In today’s market, more than 90% of home buyers start their search online, according to recent NAR reports.
Therefore, it’s essential to think about effective strategies to advertise your listings. You need to be able to appeal to customers who are chronically online.
The focus of this guide is on actionable and proven tactics that brokers, agents, and sellers like you can use to boost your online presence.
Once you’ve read it, you’ll understand more about how to drive leads in a competitive digital landscape. With the proper tools in place, you can reduce selling costs and reach the very people who are most likely to buy. Understanding these challenges and then finding ways to break through them is the shortest path to success.
Below, you’ll find various individual strategies you can deploy when selling. But if you really want the greatest results, the best approach is to integrate all of them.
Once you understand your audience, develop the right marketing techniques, and craft compelling listings, you’ll make faster sales and get higher engagement from prospects. You’ll also have a better return on investment supporting your cash flow if you’re an agency.
So, what are the strategies that you need to use? Let’s take a look.
Maximizing Online Visibility
The first thing you’ll need to focus on is online visibility. Maximizing this means that your properties appear prominently on the platforms you use to sell them. This could apply to search results in Google, directories where people can post listings, or conventional platforms like Rightmove, Zillow, and Redfin.
Start with proper keyword research using Google’s Keyword Planner tool. You’ll need to look for the keywords people are using in your area, like “homes for sale in New York City” if you happen to live in New York.
Knowing the phrases prospects type into Google search makes it more likely to show up in results. This is particularly helpful if you are selling a commercial property or a luxury home that has appeared in a press release elsewhere. Google may prioritize it if you get your choice of keywords right.
The next stage is to think about on-page optimization for your listings. You’ll want to consider:
- Alt text for images
- Meta tags
- Keywords in your descriptions
- Mobile friendliness
Remember the vast majority of people listing properties for sale will not cover these bases. Instead, they’ll simply go with the default copy and setup offered by the platform. If you go beyond this, you will automatically rise above the pack, and your properties could potentially become more visible.
Following that, make sure that you claim your profiles on the major syndicating sites mentioned above. These have special algorithms that select listings based on the completeness of the data they have and the quality of the photos associated with them.
Always use a professional photographer and edit your photos using specialist tools like Phixer. Avoid the temptation to take pictures with your iPhone (unless you have a lot of experience in real estate photography).
Next, complete all the fields platforms require. These include:
- Number of rooms in the property
- Size of the floor space
- Number of bathrooms
- Number of bedrooms
- Whether the property has a yard or a balcony
- Whether there’s a garage attached to the property
- Presence of any special utilities like solar panels or air-source heat pumps
If you run a real estate agency, optimize your Google My Business profile. Doing this gives you more visibility in search results. Make sure you use schema markup for property details. Getting this right improves the likelihood they appear in Google’s rich snippets.
Also, encourage reviews. The more of these you have, the more Google will promote you, and the more likely prospects are to use your services.
Don’t forget to track your success with the right metrics, such as impressions, click-through rates, and website traffic. These allow you to monitor what’s working and what isn’t so you know how to adjust your listings to make them more competitive.
Crafting Compelling Listings
As mentioned, maximizing your online visibility means crafting more compelling listings. But how are you supposed to do that?
For us, the most important thing to remember is that your listing is essentially your digital storefront – it’s what your audience sees the moment they encounter your property. Therefore, find ways to captivate them in seconds and convert them (just like any other business would).
Focus on high-quality visuals
Start by focusing on creating high-quality visuals with Phixer. For example, our AI tools can assist with:
- Video editing if you decide to video your property
- Photo editing to make every image of your interiors and exteriors more exciting
- Virtual staging to remove clutter and personally identifiable objects from your listings
- Lawn replacement to make your exterior areas look more attractive
- Virtual twilight so that audiences and prospects can see what your home looks like in the evening
- Decluttering to remove unwanted objects from scenes
- AI editing to speed up the editing process and reduce the amount of work you have to do
- AI website builders that can create websites for your listings in a fraction of the time of conventional approaches
Once you have high-quality images, people are more likely to click on your listings and learn more about them. This is probably the best way to attract genuine leads who are looking for exciting properties to purchase.
We recommend taking a combination of professional photography, 360-degree images, and drone shots. Ideally, prospective buyers should be able to walk through the properties that you list virtually and get a tour before they actually visit.
Write compelling headlines
Compelling headlines are another way to grab attention and tell leads what’s appealing about your property. For example, you could write titles like:
- “Attractive waterfront property with the latest smart upgrades”
- “Cozy cottage home in a rural setting for people who want peace and quiet”
- “Modern urban apartment for busy professionals who need automated utilities”
Ideally, the headline should describe the property while also addressing a pain point prospective buyers might have. For example, some people need a home offering convenience because they’re working 50 to 80 hours per week. Others require somewhere that gives them peace and quiet, perhaps because they’ve lived a busy life and now they want to take time to unwind
Once you’ve written the title, it should be paired with some descriptive body text. Most buyers won’t read this, or if they do they’ll just scan it, but make sure that it includes all the essential details they need anyway.
Ideally, any description you provide should confirm the property solves the particular pain points the prospect has. Then, it can go on to provide solutions to their additional pain points.
For example, if they have dogs, they might want a mud room for when they come in from walks. These give them space to clean up the dogs before they enter the main property.
They might also want outbuildings if they plan on keeping animals. Again, these can be included in the descriptive text.
Add storytelling elements
These are narratives that describe the ideal situation that a new property purchase might create. For example, you might discuss how the outdoor patio is perfect for family gatherings during the summer or how there’s a spacious backyard which provides space for young children to play.
While it’s advisable to add statistics like square footage and market comparisons, it’s often these stories that have the greatest impact on buyers. With them, they can better imagine what it might be like to live on the property that you’re selling.
Leveraging Social Media
Another tactic is leveraging social media. Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and LinkedIn allow you to reach specific demographics you might want to target more easily than ever before. Plus, more than 70% of prime property buyers in the millennial age category use social home searches. That means that they’re actively on social media looking for properties.
Build and engage with communities
To start off, you could grow your followers for your agency or brokerage. Then, you could recommend properties to them throughout the year depending on their preferences.
What’s nice about this approach is that you can be very specific in your targeting. You probably already have a lot of data on the type of people in your audience, so you know more about the properties they want.
You can also pair them with sellers who are trying to sell the same types of properties. For example, if you have a luxury audience, the market is often quite small, but you can get early access to listings that are in this category and disseminate them to your followers.
Paid and paid social advertising is another option. You can provide platforms like Facebook and Instagram with an ad budget, and then they can boost your posts and carousel ads for various properties. This approach is expensive, but it can be used if it has a high ROI.
The last approach you might want to look at is influencer and partnership collaborations. Working with popular faces online or complementary businesses, like interior design firms, can be useful, especially for cross-promotion. You can get them to look around your properties or showcase them on their websites to drum up interest in the lifestyle you’re offering.
Targeting the Right Audience
We’ve briefly mentioned how important it is to target the right audience, but it’s worth reiterating in this section. When you get this puzzle piece right, (by understanding your audience’s demographics, behaviors, and psychographics), you’re in a much better position to convert them.
Use data-driven approaches
When trying to target the right audience, use data-driven approaches. We like the idea of using analytics platforms like Google Analytics and CRM tools. These are great for identifying buyer personas and differentiating between investors and first-time buyers.
Use geo-fencing and location-based targeting
Second, use geofencing and location-based targeting when seeking your audience. While it’s possible that people from the other side of the country might want to buy a property, most people actually move locally.
That’s why, if you’re trying to save money and you know you have a local market, it can be a good idea to set boundaries on where ads can appear. For example, if you’re selling a property in New York, you may not want advertisements to appear to users searching in San Antonio, Texas, unless they’re specifically using local search terms like “New York.”
Location-based targeting also works depending on the price range of the property. Some districts simply don’t have the purchasing power to purchase properties that add to my service. There’s no point targeting them.
Use demographic filters
Finally, always use demographic filters. For example, you might want to target families that are in a specific school district, or use luxury features to attract high-end buyers via Facebook advertisements. These filters mean allowing you to target in a more niche manner, you’re not serving adverts to people who won’t benefit from them.
If you’re unsure if you’re targeting the right people, use A/B ad testing. These testing variations of ads on different audiences can help you optimize for conversions. You’ll often notice that the number of people clicking ads increases when they connect with them on a genuine emotional level.
Engaging with Virtual Tours
Another strategy is to engage with prospective buyers with virtual tours. These are possible because of advances in technology in recent years. For example, Matterport and 360-degree cameras make it possible to simulate in-person walkthroughs and viewings of properties before they visit.
These approaches have a number of benefits. For example, properties with virtual tours have far higher engagement (up to 4x more), according to NAR data. Furthermore, they enable greater accessibility for remote buyers. Prospects don’t have to travel across the country, covering thousands of miles, just to visit a property that they might want to buy. This is particularly important for investors who often understand the market but don’t necessarily want to visit a property before buying it.
It’s also time-saving for agents. As a real estate agency, taking people around properties is time-consuming and expensive. However, if you can provide a virtual tour, it gives them essentially the same experience. There’s no need to shoulder this cost.
To create an effective tour, make sure that you:
- Add annotations to each room
- Provide adequate lighting so that cameras can capture details effectively
- Choose the right types of equipment, such as 360-degree cameras
- Get somebody on your team who understands on-site setup
You can now integrate 360-degree tours with most listings and platforms. Even social media sites now allow you to post this kind of content.
Harnessing Email Marketing
Finally, it’s a good idea to use email marketing when you are trying to sell a property. Right now, it is the most direct and cost-effective way to nurture leads with incredibly high returns of up to $40 per $1 spent, according to industry averages.
Building an email list is the most challenging part of the process. You have to do this voluntarily, as per Google rules. Therefore, make sure you add plenty of opt-in forms on your websites and lead magnets. Give people something in return for submitting their email addresses to you (like a market report).
The next step is to use segmentation and personalization. Make sure you divide lists by buyer stage. For example, the emails you send to prospects (i.e. people who haven’t bought yet) will be very different from past clients (i.e. people who have bought).
You also want to tailor the content to the specific interest. For example, if you can provide email recipients with personalised property recommendations, then do so. This is one of the reasons why you need to collect as much information on your prospects as you can.
If you do plan on sending marketing emails to your clients, then use tools like Mailchimp. You can use these to build email sequences that are proven to maximise engagement and possible conversions. You can also use them for analytics to tell which approaches are working best and where and what actions you need to take to refine your campaigns.
Now you know how to effectively advertise properties online
Having read this article, you should now be in a better position to advertise properties online. Combining all of the above, including boosting visibility, leveraging social media, targeting the right audience, providing virtual tours, and using email marketing creates a synergistic online advertising system. As you deploy these strategies, you’ll notice that the amount of interest in what you’re doing explodes exponentially.
We encourage you to use tools like Phixer to speed up listing creation. Our tools allow you to improve the quality of photos and videos on your listings, which is the first thing that most people see when looking for properties.