The decision to buy a home is one of the most important anyone will make throughout their lifetime.
It’s also among the most complicated, so people naturally want to make sure they do everything right.
Some may already have a go-to real estate agent to turn to for help, but those who don’t will undoubtedly hop online and search for the information they need.
Now imagine your company website is filled with top-tier content that addresses all of the concerns a prospective homeowner might have.
You’ll likely earn yourself some new customers, not to mention setting yourself up as an absolute authority in your industry.
That’s the magic of world-class content marketing at work.
It’s also a great example of why SEO and content creation are essential concerns for businesses across every industry, including real estate.
Here’s a look at everything you need to know to launch a real estate content marketing campaign that yields results.
What is Real Estate Content Marketing?
Every business has something to sell, something it’s looking to convince consumers they absolutely need if they’re serious about living the life they want.
Yes, the actual properties are a huge part of the equation when you’re in real estate, but any real estate expert knows they’re selling so much more than that.
After all, a house is more than just a place to hang your hat at the end of the day.
It’s tangible proof that a person has officially become an adult and is truly ready for everything that comes next, including a family and ongoing financial security.
That means a successful realtor isn’t just a salesman, nor is he just selling homes. He’s selling people opportunities to make all their most cherished dreams come true.
Real estate content marketing successfully leverages classic digital marketing techniques to sell the dream of homeownership.
It means using classic copywriting, blogging, social media, and content creation techniques to give prospective homeowners the information they need to make a solid decision (as well as choose your company to help them make it happen).
Why Does Real Estate Content Marketing Matter?
Choosing a realtor to help you find the right home for you used to be a lot simpler than it is now.
If you were lucky, you knew a relative or a friend of a friend who could recommend someone. Otherwise, you simply picked someone from the yellow pages, a television commercial, or perhaps a billboard.
Then the internet came along and changed everything.
Although many people still turn to people they trust for recommendations, like friends and family, you’re no longer limited to sources you already know.
Instead, you’re never more than a few keystrokes away from an enormous amount of helpful information. But the more choices someone has, the more confusing coming to an actual decision can become.
That’s where real estate content marketing comes in.
Great content has the power to convince someone with no personal connection to you to trust you with the process of getting them into their dream home.
It accomplishes this by:
- Establishing and nurturing trust.
- Driving organic traffic via SEO.
- Supporting your company’s social media presence.
- Setting you and your company up as industry authorities.
7 Must-Know Tips for Creating a Killer Real Estate Content Marketing Strategy
Excellent content marketing for those in the real estate sector doesn’t stop at peddling perks like low-interest rates, impressive selection, and so forth.
Yes, it’s great to make people aware of those things, but they’re not enough on their own to generate leads.
Here are a few killer pointers for helping your company’s strategy stand out and deliver the results you’re looking for.
1. Add an active blog to your company website
Blogging is the cornerstone of any solid content marketing strategy. So if your real estate website doesn’t already have a blog, start one.
Search engines are all about sites that feature steady streams of fresh, high-quality content, and a consistently updated blog is a great way to deliver that.
Plus, your blog will be the key to attracting potential customers to your company and convincing them to trust you instead of one of your competitors.
Great content for your blog is:
- Meaningful, informative, and valuable.
- Relevant to those in a specific locale, as real estate is a local service.
- Written with different demographics in mind, as not all readers will be the same.
Use your blog to answer questions your potential clients might have, share client success stories, or highlight desirable properties in your area.
Let people know what to expect from the buying process, and explain how you can help make the process easier for them.
Your blog is your chance to win people over and increase your company’s curb appeal, so make the most of it.
2. Prioritize your website’s user experience
Although the quality of your content is vitally important when it comes to real estate content marketing, the way you present that content is essential, too.
A great website design that’s attractive, well-organized, and easy to use makes a visitor want to stay awhile and see what you have to offer.
It also conveys the powerful message that your company is competent, helpful, capable, and trustworthy.
Amazing website designs that deliver results:
- Are clean and straightforward with no distracting or unnecessary elements.
- Are easy to navigate thanks to readable fonts and intuitive labeling.
- Offer easy sharing options, including the ability to share privately instead of publically.
- Include a seamless search function that makes browsing easy.
- Serve up additional content based on what the visitor may want to read next.
3. Leverage the power of visuals
Visuals are important for any type of online content, but they’re critical when you’re in the real estate industry.
Poor-quality photos or badly shot videos can be all it takes to turn a prospective buyer off a particular property. Visuals that really make the grade should be a top priority.
Make your customer’s visual nature work in your favor with lush staging, high-res photography, and professionally shot video that helps them picture themselves living in that space.
Incorporate strong visuals into your online content, as well, with options like infographics, interactive photo carousels, videos, and so forth.
4. Invite visitors to subscribe to your content
Let’s say a particular person visits your website or blog and finds that it’s precisely the resource they were looking for.
You want to make it as easy as possible for them to come back and see what’s new in the future instead of requiring them to physically type your URL into their browser every time.
Offer people attractive options for keeping up with you in the future.
Make it easy for them to sign up for email updates or subscribe to your RSS feed. Display your social media follow buttons where they’re easy to see.
You may want to consider offering a newsletter option for prospective homebuyers, as well.
5. Include success stories in your narrative
Social proof is a powerful motivator for decision-making, especially when someone’s on the fence about a critical choice.
Offline, that social proof often comes in the form of word-of-mouth recommendations from trusted friends and loved ones.
But online, glowing testimonials from satisfied customers can be just as powerful.
Incorporate video testimonials, quotes from happy customers, and compelling success stories into your marketing efforts.
They help convince people with no personal connection to you that you know what you’re talking about and can help make their dreams come true, too.
6. Include app integration
While some prospective homeowners may browse for properties via a realtor’s website, many turn to non-domain platforms like Zillow, Trulia, Craigslist, and similar options instead.
Platforms like these are popular and well-known, meaning people trust them.
They also feature perks like advanced filtering and targeted searches to help people focus on picks that meet their needs.
Integrating with apps and platforms like these and keeping your associated listings up to date is a crucial part of staying ahead of the real estate marketing game.
Make sure your contact info is up to date and calls to action are easy to respond to, as well. Once someone’s ready to buy, they should ideally be able to get in touch with you via a single click.
7. Mix evergreen content with timely updates
While posting content that addresses hot industry topics and timely concerns your clients may have is definitely important, amazing evergreen content is crucial, as well.
Some questions and pain points a would-be property owner faces will likely be just as relevant down the line as they are right now, so you’ll want to address those.
Think sales sheets, evergreen in-depth blog articles, and appealing infographics that answer many questions at a glance.
Pieces like these have staying power and will help you build organic authority over time. They also offer near-endless options for future content repurposing.
Content Ideas for Real Estate Businesses
Real estate is a that everyone is blogging about, from realtors to financial websites to wannabe investors. If you’ve ever read or written anything even remotely related to real estate, you’ve probably seen hundreds of ways to add curb appeal to a home. That’s because curb appeal is essentially making your home stand out from all the others on the block.
The same principles apply to your real estate blog. To stand out from other agencies in your area, you’ll have to give your website a little curb appeal.
Good Ideas
There’s a reason you can find thousands of posts titled “6 Things First-Time Homebuyers Need to Know” or “3 Ways to Get Your House Ready for Sale.”
Most people, at some point in their lives, will consider buying or selling a home. They need to know these things before they jump in.
But are these the best topics for your blog? Your readers have most likely already read six different iterations of these posts before they ever landed on your website. It doesn’t mean that you should skip these topics altogether, but if you make them the primary focus of the blog, your blog will blend in with thousands of others.
Better Ideas
For the sake of being unique, it helps to narrow your scope a little bit. While everyone and his brother has written “How to Know You’re Getting a Deal on a Home,” not everyone has written about the stuff that is relevant to your area. Think news, market information, and statistical data.
Are big businesses bringing new jobs to the area? Tire-kickers just might turn into buyers if they know it’ll be easy to land a great job.
What is your market up to? Blog about how the builder’s market is hot or how commercial properties are a wonderful investment right now.
Does your area have outrageously high median incomes or some other excellent statistic? Feel free to brag about it!
Posts like this make great content, but they’re still not the best ideas because they’re very timely in nature. Sprinkle a few posts like this into your blog, but keep in mind that statistics change, markets fluctuate and those new businesses can close their doors as easily as they opened them.
Best Ideas
Along the path toward buying a home, most people run up against seemingly insurmountable obstacles. For instance, how does one buy a fixer-upper if it’s not listed as a Fannie Mae HomePath property? The average homebuyer has never heard of products like the FHA 203k Rehabilitation loan. Use your blog to answer tough questions, like:
- What should you do when a bank appraisal goes sour?
- What permits does your neighborhood require before building a new home?
- What is a fire protection class and how does it affect homeowners insurance?
These seem like niche topics, but there are thousands of people asking questions like this every day.
Think of your real estate website content in the same way you’d think of an investment property. If you just slap a coat of neutral paint on it and put it on the market, your blog will look like the rest in your neighborhood. You’ll need to invest time, money, and effort into it to see big returns.
Content Marketing Trends in the Real Estate Industry
Nurture Your Ideal Buyer
The very first step every real estate marketer must take is to identify their ideal buyer. Content marketing for the real estate industry allows marketers to target a very specific subset of buyers. And, this is how to distinguish yourself and get the largest ROI possible for your marketing efforts. Don’t look for buyers in a specific city. Instead, target:
- Buyers in specific neighborhoods
- Ages of buyers
- Lifestyle of buyers
- Demands of buyers
- Needs of buyers
Tailor your marketing based on who this buyer is and what they want. Getting to know your individual neighborhood helps here.
Tapping Tech: How Content and Tech Link
You’ve heard about it, you’ve thought about it, and you know you need to invest in it: technology. Technology is an incredibly valuable and even a must-use tool in real estate marketing today.
Buyers want to see, visualize, and understand what their options are right from their smartphones. Link this technology to your real estate marketing efforts. Here’s a closer look.
Grab Their Attention by Streaming Video
People love live video. Real estate agents can capture this addiction by broadcasting live. For example, perhaps you are just listing a home for sale. You’re excited and energized. This is the perfect time to stream live.
Do a virtual tour with your smartphone camera. Ask and answer questions in real-time.
This allows you to have content for your marketing effort. You can capture your buyers’ attention immediately and then use this video for a blog post and social media content later on. Supplement it with property descriptions or insightful documents on the neighborhood.
Go Sky-high with Drone Footage
Drone footage is perhaps one of the most diverse new tech solutions available, and it should be a part of your content marketing strategy. How do you make it work?
Link with a local drone video company. Most areas have plenty. Have a high-quality drone flyover completed.
Use the video as an attention-grabbing component in your next social media campaign.
Build a content marketing strategy around the drone footage. Teach your buyers about the region, schools, and current neighborhood opportunities.
Send insightful emails with an embedded link to the drone footage to your email list.
Make It Real with Virtual Reality
Realty Times notes the importance of modern virtual reality in the real estate industry. Next-generation tech in VR is creating opportunities for home buyers to step into a would-be home and get an idea about the way it feels.
Take this to a new level in your next campaign. Instead of just showcasing a current listing, why not build a content marketing strategy around it? For example, work with a VR company to develop a video that lets people test out various floor plans. Let them visualize rooms in different colors or layouts.
This type of hands-on tech will allow you to pull people in from your marketing to your website. It builds your brand as innovative. And, it helps you sell. Couple VR videos with how-to articles or even comprehensive e-books on color choices or home-building methods.
Automation Keeps You Fresh
A final innovative component to your efforts has to be automation. You’ll develop various content pieces you want your readers to, well, read. To make it possible for them to engage with you, you simply must automate and customize. Here are some tips:
Use software to customize names and details within emails to ensure your readers know you are talking specifically to them.
Use artificial intelligence services to develop chatbots for your website. This lets someone ask questions about a listing at 3 a.m. if they want to do so.
Always automate solutions through email. This includes giving them automatic access to how-to guides, eBooks, and MLS listing breakdowns.
Hyperlocal Content for Real Estate Bloggers
Sometimes it feels like you need a personal assistant to keep up with Google’s updates in order to stay on top of the SEO game. The most recent changes favor high-quality, informative content over repetitious keywords.
How can real estate blog writers still get their local keywords in without being repetitive and provide something useful to buyers? Hyperlocal content is the key.
What is Hyperlocal Content?
While local content talks about a city or general area, hyperlocal content drills down even further by focusing on individual neighborhoods within a city, sometimes an area as small as a few city blocks.
For real estate blog writers, this means taking a street-level view of the neighborhood you’re writing about and telling its story from the inside out. The idea is to help home buyers see what it’s like to be someone who lives there by taking them on a tour, one piece of content at a time.
What makes hyperlocal content so perfect for real estate blogs is that it is naturally rich in just the right keywords while still being fresh, unique, and a source of real information that will attract the right audience. Your local keywords will slide in as smoothly as silk to give you a boost with Google and help your readers get great information.
You’ll also notice that once you get rolling, hyperlocal content is a never-ending well of material: there’s always a new restaurant opening, a seasonal festival approaching, or a bit of local news that can be covered. You’ll never run out of blog topics!
How to Write About Hyperlocal Content
Creating hyperlocal content can be super simple if you break it down into easy-to-find categories:
Places to Eat & Drink
Writing up an overview of the new Mexican restaurant or a roundup of the three Chinese restaurants that deliver can provide dozens of posts for your neighborhood. Websites that show reviews from customers (Yelp, Google, Trip Advisor) can help you get an idea of which places the locals really like and which dishes and drinks they’re enjoying.
Current Events
Subscribing to the neighborhood newsletter and checking on park district websites will give you an idea of what’s going on in the area. Will there be a block party over Labor Day weekend? Will the bank be handing out their customary lollipops during the Independence Day parade?
School News
Has the high school football team captured the state title? Has a student from the elementary school won the national spelling bee? Will a local teacher be given national recognition? This is also a great place to bring in a few words about the excellent schools in your neighborhood — something most home buyers want to know about.
Local Economy
While the national economy has its ups and downs, how is the local neighborhood doing? Is it booming? Does the local chamber of commerce foster a welcoming environment for small business owners? Do they promote shopping locally? Show readers why this neighborhood is a great place to live and work.
Best Practices to Write Real Estate Copy
Pictures may speak a thousand words, but if the copy associated with your properties falls flat, interest will too. As important to the real estate visualization process as proper staging, the correct real estate copywriter will mentally move your clients in before the lease is even on the table.
Real estate as an industry tends to focus on facts – square footage, assessed property value, school district, and so on. While buyers do need to have this information, without the proper copy, it can be difficult for a browsing client to differentiate one split level from the next.
A Reliable Hook
Listings are often networked across property sites and listing services, but these can arrange and present information very differently. If your listing ends up on a site that requires browsers to click through for more information, the carefully arranged property pictures you’re using might never reach a buyer’s eyes.
If, however, you’ve hired a writer to spin up a unique and engaging blurb, you can count on the clicks you need. A professional copywriter will make each property stand out amidst a sea of flat, figure-based descriptions that don’t encourage further engagement on the part of buyers.
A Fresh Coat
Agents know that small details can make all the difference when it comes to coaxing out an offer. Issues such as peeling paint in a master bedroom can distract a potential buyer from the more flattering features of a given property.
A solid description gives the same benefits as a fresh coat of paint – it covers minor imperfections and provides a smooth overall impression instead of a collection of questionable traits. In addition, a coat of paint only works for a single property at a time, but your new writer’s talent can follow you to many properties at once.
More Clients for You
Great descriptions for properties are only the beginning of what a solid writer can do for you. If you keep a personal site or professional page, you’ll need welcome text that highlights your strengths and convinces clients to trust you with their property listings.
You owe it to your career to give those clients the most compelling welcome mat that words can achieve, and your writer can help you set it up. After all, a simple list of your certifications won’t do much to set you apart from your listing competitors.
A Boost in Sales
Increased exposure through well-written descriptions will help move your listings faster, a huge benefit when the market slumps. You know all too well the difficulties of properties that stay on the market for years, so making the best impression possible from the start is important.
Don’t wait until your clients start talking about shifting real estate agents to put your best foot forward; you can turn a simple carport into a castle fit for a king with the right wordsmith in your corner.
Remember: descriptions and real estate listings go hand-in-hand, so be sure you’re prepared to excel in both.
What to Look For in a Real Estate Writer?
When looking for an expert real estate writer, you will want someone who has a strong background in real estate. This person may have at one time been a real estate agent or even hold a current real estate license.
You can check to see if they have a current license by heading on over to The ARELLO.COM International Licensee Verification Database system. If they have a real estate license, you will be able to find out about their experience and knowledge of the industry.
Your desired writer should also be able to write about a number of real estate topics. Some topics may include real estate investing, web copy, sales, preparation for home sales, and financial-related content pieces.
The real estate market is an ever-changing environment that demands that writers and agents stay knowledgeable by attending seminars and constantly reading.
Take a look at some of their writing samples to see if any of them fit the style that you are looking for. They should be able to mix their knowledge of the industry with correct grammar.
You can find specialized real estate writers in the WriterAccess marketplace for freelance writers. All writers are vetted and you can match with the perfect writer for your project. Try it right now for free!
Wrap-Up: Take Your Real Estate Marketing Plans to the Next Level
Now that you know why real estate content marketing is important and how to cultivate a terrific campaign, it’s time to take the next step.
Our content marketing maturity assessment can help you identify areas where you’re excelling, as well as ways you can do even better.
Get started today!
