It’s common for real estate investment businesses to start out using only one or two marketing channels, particularly social media (namely, Facebook).
While it is free to post there, and the ability to share outside information to say “Hey, we are here to help” is easy, relying on one or two channels of marketing can be dangerous.
Not diversifying your strategy can leave your business in an uncomfortable spot if anything goes wrong. For instance, Facebook deleted one of our accounts shortly after we started gaining traction on the platform. Why? Simply put, one of our posts had something that triggered their algorithm to say it was spam.
This kicked off a three-week effort to prove otherwise to Facebook. In the meantime, anything that had our website link, calendar link, or even mentioned anything about our company would not be posted. It simply was deleted by Facebook as soon as we hit that post button.
Thankfully, Facebook was not our only means of marketing. We have a diversified marketing approach that allowed us to move forward without worry. Not to mention, when you diversify your marketing efforts, you will be less prone to panic if Instagram changes its algorithm or Facebook decides to change its policy.
So how can we as real estate investors diversify our marketing strategy?
1) Focus on your email list
Email marketing is the best way to build relationships and turn those lukewarm leads into loyal raving fans of your business. According to the Harvard Business Review, working professionals check their email an average of 15 times per day, or every 37 minutes. Since anyone who joins your email list must have had some interest in your business when they signed up, we know this is a warm lead. Periodically popping up as a name in their inbox guarantees that they will remember that you exist, even when they don’t open the email.
Use emails to share engaging content and special deals with your leads. Email marketing is a great medium to connect your highly engaged audience with first access to exciting new services you offer and even gifting ideas for every holiday. Providing tips for how they can sell their home quickly, or the major updates new home buyers are looking for, is a great way to showcase your knowledge and continue to position your company as the expert in the area.
When it comes to growing your email list, you need to be strategic. Gone are the days of asking people outright to sign up for your newsletter. Instead, offer individuals something of value in exchange for their email, such as a useful checklist or workbook, or a special report that will help in their decision- making process. Once you get them on board, engage them with relevant, valuable content. It can be tempting to send out “WE BUY HOUSES – GET A CASH OFFER TODAY” but keep those emails to a minimum. Instead, put yourself in the customer’s shoes: Why will they want to open your email, and what about it will make them want to open the next one? Your goal is to get subscribers who do want to hear from you, and then delight them with content that gets them excited.
2) Own your content on your website
If you have been focused on Facebook marketing for a while, you have probably produced a number of posts there. That content is yours. You did the work to make it, and now it is time to repurpose it to bulk up your website.
Consider taking posts that you have shared on social media and reconfiguring them as articles on a blog on your website. This way, regardless of what happens to external platforms like Facebook, your own site will continue to be the main hub for everything that your business wants to share.
The long-term benefit of creating original content on your site is that it will improve your Google search ranking, making it easier for potential buyers and sellers to find you when they start hunting for what they’re looking for online. Since real estate investment companies will have a hard time ranking highly for broad search terms like “we buy houses,” your best strategy is to create content based on specific ideas and tailored for a specific audience. Think about your company’s specialties, whether pre-foreclosure or short sale, maybe you focus on vacant landlord rentals. When your content is specific, not only will you show up higher in search results, but anyone who finds you when searching that topic will likely be motivated to stick around on your site since it’s highly relevant to them.
3) Build a long-term strategy for organic traffic
Referral traffic (both from social media and Google ads) is great, but you are limiting yourself if you aren’t going after organic search traffic.
Building a robust content strategy is a longer-term plan that typically won’t deliver immediate sales. But, as the amount of relevant, quality content on your site increases, so will your organic search rankings. This will, over time, provide you with a steady stream of incoming traffic from potential sellers and buyers who are searching for answers to their questions when it comes to their real estate needs.
Begin creating content that answers the common questions and assists your ideal client in their research.
As you add more marketing channels to your strategy, think about how they can feed one another, working together to convert leads into deals. Having a central point for collecting and reporting will make all the difference. Many seasoned real estate investors layer on numerous marketing channels but fail to connect all the data.
As you create valuable pieces of content and your organic traffic increases, you can serve more people. The more content you create, the more assets you have to share on social media, boosting referral traffic and potentially earning you more backlinks as people share your content.
By having a diversified and strategic marketing approach, you are giving your potential leads the opportunity to get to know you, understand how you can help them, and ultimately build trust that you know what you are doing.
With the changing economic climate, real estate investors have a great opportunity. The question is, will your prospects know that you are an option for them?
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