the dots

When you make the decision to go down this pathway, make sure you join the dots between the various parts of this same campaign. Ensuring that your website can talk to your AdWords which can talk to the other buying platforms – the more complete data you have the more knowledge you have to feed back into future campaigns.

 

Championing your amazing content on social media

As we said at the start, your photography is your hero, so use it for everything it’s worth on social media platforms – Instagram, Pinterest and Facebook are your key platforms here. Don’t just post links to the property listing on your website, use the different types of tech available on the platforms to help sell property – Instagram Stories / Facebook Live videos of auctions and inspections. It’s great to market your properties through the major portals but remember they are only one of the channels open to you to find buyers.

There are lots of other ways you can do more online for you to find new vendors. We love a bit of property-porn so if you want some assistance with your digital marketing – shoot us an email.