Social Media Marketing Plan For Real Estate Agents

From Facebook and Instagram to YouTube and LinkedIn, there are over 350 million individuals active on different social media platforms today. Once seen as a tool for networking and entertainment, Social media is therefore changing the way business is done across sectors, including real estate.

The industry that depended on cold calling and traditional methods of marketing is now online. Social media has not only become an indispensable marketing tool but is also an excellent method to create a trustworthy and notable brand for your business. This presents an abundance of opportunities for real estate agents who wish to connect with a larger audience pool.

However, with teeth-cutting competition across the real estate industry in India, having an online presence is not sufficient. Planning and optimizing your real estate marketing strategies for social media, based on the user requirements, is essential in growing your business. Hence, in this article, we will be discussing all the relevant social media platforms for Real Estate Agents and how you can generate leads from them.

Social Media Marketing Plan for Facebook

Facebook is an excellent lead generation platform for real estate agents. This is especially great if you are a new realtor looking to make more connections and expanding your network. However, gone are the days when your Business page on Facebook would receive heavy organic/free traffic. From 2020 and going forward, more focus has to be laid on ‘pay-to-play’ marketing.

Leveraging Facebook through its lead generation feature will help you target an audience that has a keen interest in buying similar properties. For this, you have to run Facebook real estate ads campaign through your personal or Facebook Business Manager Account.

Real Estate Marketing on Facebook: Tips and Tricks

You can post 4-5 times a week to maintain your business page. These posts can include, photos, sold listings, open houses, details about your journey, and personal branding content.

• While planning your marketing strategy, you can budget your account for $10 per day for running fresh ads on Facebook. You can increase the budget as you become more experienced. Now that you have your budget set aside, the next step is to create a ‘custom list of homes’ ad. 

• Along with this, you should be spending $5 per day running ‘retargeting’ ads. Retargeting, also known as remarketing, is the technique through which you can keep your brand in front of the user even after they leave your website. Through this, you can ensure that people who come across any of your social media platforms, websites or ads, are continuing to see you and your brand repeatedly. As per the statistics, an average user closes a deal after 7 touch points (touchpoints are the number of times the user comes in contact with your brand. This can be before, during, or after they purchase something from you). On the other hand, only 2% of web traffic converts on the first visit.

In simple terms, retargeting allows you to show your ad to the same user numerous times, to recapture their interest, bring them back to your website and potentially generate a lead and/or turn them into a customer.

Retargeting is especially important for real estate agents because buying a property is a long process. It is possible that someone interested in investing a project right now, actually acts on that desire 6 months later. If they only come across your brand once, they won’t remember you at the time of making that purchase. It means that whoever is reaching out to them closest to the time when they want to make the purchase will be the one getting that business.

Instagram Marketing Plan for Real Estate Agents

Instagram is suitable for personal branding. To leverage this platform fully, you have to do two things:

1. Posting Consistently on Feed: Posting consistently is one of the best ways to increase your reach and grow organically on Instagram. You should be posting 2 to 3 times a week on your feed. The “80-20 rule” should be followed when it comes to Instagram. According to the rule, 80% of the content that you post online must create brand awareness while the 20% can be informational. Posts that establish your brand should be your top priority. This 80% content should still be real estate related, but they must endorse you or your brand. Additionally, sharing your journey and success stories is also a good way to create brand awareness. To engage with the audience you can share what happens ‘behind the scenes’ of Real Estate. For example, instead of posting pictures of a property with a “Just Listed” banner, you can take a selfie with that property in the background welcoming them to arrange a visit. 

2. Post Instagram Stories/Utilize Reels: To grow your brand, it is a good idea to document your daily life as a real estate agent. You can then publish the raw, uncut and unfiltered snippets as Instagram reels or stories. Such content will tell the audience about your work ethics, style of marketing and is the best way for the people to get to know you. This way you will be able to build a deeper connection with your audience, which can then grow to trust and loyalty. You should be publishing Instagram stories daily. Such content is rather easy to create.

Many real estate agents make the mistake of turning their Instagram accounts into a property listing platform. This must be avoided as Instagram is a platform for establishing your brand and nurturing your audience. 

Real Estate Agents and the Power of Video Marketing

With 3 billion searches per month, YouTube offers tremendous opportunities to grow business online. Yet not posting on YouTube or performing video marketing is considered as one of the real estate marketing mistakes. With the right SEO strategy, you can organically grow your traffic multifold. To leverage this feature, you must know how to optimize the tags, titles and descriptions of your videos for local SEO. It is recommended that you start posting on YouTube at least once a week, and this can be further pushed.

To attract the right audience to your channel, your videos should be based on topics specific to real estate sector. For example, if you publish a video titled “Best Locations to Live in Mumbai” or “5 Top luxury Properties in Mumbai”, someone who is searching for a home in Mumbai will come across your video.

Additionally, you can also post videos centered around property walkthroughs, neighborhood guides, market trends, etc that not only provide valuable information to viewers but also present properties in an engaging manner while shedding light on the current state of the real estate market. Consequently, this strategy fosters trust among potential clients by positioning you not simply as intermediaries but rather knowledgeable experts within their field.

Unlike Facebook and Instagram where your feed dies out within 24 hours (on average), YouTube is a platform that lets your content be discovered forever. That implies that if you optimize and rank your video properly, it can still work at growing your business years after being published. 

Marketing Techniques to be Followed on LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a widely underused platform by Real Estate Agents due to the misconception that it is specifically for working professionals. However, LinkedIn is as important as other social media platforms to find potential leads.

Just like Facebook, you should be posting about 2 to 3 times a week on LinkedIn. You can also take the same content, tailor it for LinkedIn, and publish it on your feed. You’ll notice that as compared to Facebook, the slightly altered version of the same content will get you much greater reach and engagement. Along with improving your brand presence, LinkedIn will also help you in building connections at a professional level. 

Hence, as a real estate agent, it is important to understand the working and relevance of all these platforms in-depth. The social media platforms that we discussed have different advantages and thus, the intent with which you should be utilizing each of these should also vary. Using social media for growing your business is the need of the hour. With correct utilization and smart optimization, you can generate quality leads, create brand awareness and become the most sought-after Real Estate Agent in your locality.

Collaborating With Real Estate Influencers

Real estate agents can significantly enhance their market visibility, reach, and credibility by partnering with real estate influencers, leveraging the power of influencer marketing for their sales. By formulating a comprehensive strategy, one can co-create content with influencers, such as virtual tours, Q&A sessions, project walkthroughs, tips for investors or first-time homebuyers, and much more – making the information both relatable and engaging. In addition to this, one can also use Meta, Twitter and other platforms to boost live events, behind-the-scenes looks, offers – which can create a buzz and attract potential buyers who follow these influencers for insights and trends in real estate.  However, as an agent, you must establish clear goals and metrics in order to test the effectiveness of your influencer marketing strategies. 

Optimize for SEO

For real estate agents formulating their social media strategy, the importance for SEO-optimized blog or video content cannot be neglected. Apart from conducting thorough keyword research on topics related to the real estate sector, video titles, descriptions, and page tags should also be optimized to improve discoverability on search engines. The inclusion of SEO strategies not only ensures that your listings or blogs are more easily found by potential buyers, but will also aid in establishing your expertise and authority in a given micro market.