Digital marketing for real estate professionals can be a lucrative and budget-friendly option for the modern realtor, and while there’s a lot of discussion and value to creating organic content, running online ad campaigns are still a great way to generate qualified leads.

That being said, effective online ad campaigns can be tricky: yes, you will have to study digital marketing best practices, particularly for your field (SEO for Real Estate is going to be different from, say, SEO for truck companies or restaurants), but the pay off is well worth it. Here are some basic digital marketing practices that you should be applying to your real estate practice.

Acquire Your Marketing Targets

Specifically, acquire the three, most desirable customer data points for any real estate professional: location, demographic, and interests. With these three pieces of information, even a mediocre realtor can sell the most impossible listings easily. That’s because location, demographic, and interests pretty much sum up the totality of a person, including their buying behavior.

By targeting location, you’re ensuring that people in a certain geographic area (i.e., your field of operations, so to speak) are going to see the bulk of your ads. But you don’t want to target everyone in a specific area, so you narrow it down by targeting a certain demographic. In this scenario, demographic refers to the “Big 3” demographic data points for real estate pros: age, income, home ownership status.

And finally, interest. This one is a bit tricky because every client is going to have a different interest, so you’ll need to target people of a certain marketing demographic in a certain area by enticing them with listings that are X distance from the nearest place-of-their-interest.

All that being said, once you’ve narrowed down your ad to hit those 3 targets, you’re going to find your qualified leads list filling up faster than ever before.

Diversify Your Media

In the digital age, the average attention span of your everyday internet user is at a dismal 8 seconds. This means that, on average, you only have 8 seconds or so to get a website visitor’s attention. Once that window closes, they’re off to their next website, or checking their phone, or visiting social media, and all the other things internet users do.

The best way to retain people’s attention is to diversify your media when marketing to them. When it comes to your ads, it can’t just be static carousel ads (although those won’t hurt your digital marketing needs): you need to spice things up with infographics, videos, and even interactive content like online quizzes or Augmented Reality options. The choices are endless, and as much as possible, take advantage of every single option you have.

Content is Always King

At the end of the day, the old saying is still accurate: Content is king. Always ensure that every piece of content you churn out –whether it be video, graphics, photos, ad copy, blogs, and everything else in between –is going to leave a positive impression with your marketing’s target audience.

This means that your ads still need to be value-adding, information-giving, and entertaining, for it to be received well by your intended audience. Lose just a single one of those three factors, and you run the risk of your intended audience jumping to the next web page or just ignoring your ad altogether.

Expect to Overshoot Your Initial Budget

This isn’t to say, of course, that you should overshoot your initial budget. Rather, what we’re trying to say is that, more often than not, an online ad campaign will go over the initial budget. But here’s the good news: it’s worth it.

With the way social media platforms work, paid ads and ad campaigns that have higher budget ceilings are prioritized in the algorithm. This means that, the more money you pay, the more eyeballs on your ad. Considering that more than 4 Billion people –or half of the world’s population –are on social media, and overshooting your budget by $50 or $100 doesn’t seem too bad.

Again, we’re not saying that you should go over-budget: we’re just saying that, should you go over, don’t stress too much about it.

Let Us Help You With Your Digital Marketing Needs!

When it comes to digital marketing for real estate professionals, REI Toolbox has the necessary expertise to help you achieve success. As the country’s #1 Marketing Agency for Real Estate Professionals, REI Toolbox prides itself of being experts in both digital marketing and navigating the unique marketing needs of a real estate professional. Our team of experts has decades of combined experience under their belt and they’ll be happy to share their knowledge with you!

Contact us today and one of our expert team members will schedule a one-on-one call with you to figure out the best way that we can solve your unique needs.