Posted in:

Use of Web For Real Estate Marketing

The use of the Web as a Marketing resource in the real estate sector is in my humble opinion an area still little explored by most real estate agencies, being “the first” to make yourself known through this channel could prove to be a competitive factor.

In our age, people expect a direct and above all rapid relationship from companies and their interlocutors and this assumption naturally also applies to real estate agencies that can no longer ignore having a marketing plan aimed at winning trust and attention. of customers through the Web, agencies and real estate agents must know how to intercept the needs of their customers, always dialogue, know how to distinguish and differentiate themselves in order to continue to have new exclusive assignments and overcome mistrust, useless to hide it because it exists! that people have towards them.

Most people when they have to buy or sell a property ask themselves: “why contact an agency, I can’t do it myself? “, If you are a real estate agent as Tajarat Properties you know very well that very often this happens, even if it is unquestionably not the best choice for anyone! You also know very well how easy it is to fall into the commission war with clients asking for discounts by threatening to go to another agency.

My experience in the world of Real Estate Web Marketing

In life I deal with Web Marketing, so I do another job, but I know the real estate sector well due to the past I had as an external Web consultant for one of the most important real estate franchises, so I think I can help you a lot for start with some small suggestions that I have chosen to put in this post and others that you find in our blog.

What marketing approach do you use?

How do you work? You still rely on the traditional method, putting your agency in the foreground with slogans, commercials, newspaper ads, “the magazine outside your agency’s door”, ringing the bells … or you always try to be one step ahead of your competitors and do you put your customers first?

Over the years, the needs of the real estate market and more… have evolved, and consequently the activities carried out to win over the customer have also changed, traditional methods are no longer enough.

Which Real Estate Web Marketing Strategies to Choose?

It is difficult to answer with a single post, for this purpose with the colleagues of our real estate marketing company a few days ago we have opened a new category of the blog entirely dedicated to this sector.

When we talk about real estate Web Marketing, it must first be clarified that every real estate product is unique and in order to be sold it needs an enhancement that leaves nothing to chance. The house is an important asset in the life of each of us, the economic and emotional values ​​at stake are ALWAYS high, each time your client DOES NOT sell or buy just a property, in his brain an emotional reaction resounds and is triggered that you strategically need be able to manage in the best way.

It follows that a real estate Web Marketing strategy must be articulated and specific according to the phase in which the potential client of your agency is involved.

How much it could cost, what features it should have, what to do and what steps to follow to create the website of a modern real estate agency❓

Is that what we will see in today’s post?

First of all, it must be said that there are several key factors to follow and often real estate agents are not aware of them? Let’s see them together STEP BY STEP.

A variety of content is required to populate the pages of a real estate agency website. They can include branding resources, professional photography, renderings, 3D videos, a blog … If you don’t have the time or the ability to provide all this material on your own, you need to rely on an agency to help you; in this post I “talk” about it later …

Web Design

In the creation of any website the design phase is crucial, it includes several critical components that have an impact on the general aesthetics of your real estate agency’s website, as well as on the experience that the user will have on all devices (desktop, mobile, tablet). In this phase a Web Designer must be involved who will take care of:

  • Of the study and realization of the general visual design.
  • Prepare and optimize the content layout for all pages.
  • Test the usability of the pages on all devices and browsers.
  • Select the color combinations.
  • Create the graphic elements (icons, buttons, etc.) of the Site.
  • The total number of pages, visual components, and complexity of custom graphics will determine the amount of design time (and associated costs).

Website Development

The total development hours required for a project depend on a variety of factors including: the size of the site, the interactive components, and the advanced features required for your site. These elements could include:

  • Property search filters.
  • Property detail pages (property listings).
  • Interactive maps.
  • Evaluation systems and customized areas.
  • Blog.
  • Integration of third-party tools (Management, Real Estate Portals …).

Type of CMS

CMS is the acronym for Content Management System; WordPress is one of these and is probably the most widespread and among the most used also to create Real Estate Websites and to manage and make changes to their contents in complete autonomy.

WordPress is an OPEN-SOURCE tool but it is NOT totally free as it is sometimes thought, depending on your needs it will be necessary to consult an agency and the integration costs vary according to the modules or custom plugins to manage the Website.

Site hosting and maintenance

After starting a website, other complementary and maintenance services are required to make it work to avoid hitches, so expect the following maintenance costs:

  • Hosting.
  • Security updates and patches.
  • CMS and plugin updates.
  • Technical support.
  • Data backup.
  • Monthly reports.

Definition of requirements

Before starting a new project to create a website is it important to think carefully to understand what are the necessary needs and the objectives to be pursued?

If you want the Site to become a Real Estate Marketing Tool, you should try to answer these questions:

  • What is the overall goal of your website?
  • Do you have an idea of ​​how to organize it and which sections to develop?
  • What features are needed?
  • Who will provide the content for the website?
  • Does the website need to connect with third party tools / platforms?
  • How important is SEO (Search Engine Optimization) to you?
  • Have you planned an advertising budget for its promotion and maintenance?
  • What Existing Real Estate Websites Do You Like?
  • Who to entrust the project to?

Another element that has a significant impact on the costs and likely results of your website will depend on who is doing the project. There are many options available and just like anything else in life, do you pay for what you get or vice versa if you prefer?

In my humble opinion, doing an objective analysis, there are THREE OPTIONS:

Web agency specialized in the real estate sector.

If you intend to do things with the utmost professionalism and if you intend to avail yourself of lasting advice to maximize results and grow over time, is this the best choice?

The structured Web Agencies typically have different people with all the necessary professional SKILL we have seen above, which results in a more efficient development process and make quicker upgrades in the future. Certainly NOT all agencies are the same, so it’s important to choose partners with experience in the real estate sector.

  • Pros:  great experience, professionalism, efficiency.
  • Cons:  usually more expensive option.

Freelance

The freelance usually can offer more competitive costs than Web Agency, and this itself is the most important deciding factor for some real estate agents. However, freelancers typically only specialize in one area of ​​the development process and lack expertise in other areas. Additionally, a freelancer will have limitations on the number of projects they can work with at the same time, which can create problems if other clients have more important emergencies or priorities than yours.

  • Pros:  competitive costs.
  • Cons:   slower completion times, limited ongoing support.

DIY tools

There are friends of friends, the so-called CUGGINI, that you find in all sectors and who certainly could not miss in the real estate sector. There are also a plethora of free or inexpensive tools to build DIY sites quickly, but there is a downside that I invite you to think about, THE TIME FACTOR.

In fact, in addition to finding yourself with a site full of bugs and problems, you will have to make do with building it yourself, which will make you waste precious time that you could devote to your job as a Real Estate Agent, remember that your time is also valuable! Also, if you have to include a custom function in the future, problems are very likely to occur.

  • Pros:  fast and cheap option, good for basic requirements.
  • Cons:  time to learn, limited ability to customize, limited or nonexistent personal support.

The phases of a real estate Web Marketing strategy

We can divide them into 6 macro areas:

  • Brand Positioning.
  • Traffic sources and advertising campaigns.
  • Destination of the campaigns.
  • Interaction, involvement, analysis.
  • Conversion.
  • Feedback and reviews.

What is SEO?

The most important phase to make web marketing productive.

It is nothing more than an acronym in English (Search Engine Optimization) and with it we mean all those activities aimed at improving the crawling, indexing and positioning of the pages of a website on search engines.

In the world there are several search engines however, for at least fifteen years, Google has become the main search engine on which we recommend concentrating and investing time and resources to develop an effective real estate SEO strategy.

Indexing VS Positioning

Sometimes the less experienced tend to get confused and think that indexing and positioning a site have the same meaning while it is not true at all.

Indexing refers to the different methods used by search engines to include the pages and all the contents present on a Web Site (texts, images, video podcasts…) in the index of their Data Base.

Positioning implies the achievement of certain position objectives within the search engine results page (SERP).

If someone is offering an indexing service for your site, they are NOT selling you their ranking, because that is another much more difficult and expensive activity, be careful.

SEO On site & SEO Off site

When you start developing a real estate SEO strategy, the project must be approached with two methodological approaches: SEO On Site and SEO Off Site.

The On Site phase concerns all the optimization activities carried out directly on your Website and of which you have full control, for example: the choice of keywords, the texts , the titles and descriptions of the pages , the HTML code  and the  structure  of the  site. 

Now I would not like to bore you and it is not even the aim of this article to explain too complex technicalities, you simply have to know that your consultants must work to develop a site where users when they arrive on its pages are able to use it in a simple way, walking the road which leads to the purpose for which the site was built – in your case selling real estate and acquiring exclusive assignments.

This sort of “path” must be easy to locate and follow even by spiders, which are the software used by search engines to find and index Web pages.

This is a good SEO ON SITE strategy sufficient to start real estate SEO and to which you must try to add a good page loading speed and compatibility with mobile devices ( responsive design ) which will probably be the most used by your potential customers. , especially in the initial phase of their purchase journey, especially if you intend to do Social Marketing campaigns on Facebook .

But as we “saw” above, the positioning on Google of your real estate agency also depends on SEO OFF SITE factors which, unlike the previous ones, are beyond your control and therefore more difficult to develop!

Off-site optimization is used to provide Google with information on how users perceive your site and its authority index which is calculated in various ways, just below we see the main ones:

  • Links from other sites.
  • Mentions, citation and sharing of your site on other sites or on social media.
  • Amount of traffic on your agency’s site.
  • Time spent by users on your site.
  • Feedback and reviews.

First of all, if you haven’t done it yet, you need to add or claim the card of park view villas lahore Updated Details in your real estate agency, here you will find all the necessary information.

Give Google as much information as possible. I advise you to optimize the card 100% without neglecting any request, among other things, real estate agencies usually have a lot of material and therefore it is not difficult.