How to Create a Real Estate Email Marketing Strategy

When Brandon Stewart made the leap from architecture to real estate, he knew he’d have to market his real estate agency just as much as the properties he was trying to sell.

“For realtors, it’s important to stay in touch with people and to remind them on a regular basis of what it is that you do. When the time comes that they actually need your services, you’ll hopefully be the first person they think of because of your consistent marketing,” Brandon says.


In 2009, Brandon decided to make email marketing part of his real estate marketing strategy.

Using Constant Contact, Brandon started creating a monthly newsletter, and began sending it to existing clients. He quickly found that by providing helpful resources to current clients, he was able to reach an entirely new audience, as well.

“I realized that if I put content in the newsletter that is really popular, people would share it. That’s been invaluable,” Brandon says. “They share it on Facebook or pass it along to their friends, and then their friends ask to subscribe. Every time I send out a newsletter, I’ll get new
subscribers back.”

• Tip: You can try email marketing for your real estate agency with a free, 60-day email marketing trial.

With Constant Contact, Brandon can easily insert images and include links to articles he thinks his audience will be interested in.

He is able to upload his own images and save time by sharing helpful information from other reliable resources.

“Much of my content comes from blogs or other sources, and I of course give total credit to the original source,” Brandon explains. “It saves me a lot of time because I don’t need to create new content on a monthly basis when there are already so many insightful and diverse blogs creating compelling content every day.”

•  Tip: Constant Contact’s “Read More” tool allows you to drag-and-drop content into your email easily. After you copy and paste the article URL, we’ll generate a preview of the content, complete with an image, headline, first few lines of text, and citation. See how it works here.

In a competitive market, Brandon’s newsletters set him apart and allow him to show off his industry expertise.

After sending his Mid-Century Modern Newsletter for almost eight years, Brandon has become known as a trustworthy expert in his field.

“The emails are an important reinforcement of brand,” Brandon explains. “I get calls from people I’ve never met all the time. They get the newsletter, or a friend of theirs gets the newsletter, and they know I’m the person to call. It really helps establish credibility upfront.”

To promote the visibility of his newsletters, Brandon takes advantage of Constant Contact’s Social Share feature to easily share each email on his Facebook Page. 

Recently, Brandon has also started using Facebook Ads to get his newsletters in front of an even wider audience.

Brandon targets his ad to reach a local audience and gains valuable email subscribers with each campaign.

“It’s great to get new Likes on my Facebook page, but I’ve found they’re not as important as email subscribers because they don’t ensure you’ll reach the people who like your page.” Brandon says.

While Facebook uses an algorithm to limit the number of people who see your posts, email gives you more control over who you’re reaching. When a new contact opts into your mailing list, you can reach them in a place they likely visit every day — the inbox.

By consistently sharing engaging newsletters, Brandon has built a growing, loyal community.

What started as a list of about 300 people has grown to over 3,000 subscribers. And with open rates reaching double the industry average, it’s clear Brandon is offering his subscribers something of value, while also allowing them to get to know, like, and trust him.

“Through my newsletters I’m able to bring something completely different to the real estate market,” he explains. “Most realtors only focus on sales numbers and how prices have decreased on increased throughout the year. I’m able to bring content with significance beyond just the numbers.”


Constant Contact has the tools you need to make your business stand out, attract new customers, and develop long-lasting customer relationships.
 
If you’re looking to drive awareness and sales for your real estate agency, email marketing can help. Visit our Email Marketing for Real Estate Pages for tips, content ideas, and advice.

Source: blogs.constantcontact.com

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Social Media Advertising vs. Traditional PPC

 

Advertising on the internet is a wonderful way to reach an audience that you would not have otherwise. Paid search and social media ads have come along way over the years and are now great tools to have in your overall search marketing efforts. While some people think of them as opposites or competitors, this isn’t true. They are separate entities that do different things and should be treated as such. So, which one is better and which one should you use? Find out.

Traditional PPC

For this article, I will be referring to Google AdWords as traditional, or paid, search. In today’s industry, Google AdWords is the largest and most popular advertising platform and has become interchangeable with paid search. There are more than 3.5 billion searches on Google (NASDAQ:GOOGL) every single day.

Traditional PPC refers to using keywords to target users and then bidding on text advertisements to serve to them. Advertisers that run PPC campaigns will bid on the specific keywords that they want and when a user searches for said keyword, their ads will be displayed with the results on Google. If a user then clicks on their ad, they are charged for the ad.

While that is a very simple description, PPC is very complex and takes a lot of knowledge and expertise to really execute successfully. But what it comes down to is finding your target customers that you otherwise wouldn’t have based on their search queries and keywords. This is a goldmine for advertisers and help so many companies find their customers.

In Google AdWords, there are two main networks — the search network and the Google Display Network, or GDN. The search network is probably what you think of when you think of Google ads. They are the ads that show up on the top (or previously the side) of the results and they cover the whole search engine. On the other hand, Google Display Network, offers more visual ads, such as the banner ads that you will see at the very top of the page on Google. This gives advertisers the ability to give more visual ads and helps companies that want to work on goals that aren’t as conversion driven as text PPC ads.

Even though visual ads are more prominent on the Display Network, Google does have a wide range of formats for their PPC ads on the search network. They are still text based, but there are features that you can use to make your ads more attractive, like ad extensions, reviews, shopping ads, targeting, and more. Google is also constantly working on their formats, so expect even more variations in the future.

One of the biggest advantages of traditional PPC is the immense audience that you can reach with these ads. Google has more than 40,000 search queries every second. Over one year, Google has more than 1.2 trillion web searches. And that’s just data from right now. Google is just going to continue to grow thanks to their incredible advances and changes. They are constantly striving for the ultimate user experience, and in turn, their users increase all the time.

Since we have covered one of the biggest advantages of traditional PPC, let’s also cover one of the biggest misconceptions. A lot of people think that it isn’t for them because they don’t have a huge budget to compete. It’s not true that whoever has the highest budget wins. Instead, Google tries to focus on the relevance and the quality of the ad, not just the spend. However, with that said, there are keywords that just cost more than others. But don’t let that deter you from trying PPC ads out to see if they are worth the investment for your ROI.

Social PPC 

There are a lot of different social media sites that you can use and that you can advertise on. However, like for traditional PPC, I am going to focus on one for the sake of this article: Facebook ((NASDAQ:FB). Facebook has the highest number of users of any social media network and has the most complex and rewarding advertising platform.

Social PPC, also known as paid social, is when you advertise either your company as a whole, or your content on a social network. It can be similar to AdWords. Both promote your company, but there are differences. Instead of focusing on keywords and queries, you focus much more on people and this lets people find you.

With over 1.55 billion monthly users — the equivalent of more than 1/5 of the world’s population — Facebook has no rival when it comes to its reach or its ability to target its users. This really boils down to how much people really share on the site. People tell you their life story — if they are married, what their job is, where they live, their beliefs, etc. This gives advertisers so much information that is not available anywhere else.

My favorite part of advertising on Facebook is its feature, Lookalike audiences. With a Lookalike audience, you can upload any customer information that you have, and Facebook will match that data to a profile. Then, it will take those profiles and match them with other users, which gives you double the users that you can reach with your advertisements.

While there are so many great features and aspects of Facebook advertising, perhaps the greatest thing is the incredible ROI that you can get from the platform. Ads on Facebook are very affordable and are great for small businesses and other companies that don’t want to spend a ton to reach people.

Facebook Ads vs Google Ads: Which One is Better?

It’s hard to effectively say which one is better for your business. My personal opinion is that they both are very powerful advertising platforms that you should be utilizing. They are not the same thing and you can’t think of them as such. You should use both if you really want to push your company to as many people as possible.


Image credit: Shutterstock
Source: www.smallbiztrends.com 

ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business networking association dedicated to helping small businesses and entrepreneurs develop, expand and grow. We offer affordable opportunities to help create a positive impact and advancement in your business interests and personal quality of life to take you to the next level.
Stay Connected with WNFP!

10 Small But Small Essential Ways to Boost Your Business

Giving your business a boost doesn’t have to be difficult or incredibly time consuming. In fact, there are some essential elements of building successful businesses that can sometimes get overlooked. These suggestions from members of our small business community include some small but important things you can do to boost your business right away.

Include These Essential Features of a Small Business Website

Your small business website serves as the online face of your business. And it can also provide any number of important functions. While each small business website should be different, there are some essential elements that can make them great, like the ones outlined in this post on Techlofy by Prince Kumar.

Entice Customers to Binge Watch Your Product Videos

Videos can really enhance your product pages with additional information, views and storytelling elements. But for them to really work, you need to get customers to actually watch them. This post on the Kissmetrics blog by Shayla Price includes some tips for getting people to binge watch your product videos.

Find a Fundable Startup Market Opportunity

There’s a lot that goes into finding a great startup opportunity. But one of the essential elements of any idea is its ability to get funded. Martin Zwilling of Startup Professionals Musings explains more in this post about finding fundable startup opportunities. And BizSugar members discuss the post further here.

Use a Digital Marketing Strategy to Increase Marketing Impact

A digital marketing strategy can help you keep all of your online and mobile marketing goals organized so that you’ll be better equipped to actually reach them. For that reason, Erik Newton of the BrightEdge blog suggests that using a digital marketing strategy can increase your marketing impact overall.

Achieve the Ideal State of Marketing

Marketing is an essential part of running any successful business. The actual activities that go into marketing can vary from business to business. But there are some elements you can include to find the ideal state of marketing for your business. Scott Rayden discusses the idea in this Marketing Land post.

Get Mind-Blowing Traffic From Pinterest

Pinterest has been steadily gaining popularity among consumers for a few years now. And that popularity means that it can be a great tool for businesses looking to attract online consumers. This Mostly Blogging post by Janice Wald includes some thoughts on the potential power of Pinterest. 

And the BizSugar community also weighs in here.

Learn How to Write Effective Web Content

Communicating with your customers online is becoming increasingly important. And content marketing can help you get those messages out effectively. But you need to understand how to write content that’s actually effective first. Jireh Gibson shares some tips in this Media Shower post.

Nurture Email Leads in Your Digital Marketing Funnel

Once you gather leads from your website or opt-in forms, you need to have a plan for actually converting those leads into customers. Nurturing leads is a huge part of that, as Mike Gingerich discusses in this post. He also offers tips for how to actually craft your emails.

Get Started With Facebook Instant Articles

Facebook has become such a huge part of how many businesses interact with their customers. So new or changing features like Facebook Instant Articles can have a big impact. In this post, Rebekah Radice explains Facebook Instant Articles and how they can help small businesses. You can also see discussion about the post over on BizSugar.

Take a Weekend Business Break

Hard work is an essential ingredient for any small business. But working hard constantly without ever taking any breaks can be draining and ultimately hurt your business in the long run. In this CorpNet post, Nellie Akalp challenges entrepreneurs to take a break over the long weekend, and explains why that is important.

Source: http://www.smallbiztrends.com

Photo Credit: Shuttershock

ABOUT WNFP
Westchester Networking for Professionals (WNFP) is a business networking association dedicated to helping small businesses and entrepreneurs develop, expand and grow. We offer affordable opportunities to help create a positive impact and advancement in your business interests and personal quality of life to take you to the next level.
Stay Connected with WNFP!