The real estate business is all about the ability to generate leads. Whether you are a real estate investor, broker, agent, FSBO..... your main goal is to capture qualified leads that may be interested in what you are offering. The old tactics of marketing in the newspaper, passing out brochures or fliers, putting signs in your front yard are long gone. While these tactics may help increase your exposure remotely, I promise you will not be getting the results you want. If you are going to run a successful business or sell your house on your own in Syracuse NY, you have to incorporate both outbound and inbound marketing. I am comfortable saying, that now a days, you need to be spending 75-85% of your time increasing your exposure and generating lead with the latter.
Enter Inbound Marketing
So what is inbound marketing?
"Inbound marketing is about using marketing to bring potential customers to you, rather than having your marketing efforts fight for their attention. Sharing is caring and inbound marketing is about creating and sharing content with the world. By creating content specifically designed to appeal to your dream customers, inbound attracts qualified prospects to your business and keeps them coming back for more." -Hub Spot
This concept is fairly easy to understand but in order to be effective with this strategy you have to learn the basics.
So how will you begin to implement this strategy. Let me discuss the different mediums you will use to begin to create quality content to bring in qualified leads.
1) Lead Capturing Website - Developing an effective lead generating real estate website is the most crucial part of inbound marketing. This will be your main hub. You will push all of the content you produce back to this page. This is how you will capture emails, names, phone numbers and other valuable information. This hub will allow your customers to convert which will push them into your sales funnel for you to evaluate.
So how will you push these leads to your website?
First off this is going to take some testing for your specific business, but I want to go over the mediums that you need to be using to create your content.
1) Paid Facebook Advertising- The best, most cost efficient way to reach your target market is through paid Facebook advertising. With the ability to target specific interests, behaviors, life events etc.. You can get in front of any market that you deem necessary with a couple bucks a day. I would suggest educating yourself on this topic and really learning the basics of how this platform works. It is very powerful if used properly.
2) Organic Facebook Advertising - You need to create a business page on Facebook. In my opinion this page should be used to push all of your content. You should do about 20% advertising or selling and 80% of pushing valuable content. (You will need to use paid advertising to get your target market to like your business page, so you know that your content is reaching your target market). You can also target specific people/interests/behaviors through your organic advertising (post for another day).
3) Twitter - While this medium is not as effective as Facebook, it still offers valuable targeting metrics. There are a couple different ways to use twitter. The first way you need to be using twitter is to push certain content through this medium. You will also need to post pictures and videos that intrigue your target market to get them to follow you. Another way you need to be using twitter is by targeting conversations. Twitter gives you the ability to search for specific words and hashtags that your local community is using. Once you test different words for your real estate niche, join the conversation. If you think you can help these folks, then begin to communicate with them. Do not come out and immediately start selling to these folks. Begin with a like, or a conversation starter. One of the greatest Gary Vaynerchuk uses the tactic of "Jab, Jab, Right hook" .
4) Instagram - Another valuable medium for real estate. Real Estate is a great business to show pictures and videos, so if you know how to use Instagram you can be successful in this medium. The majority of the folks using this medium are of the age of 35 or less. So this is a perfect medium for first time home buyers. Initially when you start up your page, go ahead and start following every body that is in your local area, and I mean everyone. You can do this by using the search function and clicking on local places that people have tagged when posting. You will then be taken to the hashtag that was used. Begin following everyone in that specific hashtag (ex. Onondaga Lake, Local Businesses, Liverpool NY, Syracuse etc..)
5) Create a blog- This is a medium you can use to create valuable written content for your specific market. If you are targeting first time home buyers, maybe you start writing blogs about how to obtain a mortgage, the best lenders in the area, different types of down payments, tips on getting a mortgage etc. Make sure your blog revolves around valuable content for your target market to soak up.
6) Create a vlog- A vlog is just a video blog. It is another tool to incorporate into your inbound marketing strategy. If you are more comfortable in front of camera then you are writing
, then play to your strengths and create content through video. Currently, video is the best way to distribute content. This is if you are creating GREAT content. No one is going to pay attention to you if what you are putting out is shit. Make sure that you are bringing value with every video you put out.
7) SEO- Search Engine Optimization. This is how you are going to optimize your website for the search engines to rank your site. 75% of users never scroll past the first page of their search, so you know what that means. You better be on the first page of these search engines. If you are ranking locally for specific keywords, you should have no problem making it on the first page. I suggest that you take some time to educate yourself on the basics of SEO.
8) Craigslist- I understand that a lot of people use craigslist to advertise their properties or find buyers but the majority of them don't know how to use it or are using it the wrong way. Remember the main goal of all this marketing is to push them back to your webpage to convert, so keep that in mind when you are doing any type of inbound marketing. You need make your craigslist ads stand out. You can do this a number of way. First you need to utilize some basic HTML code to change your fonts color, italics, bold, header titles etc. This will help you design an ad to stand out. You can also insert a video into your craigslist ad, which no one does (its a secret) and really help your ads stand out.
The Power of Inbound Marketing In Real Estate Investing
Inbound marketing is a very powerful strategy and one that all business owners need to be using. If you are not familiar with any of these topics, you need to take the time to educate yourself on them. Inbound marketing can increase your sales ten fold if you understand how to utilize all the mediums. There are several other mediums that you can use, you just have to test which ones work best for your company and which mediums work off of your strengths. The thing with inbound marketing is that you are not going to see results over night. It is going to take time. You have to keep at it and never give up. You are building a valuable asset for your business and one that can make or break your business career. Don't mess it up!
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