Digital marketing strategies for real estate businesses can help owners reach potential customers, boost their online presence, attract leads and drive sales.
Real estate is one of the most stable assets, holding its value even irrespective of the market conditions. For this reason, it is considered one of the safest investments. Various types exist within the real estate sector, such as land, residential, commercial, industrial, and multipurpose properties, and attracting investors in all these sectors requires effective marketing. While traditional methods help to a large extent and have their place, digital marketing strategies for real estate can transform everything.
The global real estate market will be around $637.80 trillion in 2024, with more than 97% of homebuyers going online to search for homes. Statista also estimated that global real estate digital ad spending will reach 835.82 billion U.S. dollars by 2026, a massive increase from an estimated 522.5 billion U.S. dollars in 2021.
These numbers depict the role digital marketing plays today and how now is the perfect time to implement digital strategies for real estate. Here are the top ten digital marketing strategies for real estate you need to look out for.
Why Digital Marketing Strategies Matter for Real Estate Businesses
Digital marketing strategy for real estate can attract and engage customers and help them retain clients in a way that traditional marketing cannot. This makes these digital strategies a powerful toolkit for success in today’s competitive market. Here is why digital marketing for real estate businesses matters:
Broader Audience Reach: Digital marketing leverages the Internet’s extensive reach, enabling real estate professionals to showcase properties to a global audience. Listings can attract potential buyers or renters internationally, opening new opportunities beyond local markets.
Cost-Efficiency: Compared to traditional methods, digital marketing is often more affordable. By targeting specific demographics, agents maximise their marketing budgets, focusing resources on those most likely to convert, leading to a stronger return on investment (ROI).
Data-Driven Strategy: With access to real-time data and analytics, real estate agents can track campaign performance, engagement, and lead generation. This information allows for on-the-go adjustments, ensuring campaigns remain optimised and effective.
Increased Engagement: Social media, email marketing, and interactive websites facilitate meaningful engagement. Agents can connect directly with potential clients, answer questions quickly, and build trust, creating stronger client relationships.
Competitive Edge: A robust digital presence is essential in today’s market, where most property searches start online. By embracing digital marketing, agents stay visible to online buyers and renters, setting themselves apart in a competitive landscape.
Precise Targeting: Digital marketing allows for highly targeted campaigns, enabling agents to reach specific demographics based on age, income, location, and more. This precision reduces waste and increases the likelihood of reaching serious buyers or renters.
24/7 Availability: Digital platforms work around the clock, allowing listings and content to be accessible to clients anytime, anywhere. This convenience aligns with clients’ schedules and increases the chances of capturing interest when it arises.
Enhanced Brand Visibility: Consistent online activity across various digital channels boosts brand visibility and credibility. A solid online presence can position an agent or agency as an expert, attracting a loyal following and encouraging referrals.
Virtual Tours and Interactive Content: Digital marketing enables the integration of virtual tours, 3D walkthroughs, and interactive content, providing clients with a comprehensive view of properties. These tools are valuable for clients who prefer online browsing and can help properties stand out.
Adaptability to Latest Market Trends: Digital marketing allows quick campaign adjustments based on real-time market trends and feedback. This adaptability keeps agents responsive to shifting market demands, ensuring marketing strategies remain effective and relevant.
How Can Real Estate Business Owners Learn Digital Marketing Strategies?
Real estate business owners can learn digital marketing strategies through various mediums, from formal education to self-paced online courses and hands-on practice. Here are some effective ways to gain these skills:
Enrol For The Best Online Digital Marketing Course
Real estate business owners should consider taking an online digital marketing course or a corporate digital marketing course to gain insights into the latest digital strategies, tools, and techniques. These courses can empower real estate business owners with the knowledge to effectively market properties, build a strong online presence, and engage potential clients through targeted, data-driven approaches.
Attend Digital Marketing Webinars and Workshops
Many local real estate boards organised webinars and workshops focused on digital marketing. These programs cover social media marketing, SEO, email marketing, lead generation, and, more particularly, tailored to real estate. You can also learn about the latest tools and techniques in these webinars to reach potential audiences.
Hire a Digital Marketing Consultant
Digital marketing consultants can offer personalised guidance to improve your real estate business. India’s best digital marketing consultant will provide customised strategies, one-on-one training, and mentorship programs for branding, lead generation, and customer relationships. This will make digital marketing seamless for the business and scale digital efforts effectively.
Top 10 Digital Marketing Strategies For Real Estate
1. Digital Marketing Strategy: SEO-Optimized Website
Today, just having a website for any business is not enough. To stand out, you also have to implement smart strategies. An SEO-optimized website is the base of your online presence that helps you rank high on search engines and draw organic, relevant traffic. If your website is not easy to find, you will miss out on numerous potential buyers. Hence Search Engine Optimization is the best digital marketing strategy for real estate brands in this year.
Importance of SEO-Optimized Website for Real Estate
- Improves Search Rankings: SEO pushes your website to the top of SERPs for potential buyers to find your real estate business. Improving visibility on search engines like Google increases the chances of attracting more organic traffic.
- Target Local Buyers: Local SEO helps people discover your site by searching for properties within your targeted area.
- More Organic Reach: SEO reduces the need for expensive paid channels like social media campaigns or search ads to drive traffic. The more you invest in optimisation, the less you rely on paid efforts. Over time, improved organic traffic leads to increased traffic while cutting marketing costs.
- Enhances User Experience: Applying the best search engine optimisation practices improves your search rankings and provides a better user experience. A well-optimized website becomes faster,mobile-friendly, and easier to navigate and offers a more accessible experience for potential buyers. It keeps the visitor on the site longer, which reduces bounce rates and eventually may increase conversions.
2. Digital Marketing Strategy: Targeted Social Media Marketing
With 5.17 billion people using social media globally as of July 2024, social media opens doors to expand your reach. Since social media platforms like Facebook, YouTube, and Instagram have become essential to people’s lives today, all potential buyers and sellers hang out on one or the other platform. Through targeted social media campaigns, real estate businesses can reach a specific audience, list properties, and build relationships that convert. Hence social media marketing is one of the best digital marketing strategies for real estate brands.
Importance of Targeted Social Media Marketing for Real Estate
- Precise Targeting: With Facebook and Instagram, you can customise campaigns based on demographics, interests, and location, reaching ideal buyer personas. In 2023%, over 70% of real estate professionals used social media for lead generation.
- Brand Awareness: Regularly posting on Social Media (visuals, expert advice, or community events) helps establish brand visibility. The audience gains insights and a walkthrough of your business. You stay on their minds and make them knock on your door whenever needed.
- Digital Storefront: Social media is a virtual storefront for your real estate business, allowing you to showcase properties and highlight your expertise. Platforms like Instagram and Facebook let you feature listings through visually appealing posts, stories, or reels to give home buyers a first look. Clickable links and contact options turn social profiles into interactive hubs for your services.
- Engages Audience: Features like question and answer sessions and live videos keep the audience connected and promote genuine engagement, which multiplies their trust in you.
3. Digital Marketing Strategy: Blogging & Content Marketing
Content marketing and blogging are proven effective digital marketing strategies for real estate businesses to connect with ideal clients through valuable and targeted media like blog posts, videos, neighbourhood guides, white papers, and case studies. 82% of marketers actively use content marketing, and businesses that publish content regularly see 6x higher conversion rates. You gradually build trust with your audience by sharing valuable content, from market updates to home-buying tips.
Importance of Blogging & Content Marketing for Real Estate
- Builds Brand Awareness: The more valuable content you create, the more your ideal clients see and discover about your business. This increases the chance of you crossing their mind whenever they consider investing in real estate.
- Improves SEO: Regular content marketing with relevant keywords improves your ranking on search engines. Quality content also attracts backlinks, which act as endorsements and boost your site’s domain authority and visibility.
- Long-Term Lead Generation: Well-articulated and evergreen content like property guides and market insights works for you long after it’s published. These pieces remain relevant, attracting traffic and generating leads over time. By regularly delivering value, your website will keep drawing in visitors without additional effort, resulting in sustainable lead generation for your real estate business.
- Educating Audience: Valuable and consistent content helps the audience better understand the real estate market, the buying process, and proper insights. By providing comprehensive guides and FAQs, you can translate difficult concepts and make them readily available to the audience. Informed buyers will make the right decision and consider you when it’s time.
4. Digital Marketing Strategy: Virtual Tours & 3D Listings
With technological advancements, we have the best digital marketing strategies at our disposal today. Imagine walking through a property from the comfort of your couch anytime. A virtual 3D tour offers just that. The technology provides a unique & convenient way for buyers to explore properties without leaving their houses. Best for remote buyers or busy people, the virtual experience can also point out critical elements that photos alone might miss. In fact, 75% of buyers say virtual tours were a significant factor in purchasing a property.
Importance of Virtual Tours & 3D Listings for Real Estate
- Time Efficiency: Virtual walkthroughs save time for both buyers and agents by reducing the number of personal visits. Studies show that virtual tours reduce wasted viewing by up to 40%.
- Engages Remote Buyers: Virtual tours allow buyers to explore properties without travelling. This is perfect for overseas buyers who cannot visit in person.
- Detailing: Virtual 3D tours offer a 360-degree view of properties, showing even the most minor details that might go unnoticed in a photograph. The in-depth view helps buyers make considerate decisions and gives them satisfaction.
- Engagement: Properties with virtual tours create curiosity among buyers and receive more interest: the more engagement, the more possible sales and greater visibility in a competitive market.
5. Digital Marketing Strategy: Real Estate Portals & Listings
The Indian residential market is at its peak, with a 66% yearly increase in property sales, reaching over 70,000 units in Q1 2024. Listing your properties on top real estate portals like 99acres, MagicBricks, and Broker.com is essential to target more customers. These platforms provide a verified space for buyers to explore property listings. These portals can push your visibility, simplify buying, and increase your chances of closing deals.
Importance of Real Estate Portals & Listing for Real Estate
- Trusted Platforms: Buyers scroll these portals before considering any property and count on them for accurate information. Since these portals adhere to strict listing guidelines, only verified properties are put online. Authentic information builds trust among the viewers.
- Audience Reach: Real estate portals attract millions of visitors each month and expose your listing. The massive traffic increases the chance of reaching potential buyers who have yet to discover you through other channels.
- Detailed Listings: The listings on these platforms are submitted in HD media with precise descriptions. Better visuals and valuable content captivate buyers and make your property stand out.
- Mobile-Optimized: With the rise of mobile browsing, real estate portals are optimized for mobile devices so buyers can easily navigate the listings on their smartphones or tablets. For housing.com, 79.94% of visitors come from mobile devices, while 20.06% come from desktops. The number speaks for itself about how important mobile-friendly listings are.
6. Digital Marketing: Video Marketing
Video marketing is another important digital marketing strategy for real estate brands in 2025. Video marketing is changing how real estate agents present properties to buyers. Whether it is a virtual tour, market trends, or even client testimonials through footage, video gives buyers an actual visual of space and features. Interestingly, sales agents using videos received more than 4X the average number of leads. A video any day will show a property much better than any other medium, so real estate businesses should consider video marketing.
Importance of Video Marketing for Real Estate
- Hooks Buyers Immediately: Photos certainly catch the eye, but videos keep the audience glued longer. A listing with video content has a 53x much higher chance of showing up on Google search’s first page. Instant visibility ropes in more prospects and converts to more possible leads.
- Connects Emotions: Quality video tours and video testimonials make users believe that the content comes from a genuine place and tend to connect to it more. Buyers feel more confident in their buying decisions if they have seen enough videos of the property, which helps them visualise the space better.
- Shareable Content: You can easily share videos across platforms like YouTube, Facebook, and Instagram, which help them go viral and reach a large audience.
- Provides a Competitive Edge: Regardless of how well it works, only a tiny percentage of real estate agents utilise video marketing. Using it gives you an advantage in attracting prospects. 73% of homeowners are more interested in agents who use video marketing.
7. Digital Marketing Strategy: Geo-Fencing
Buyer and seller behaviours are dynamic, so real estate agents must adopt the latest technologies to stay competitive. One popular way is using geo-fencing and local targeting. Geofencing is a location-based marketing strategy that uses GPS, Wi-Fi, or cellular data to show ads for your real estate listings to the targeted audience when they are nearby. Geofencing has gained traction since mobile usage has increased.
Importance of Geo-Fencing for Real Estate
- Real-Time Targeting: Real estate agents can pronto deliver ads or notifications to prospects within a particular geographic area. It enables timely communication with clients who are nearby.
- Targets Key Locations: By creating virtual boundaries around areas where potential buyers might hang out, like popular neighbourhoods, open house locations, or luxury shopping complexes, you can send targeted ads to people close by. This will help you reach the right audience in posh areas who might be looking for premium properties.
- Promotes Events: Geo-fencing can be a handy tool to push recently listed properties or any event. When buyers enter a specific zone, they receive ads about what is happening around them. Chances are they will show up since they are around. This is useful for promoting time-sensitive events.
- Data-driven: Geo-fencing gives agents valuable insights about their ads, like the number of people entering the targeted area, interacting with the ad, or visiting your listing. It is best to refine your marketing based on what works best.
8. Digital Marketing Strategy: Online Reputation Management
The online reputation of any business is its first impression on the audience. In the real estate industry, clients research thoroughly about agents and properties online. Their reviews/ratings play a decisive role. A managed online reputation opens doors for new clients and holds the existing ones.
Importance of Online Reputation Management for Real Estate
- Positive Reviews: Asking happy clients to leave a review will boost your ratings and increase your visibility on real estate portals. Positive reviews act as testimonials, showing prospects that you are trustworthy. More than 91% of people read reviews, and 84% trust them as much as a friend’s recommendation.
- Address Negative Feedback: Professionally handling negative reviews shows that you care about your clients’ feedback and aim to improve. Resolving issues quickly shifts negative experiences into positive outcomes.
- Brand Image: A series of positive feedback improves your brand image, especially in real estate businesses where trust is essential.
- Client Referrals: A positive online reputation can lead to word-of-mouth marketing by existing customers. Satisfied customers refer your services to friends and family; in real estate, referrals are a significant source of new business. 39% of buyers find their agent through referrals.
9. Digital Marketing Strategy: WhatsApp Marketing
WhatsApp has over 2 billion users globally, which means if you put in the right strategy, you can reach a pool of customers through WhatsApp. Businesses need to have a business account to interact with customers. WhatsApp Business has various features, such as a quick reply option to draft ready-made and automated replies. The app lets you share property listings, images, and more updates.
Importance of WhatsApp marketing for Real Estate
- Instant communication: Have real-time and instant responses to inquiries and updates on listings. WhatsApp outperforms email in reachability, as messages via the app are read within minutes compared to an email.
- Rich Media Sharing: Offer detailed views of properties such as HD photos, videos, and floor plans directly through WhatsApp without leaving the app. Rich media captures buyers’ attention and makes them interested in your listings.
- Personalised Marketing: WhatsApp features segmenting contact lists and sending customised content to specific groups, such as luxury home seekers or first-hand buyers. Many buyers prefer communication via messaging apps, which makes personalised marketing effective.
- Economical: WhatsApp marketing is a significantly cheap method to reach prospects. It nullifies SMS costs while having you share rich media content. With higher engagement and lower expenses, WhatsApp provides better ROI than other marketing channels.
10. Digital Marketing Strategy: Podcasting
Podcasting for marketing has risen in popularity recently. Millions of listeners tune in daily, and this program provides a unique opportunity to accustom the audience to your brand and share your expertise. Connecting with potential clients also becomes easy with podcasts, as you can share valuable insights and interview industry experts.
Importance of Podcasting for Real Estate
- Establishes Expertise: Real estate agents can prove their expertise via podcasts. There is a lot to real estate; discussing relevant topics, sharing market trends, and offering valuable advice on the podcast can help show themselves as industry experts, which helps build trust.
- Build community: Storytelling and personal stories connect the listener to the host. Interesting content helps build a healthy community, an essential element of the real estate business.
- Versatile Content: Podcasts are suitable for busy individuals who prefer listening over reading or watching. 546 million across the globe listen to podcasts today, which makes it a beneficial medium to cater for audiences while they multitask.
- Builds a Brand: Podcasting helps real estate agents make their brands more approachable. By giving a personal touch, such as storytelling with a friendly tone, agents can share their values, and potential clients feel more connected; ultimately, they will choose the agent they resonate with.
To Wrap It Up
Incorporating these top digital marketing strategies for real estate businesses can significantly improve property visibility, engage potential clients, and generate quality leads. From search engine optimisation to video marketing and online reputation management, each digital strategy for real estate brings unique benefits that contribute to a well-rounded digital presence. However, managing a comprehensive digital marketing plan can be time-consuming and requires expertise to maximise effectiveness.
Hiring a digital marketing agency can be a smart investment for real estate business owners who may lack the time or in-depth knowledge of digital tools. A dedicated agency not only brings specialised skills and up-to-date insights but also offers the advantage of strategic planning, real-time adjustments, and measurable outcomes tailored to the real estate market. By partnering with a digital marketing agency, real estate professionals can concentrate on their core business while ensuring their online marketing is expertly handled, delivering results that drive growth and success in a competitive market. Contact echoVME Digital today for a customised digital marketing plan for real estate.
FAQs
Should real estate businesses use digital marketing?
Digital marketing is crucial for real estate businesses to thrive today. Since most buyers search for properties online, digital marketing can help agents and businesses connect with these buyers. It is also a cost-effective option, providing real-time data and tools for personalisation, which can enhance lead generation and customer relationships.
Is video marketing necessary for real estate business?
Video marketing, including property walkthroughs, client testimonials, and neighbourhood tours, helps create a realistic view of properties and adds a personal touch to listings. Videos are a highly engaging medium and can be shared on multiple platforms, reaching a wider audience.
Why is SEO important for real estate marketing?
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) helps improve a real estate website’s visibility on search engines like Google. By optimising for relevant keywords, creating quality content, and building backlinks, real estate business owners can attract more organic traffic from people actively searching for properties or real estate services.
Should I consider hiring a digital marketing agency for real estate marketing?
Yes, hiring a digital marketing agency can be beneficial if you lack the time or expertise to manage these strategies effectively. An agency brings specialised skills and can handle tasks like campaign planning, data analysis, and real-time adjustments, allowing real estate professionals to focus on their core business activities.