Are you struggling with marketing your real estate business during the ongoing Coronavirus pandemic the traditional way? With the slowdown in buying and selling activities and the shelter in place policies, even top real estate agents find it hard to advertise their listings and attract new clients. The current situation is proving the need for agents to embrace alternative marketing methods and take their real estate lead generation strategy to the next level. To help out those who don’t know where to start, we’ve put together the 6 top ideas for digital marketing for real estate agents amid the COVID-19 pandemic and even after it finishes.
Watch our real estate video below for a quick summary of the best real estate digital marketing tips.
Idea #1: Switch to Virtual Tours
When it comes to real estate digital marketing, one of the first things which agents can do to promote a property for sale is to create a virtual tour. Actually virtual tours were taking over the real estate industry even before the pandemic, but the Coronavirus is definitely accelerating this trend and highlighting its importance.
Luckily for realtors with minimum technical skills, there are plenty of software websites which allow anyone to make professional virtual tours of homes. Once you’ve created the perfect tour with the help of virtual reality, you can include it in the regular property listings on your brokerage’s website, advertise it on your social media accounts, send it in email campaigns, or make it part of any other digital real estate marketing strategies which you decide to implement.
To further enhance digital marketing for real estate agents with the help of virtual reality, you can also organize virtual open houses. Traditional property showings and open houses are unsafe and unattractive for investment property buyers and even illegal in many locations within the US housing market under the stay at home policies. Virtual open houses and property showings are an excellent alternative for top real estate agents to show homes for sale and interact with buyer leads.
Related: The Ultimate Guide to Virtual Reality for Real Estate Agents
Idea #2: Create Real Estate Videos
Another element which you should include in your digital real estate marketing plan to grow your business is making videos. Video marketing was already becoming an integral part of digital marketing for real estate agents, even before the ongoing crisis. However, the pandemic is taking this real estate trend to a whole new level.
The best thing about real estate video marketing is the endless opportunities out there. To begin with, realtors can turn their property listings into videos. This strategy will attract many new tech-savvy home buyers and real estate investors. In addition, you can shoot a wide variety of educational videos. Videos focusing on the current state of your local real estate market can be used to not only demonstrate your knowledge, expertise, and professionalism but also to show why this is the best place for buying a home or for buying rental property.
In terms of publishing and distributing videos, there are numerous options to enhance real estate agent marketing efforts in the digital era. Having a YouTube channel is a must for the best realtors in the 21st century. Moreover, both property listing videos and educational ones should be published on your online real estate website and the website of your brokerage. You should also share them on social media platforms for maximum exposure and for generating the most real estate leads.
Idea #3: Optimize Your Social Media Accounts
Real estate social media marketing is another crucially important part of the digital strategy of agents amid the pandemic. With the Coronavirus threat, people are spending more and more time on social media platforms. These include home buyers, homeowners, real estate investors, and other potential real estate leads. Now is the perfect time to capture the attention of both buyer and seller leads on social media.
Chances are that top real estate agents already have accounts on most social media websites. That’s why the next step in digital marketing for real estate agents during the pandemic is optimizing these accounts. They should include attractive photos of you showing your professionalism as well as your brokerage’s logo and detailed description of your experience and expertise. For starters, focus on your accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn as these are the best real estate sites for social media marketing.
With regards to social media posts content, the sky is the limit in the real estate business. You can share your listings of homes for sale, virtual tours, videos, local housing market news, and any other types of content which your leads could find interesting and valuable.
As a key part of your social media strategy, make sure to find out and use the most relevant hashtags. This will help you tremendously drive more traffic to your social media posts and generate more leads.
Idea #4: Improve Your Real Estate Website
No list of the best digital real estate marketing ideas during the COVID-19 pandemic is complete without enhancing your website. When deciding how to find a real estate agent to buy or sell a property, most homeowners and real estate investors visit his/her website. In 2020 distinguishing the best real estate agent can be done through his/her site.
First and foremost, you should make sure that your real estate website is enhanced for search engine optimization (SEO) and mobile devices. These are two absolute musts when it comes to digital marketing for real estate agents. Your website structure and all content that you publish on it should follow the most recent SEO best practices to drive the most traffic organically. Furthermore, data from the National Association of Realtors (NAR) shows that an increasing number of home buyers and real estate investors first find their property on a mobile device. This means that how to be a successful real estate agent partially boils down to having a mobile friendly website.
With respect to content, first of all, you need to include your information such as name, contact info, brokerage, areas covered, expertise, and other. Moreover, you should post all your homes for sale, whether MLS listings, off market properties, foreclosures, and any other property types in which you specialize. To generate even more leads with your digital marketing efforts, you can start a real estate blog. You can write about the local housing market, general real estate trends, your listings, and other topics of interest to potential leads. A blog will help you incredibly get more clients organically during the Coronavirus pandemic.
Related: Buying and Selling Real Estate in the Time of COVID-19
Idea #5: Enhance Email Marketing
Emails are a must for digital marketing for real estate agents during the pandemic. It is important to send some email campaigns to your past clients to express your concern about their health and assure that they are doing well. Your real estate clients will appreciate the time you’ve taken to get in touch during such tough times and will definitely remember you next time they are buying and selling real estate properties.
Furthermore, you can automate email campaigns that you can use even after the end of the COVID-19 crisis. One excellent idea is to set up emails with your new property listings which go out to your real estate leads. With the help of the best email automation software tools, this should not take more than a few hours, while it will serve you for years to come. When real estate activities are down due to the pandemic, the time is right to invest efforts into digital marketing strategies which will help your business thrive once things start going back to normal.
Idea #6: Claim Online Real Estate Agent Profiles
Last but not least, digital marketing for real estate agents should expand to other real estate websites, not just your own website and social media accounts. Many sites – such as Mashvisor – offer free real estate agent profiles. In many cases, that’s how realtors get clients online.
All you have to do in this regard is to search for online agent profiles and claim them. Then you can fill in all your information to start generating real estate leads from a large number of sites. Being present on numerous trustworthy websites will not only give you exposure to significantly more seller and buyer leads but also increase your credibility.
On real estate agent profiles, you can list your properties for sale – both MLS listings and off market properties. Additionally, you can post real estate blogs to highlight your expertise and knowledge of the business.
Claim your Mashvisor’s real estate agent profile now to support your digital marketing efforts.
Bonus Tip for Digital Marketing for Real Estate Agents
The last on our list of top real estate tips for digital marketing during the Coronavirus pandemic is to use real estate data analytics tools. It is not safe – or even convenient and efficient – to conduct comparable market analysis (CMA) manually at the moment. Not to mention how much effort agents specializing in working with real estate investors have to put into real estate market analysis and investment property analysis to find the best rental properties for sale for their clients.
Using the real estate investment tools available on Mashvisor’s software platform can significantly cut the necessary time in addition to allowing agents to conduct all required real estate analysis from the safety of their home. The heatmap, the Property Finder, and the investment property calculator are some of the tools on Mashvisor’s real estate investment software app to help agents perform neighborhood analysis and rental property analysis quickly and efficiently.
Related: Real Estate Heat Map: A Revolutionary Tool for Neighborhood Analysis
Sign up for Mashvisor now to start matching your real estate investor clients with the best investment properties for sale.
Digital marketing for real estate agents has become an absolute must with the spread of the Coronavirus pandemic across the US housing market. That’s the way for realtors to continue generating leads as well as buying and selling real estate at the time of the crisis. The 6 ideas above should help you grow your real estate business even under the current conditions.
