Real Estate Content Marketing Ultimate Guide 2024

Real estate content marketing might seem another marketing practice, but internet use has grown exponentially and permeated almost all aspects of our lives adding convenience to personal communication and commerce. That’s not the only gift the internet has given. In line with the original idea behind the world wide web, the internet has facilitated the sharing of information. And information can help build trust.

The average American is bombarded with 4000 to 10000 ads every day. Standing out among such a mess of buy-me messages is hard work, not to mention the fact that people have grown tired of and skeptical towards such measures. As ads lose their power content marketing fills that marketing void. It doesn’t try to persuade or beg customers to buy something. It tries to solve people’s problems and hopes to be rewarded with their business. That’s why 93% of B2B marketers use the content. And that’s why you should too.

Benefits of Content Marketing for Realtors

Content marketing focuses on problems customers have and then makes an effort to provide solutions. Why? To prove that you are trustworthy. To prove your expertise. With competition fierce only the most qualified businesses win. It’s also good to know that content marketing costs 62% less than traditional marketing and generates about 3 times as many leads:

Conversion rates are almost 6x higher for content marketers than non-believers (2.9% vs 0.5%).

48% of smaller companies have a documented content strategy, compared to only 41% of larger organizations.

60% of the most effective B2C marketers have a documented content strategy.

73% of organizations have someone in place to oversee their content strategy.

86% of highly effective organizations have someone in charge of content strategy.

72% of marketers think that branded content is more effective than magazine advertisements.

69% of marketers say content is superior to direct mail and PR.

72% of marketers are producing significantly more content than they did a year ago.

82% of marketers who blog see positive ROI from their inbound marketing.

There is more to this list but we think you got the point. The fact is the customers don’t care about you. There are simply too many businesses bragging about what they can do. It does not matter. Customers care about themselves and if you want their business you should care about them too.

What Type of Content Realtors Should Make?

Content is produced in many forms and each type has its own merits. Articles, videos, infographics, podcasts, white papers, newsletters, you name it. The list goes on and on:

In this section, we will review the best types realtors can use in their real estate content marketing.

1. Blogs and Articles

The first thing that comes to mind when one thinks about real estate content marketing is starting a blog. In fact, blogs are so popular that WordPress reports that 70 million blogs are created every month. And that number is for WordPress alone. This significant number might intimidate you but don’t forget that although the supply of content is great on the internet, the demand for it is even higher. Furthermore, much of the content produced on the web is poorly written and does not offer value. You need to do just the opposite.

Steps to Write a Blog Article:

A. Plan Ahead

One does not simply start writing in real estate content marketing. The topics should come from extensive research based on customer needs and keyword research. Studying your niche and their needs will help a lot. Remember you will not be reading the articles. Adjust them to fit your audience. Think of the message you want to get across for each article.

B. Practice Proper Writing Structure and Stick to it

The overall look and structure of the text are important to convey the message and for the professional look of the article. Follow the proper language standards to divide your text into appropriate paragraphs. Start with an introduction and conclude in the last paragraph. Repeat this structure in all your articles. A perfectly structured article is easier to read and will hold the reader until the last word.

C. Do Extensive Research

Producing original content does magic in real estate content marketing. However, studying the existing literature and citing valid and credible stats from trusted sources will enrich the article even more. Study many sources and try to sum up with a great volume of available information. Use your own knowledge and experiences to add to the article. Remember, this is not permission for plagiarism. Always mention sources and keep it honest.

D. Start Writing

The first draft will get things going and what you write does not have to be perfect as you type. You will be revising later.

E. Revise

Once the draft is done, go back and read it thoroughly. Add missing topics and remove the extra material.

F. Ask Others to Read it

Have a friend or a coworker read the article completely and ask for their feedback and opinion. They will be able to find mistakes you missed.

G. Edit, edit, edit

There is no such thing as too much editing. Read the article over and try to make it more concise and brief. You don’t want to bore your audience. Each sentence should have meaning. Avoid using complicated language.

2. Infographics

Just between the years 2011 to 2012, the demand for infographics increased by 800%. Infographics are a mix of snap-facts, education by entertainment, and statistics. These easy to read and understand visuals are a key weapon in every realtor’s arsenal because:

They are perfect to present different information in a quick way.

They can easily be shared on social media.

They can be embedded in your articles, blog posts, etc.

They can direct more traffic towards your real estate sales funnel.

From realtor.com

Concepts to use in Infographics

FAQs

How-tos

Pros vs. cons,

Renting vs. owning,

Fixed-rate vs. adjustable-rate

Condo vs. townhouse

Infographics’ Best Practices

a. Professional and Aesthetic Design:

Infographics are supposed to be eye-catching and attract visitors. So you need to make them as interesting as possible. It is all about presentation. You want your infographics to look good enough to compel the audience to share them.

b. Valuable and Valid Facts:

Infographics are capable of providing the audience with huge amounts of information and data in a compact way. That can both do you good or bad. You need to be picky when choosing facts to present in the infographics. Make sure what you use is Valuable and Valid. Also always use trusted sources.

c. Branding:

Developing awareness for your brand is something you should always keep in mind. With articles and textual content, it might be hard to demonstrate it is your company that has provided the audience with the content, but infographics, thanks to their visual nature, are capable of demonstrating such credits easily. Make sure your name is up there.

Sharing Infographics

Infographics are visual and the best place for sharing them is visual social platforms. Of course, you can use them in your blog and articles as well.

a. Pinterest:

You might think of Pinterest as a social medium, but in effect, it is just another image search engine, where people use keywords and search queries to find visual content. It’s just the perfect place for sharing the infographics. Make yourself an account and use the SEO and hashtags best practices to make your infographics easily discoverable.

b. Facebook:

Through the ups and downs of various different real estate social media platforms, Facebook still manages to be one of the leading ones. Make sure you post your infographics on Facebook to increase your reach by targeting the vast user base it offers. Like how Saatvik Homes and Decor is doing this on a Facebook post:

c. LinkedIn

LinkedIn is known for being the place for professionals. Professional content is welcome on this platform and given the educational nature of infographics, you can achieve a great reach and engagement by sharing your content there. Make sure it is well researched with a formal look and you are fine.

d. Instagram

Instagram is quite popular these days especially among Millennials and thanks to the image-sharing features of the platform, you can share infographics with ease. The platform allows sharing images which will increase your reach even further. Check out Trevor’s post here:

3. Videos

The human brain processes images and visuals faster than text. It is the reason many prefer movies to books. Real estate content marketing should focus on visuals. People browse then buy. Video is currently the king of content as it combines visuals and audio in a perfect way that text is not capable of.

Savvy marketers, take note: video is here to stay. Even Mark Zuckerberg believes video is a critical part of our future. Here is more:

By 2022, online videos will make up more than 82% of all user internet traffic — 15 times more than it was in 2017.

78% of people watch online videos every week, and 55% view online videos every day.

Viewers retain 95% of a message when they watch it in a video, compared to 10% when reading it in text.

72% of customers would rather learn about a product or service by way of video.

92% of users watching videos on mobile will share them with others.

Real Estate Content Marketing by Video-best practices:

a. Value Comes First

It is true video is visual and no doubt needs to be interesting with high-quality production but does not forget that even the most professionally produced videos won’t achieve much if the message and the content inside has no value. Valuable content is what the audience needs and looks for online. It is something that solves problems. If your content does not do that, it is not content marketing.

To produce the right content, you have to do some homework and study your audience. Find out who they are and what they care for. What their concerns are in real estate; What keeps them awake at night. Then you know what to say in your content. As long as your videos are aligned with your audience’s needs, they will keep coming back for more.

b. Quality is Next

Having said that, quality DOES matter. If it is within your budget and can be afforded, please do consider creating high-quality videos as they will leave a better impression on your audience. Professionally produced videos improve your image as a pro realtor and make you stand out.

In fact, we at Roomvu offer high-quality production of real estate videos for realtors. Please check the links below for more information. Look professional from the get-go and watch those leads fly in.

c. Be Human

Trust building plays a key role in realtors’ relationships with the clients. In order to be trusted a realtor should let the client get to know them and develop a personal relationship. The ultimate level in content marketing is “storytelling”. A realtor should tell a story of why and how they have come to produce a certain piece of content. And stories should be relatable, clients need to know where you stand and feel you care.

4. Virtual Tours

What’s better than a video? A virtual tour. People love browsing homes even if they are not contemplating buying one. But you should not focus only on people who have decided to buy a house. There are a lot of people who just need a nudge to start thinking about moving to a new place. For these folks, a virtual tour is just the necessary tool to stir emotions and trigger the will and the passion for a new home. Of course, virtual tours are also used to encourage and help those who already have made up their mind about a new place.

360 virtual tours

A virtual tour is a 3D simulation of a property shot and captured by cutting-edge technology. This frees the viewer from the limitations bound to the actual visiting of the place. Prospects can take control and with a few clicks and touches on their cell phone or computer screen, they can explore the property as they wish and at their own pace.

Virtual tours offer many benefits:

Once a virtual tour is created for a property it can be used again and again.

It is possible to visit properties far from the prospects, even in other cities

No need to make appointments.

Visitors can take their time as long as they want to.

They can explore every nook and cranny thanks to the 360-degree image capturing.

Realtors do not need to spend time on the actual showing of the property.

Many people can visit a place simultaneously.

The high-tech nature of virtual tours makes realtors stand out.

Matterport

Here are some stats about virtual tours provided by Matterport:

95% of people are more likely to call about properties with 3D virtual tours

Virtual tours may allow realtors to sell at a 4-9% higher sales price and decrease the number of days a listing is active in listing services.

90% of buyers would be more interested in a listing with a 3D tour.

99% of sellers believe a 3D tour would give their listing a better chance in the market.

Viewers are found to be 300% more engaged with a virtual tour than they are with 2D imagery.

Do you want to see it yourself? Click to browse yourself or check out the video below:

iGuide

iGuide is the tool that will help you create stunning virtual tools with great accuracy and eye-catching details. Better late than never; so get a move on and get your first virtual tour made for you easily and quickly.

Powered by iGuide or watch an iGuide video here:

5. Drone Videos

Marketing a real estate property is one of the most difficult things to do in business today. The competition is tough. People are looking online for listings and the trend has grown so big that everywhere you look there is video or images on properties.

To differentiate your listings and stand out you need to offer something new or rare. At least for the time being. For example, in the U.S. only 9% of agents are using drone photography and videos nationally. Drone or air videos are one of the new real estate marketing trends that combine the aesthetic view of air shots with artistic videography and the result is simply breathtaking.

In fact, according to the National Association of Realtors, 73% of homeowners say they are more likely to list with an agent that uses drone photography and video.

Homes sold 68% faster with aerial images on the listing.

agents sell 3.5 times more properties than agents that are not using aerial photography.

Have a look for yourself:

To showcase the gorgeous sights and vistas of the local neighborhood through an impressive aerial view around your listings impress your audience.

6. Real Estate Video Landing Page

Images and visuals draw attention and website designers and developers have taken notice. More people are adding videos to landing pages to increase the lead generation rates and direct customer behavior towards the desired sales funnel. One study found that videos increase the conversion rate by as much as 34 percent.

As your landing page will be the first thing your visitors come to see, it is advisable to make it as interesting as possible by using videos. There are some merits to this.

First, videos will let the audience get to know you more especially if your video features you as well. The relationship between realtors and clients works best if it starts off on trust. Videos allow visitors to discover you through the screen of their computers.

Second, videos are far superior in terms of the value they offer compared to text. Actually, search engines favor pages with videos in search result ranking as they believe video content is harder to produce.

Here are some tips for using videos in landing pages:

Prepare a shooting script before recording so that the video flows smoothly, and editing is easier

Keep your video short at just about a minute or two to keep the audience engaged

Provide the video with directional cues, such as a person inviting action at something.

Overlay the video with an appropriate audio

Embed the video on the landing page using a standalone player like YouTube or Vimeo. See an example of the power of videos here.

Put your video on looped auto-play to give the landing page a sophisticated and customized look

To get started we are proud to offer you the Roomvu agent web profile. Let the creatives at Roomvu deliver to you all these lead-generating instruments. They have created a real estate ecosystem where you get a free landing page rich with market report videos. Just the thing you need.

From Lilian Smith’s agent profile – Every Page is Branded and has a Contact Form

Real Estate Content Marketing Ideas

You need great real estate marketing ideas to produce great content. Great content is what turns visitors into leads and without leads, you have no business. Realtors have a busy and challenging job and it can be hard to stop and think of ideas. To help, we have gathered some popular objectives and themes to work from.

1. Offer Home Evaluations

Many people may not be in the state of the mind of selling their home or property but they need a little motivation. Some temptation. To set their minds and to sell, realtors can offer free home valuation and put it on a landing page. Finding out what they can list their property for may trigger those thoughts of selling. What will you get in return? Their contact information to build your audience base and market to later.

Roomvu agent profile offers realtors the option to create a lead capturing page and offer home valuation services. Sign up here and get your profile without the hassles of designing a whole website.

Home Evaluation is an effective type of lead generation landing pages

2. Use Instagram Stories

Use Instagram and run some FAQ Live Videos or upload some helpful videos to the IGTV section of the platform. Ask your followers to take screenshots of these stories and directly message them to you. Randomly choose from participants and give them some valuable rewards like a free meeting. This way word gets around and you will get more people following you and have more leads to the market.

Read more: Instagram Live for Realtors: How to Host and Advertise a Successful Virtual Open House

3. Use a Professional Profile Image

Going through your phone gallery and choosing a random image of yourself during your last holiday on a sunny beach, cropping the head, and using it as your profile image might be convenient but it will do more harm than good. There are certain jobs where you need to look professional like lawyers, doctors, etc. Realtors also fall into this category. So invest in a professional headshot and use the same image on all of your social accounts.

4. Earn Your Prospects Trust with Testimonials

Your profile on your website and social media can tell a lot about your qualifications and achievements. While those can be a good sign of what you can do for the clients and how you can help them with the problems they are still claims and yet to be proven.

Roomvu Testimonials

Set Testimonial Expectations:

While you can and should have the testimonials from your past clients on your website it is a good idea to have a video interview with your past clients and ask to have them talk about:

How they felt before doing business with you and after?

How do they feel now?

What specific problem did you solve for them?

Would they recommend you to their friends and family?

How did you help them make the right decision?

What about the property makes them the happiest?

Make sure you ask a recent client and let them do the talking. You are not there to show anything. They should be the one who states the facts.

5. Nurture Your Leads with Newsletters

You have done a great job capturing leads by creating awesome landing pages and now it’s time to nurture them into clients. The hard part is over. Or is it? Marketing to your leads is never supposed to be too easy.

You need to have a commitment towards what you do which in this case includes publishing valuable content regularly. Email Newsletters are a reliable way to reach our (potential) customers. Just make sure you send the right content to the right section of your audience.

Newsletter Topics for Real Estate

Here are some topics you can use in your newsletters offered by Brafton:

Blog posts.

Infographics.

Links to social media feeds.

Short videos.

Trending data points.

Geo-specific news.

New listings.

Buyers/sellers guides.

Helpful Tangible Content.

Newsletter Best Practices

Strong Subject Lines

Your leads receive lots of emails every day and guess how they decide which ones to read? That’s right, the subject line. The subject of an email leaves the first impression and is the defining factor if the message will be read or not. You need to use killer subject lines that are intriguing enough for the mail to be opened.

Visually Appealing Templates

Your newsletter will incorporate visuals and as mentioned earlier need to promote your brand as well. to present your brand in a decent way and to make the content interesting and attractive in visual terms make an effort to have a professional design, regardless of the quality of the content, bad visuals and design will have a negative impact on how professional you look.

Contact & Social Information

It is true that your newsletter is delivered by email and your email address is right there in the sender box, but you need to make it even easier for the audience to contact you. Put your contact information, like mentioning your email address again and your phone number where it can easily be seen.

Paul Warrin Contact info

Call-To-Action (CTA)

Real estate content marketing and content marketing, in general, is wasted without a Call to Action or CTA. It is easy to assume that the reader will know what to do but the thing is most readers won’t bother doing the guesswork. Make it clear what the reader needs to do and what you ask them to. Don’t confuse them with multiple CTAs. Each newsletter should have a single and clear call-to-action.

A Personal Touch Newsletter Contact Info

Real Estate Content Marketing Tips

Real estate content marketing is so vast that covering everything in a single post is an impossible task. However, in the last section of this article we have provided you a handful of tips that will teach you how to make the best out of real estate content marketing:

1. Make your website user friendly

You might be tempted to create a website with multiple sections and categories. But visitors need a clear path ahead of them. Confusing them with a complicated page will result in them leaving.

Make it easy to navigate through your website. Make sure your website is mobile-friendly as many viewers will be on their phones.

Finally, your contact information should be right there. Nobody should have to find it. It should be front and center.

2. Combine SEO with lead generation techniques

Although it is important to make your website and social media posts SEO-friendly, the main flow of your leads will be from the landing pages you create. Build a solid contact list by including existing clients, previous sales, social media followers and make a habit to expand this list.

Property search is another type of lead generation landing pages

3. Invest in digital advertising

Although content marketing is the opposite approach to ads, real estate agents may try PPC ads from time to time to promote their best performing pieces of content. These ads can be highly effective and generate significant amounts of leads.

However, PPC ads can easily turn into a waste of resources. Be extra cautious about what you are promoting and choose the right keywords for your ads and run the ad on your region of interest.

4. Get Active on Social Media

Creating great and valuable content without promoting it is useless. How are people supposed to read it when they don’t know it exists? Social media platforms are where people especially millennials spend time so you should be there too. Promote your content on your social media accounts. Track and monitor topics related to your business and engage in others’ posts. For Instagram and Pinterest, you need to focus more on visual content.

5. Post regularly

Establishing a regular habit of producing and posting content is vital to real estate marketing as your audience will be waiting at those times for your content. you go silent for a while and those followers are lost. Probably unsubscribing from your emails, unfollowing you on social media platforms, or simply removing your website’s bookmark. Keeping a steady and regular flow of content is a must.

6. Include local images

A neighborhood landing page is providing clients with local information

As a realtor you are not just selling the house; you are selling the neighborhood too. Including information about the amenities and facilities in your listings on your website is a brilliant idea but remember to combine them with beautiful images of the neighborhood as the images will have a stronger impact on the purchase decision the prospect will make.

7. Create a Referral System

Provide incentives for your past clients to refer you to their friends and family and reward those new clients with incentives too. Such incentives go a long way in finding more prospects especially if your previous clients are very happy with the business they have done with you.

8. Add social sharing buttons to your site

Your website should contain some valuable content but real estate marketing is about audience engagement and being shared. So make it easy for your website’s visitors to share your content on social media. Provide easy-to-use icons for different social media platforms and place them with every piece of content you post. If your content is worth it, people will share them and that means more to your audience.

Bargain Homes is one type of lead generation landing page

9. Develop guides for buyers and sellers

Being helpful is one of your main jobs in real estate content marketing. And as a realtor, you need to produce lots of content helping buyers and sellers, your two business parties. Go through question and answer social platforms and look for the most common questions people ask in your field of work. Compile an article and answer those questions. Make this article downloadable on your website and promote it on your social media accounts.

10. Try different kinds of content

You may assume having a blog with lots of articles alongside a couple of social media channels is enough. However, in order to avoid being boring you need to think of, eBooks, infographics, videos, photos, lists, etc. in your content calendar. The video below was made to provide value to home buyers:

11. Curate content

While it is a good idea to produce original content based on your knowledge and experiences, not all your content marketing material needs to be completely your own. Go through different literature and content in related sources and compile useful articles and posts and add your own insights. This does not mean to plagiarize. Always keep it honest and include the sources.

12. Create Multiple Websites

Your audience is not all the same. They are of different ages and characteristics with various interests. You can’t treat them all the same. Every niche needs its own specially designed content and it is a good idea to create different websites/landing pages to cater to their specific needs.

13. Use analytics to drive your marketing

Having a great plan and a solid real estate marketing strategy is a must in real estate content marketing. However, monitoring and keeping track of how your efforts are doing is even more important. You need to monitor the analytics of your post to see where you are doing great and where you are not. Learning from both the weak and the well-performing posts, you can make modifications and tweak your content to increase performance and get better results.

14. Put your top listings on your home page

Your home page will be your most visited one on your website, use this opportunity to feature your best listings to increase chances of generating leads and ultimately closing a deal.

Agent profile contains all your current listings

15. Present your listings the best they are

Using low-quality, poorly shot images for listings is probably a bad idea. Not only will they not generate any leads, but they will also probably disappoint your client and will ruin your reputation. As easy as shooting a random image may be, do yourself a favor and invest in professional listing photography and present properties in their best light.

Listing page

Roomvu offers high-quality real estate photography with great value. Head on to the listing photography page to learn more and have your first listing photographed in a professional manner and watch those leads fly in.

Impress your Clients with Professional Photography

16. Get friends and family members to follow you on social media platforms

If you are new to social media, you will be starting at point zero with no followers. To get a kick start it is a good idea to ask friends and family members to follow you. The more you get people to follow you, the more others will feel inclined to join. Empty pages do not leave the best impressions for new visitors.

17. Post regularly on each social media platform

Consistent with what you are supposed to with your own website regarding the constant flow of content, your social media followers will be having the same expectation from you. If they are following you, they expect you to post content in a timely manner. While it is not necessary to post every day, keeping a consistent pattern is a must. Every day, every other day, once a week, whatever fits your strategy should stay the same throughout your efforts at real estate content marketing. See how Deanna Barley is announcing her donation to a charity on an Instagram post:

18. Direct visitors of your website to your social media accounts

Social media is your second most important base in real estate content marketing. so it is wise to link to your channels from your website and vice versa. Anyone who follows you should be asked to follow you anywhere else online you are present so that they can engage with your content on those platforms as well.

Julia Green

19. Run contests on social media

To improve and expand lead generation on social media, think of some contests you can run and set some rewards for the winners. Such prizes are a great drive to attract more people to your channels and turn into leads. Leads mean deals. The more the better.

20. Produce custom content for your featured properties

In order to increase the chances of closing a deal, it is advisable to invest in more rich content for your best listings. Content like more high-quality images, videos, and graphics will improve marketing results.

21. Set up Google My Business page

Google My Business lets you manage and control how your real estate business appears in Google Search and Maps listings. Once people search the name of your business on Google, your contact information and the address on the map will show up. How many times have you found a business like this?

22. Write an ebook

Once you have produced a decent amount of content on your website, you can compile those articles in a single ebook and make it downloadable. Using ebooks in landing pages is a great way to capture leads by asking visitors for their contact information in return for permission to download the ebook.

23. Focus on solving problems

Remember in real estate content marketing you are not selling anything. You are helping people. You care for them and at the same time present yourself as an expert on the matter who can be consulted if anyone needs professional help. People hate being sold to. Making such moves in content marketing will not work. Have the correct mindset and plan to be the source of valuable information. People will reward you with their business later.

24. Don’t lose hope

Real estate content marketing is a long-term investment. If you don’t see results in the beginning it does not mean it won’t work or you are not cut out for it. Stick to your plan and follow the rules. It will work out eventually. If you don’t see results after a while you need to go through what you have done and identify those wrong turns and make an effort to correct them.

The Takeaway

Content marketing is not a shortcut. It is an investment of time and energy. But it has proved to be efficient and useful for producing leads. Developing a strategy will set you in the right direction to present yourself as the professional who can help your audience buy or sell their next home.

What is the core of successful marketing of real estate?
Real estate content marketing might seem another marketing trend, but internet use has grown exponentially and permeated almost all aspects of our lives adding convenience to personal communication and commerce. That’s not the only gift the internet has given. In line with the original idea behind the world wide web, the internet has facilitated the sharing of information. And information can help build trust.