There are a number of key steps you need to take as an estate agent to understand your digital marketing properly. First and foremost, you need to conduct thorough market research into your key markets. Only by obtaining first-hand insight into the state of play at a local and national level can you hope to forge a strong market share.
One of the easiest ways to complete market research is by conducting a thorough PEST analysis – to establish the political, economic, social and technological factors which are affecting the housing marketing, and a SWOT analysis – to help you identify your estate agency’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats.
Although it might seem obvious, effective research will help your estate agency to position itself in the market and set your pricing strategies. On a deeper level, however, it helps you understand the ‘why’ of your brand – why are you an estate agency?
To work out this ‘why’, it’s best to refer back to the core values of your estate agents. With so many companies offering similar value propositions and doing nothing to differentiate themselves towards one single audience. Although estate agent firms have broad audiences and don’t want to alienate themselves, it does mean that many firms resort to the same tired, repetitive marketing tactics.
To build an effective brand identity for your estate agency firm, you need to clearly mark yourself out against your competition. In one sentence, you should be able to define all of the below:
The next step for your estate agent firm to build effective digital marketing is conquering your local area. The best way to do this is by creating specific, content-rich landing pages with correct technical SEO and appropriate meta descriptions, image choices, headers and alt-tags. When designing on-page content, you need to identify a set of keywords that will drive the most sales and also create location-specific pages to capture your local audience. If you have copy, imagery and properties related to that area, you increase the chance of your customers having a positive experience on your website, leading to more enquiries and hopefully more conversions. By achieving this holy grail, you will propel yourself up the search engines as they recognise your relevance and importance.
For a final key aspect of an estate agent’s digital marketing, you need to create an appropriate range of social medias, which are all aimed at different levels. Estate agents are increasingly turning to Facebook and Twitter as a way to directly generate leads by producing targeted advertising and content.
If you complete these first few steps, you’ll already be well on the way to developing a strong digital presence for your estate agency firm and for your team of estate agents. Moreover, you’ll be giving yourself the best possible chance of being used by your customers and start to create a unique sales experience as an estate agent firm, which will drive further engagement. The most important thing to remember is that your estate agent firm can always benefit from effective digital marketing. It’s crucial that you don’t neglect digital marketing as it can often be the make or break between a sale, and in as competitive and cut-throat an industry as the UK housing market, effective digital marketing for estate agents is more important than ever.
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