Category: Marketing Tips

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Marketing Tips

Real estate digital marketing

Realtor utilizing Real Digi Ads for their real estate digital marketing

Paid Search PPC Digital Advertising

When someone performs a search on Google, the search engine scours its index for highly relevant content in the order it thinks will solve the searcher’s query. This is why content is king with Google search. Google uses the Pay Per Click (PPC) model for paid search engine digital advertising (see PPC Advertising on Google Search for more information). With PPC, you only pay when a user clicks on your ad (hence ‘ pay per click’). This method of realtor digital advertising incentivizes search engines only to show the ads to the most relevant audiences. 

A PPC bid (or keyword bid) generally used in Google Ads, is a bid placed in a pay per click auction to ensure ad placement at the top of search results. Advertisers bid on specific keywords or keyword groups in an attempt to acquire ad space for relevant terms related to their business. However, what most advertisers don’t know is that ad placement on Google is not solely based on bids, but quality score too. 

Google’s quality score is determined by the relevance of keywords, ads, and landing pages. Based on your quality score, your realtor digital advertisement on Google may be above other Realtors, and you may even pay a lower Cost Per Click (CPC). It might sound complicated, but it’s actually pretty easy to do.

When you create a new realtor digital advertising campaign with RealDigiAds on Google Search, RealDigiAds has already done most of this for you. For example, if you bid on the keyword “New York City Co-op for Sale,” your ad might show up in the first spot on the Google results page. This is because Google offers advertisers an easy way of putting their business message in front of their target audience. PPC advertising is a great way to build your pipeline of Realtor leads and to promote specific listings because your target audience is searching for what you are advertising.

Digital Display Advertising on Google

Google Digital Display Advertising features display ads on the Google Display Network. Display ads are shown to users across two million-plus websites, Youtube videos, and applications that are a part of the Google Display Network (GDN). The Google Display Network reaches 90% of internet browsers while all other advertising networks combined (i.e., Microsoft Network – Yahoo, MSN, Bing, etc.) make up the remaining 10%. With GDN, Realtors have the option of either selecting specific websites to display theiradsor picking a category to target advertise (this is where Google will place display ads on websites that are the most relevant). Display ads are great for building your brand in your target market as well as promoting specific listings or communities. 

display and search ads sample.png
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Lead Gen Marketing Tips

PPC advertising on Google search

Real Digi Ads makes is very simple to advertise with pay per click on Google

Google uses the pay-per-click advertising model (PPC) for search advertising. When Realtors use RealDigiAds to create PPC advertising campaigns on Google, the actual price they pay for each click in their PPC marketing campaigns is known as cost per click (CPC).

Google is concerned with providing the most relevant content to people that are searching on their search engine. For this reason, your quality score using Google’s rating system correlates to your CPC on Google. It also correlates to how many impressions your ad will receive. Each time your ad is displayed and clicked on, your quality score will improve. Each time your ad is displayed and is not clicked on, your quality score will worsen, resulting in Google displaying your ad less.

Factors to consider on a PPC marketing campaign are your CPC, quality score, click through rate (CTR), conversion rate, and bounce rate. Most of this information can be found on your Google Analytics Account. Google Analytics is a free web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. All you need to do is create a free account and add the Google Analytics tracking code to your website to get this information. We already discussed what CPC advertising is, so let’s learn about the other items.

Google’s quality score is their rating of the quality and relevance of both your keywords and PPC ads. This is calculated based on your ad’s CTR and conversion rate. A Realtors click through rate on a PPC campaign is the average number of click-throughs per one hundred ad impressions, expressed as a percentage. This has to do with whether or not your ad offers what a user is searching for. For example, let’s say a buyer is searching for an ocean view condo in Fort Lauderdale. Keywords the buyer might be searching with are “ocean view condo Fort Lauderdale.” Since that’s included within your keywords for one of your Google Ad campaigns, your ad will be displayed on Google for the buyer to find. Somewhere in the ad should include the words ocean view condo Fort Lauderdale to offer what the user is searching, thus resulting in clicks on your ad.

The next item to consider which is way more important than a click through rate is your conversion rate. The conversion rate is the average number of conversions per visitors (clicks) to your website, shown as a percentage. Ad campaign conversion rates are calculated by taking the number of conversions and dividing that by the number of visitors that can be tracked to a conversion during the same time period. For example, if you have 65 conversions of 1,000 visitors to your website from an ad campaign, your conversion rate would be 6.5%, since 65 ÷ 1,000 = 0.65%. This is most important because conversions are leads. When a visitor converts, that means that the user registered on your website and is now a lead within your pipeline. You’ll have the user’s name, phone number, and email address so you can start calling and marketing to them.

Another important index to watch is your websites bounce rate. A website bounce rate is an internet term used to analyze website traffic. A website bounce rate is the percentage of visitors who enter a site and then leave rather than continuing to view other pages within the same website. A high bounce rate will lower your Google quality score because people coming to your website are not finding the information they are searching fo

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Lead Gen Marketing Tips

Real estate marketing: tips to get more clients

two buyers ready to make their first time home purchase with the help of a real estate agent due to their real estate marketing efforts

As a realtor, you know that being discovered by home buyers and sellers is essential for your business. You’ve probably already established a presence in your local community through direct mail or word of mouth, and now you want to grow your business online. You’re most likely reading this because you are wondering if online marketing is the solution. The answer is YES!

Online marketing for realtors, otherwise known as Real Estate Marketing, is all about building your brand and being found easily online. Studies show that 90% of home buyers use the Internet as a source of information when looking to purchase a new home, 76% of home buyers drive by or set up a viewing for a home they found on the Internet, and 41% of home buyers found their home online first (rather than through an ad or sign). Building your brand means keeping your face and name in front of prospects (both buyers and sellers). Successful realtors cannot be secret agents!

There are three important things to note when building your online presence –– 1) traffic does not equal conversions, you can get 100,000 unique visitors to your site every day and never have a single conversion, 2) a website conversion occurs when a visitor to your website creates a new account (registration), and 3) it’s most important for you as a realtor to contact the prospect immediately. Whether you make contact with the prospect via phone or email is not what matters, all that matters is getting the communication started ASAP and keeping the communication ongoing. The tools you’ll need to be successful in Real Estate Marketing are as follows: a lead capture website, CRM (customer relationship management), and email drip marketing. The trick is not to think of marketing as simply getting leads to your website because campaigns created on RealDigiAds for Google Ads will do that for you. What you do after a prospect converts is even more critical –– drip email campaigns, email blasts about new listings, or incentives you offer, text marketing, newsletters, and video marketing are all crucial for digital Real Estate Marketing.

Sending direct mail to the same areas you’re targeting with your Google Ads campaigns will make all your advertising much stronger. Though direct mail to potential buyers and sellers is an old school method, it still works. Call, call, and keep calling until you reach the prospect. The longer you advertise on Google and continue your Real Estate Marketing efforts, the more you will see an increase in your Real Estate business.

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Lead Gen Marketing Tips

Digital real estate marketing tools for success

A realtor and his client celebrating the sale of the clients home and the use of digital real estate marketing to get successfully get it done

With over 246 million unique visitors, 3.5 billion daily interactions, and an estimated 700% return on investment, it’s no surprise that Google Ads is an increasingly popular advertising option. RealDigiAds was created with all of that in mind — we make it easy to drive qualified traffic to your website using Google Ads.

Once you implement RealDigiAds and prospects come to your site, its essential the content they see is what they are searching for. Today, buyers and sellers use the Internet to research before ever even calling a realtor. With Google being the most prevalent search engine out there, it is a highly effective platform for conducting said research. The best way to find success in your real estate business is to be apart of that research. Google Ads gives you the ability to do that. It’s equally as important to be able to maintain relationships and build your pipeline with prospects to ensure you’ll actually do business. Below are the tools you’ll need to make your pipeline and get the most conversions and sales from your digital marketing campaigns.

Real Estate Internet Data Exchange (IDX) Website
An Internet Data Exchange (IDX) website enables realtors to display the most comprehensive and up-to-date property listing data on their real estate websites. It offers users the option to search for properties in their desired location. Most IDX websites are a direct connection to the Multiple Listing Service (MLS) and are far better than the national Real Estate Websites. Sites like Zillow are updated in days, whereas Realtor IDX websites are updated in minutes. Remember, it’s not enough to just create an IDX website; you’ll need to provide content that the prospect is searching for when they click on your ad to get them to convert (register).

For the best return on investment (ROI), you should create landing pages for each campaign you are running. Landing pages are one of the most effective ways to convert people to new customers. In other words, if you’re running an ad for condos on the ocean in Fort Lauderdale, Florida, your website landing page should focus on condos on the ocean in Fort Lauderdale, Florida. The page should include listings with different price points as well as other related content. Unless you’re receiving millions of visitors a day, forced registration is most important to maximize conversions. i.e. the user may look at 2 listings and when they try to look at a 3rd listing, the website tells them to register to continue.

Customer Relationship Manager (CRM)
A customer relationship management (CRM) software will help you organize contact information and manage your relationships with current and prospective customers. When you drive traffic to your website ongoing, it’s easy to lose track of prospects because you’re continuously getting new leads. Your CRM will give you reminders to call back prospects, keeps track of ongoing conversations, and assist you in building relationships to develop your Real Estate business. Your CRM should be set up to log new prospects to its database automatically. It’s best to get a CRM that is integrated with your website. It’s common for Real Estate Website companies to offer packages that include a website, CRM, and drip email campaigns that are fully integrated.

Email Drip Campaigns
Once a lead on your website converts (registers), the prospect should automatically be added to an email drip campaign. An email drip campaign is a triggered sequence of automated emails sent on a predefined schedule to targeted email subscribers to achieve a specific result. Pre-write your emails in advance for buyers and sellers to maintain contact and give them helpful hints on buying and selling; we recommend having emails set for at least 12 months. Drip campaigns are one of the simplest ways to get more sales for your business. They bring prospects back to your website, which is key to increasing your sales. Remember, the content within your emails must benefit the prospect. In other words, emails should not just be about how great you are as a Realtor. Maybe you highlight unique types of homes in your area or share thoughts from former clients who purchased properties in your market to show what’s special about your area.

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Lead Gen Marketing Tips

Google Ads interface vs RealDigiAds

Real Digi Ads shows the difference between Good Ads platform and the simplicity of Real Digi Ads' platform

Why should Realtors use RealDigiAds to create & manage campaigns on Google instead of going directly to the Google Ads Interface? Simply put; because the Google Ads Interface is very technical and difficult to use. There are plenty of courses online to learn how to use Google Ads but unfortunately, these course will only shorten the learning curve just a little bit.

Realtors also have the option of hiring a Google Ads Management Company. This is an option for maybe the top 1% of Realtors because of the cost. For example, you have a marketing budget for Google Ads of $1,500 per month. In addition to your ad spend (advertising dollars), you will pay a management fee of $500 to $1,000 per month plus 10% to 20% of your ad spend. That will significantly reduce the amount of leads you will potentially receive.

Example: Traditional PPC Management Company: You have an advertising budget of $1,500 per month. You hire a ppc management company to create and manage search marketing campaigns. At the low end, your cost will be $1,500 (ad spend) + $500 (management fee) + $300 (20% of ad spend) for a total of $2,300 per month.

RealDigiAds $1,500 ad spend + $149 subscription fee + $75 processing fee (ad spend X .05) for a total of $1,724. That’s a savings of $576 per month or $6,912 per year.

We recommend that you start your Google Ads campaign with RealDigiAds between $16 – $20 per day. Google guaranty’s to never go over your monthly ad budget. Lets say your budget is $16 per day. A Google month is 30.4 days. Your cost will be as follows: $486.40 ad spend + $24.32 processing fee (ad spend X .05) = $510.72 per month. $510.72 is your monthly budget. The RealDigiAds subscrition fee is as low as $149 a month to do unlimited campaigns. This was unheard of until RealDigiAds.com.

RealDigiAds was built by Realtors for Realtors, and their pre-configured campaigns are proven to get results!

RealDigiAds is the search marketing solution where the majority of your budget is spent on advertising, not management fees.
RealDigiAds is not affiliated with or a partner with Google Ads. RealDigiAds is an independently owned company & is not part of Google.

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Lead Gen Marketing Tips

Social media marketing for Realtors

a group of people outlining the importance of social media marketing as advertising can be reached to many consumer parties

The days of looking in newspapers for real estate are long over. Homebuyers and sellers in the digital era have many options and resources at their disposal when it comes to finding a home. Empowered by the internet, he proliferation of smartphones and other devices, consumers seeking to buy or sell a home can research listings all with the press of a button. In today’s wildly competitive online mediums, there’s no shortage of potential ways to market real estate. Below are some proven methods and ideas for marketing real estate online that will help you find. Starting and ending with getting social on social media!

Social media marketing is the process of using social media channels to promote and advertise your brand and properties. It is an important marketing strategy that helps realtors connect with their audience where they spend a sufficient amount of time. This form of marketing is not as much about leads as it is about building your brand, audience, and reinforcing your other advertising methods. The idea is for your brand to be seen everywhere, from social media to PPC ads on search engines, display ads on the Google Display Network (GDN), and on the postcards you mail. Realtors often use social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter to engage and connect with their customers and prospects. These platforms will allow you to publish content, send messages, respond to comments, and advertise to segmented audiences.

Facebook Business Page – Facebook is the most well known Social Media Website. It has over 2 billion users and is very easy to use and understand. Most companies that have had success with Facebook use the 80/20 rule. 80% of posts are not about the business, and 20% are about the business. Facebook is not about self-promotion but about what’s happening in your community, local events, school information, restaurants, etc. By posting things that benefit the community, a Realtor can become the trusted expert for that community and not just the local Realtor that only cares about making a sale.

Post Photos on Instagram – It’s been said that Instagram may be the best Social Media Platform for Realtors, and it’s easy to understand why. With over 700 million users, it’s not difficult for Realtors to receive a tremendous amount of likes for listing images they post. Research shows that the Instagram “like button” is clicked over 4 billion times a day. There is a lot more engagement on Instagram than any other platform because Instagram is mostly accessed through mobile phones. Remember, more views translate to stronger branding for your Real Estate business.

LinkedIn for Realtors – LinkedIn is the top networking platform for business. With approximately 467 million users, it is relatively small when compared to Facebook’s 2 billion users and Instagram’s 700 Million users. The advantage of LinkedIn is that it provides a marketing system to engage other users via group discussion boards, messaging, and blogging. Realtors should focus on LinkedIn to build their professional reputation online and for increased exposure. Realtors should also be posting listings with photos, sharing links to interesting articles and videos, posting testimonials from previous clients, etc.

Twitter for Realtors – Although it’s not as popular as Facebook, Twitter is a social media platform that realtors should utilize. How you should approach Twitter is very different from the way you approach Facebook or Instagram. In addition to promoting listings on Twitter, there are other types of content worth tweeting. Provide your followers with insights and unique value that will help you generate feedback on your content, gain new followers, build a feeling of community, and help cultivate stronger relationships with your leads. Use this platform to give people advice on how to sell their home with or without a realtor, how to prepare their home before you put it on the market, testimonials from previous clients, sold homes, etc. Promote your value proposition to real estate investors, local companies, and influencers. Tweeting relevant community information is a great way to become more recognizable in your community and reach more buyers and sellers. Use hashtags so people can find, read, and share your tweets. Hashtags should be tailored to your targeted areas, recent and upcoming events, or keywords that your target client may be searching for.

Images and Videos – Sharing images and videos across all of your social media platforms will increase user engagement. It’s been said before, but especially in the age of the internet, it’s always worth repeating: Real estate is a people business…ENGAGE WITH THE PEOPLE!

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Lead Gen Marketing Tips

The critical importance of lead generation for real estate

a house to show the importance of lead generation for the real estate market

If you’re in real estate, leads are vital. The industry is huge, worth $27 trillion according to recent estimates. In an industry this big, standing out from the crowd is critical.

This is where lead generation for real estate can help. If a customer comes to your website and doesn’t find what they need, they won’t be interested in doing business with you. Instead, they’ll bounce off to a competitor and spend money there instead.

Your website needs to be built around giving the client what they want and engaging with the customer. A canny real estate company needs to leverage all of its resources to project an image of professionalism and opportunity to attract customers.

So what are the best real estate lead generation ideas in 2020? What approaches work and what ones are best left by the wayside? In this article, we’ll take a look at the best ways to generate real estate leads and snag customers.

Ready to find out more and boost your business? Then please, keep reading.

Let Your Customers Speak For Themselves
One way to increase lead generation for a real estate business is to leverage the power of social proof. Social proof is a concept in marketing psychology that argues people like to follow the herd: if someone has had a good experience with you, others will more readily come to you. If others have had a bad experience and avoid the business, new prospective customers will too.

You can leverage the power of social proof by posting user reviews and testimonials from satisfied customers on your site. You can also encourage previous customers to leave reviews on Google, Zillow, and other such websites.

As long as you give customers a good experience, letting them speak for themselves gives your marketing a huge boost. It turns every satisfied customer into a representative for your company.

Use Google Ads
If you were looking for a real estate company, where would you go? You’d use a search engine and you’d almost certainly use Google. Google has an overwhelmingly dominant share in the search engine market: 91.89 percent of users search on Google.

Advertising on Google Ads lets you select keywords that, when searched, will present your website at the top of the search results. This means you don’t have to worry about SEO as much and can focus on conversion. RealDigiAds.com is lead generation for real estate made simple on Google.

We’ve put together a case study to demonstrate the usefulness of Google Ads for real estate companies and the results are astounding.

Create a Landing Page That Converts
When a user clicks on your ad, they should come to a landing page on your site that can convert them into customers. What are the essentials of a good landing page?

If you’re hoping to generate leads, your landing page should encourage customers to book an appointment with you. This means optimizing the page to capture emails and phone numbers, so that you can chase up leads and secure sales. Even if you do not make a sale immediately, this type of landing page also lends itself well to email marketing.

You could also use the landing page to show off your authority in real estate. For instance, you could offer a buyer’s guide to prospective customers or show off luxury listings. Don’t let our Google Ads spending go to waste: create a landing page that provides what the prospect was searching for and more real estate leads.

Make Your Business Known in the Community
Becoming a part of your local community isn’t something that you can do online but it does help a real estate agent’s leads a great deal. People prefer to do business with a company that they know rather than one they’ve never heard of.

There are multiple avenues you can go down to improve your business’ community profile. You can:

1.)Sponsor events in the area 2.) Host talks and seminars on business 3.) Volunteering

All of these project the image of a professional body with a human touch. You want to show that you’re a business that cares about people, not only money.

Doing these things will cost money but your service to your community will pay off in time.

Create An Inspiring Website
Real estate lead generation ideas are all well and good but you need to have a website that looks good and functions well, too.

For instance, your site should be set up to handle an IDX. An IDX pulls data on houses from your database and displays them on your website, which means you don’t need to create a new listing for each one manually.

You should also be sure to display relevant and interesting information about your inventory, in addition to lead capture strategies. For instance, your site should ask users to sign up for a newsletter. This gives you an email address which you can use to follow-up with.

Take Inspiration From Your Competition
Are your competitors creating more leads and doing more business than you? Then it’s time to take a look at what they’re doing and figure out how to do it yourself.

There is a wide range of marketing tools that let you analyze competitor sites and find out what they’re doing and whether it’s working. You can then put similar strategies into place yourself.

Lead Generation For Real Estate: The Best Way
We’ve covered lots of different real estate lead generation ideas in this guide, but the best way to do it is to buy ads on Google through RealDigiAds.com. RealDigiAds.com makes advertising on Google easy because Realtor campaigns have been pre-configured for you so all you need to do is add your target market and daily advertising budget. When you buy ads on Google, you don’t need to worry about SEO or what your competitors are doing as much. You can leapfrog them and get to the top of the search results with ease.

It really is lead generation for real estate made easy. We hear you ask: “how can I buy these ads?” That’s where RealDigiAds comes in. We’re experts in lead generation for real estate and designed a platform to help you buy ads that will work for your business. For more information take a look at our pricing page and get in touch!