Top 17 Real Estate Marketing Mistakes and How to Avoid Them

Investing in real estate for most people is the biggest investment decision of their lives. In keeping up with the ongoing pandemic crisis and the casualties it has induced, the real estate market is also undergoing its fair share of changes. So if you’re someone who wants to understand how to bring your A-Game in Real Estate Marketing even during these tough times, then this blog is for you. 

The end of this pandemic till date is nothing less than a giant question mark. This could only mean one thing. The temporary changes in home buying behavior will have a long-lasting impact. From sourcing the leads to closing the deal, the process will move digital and Real Estate Marketing is going to play a key role throughout. At this juncture, it is important as a real estate marketer to leave no stone unturned to reach your target audience.

Here are 11 things you are doing wrong that could be killing your sales pipeline:

Real Estate Marketing Mistake 1: Not Writing a Blog

As a marketer, your power comes from the influence you have on your target audience. To be able to influence them, they should trust you. And what better way to build trust than by putting your expertise on full display through well-researched content!

If you lay enough focus on the search engine optimisation of your content, a good blog is all you will need to drive traffic to your real estate website. Through a blog you not only establish your credibility, but also increase your visibility among prospective leads. And guess what! You don’t even have to spend a penny on paid search results. 

Real Estate Marketing Mistake 2: Building a Crappy Website

Undoubtedly, buying property is a high involvement purchase process. A home is not only an investment but also an emotion. A recent survey shows that more than 90% of the home buyers perform an online search before they seriously consider the purchase. 

Most realtors tend to think that building a static website with some basic info serves the purpose. This is where your Real Estate Marketing strategy goes wrong. You need to build an interactive website that could enhance the user’s experience. According to research, 99% of the realtors don’t reap the benefits of the internet, only because of their minimal or no digital presence. 

Also, in a country like India, where 80% of the users search through mobile, it becomes extremely important for the website to be mobile responsive. 

Real Estate Marketing Mistake 3: Not Leveraging Data

In keeping with the changes in technology and the avenues that it opens, realtors might be laying the money on the table by not leveraging data analytics. The possibilities are ceaseless. 

Advanced metrics today enable the marketers to analyze the worth of the investment with respect to its physical attributes as well as human components. Flood maps, traffic count, etc can be used to paint a fuller picture of the locality without even visiting the site.

Earlier this year, Forbes suggested that commercial real estate (CRE) tools that can perform multiple functions just might be the next big thing in real estate marketing.

Real Estate Marketing Mistake 4: One Size Fits All Approach

Why should you personalise your real estate marketing? 

Well, if you think about it, no buyer wants to be just a lead. According to a study by the University of Texas, subconsciously he desires to have control over the process.  He desires to protect himself from information that he does not need. This is why if your marketing copy does not hit the right pain point, it sometimes does more harm than good.

If your efforts at personalisation are limited to auto changing the names on your mail templates, you’re doing it wrong.

Differentiating factors like lifestyle preference, annual income, buyer journey stage should be used to segment the audience to have maximum conversion rates.

Real Estate Marketing Mistakes 5: Not Conducting Thorough Market Research

Personalizing your real estate marketing plan is possible only when you are aware of your target audience. Hence, before getting started, you need to research your competitors, the services they offer, understand the latest trends, and client expectations.

This doesn’t mean that you conclude your research after completing one campaign. It is a continuous process and the ideal way of generating leads.

Real Estate Marketing Mistake 6: Not Setting Up Retargeting Channels

Statistics show that retargeted display ads draw 10 times more click through rate (CTR) than normal ads. There is a psychology behind the effectiveness of retargeting ads. The human mind tends to find truth, what is familiar. 

In the olden times, brands used to heavily rely on repeating the catch phrases to coax the consumer in to believing it’s true. Repetitive advertising is today obsolete as the modern consumers can well see through this tactic. Contextual retargeting though can have much deeper impact on pushing the buyer to an end decision.

When you show ads repeatedly to a potential consumer, his interest in the property is likely to pique. By focusing on nurturing these leads rather than generating new, you not only shorten your sales pipeline but also considerably minimise the ad- spend.

Real Estate Marketing Mistake 7: Giving Delayed Responses

The digital age is characterised by short term attention span. Most home buyers start their property search online. If you can’t hold the customers interest by responding to their queries on time, they will be checking out the properties on another website in no time. Do you really want to  miss out on a potentially serious lead just because you could not give a prompt reply. Do you realise you don’t necessarily have to write this off as a cost of doing real estate business?

Well, this is where automated chatbots come into the picture. 

This chatbot creates a personalised experience for your consumer. Available on a 24/7 basis, it can help considerably in cutting down costs. Most potential  buyers have similar queries when it comes to property enquiries. These queries and answers can be preprogrammed. Chatbots minimise the need of dedicated sales representatives. 

Real Estate Marketing Mistake 8: Neglecting the Power of Video Marketing

Marketing insights have predicted that an average user in 2021, will spend 100 minutes a day online watching videos. Unprecedented rates of internet penetration in the country has brought about a radical shift in the way we consume content. 

Search engines love video as well as the buyers of real estate. People like to walk through the entire project, understand the look and feel of it, before generating an intent. The days when a static image could bring you thousands of quality leads, are long gone!

Real estate video marketing to sell real estate can take the form of property tours, testimonials, day in the life videos etc. Video and virtual reality are going to dominate the real estate sector.

Real Estate Marketing Mistake 9: Not Giving Enough Importance to Social Media

Over the last 10 years, an average screen time of a user on social media has increased by over a 1000%. Majority of the realtors make the mistake of not investing on their social media platforms, where their target audience is spending their time the entire day. 

Social has become integral in our lives, and has also evolved as one of the most trusted sources of information. So when you interact with your target audience and provide them with industry updates, your success, offers, values, you massively increase your chance of winning their trust, manifold.

Along with helping you build a relationship of trust with your audience, social media can also be leveraged as a lead generation and marketing tool. For instance, Facebook real estate ads are one of the major tools that can be used by a real estate agent to generate leads. This feature helps bring new clients and convert the current leads into customers through re-marketing.

Real Estate Marketing Mistake 10: Not Including a CTA or Including Too Many CTAs

Putting the right Call-to-Actions or CTAs is an art. Understanding what kind of content will generate maximum activity upon your website/landing page is extremely crucial. Relevance, clarity and conciseness are 3 main pillars of defining a perfect CTA. 

You can segment your CTAs based upon the target audience you’re targeting. In real estate marketing, A/B testing your CTAs can bring massive learnings for you. Look at the heatmaps and focus on how visitors will see your CTA on various devices. Sometimes click triggers (such as exit pop-up, testimonials, exclusive deals) can help boost conversion rates.

Real Estate Marketing Mistake 11: Depending on a Single Channel for Marketing

There’s a famous saying – Don’t put all your eggs in one basket. That applies to real estate marketing as well. If the success of your campaign totally depends on its performance on a singular platform, then you’re really doomed. 

Multi-channel marketing provides higher interaction with the clients and thus using an integrated approach involving multiple mediums including social media, blogs, affiliate, landing pages, search, etc. is crucial. All the channels that you might be using independently today, can complement each other, saving you thousands in advertising cost and tap upon a largely untapped audience. 

Real Estate Marketing Mistake 12: Not Sending Newsletters

According to a report published by McKinsey, E-mails are 40 times more effective than social media in acquiring leads. Yet majority of realtors don’t focus their resources on email marketing.

Newsletters are emails that are sent out to a target audience to provide a better understanding of your brand. This can be done by sending business updates, home improvement tips, market data, schemes for homebuyers, client testimonials, featured or new properties, relocation guides, downloadable eBooks, etc. Strong subject lines, creative posts, persuasive CTAs, and high-quality content are some of the essential components of Newsletters.

Newsletter content should be crisp, concise, and relevant for your audience. Hence, segmenting your subscribers based on demographic and geographical data is essential in order to send client-specific data.

Real Estate Marketing Mistake 13: Posting Low-quality Pictures

In the words of Phil Dunphy, “If you show enough houses, you learn all the tricks.” But if you don’t apply these tricks while posting property pictures, then you might be committing the biggest real estate marketing mistakes!

Visually appealing pictures form a part of every business; however, for residential or commercial real estate marketing, it is a necessity. From interiors to its exteriors, you should provide a holistic view of the house through images. Otherwise, the clients may end up skipping some of the important listings.

Real Estate Marketing Mistake 14: Not Leveraging the Power of SEO

Be it the services offered or company reviews, we all know that search engines are the best source for extracting information about any business. However, with the ever-increasing competition, your website may not even make it to the top pages if you do not optimize your pages.

This is where Search Engine Optimization or SEO comes into the picture. SEO is a highly cost-effective way of generating quality leads through search engines. Right keywords, good URLs, quality content, and backlinks will help convert leads to clients, thereby improving your ROIs.

Real Estate Marketing Mistake 15: You Are Afraid to Outsource

The majority of the realtors believe handling marketing in-house could save them some salary expenses. But what they neglect is that limited expertise in handling paid campaigns can increase advertising costs, minimize conversion rates, reduce lead quality, and hamper their real estate marketing strategy. Also, when real estate agents outsource marketing of their projects to an organization, with core expertise in the field, they get much better insights about the changing trends in the market, competitor strategies, project favourability & much more.

Also, outsourcing also helps realtors in focusing upon their core job which is interacting with prospective buyers, scout new real estate projects, and building relationships, while they can rely on Propacity in expanding their business online.

The Real Estate Marketing Mistake 16 : Overlooks the Importance of Client Feedback and Ratings

In the world of real estate, social proof isn’t the only thing that matters. Many real estate marketers don’t take into consideration the potential of social media content and consumer opinions.

Testimonials and reviews from satisfied customers can build trust and credibility among potential buyers. Reviews and positive testimonials from satisfied clients are also endorsements for your services. Reviews and glowing testimonials can vouch for your products and services. Making your business reliable and capable of delivering an exceptional client experience, accordingly.

Encouraging customers to share their experiences online is a great way to harness the power of positive feedback. Encourage satisfied clients to share their encounters online. The power of comments and evaluations, follow-up emails, specialized queries, or incentive-driven referral schemes can be used to achieve satisfied customer relations. Your customer feedback should be prominently displayed on your online presence and social media channels, making them easily accessible to potential customers.

Embracing the power of testimonials and feedback as valuable tools in your real estate marketing arsenal is crucial for attracting and converting more prospects.

The Real Estate Marketing Mistake 17: Not Getting Involved in the Locals

Getting to know your neighborhood is often left out of property marketing. engagement with local communities and local partnerships can help improve your brand visibility, credibility, and lead generation efforts.

Participating in community activities, supporting charitable endeavors, or hosting neighborhood gatherings are some of the ways you can get involved. Participating in nearby activities shows your affection for the area and positions you as an trustworthy local resource.

Also Partnerships with nearby firms can have mutual advantages. You can reach out to their current clients and tap into their networks for suggestions. By connecting with local organizations and participating in community events, you can establish a strong presence within your locals and foster meaningful relationships with potential clients.

Engaging in local events and initiatives not only demonstrates your commitment to the community but also establishes you as a reliable source of information for fellow residents.

Additionally, collaborating with nearby firms can also lead to resource sharing and cost optimization.