2019 is right around the corner, so it’s time to get familiar with coming trends: here are 21 real estate marketing ideas that are likely to dominate next year. Familiarize yourself with them now so you can implement them in your own real estate business over the next 12 months!
Increase Your Site Automation
Some of the best real estate marketing ideas for the coming year revolve around working smarter, not harder. You can do this by increasing the automation of your real estate website in a number of different ways. This reduces your direct workload in a number of ways, including:
- Installing a chatbot: just as automated phone systems help route call traffic for companies, so too can a chatbot route online traffic for websites. A quality chatbot can help get the right information to a visitor quickly, capture contact information, schedule appointments, and more.
- Revamping your email marketing campaign: email marketing is often seen as an older marketing tactic, but new advances in automation have revitalized this trusty approach. Moving from inundation tactics to slower-paced emails with a more focused, mobile-centric, and personalized approach can make a big difference.
Build Trust and Authority
Modern digital marketing is all about building yourself as a trusted brand. Real estate marketing is no different. You can use the following real estate marketing ideas to help build that trust and authority into 2019 and beyond:
- Create local websites with high specificity: inculcating an authoritative air about local neighborhoods, and using those sites to provide added value to local homeowners, builds high levels of trust that you can leverage later.
- Provide exclusive neighborhood interviews: locate and interview important figures in the community, both in video and in written form. Highlighting local business owners or professionals reinforces your own company’s ties to the area.
- Profile neighborhoods: provide information about specific neighborhoods that prospective buyers can use to inform their own house hunting. Use video clips to highlight the features and amenities of a neighborhood like shopping or schools.
- Highlight testimonials: nothing builds trust and authority like glowing reviews from happy home buyers. Text quotes — or even better, video — of new homeowners that have positive things to say about your services will go far.
- Provide free e-book guides: want to really wow prospective buyers? Draft in-depth guides to specific neighborhoods and provide them free of charge to anyone interested. You can truly showcase area knowledge this way.
- Maintain an industry blog: Writing articles about new developments in the real estate industry that impact your neighborhood keep locals tuned in to relevant changes. It also shows neighbors that you’re looking out for them.
Keep Up with Modern Digital Marketing Standards
One of the most important real estate marketing ideas today is to embrace digital marketing methods. However, because digital marketing evolves so rapidly, it’s important to keep up with modern standards or risk left behind. Make sure you’re aware of the following:
- Optimize for mobile browsing: mobile-friendly, or even mobile-first, marketing is the current standard. Ensure any content you push digitally is optimized for viewing on smaller screens like phones, tablets, and other mobile devices.
- Use accurate SEO: The search engine optimization standards of today are vastly different than those of the past. Keyword stuffing and other so-called black hat methods will get you penalized today; instead, focus on marketing content with natural language written with human audiences in mind.
- Leverage location-based listing: Business listings like Google My Business help prospective home buyers find you more easily; ensure your listing is up-to-date and accurate when it comes to name, address, phone number, and website.
Embrace Virtual Reality
Virtual reality isn’t just for science fiction movies anymore. Technology has advanced that it’s easy to now harness to help grow your own real estate business in the following ways:
- Focus on providing 3D virtual tours: it’s easier than ever to create an interactive 3D environment for MLS listings and open houses. For a small investment, you can provide a potential buyer with a flawless virtual walk-through.
- Use VR staging to transform empty houses: staging an empty home for a walk-through is often impractical. Using VR technologies to provide virtual staging, which inserts realistic furniture and fixtures into rooms that would otherwise be empty and increases the likelihood of a sale.
- Offer augmented reality at open houses: using geofencing technologies to augment open houses can help serve relevant information to potential home buyers attending open houses in new, innovative, and memorable ways.
Harness the Power of Social Media and Video
Social media is a major contender when it comes to pushing your business presence online. Platforms like Facebook and YouTube have come to rely heavily on video content over the last year, paving the way for new marketing methods such as:
- Create engaging videos for your listings: while you may not need to create a video for every listing, the more videos you can provide to prospective home buyers the better. Highlighting the top elements of every property will help move those properties much more swiftly.
- Reinforce your social reach with added value: not every video needs to be a listing. In fact, it’s better if you provide added value in the form of video content that educates and entertains. Short DIY and home improvement tips are an excellent example of this.
- Interact and engage with your audience: be sure to ensure any interactions you have with your social media audience are bilateral. Responding to questions or comments in a timely manner builds a reputation for attentiveness and professionalism.
Cater to Younger Generations of Buyers
The home buying community is getting younger. In fact, millennials are the largest growing demographic when it comes to home buyers, so it’s a good idea to alter your methods and embrace real estate marketing ideas that will resonate with these younger generations of home buyers. Here are some excellent tips:
- Pay attention to emergent finance trends: first-time home buyers will need extra help in navigating the constantly shifting waters that are home financing. Providing free information on fluctuating mortgage rates and what they mean to millennials and other new home buyers will help retain them when it comes time to buy.
- Choose millennials or Boomers — or both: with millennials coming up as home buyers, they’re encroaching on Baby Boomer territory. Increased competition for homes is good for your business, but because there’s so much overlap between both you may need to take some careful steps to market yourself to both groups without alienating one or the other.
- Embrace the creativity of younger generations: Younger home buyers are much more comfortable with fixer-uppers than many older ones. Marketing handyman specials to these creative individuals can be an excellent tactic if they express the desire to polish a diamond in the rough back to a shining example of a property.
- Provide value young buyers can’t otherwise access: new generations of home buyers are incredibly astute when it comes to using the internet. Show them information that their research skills, no matter how finely-honed, can’t access, and they’ll be suitably impressed of your prowess — and more likely to close that sale.