Emerging Technology in Advertising

WITH over 39,000 real estate agents and companies in Australia, it’s important you’re doing all you can to stand out from the crowd and be seen when customers are deciding they want to sell their property.  

But beyond the traditional approach (billboards at train stations and flyers through the door), how can you use online advertising to get the best return on your marketing investment?  

One of the great things about new technology is the wealth of data and information that it gives you access to. Using this information you can target your advertising to particular users, reducing cost on ad-wastage and ‘lasering in’ on those who are most relevant.  

Finding Customers Who Know They Want To Sell  

In the first instance, it’s wise to setup a traditional Search Engine Marketing campaign to capture those customers who are already in the mindset to sell. You need to make your campaign as specific as possible and ensure that you have a landing page created just for it. The messaging in the campaign should link all the way through.

For example, say you are a real estate agent in Surry Hills in Sydney, your campaign may look like:  
Target Keyword: “Sell My Property”  
Location: “Surry Hills, Sydney, NSW”  
Target Details: People In My Location  
Ad Unit Messaging: Sell Your Property In Surry Hills Download Your Free Surry Hills Price Guide  
Landing Page: Download Your Free Surry Hills Price Guide -> Enter Your Email Address To Download  

In the instance above your campaign is very specific and the messaging is consistent throughout. Rather than running a campaign that ends at your website homepage (which is very generic), this instead will get you a good AdWords Ad Quality Score – which is what Google uses to determine in which position to show your ad.  

Finding Customers Who Don’t Know They Want To Sell  

The trickier part is finding those customers who are not yet in the mindset to sell. This is best done by using demographic and behavioural data and interests to target customers.  

A Facebook Example:
Setup your Facebook advertising campaign with a Brand Awareness objective that targets those customers who have recently updated their relationship status to “Engaged” or “Married” – there’s a high chance those customers are looking to move house and sell their existing house.  

Alternatively you could setup an ad that targets a lookalike audience to existing pool of vendors by uploading your existing customer list and then creating a Lookalike Audience based on it. Facebook will match the details and information it knows of your existing audience and find people who are similar to it.  

An AdWords Example:
Similar to Facebook you can create a Lookalike Audience to your existing audience and target ads to it. We would also recommend that you use the Demographics and Interests targeting to find those customers who have an expressed interest in real estate or home decor.  

Remembering That Selling A House Is A Big Decision  

Unlike buying a new pair of shoes, selling a house is a huge decision and isn’t something most people enter into lightly. For those who were not already in the mindset of wanting to sell, you should ensure that you have Remarketing campaigns setup and ready to keep your brand front of mind with those customers who saw your initial ads and came to your website.

Use content to bring people along the purchase journey rather than expecting one ad unit is all that is required!   There are a tonne of campaigns you can run using the data that is available to you, making it the most targeted campaign possible – resulting in finding you more vendors who want to sell their properties.