Real Estate Marketing Tips for 2024 | Winning Digital Strategy

Tips for Better Real Estate Marketing in 2024/2025

Hundreds of thousands of real estate agents are hopeful heading into 2024, given the experts predict a big jump in listings and sales.

The sales number forecast is fine, but the listing numbers are the big opportunity. You didn’t have listings, but it looks like sellers are ready to try to unload their properties. So, there’s an opportunity here for a digital marketing-savvy Realtor to reach them and become Number One.

The Boom is Not Far off. Are you Ready?

As I mentioned in my previous post, residential real estate sales are expected to rise 13 to 18% this year vs 2023.

Overall, prices are forecast to be flat, which is good for Realtors, since more buyers will be able to buy a home. Listings will grow at least 30%.

Awakening from hibernation will be hundreds of thousands of real estate agents returning to the work they’re passionate about. Some will let their passion and intelligence guide them to commit to their marketing. Your pool of prospects notwithstanding, reaching new buyers and sellers is crucial to your career.

The best lead volumes happen during these pre-boom sales periods. Regardless of what buyers and sellers were thinking and feeling, it’s 2024 when they’ll make decisions — meaning decisions change. Getting your brand, message, and selling proposition in front of them is really important.

Cost-Effective and Strategic

You can do this cost-effectively with a well conceived plan. Yes, SEO and content strategy are pivotal. Because you won’t sell prospects from a single social post, ppc ad, or email. Moving prospects through the pipeline takes timely execution and mastery of each touchpoint. At some point, the urge to hire you becomes too much and you get that phone call.

Some engagement is necessary before you can disappear the competition — so they choose you. You’ll want to develop your full marketing capability to deliver a message of competence, compatibility and successful outcomes.

Real estate is an emotionally compelling product and the reward of seeing buyers successfully land a home is a great personal reward. Other people’s happiness and security are important to us. We all want to be happy and to share in a happy outcome. Customers should see that and know that about you. Marketing helps get that key point across.

Early Birds Dominate the Market

Getting the jump on other Realtors is important. Waiting till 2025 is unwise. Early birds dominate the market and receive lasting rewards. They deserve it. They’re smart. The only reason many of the top Realtors are market leaders is because they were here long before you. They invested money and time to build their pool of prospects, connections and customers.

The last real estate sales recession (2008 to 2011) led to a 253% increase in real estate-related searches on Google.com. Your new plan should go well beyond SEO, even if most of your leads will come via Google (and that 90% of homebuyers search online, usually beginning with Google.com search).

A New Plan for a Winning Realtor

Sometimes you need to push the reset button. You’re not in the wrong profession and you’re better than you think. You just don’t have reach to your target prospects and maybe not the right value proposition. And the bigger rule of success may not be ultra-focused on niche customer targets. It’s more about being visible and present to a lot of prospects and opportunities. So, big visibility and a good overall value proposition opens you to a vast range of customers/deals.

The key influencer in a transaction might be a spouse, parent, or friend. Why not reach them all?

The first task is to review your value proposition to understand clearly what you’re offering clients and why you’re better. Next, it’s to create big reach/visibility and impact, then build content/messaging to create engagement, and then sharpen your selling proposition to win the moment with all these consumers you’ll be reaching.

That is all included in a digital marketing package for Realtors. Sometimes you need to hear how good you are and how good the market is to make you commit to your business goals.

My digital marketing audit by the way, is free, if you hire me. The value of that is to bring you and me on the same page, and to clarify everything that’s relevant to your quest for sales success. I can unearth important matters that impact opportunities and performance.

Most Significant Realtor: It’s all about reaching your target and engaging with them meaningfully so they believe you’re the most significant Realtor available — the only one for them. That’s when all other Realtors disappear into the fog, and marketing/sales gets easy.

Key Components of a Winning Realtor™ Strategy

Right now, let’s just look at a few things that you might do to create new leads, and to stay top of mind to your current customers:

High-Converting Lead Gen Magnets: Buying and selling comes down to key moments of decision where something clicks. Often it is lead magnets that make those “clicks” happen. These are clever devices that grab the impulse of buyers and sellers. From provocative blog headlines
Instagram and Facebook Organic Engagement: building a growing pool of new connections and posting visual content with fun, professional, and informative materials helps to build a personal, emotional connection with buyers and sellers. Engagement is not easy, so you’ll need a good plan and value to share.
Digital Ad Campaigns: Facebook ad campaigns are preferred and should be part of your repertoire along with Google search ads (e.g., when homebuyers search for a street or house number to check out a listing). There is a way to advertise smartly to keep costs down while reaching the best targeted prospects (web analytics).
Useful Digital Tools: tech is in, so you’ll want to create mortgage calculators, home buying calculators, downpayment calculators, home-inspection tools, crime and neighborhood walkability reports, neighborhood quality ratings, floor plans, school quality ratings, virtual showings, and more. And remember, your website is your most important digital tool.
Mobile Apps: whatever apps homebuyers use on their phone (local MLS, your broker, or Zillow), you want to be available via that app.
Informative Content Assets: Key assets to build are infographics which demonstrate your panache and professional branding, fresh, updated market reports, trend reports, selling strategy blog posts (don’t give it all away), and customer experience reports with testimonials).
Short-Form Visual Content — for PPC ads and organic social media posts especially, these catchy visuals create attention and impact which are essential for overcoming prospect blindness so can establish a connection with them.
YouTube Videos: building visibility on the world’s second-largest search engine is very important to Realtors. These videos can be central to your blogs, Facebook, Linkedin, Twitter and Instagram posts to produce a more meaningful conversation with prospects.
Email & Texting: Reaching prospects via a dedicated communications channel helps to carve a special relationship with the prospect and make it super quick and easy to reach you. They need to know you will contact them right away when a home is listed, so they think they’re first in line. That responsiveness speaks of your commitment to them. Via these channels you can remind them to check out your online tools and listings to keep up to date on their home search.
Google Search Engine Optimization: Google provides 90% of most successful Realtor’s website traffic and those high-quality leads are the most cost-effective. Number one ranking carries immense traffic, credibility and prestige. But SEO is not free. You need to invest in it to get results because it is competitive, and it may be winner-take-all if you don’t put in a solid, well-funded effort. That means, with me, you could dominate your market and disappear your competition. That’s powerful. The most confident, committed Realtor with the right professional-level talent is going to take the Lion’s share of traffic and become the most significant provider. Hiring a truly skilled SEO/Content Strategist who loves real estate is the right choice.
Content Strategy: Overall, your content represents a lead funnel with key touchpoints with prospects. This should be well thought out with exceptional content that captures their minds at these key decision points. For instance, if the prospect is really into kitchens, then ensure your content is focused on kitchen design, features and amenities — the ones they like. This is them — who they are. Your content strategy makes you sympathize with your best prospect niches and they want to know you’re sympatico with them. We can create and demonstrate your in-depth knowledge of this fresh new 2024 local housing market so they believe you’re the most up-to-date relevant agent — creating significance. Continuous relevant content publishing keeps you top of mind and able to capitalize on news and events that drive buying decisions. Content keeps them away from your competition and their messaging.
Phone Call Optimization: I’ve always been a believer in phone calls. Responding to user’s inquiries right away means you can stop the prospect’s search right there. If they only fill out a form, then they’re back online contacting other Realtors. Not good! Realtors who handle phone calls well will convert much higher. Being ready for “can you find me a home” and “why should I hire you to sell my home” questions can help you capture that lead in a composed, confident fashion.

The 2024 Real Estate Market is Here Now!

The 2024 real estate market is reawakening and you should be positioning yourself to be front and center, ahead of competitors.

This is a pep talk to lift you out of your comfort zone and into a year of strong commissions and a bright future.

Call me at 416 998 6246 to discuss your plans and how I might help.

I’m Gord, and I’m all about search dominance. Give me the resources and you will be top dog!