The spread of the Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has put a wrench in how things run, ultimately changing nearly every aspect of our daily lives. Aside from the sickness and death brought by it, the economy has suffered even more, bringing about a total standstill that caused many businesses to shut down.
For the real estate industry, sales and operations are likewise affected, especially with the social distancing procedures putting a halt to traditional forms of marketing properties. While the situation seems dire, now is the time to start adapting with the times—especially since this extreme situation may inadvertently affect how property is marketed in the future too.
Digital Marketing for the Real Estate Industry
With a majority of the world’s population stuck or hiding in their own homes, the more traditional forms of marketing may seem quite ineffective. Instead, a majority of businesses have started pouring their budget towards digital marketing strategies—and this follows suit with the real estate industry as well.
Now that nearly everyone is spending the majority of their time online, bumping up your online presence is incredibly essential. While you may have a semblance of an online presence already established, doing some improvements can make a huge impact for your marketing strategies.
To help you in this regard, here are five tips for improving your digital marketing strategies during this time of the pandemic.
Clean up data caches
Data is important for any strategy, which is why many businesses allot an extreme amount of effort and resources into gathering data. While having too much data is definitely better than having too little, an excess amount of data can make it difficult to analyze for use—especially when the data is old and outdated.
Apart from basic statistics, this falls true with your contacts list as well. Cleaning up and updating client bases and e-mail lists are crucial to improving the overall efficiency of your delivery and engagement.
Simple practices such as removing inactive contacts and removing duplicates can go a long way in this regard. You can also create sub-groups for your current contacts, allowing you to target your information better towards certain demographics.
Review your business website
Reviewing your business website should actually be done on a regular basis. If you can’t remember when was the last time you visited your own website, then now is the best time to take a gander.
Your business website is your business’ front in the online world, which is why ensuring that it remains neat and functional is incredibly crucial for your brand. Now that a majority of your potential clients are shifting their attention online, it’s best to “clean up” and ensure that everything’s in working conditions.
Firstly, make sure that everything is in its proper place and function. Inactive or broken links are problematic for your consumers, so watch out for those. Remember, the key to a good website is the capability of giving a good user experience (UX), so make your website as seamless as possible. If your website hasn’t been redesigned in the past ten years, then you might need to reconsider hiring a graphic designer to take a look at your website.
Next, improve your search functionality, as slow-moving and inaccessible search bars can easily push your visitors out. Make sure that things respond quickly and that the search results are actually showing proper results.
In relation to the pandemic, it’s best to create a new subsection for COVID-19 related announcements—your regular customers would want to be updated about these. You can add some tips and tricks for dealing with the virus, as well as make announcements about operating hours and other brick-and-mortar changes.
Improve property listings presentation
A majority of strong leads and potential clients are on your website to actually look at your property listings. While it’s important to let them know you’re selling property, it’s also equally important how you’re presenting it to them.
More often than not, your visitors’ first interaction with a particular property listing will be through the preview. It is for this reason that improving your property search functionality is crucial, to ensure that they don’t just see relevant property to their queries, but that all the necessary information is seen in a glance.
Furthermore, once a client clicks and actually checks a listing, it’s crucial to make a lasting impression. While it’s important to highlight the details of your listing, the key factor here would lie in the images of your property. Ensuring that the photos are high-quality is basic, but supplying a variety of shots from different angles can also help a lot too.
Apart from the photos, videos will help in marketing a property as well. Now that home tours and open houses aren’t wise options at the moment, giving your web viewers a chance to “experience” the property through a video tour can be an enticing option. This won’t just improve your brand, but your engagement with your consumers as well.
Improve your SEO
Improving the content of your business website and sprucing up your property listing is essential, but it will all be useless if potential clients don’t get to see it. In order to make your website and content more visible, you should invest a little in improving your website’s search engine optimization (SEO).
By applying certain basic SEO practices, you can make your website rank higher on search engine results pages. This, in turn, dramatically increases your web traffic, as users generally prefer high-ranking results that are immediately seen on results pages.
Improve Other Digital Channels
Although your website is incredibly crucial for your online presence, also consider other channels to work on. Improving on your social media account can be fruitful for pointing social media followers to your website, and Google Ad Campaigns will definitely make your brand more visible to those merely browsing related search terms.
The Bottom Line
With the landscape of marketing changing in today’s age, it’s crucial to evolve along with it to survive. The current trend shows everyone shifting their attention online and this does not seem to be merely brought about by the pandemic. Once the dust settles, digital marketing will prove itself to be the main front of advertising—which is why jumping on it now can prove fruitful for getting ahead of the competition.
Are you looking for a digital marketing agency in St. Louis, Missouri to improve your digital marketing strategy during the pandemic? At the Framework Pros, we utilize the best and latest data to bring your real estate business to the forefront of the online world. Get in touch with us today and see what services best suit you.