How Do Realtors Advertise?

‍Create a Website

A website is as important as your company's goodwill, if not more. We say this because having an online presence is non-negotiable in the digital age. There are several reasons why a website is an essential component of advertising your real estate agency.

Firstly, if you successfully generate leads, they will look for your agency online, see what you have to offer, any deals, or even dig out your contact information. There's no better way to have all of this information in one place except a website.

You can also use pamphlets, brochures, and magazines to spread this information, but your reach will be limited. In comparison, a website allows a potential client to have your information on demand.

Secondly, a website allows you to appear on the search engine results even if clients do not search for your agency name by name. This is done by making your website SEO-friendly. SEO is a practice of optimizing your website to rank higher on the search results.

The higher the rank, the more clicks it will get. However, SEO is an extensive practice that requires constant monitoring and upgrading. It involves targeting keywords, optimizing site error, link building, etc.

You must also ensure that your website is mobile-friendly. 72% of people globally use their mobile phones to access the internet. Therefore, you wouldn't want to give a bad impression when these people land on your webpage.

Lastly, you should have sections that make users feel comfortable exploring your website and specific information that gives them what they want. This can include certain listings and their complete details, a mortgage calculator, exciting CTA's for best deals, and more.

Publish Blogs with Consistency

You can also publish blogs on your website to attract leads. Ensure that you write on topics that people generally enquire about online. The best way to do that is to search for common queries on online forums or pick other popular blogs and write your iteration.

This will help your website appear higher when searching for specific real estate queries.

Once readers land on your blog, you can use various tactics to engage and direct them to other pages on your website, such as listings, services, or contact. You can use backlinks and pop-up CTA's to sign up for a newsletter, etc.

However, ensure that your blogs are SEO optimized and you use short-tail keywords instead of long-tail keywords. Short-tail keywords are area-specific and target a more defined group. As your target audience stays within the boundaries of your state, there is no point in using long-tail keywords to target people nationwide.

The best thing about using blogs to advertise your business is that it costs nothing. Since you already own a website, you don't have to pay an external source to publish your blogs.

Create and Publish Testimonials

Put yourself in the clients' shoes, and you can imagine doubting everything the realtor says, and the reluctance to follow through naturally comes in. It's natural for clients to feel that way since they'll be investing a fortune, and trusting an unknown realtor can be difficult.

Someone who does not know how things work in the real estate world needs more than your words to trust you.

You can be the best real estate agent in the area, but there's nothing a good client testimony can't do to establish trust between your potential clients. Ask your previous happy clients to testify for your service. The testimony can be visual or written.

You must publish these testimonies on your social media profiles and websites and ensure that they are prominent. You can also get the testimonies published in newspapers and magazines.

Engage on Internet Forums

If people like to get anything for free, it's advice. But they won't come to you looking for advice. Instead, you have to reach them. It can be a business owner looking for a place to rent, a landlord who wants some tips or techniques to sell or rent their place, or someone who likes to do their research before making a significant purchase.

There are online forums where people post their questions, and literally anyone can answer them.

This gives you a chance to secure some leads by using your expertise to help these people. Popular internet forums include Quora and Reddit. You can search for keywords that you think involve common questions people usually ask about buying, selling, or renting a property.

There are many questions on these forums. You can answer them in a structured way to gain the readers' confidence and persuade them to follow a link to your website.

You will benefit from this tactic for years, as forums generally do not remove the question and answers as they get more views from people searching for similar queries. It's free for them, and it's free for you. So answer away!

Put Out Yard Signs

Yard signs are the most basic and the oldest way that realtors use to advertise. You can put up a yard sign that can be as basic as a standee stating that the house is on sale and mention your number below it. However, realtors are going overboard now and using the yard signs to provide more information about the house.

You can get a well-designed board, include pictures of the house interior, mention house specifications, and more. Also, it is a good chance to mention your website. This way, anyone who sees the sign will not be left wanting for more. It also builds transparency and influences them to take action.

Yard signs work best in high-traffic areas. You never know who's in search of a home. They might not be in the area to look for a property with yard signs, but it will let them know that the property is available to buy. A passerby might also inform someone they know who's looking for a property.

Engage in Network Marketing Groups

If you've been asking how you can grow your real-estate business, you must have received a lot of "grow your network" answers. While the answer is on point, it doesn't tell you how you can do it.

The real-estate business is all about networking and goodwill instead of trendy advertisements. Once you have established yourself as someone with great property deals and superb listings, the inflow will start increasing automatically.

However, to reach that point, you need to have some members of the society whose voices are heard. Network marketing groups are one of the best and most widely used channels to help you grow your network.

These groups have members who are willing to refer your business to other communities and people outside the network who are in search of your services.

Business Networking International is one of the largest network marketing groups you can find. The membership fee can be a bit too much for your budget. However, those who have benefited from these groups have only good things to say about it, and the membership fee pays for itself quite quickly.

Complete Sales Funnels

Well, this can take a whole other article to explain. Whether you use PPC marketing, Facebook ads, Instagram ads, or any platform for that matter, you must ensure that the sales funnel is completed.

Imagine someone landing on your website after clicking an ad post on Facebook or through the search engine result that you optimized your content for. They liked a listing but moved on to other websites they have opened to explore their options.

It's highly unlikely in realtor advertising that someone completes a certain action in the initial stages.

However, you can use the Facebook Pixel or Google Analytics integrated with your website to use their data and retarget a group of people who visited your website.

This will prompt their interest and remind them of the listing they really liked. If they haven't gone through with another option, you can persuade them to become your client by retargeting them.

On the other hand, if someone completes an action on your website, contacts you, goes through with the deal, good for you! However, it is important to keep them in the loop, and you can include them in your email marketing campaign.

So if someone they know is looking for a property, your name is on the top of their list.

Use Facebook Ads

There are numerous ways to leverage Facebook advertising for your real estate business. If you haven’t already advertised your business through Facebook ads, check out this guide from Facebook to know how you can build up successful advertising for real estate.

Real estate is an industry that can heavily benefit from the targeting feature of Facebook ads. Since you have only a specific area to advertise to, you don't have to spend a lot to have your ads appear frequently.

Besides that, you can even advertise a single or a handful of properties that can get you a huge profit. The targeting feature also helps you target only people interested in property buying and selling based on the data of their likes and past actions.

Another impressive tactic you can implement is to show ads proactively to people who are likely to become interested in property buying or renting. People who have married recently, got a new job, have a newborn, are likely to buy a home shortly.

Your ads can intrigue them or make them save your page to contact you in the future.

Make Video Ads

Videos are another versatile way realtors use advertisements. Videos are even better than still image advertisements. The conversion ratio of video ads is 37% more than still image ads. This is because moving visuals attract viewers more, and combined with the perfect audio, it can leave long-lasting effects.

There are several ways you can make videos to promote your brand. Using video ads on social media is a popular way for the masses. Besides that, modern realtors use their YouTube channels and influencer marketing to broadcast property walkthrough videos.

Walkthrough videos are a great way to promote one property, so viewers have better closure before contacting you.

Last but not the least, traditional video ads still attract a huge audience. It might be a bit expensive, but it will have better returns since it has more reach. Traditional videos also establish a business as one of the big players in the market.

You don’t have to throw in a lot of money to make an appealing video. Just the right aesthetics and supporting audio will do the job.

However, you can step up the realtor advertising game and seek the help of professionals to make a striking and impressive video and use it with effective marketing to spread the word. The impact is inevitable.

Give Your Brand a Millennial Twist

Give your brand a millennial twist if you want your real estate business to thrive. Advertising is useless without a defined target audience.

Well, the property buying audience has gone from middle-aged people to millennials. This age group holds the most share in home buying or renting, which is 38%. Therefore, you need to make your advertising more millennial-friendly.

Forbes says millennials are more likely to take actions if the advertiser portrays these values:

• Social responsibility
• Environmental friendly process
• Government should be a help, not a hindrance
• Worker’s rights protection & fair pay
• Acceptance to Diversity
• Tolerance

Cold Call Expired FSBO Listings

FSBO (For Sale By Owner) are listed by property owners as they make an attempt to make a deal without the broker. Although it requires more time and effort on their end, they try to save up on the agent's cut, which is fair by all means.

Fortunately for realtors, the FSBO listings don't do well because they lack the selling expertise. When these online listings go unfruitful, they expire after a certain time, and owners do not attempt to revive them.

Cheeky as this may sound, realtors take these opportunities of expired FSBO listings to crack a deal for themselves. You can dig up expired FSBO listings on property advertising websites such as Zillow, FSBO.com, etc.

Contact the owners and offer them help if they still want to sell the property. However, this approach needs to be taken subtly, almost as if you’re only trying to help them free of charge, which, of course, you are not.

If they are holding back on selling now but depict that they could use the money, you could suggest renting and guiding them with some tips. You can also tell them other sites where they have a better chance of selling the property.

A genuine help could make them feel that you can help them better, and it is wiser to spend some money on a realtor than to make another failed attempt. If you feel you are gaining their confidence, that’s when you can mention your services and hope that they take them.

An important thing to remember in this tactic is that at no point should you force your influence. The help you offer should seem genuine, and you need to wait and see if they ask for more.

Incentivized Referrals

People usually act more upon referrals than advertising because they feel more personal and satisfy customers. If you have friends with a loyal customer base or a huge network, you can ask them to refer your services to a customer in need.

However, you can improve your relationship with them or increase benefits and incentivize their referrals. This way, you can ask anyone with a customer base to do the job for you. Such people can include:

• Banks managers who guide people for housing loans, new accounts, etc.
• Funeral homes can refer people wanting to liquidate their homes.
• Marriage counselors to refer your services to newlyweds.
• HR managers of big companies that offer a house.
• Divorce lawyers so the couple can distribute the house value.

These people deal with several people every day, and a commission cut per referral can take your business a long way. You can either offer them a good amount per sale or a small amount per referral whether you make the sale or not.

Moreover, these people benefit more from just a small commission cut. They get to work with their customers on a deeper level that amplifies the relationship.

Business Cards

While business cards are more of a necessity on the surface, you can leverage them to increase your potential leads. Simple business cards are outdated. Get yourself a visually appealing business card.

Try to think out of the box because this is your chance to make an impression through a source you need anyway. However, business cards are also an indicator of your professionalism. You should keep the card design relatable and professional.

A top-notch business card will strike the memory when someone thinks of property, real estate, etc. Besides that, people generally keep the business card in their wallets, unlike brochures or flyers that end up in bins of the random mall they were handed out at.

Invest in Branded Swag

Creating brand swag is easier and highly rewarding for businesses with a following and trendy, such as a clothing brand or restaurant. In comparison, real estate is not a business that can have an equal impact on its customers.

But it is still worth creating a brand identity that is swaggy at some level and will hammer your brand's image into the mind to acquire potential clients.

Distributing free merchandise that the customers can use every day is a good place to start. Mugs, keychains, caps, t-shirts, car covers are a few examples of creating brand swag.

A Word of Warning

There are several other ways realtors use to advertise their business. However, these are the most common and effective ways to grow your real estate business fast.

In the end, we would like to talk about blind advertising. This form of advertising is the one you should refrain from. Blind advertising is when the ad doesn’t contain the name of the estate agent, the broker or the licensing company, the agent’s business address, and the state.

You should disclose these details because the listing belongs to you, even if you do not own the property. Most importantly, blind advertising is illegal in most states.