5 years ago, marketing experts thought that social media was a teenage phase that would just blow over. They couldn’t have been more wrong.
Standing at over 3 billion users to date, social media has become one of the biggest – and most influential – weapons in any real estate agency’s arsenal. So, if you want to find out how you can use social media, look no further. We’ve prepared this article to show you just that.
1) Develop insights into your customer’s behaviour
As social media platforms have evolved, so has the value they present to businesses. Behind the 500 million daily tweets and 4.5 billion daily Facebook likes, there’s a whole lot of data for your business to sink its teeth into.
Social media can provide your agency with a wealth of information about your target audience – everything from the neighbourhood they live in to when they last shopped on Amazon. This presents you with an immense power to target your campaigns specifically to who you want to reach.
2) Build your brand authority
Having your agency on social media will make it easier for your audience to connect with you. Remember – in real estate, everyone is a potential client. By building a presence on social media, you’ll help to increase the authority your brand has in the industry.
Coupled with a content marketing strategy, when the time comes for them to move property, your audience will be that much more likely to trust your services and go with you.
3) Execute powerful social media advertisements
Gone are the days of billboard advertising. Social media ads are a cost-effective means of getting your brand out there and distributing valuable content to your audience.
As mentioned in the first point, you can increase your ROI by targeting exactly who you want to reach. For example, if you’ve had an influx of houses for sale in Sydney, target people over the age of 30 who live in the surrounding suburbs. If your ad isn’t getting the results you want it to, you’ll know about it immediately and can chop and change it in real-time.
4) Boost your conversion rates
By keeping in regular contact with your audience, you’re going to strengthen your brand authority and build the relationship that they share with you. It also provides a window for delivering great customer service, too.
You shouldn’t underestimate the effect that building relationships on social media has. One study in 2015 found that over 70% of companies using social media reported an increase in sales within 12 months.
5) Deliver a memorable customer experience
In the digital age, the majority of your customers will expect you to be on social media. The primary reason for this – support services. A Social Media Benchmark study found that over 67% of customers seek customer support via social media.
If you’re not there to answer their queries in a timely fashion, the majority of your customers are going to have unresolved issues. This, in turn, can lead to loss of repeat business.
6) Boost online traffic and search rankings
Arguably, the biggest benefit of social media is its ability to drive serious web traffic. By sharing web-hosted content on your social media profiles, you can channel your audience to web pages of your choosing. From there, you can capture their information with sign-up forms and build a list for your email campaigns.
The benefit doesn’t stop with web traffic. If your posts get shared by your audience, Google’s going to take it into account. These are known as social signals and, if you can generate them, you’ll be rewarded with higher search rankings.
7) Target your posts by geographical location
One of the biggest issues real estate agencies have on social media is segmenting their content. Sure, some of your audience might be interested in properties in Melbourne, but it’s likely that the majority of them are going to live within 80 kms of the area.
By targeting your posts to precise geographical locations, you can ensure that you’re reaching the relevant audience. Some social media tools can even automate this process for you, allowing you to target certain posts to specific countries automatically.
8) Create and develop relationships
Social media isn’t all about the sales pitch – in fact, it’s a relatively bad channel to try and sell anything directly. It does, however, present a fantastic opportunity to communicate with your audience in a social, informal setting.
Building a social media presence for your real estate agency gives you the chance to speak with customers before, during and after their experience with your brand. It also gives them a podium to share their experiences with their personal networks.
This isn’t all. Social media has a huge amount of benefits for your real estate agency waiting to be discovered. Create your accounts and start boosting your online business today.