Local Influencer Marketing Guide For Real Estate Agents

Check out our comprehensive guide for launching your very own influencer marketing campaign. You’ll learn how to collaborate with local influencers to generate organic traffic from homeowners and residents in your farm!

Are you ready to rock your next influencer campaign? Let’s do this!

What Is An Influencer?

As the term implies, an influencer is anyone whose opinions exert influence on their peers. They are typically regarded as experts in their niche, but influencers are much more than that.

An influencer is a communicator, curator, and distributor of content. Followers stay in touch to keep informed of the latest trends and solutions in their industry or field of interest.

A successful influencer is a master of brand messaging and social media marketing. You can easily identify them by:

• High number of followers
• Frequency of social media posts
• Consistent brand messaging

These days, just about anyone can become an influencer. And there’s every indication that influencers are here to stay. An increasing number of people are driving the explosive growth of this exciting new industry.

How Does It Work?

Influencer marketing is about collaboration, content, and technology.

If you’re already pumping out great content for your real estate blog or website, you can collaborate with an influencer to craft social media campaigns that will extend your online reach and drive additional traffic back to you.

So, let’s say you want to establish yourself as the go-to real estate agent for first-time millennial buyers in your farm. You’re regularly featuring local business owners on your blog that offer discounts to millennial homeowners and renters.

How do you get more millennials to find out about you?

You find an influencer that local millennials are following, and collaborate with them to share your blog posts. Their followers discover your content through a trusted referral source (the influencer), which can lead them to become your subscribers.

 

Once you convert these followers into subscribers, you can continue serving them content they love to build trust and recognition. And, as well know, referrals come from the people we know, not just what we know!  

That’s essentially the gist of influencer marketing.

Of course, influencers want to be compensated in some way for their efforts, but it isn’t always monetary. Your real estate expertise and your Sphere Of Influence can be leveraged to help influencers you work with increase their exposure as well.

How To Find And Engage With Influencers

Your best chance of finding an influencer is on social media. And don’t limit yourself to real estate influencers. In fact, your search should be focused on local influencers in your geographic farm.

Here’s a step-by-step strategy to get you started:

• Step 1) Start by browsing on social media (YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram).
• Step 2) Follow them. Add them to your network. Set alerts to notify you when they post content.
• Step 3) Comment regularly on their posts to build a relationship.
• Step 4) Repost and share their content in your circles.
• Step 5) Attend one of their local events and meet them in person.
• Step 6) Offer to interview and feature them on your blog.
• Step 7) After your interview, collaborate with them to promote it.

This strategy is a great way to qualify influencers before committing to a larger, more costly campaign. You’ll gain valuable insights into their brand as well as their work habits through the experience. They’ll also learn about you, build rapport, and share solutions for increasing your organic traffic.

Influencer Marketing Software

In addition to reaching out directly to influencers you discover on social media, you could consider using influencer software.

Combining marketing expertise, algorithm technology and the services of a talent agency, influencer marketing services provide you with the tools to connect and collaborate with influencers in your field.

Everything from contract arrangements, compensation, recruiting and analytics are provided by the leading influencer marketing services.

Here are 5 highly-recommended services:

#1) Tapinfluence – End-to-end influencer marketing solution for finding, engaging, and collaborating with the best influencers in any industry. These guys are leading the pack, attracting some of the most recognized brands – Volvo, Target, Seiko, Whole Foods and Canon.

#2) Upfluence – With its focus on influential bloggers, Upfluence functions as both an agency and software service. You can search for relevant influencers using their search tool, Reachr. You can also collaborate with multiple bloggers to publish content using their Publishr platform.

#3) Mavrck – An all-in-one service dedicated to developing and connecting micro-influencers, their unique approach to influencer marketing seems to be working. Members of their network appeal to many different industries and earn rewards for promoting brands.

#4) Revfluence – A self-service for influencers who want to connect with brands. Over 150,000 influencers use the platform. It also gives you tools for creating content and pitching ideas to influencers, as well as tracking influencer activity.

#5) Traakr – Forbes, Travelocity, and HP are just some of the brand names using Traakr to connect with influencers and their audiences. They specialize in campaign and relationship management. In addition to their analytics and vast network, Traakr gives you the power to cultivate trust and build recognition with an influencer and their followers.

This is far from being an exhaustive list, but these are all great options for any beginner.

Choosing The Right Influencer For Your Campaign

Connecting with the right influencer for your needs is critical to a successful campaign. Honest and transparent communication between you and the influencer will be essential to your relationship, and will directly impact your results.

The individual you choose to work with will also be representing your brand. They should be someone with a proven record of integrity and a strong reputation online.

‘Popular Social Networks To Find Influencers’

Here’s the caveat: anyone these days can pay for followers and likes. Be wary of judging an influencer by popularity rather than results.

Sophisticated, social media algorithms like Facebook’s EdgeRank reward content that attracts engagement with higher exposure.

In other words, you should be looking at influencers who not only post frequently but generate comments and sharing from their followers. 

But which social network should you choose? Let’s find out.

Choosing The Right Social Network For Your Campaign

Not sure which social network offers the best engagement? Finding buyers and sellers on social media requires finesse.

Each social network is powered by its own algorithm for ranking and searching content. The user base for each network is also unique and, while there’s a lot of cross-over, you still need a different strategy for each platform.

Research social media usage on your favorite platform before choosing. Of course, you don’t have to limit yourself to one platform. Be open to exploring networks and apps that you haven’t considered before, especially if you’re trying to expand your reach to new audiences.

Setting Goals For Your Influencer Campaign

Before contacting an influencer, you’ll need to establish clear objectives for your campaign as well. Review your current marketing strategy carefully. Ask yourself the following important questions:

1. Who is my target audience? (business owners, millennials, gen X, seniors, first-time buyers, etc)
2. How much time can I dedicate to managing my influencer relationships?
3. Compensation: What incentive/reward can I offer to influencers and my audience? (i.e. exposure, resources, market knowledge, mortgage help, home appraisal)
4. Does my branding convey my message clearly? (CTA’s, logos, merchandising)
5. Is my online presence up to snuff? (high-quality images, up-to-date content)
6. Budget: how much can I afford to spend monthly/weekly?

The answers to these questions will go a long way to determining which influencers will be the most effective in reaching your target audience.

Next, you’ll want to set clear campaign objectives to measure the results effectively. Set targets for the following key metrics:

• Reach – hyperlocal, regional, national
• Engagement – shares, click-throughs, conversions
• Followers/Subscribers
• Unique Visitors – follow-up with retargeting to build recognition
• Comments – respond promptly to attract followers and increase sharing

With these metrics clearly defined, you can measure your ROI with each influencer.

Next, we’ll discuss the various types of content you can create for your campaign.

Types of Real Estate Content To Share With Influencers

There’s so much you can share online to build organic traffic. If you want to actually build relationships, however, always put your audience first.

In other words, learn to get really good at understanding what your target audience finds valuable. The best way is to experiment with different ideas, and then measure the engagement for each.

Here are 7 content ideas you can implement in your influencer campaign:

1. Blog articles about the local housing market (market reports)
2. Press releases for new construction developments
3. Video Interviews of local business owners and professionals
4. Product reviews for homeowners
5. Live stream local events such as an open house or Q&A
6. Promotional offer from a local business or professional
7. Lead magnets (E-book, E-guide) to help local homeowners/buyers

Track the content you create and monitor the feedback you receive. If folks aren’t commenting and sharing your content, research successful competitors and emulate their strategy.

With that in mind, let’s discuss the tools you’ll need to track your campaign effectively.

Tracking Strategies For Your Influencer Marketing

In the final part of our guide, we look at tracking strategies and tools to help you tweak your campaign’s performance.

Having defined the objectives of your campaign, you’ll need tracking tools that monitor the performance of your influencer posts.

Finally, your tracking tools will allow you to calculate your conversion rate and ROI, the 2 most important metrics of all.

Here are the tools you’ll need to monitor and measure your campaign:

• Sales Funnel: A sales funnel is absolutely indispensable if you want to convert visitors into referrals. Create your own funnel for each influencer campaign.
• Landing Page: The landing page is where the magic happens. This data is important for calculating your conversion of visitors to subscribers/followers.
• CRM: Funnel new leads from your social media content and landing pages directly to your crm.

• Retargeting: Prepare different retargeting campaigns and behavioral emails. Users who click on a listing on your website, for example, can continue to receive additional messages about the same listing or similar home types.
• Web Analytics Tools: Measure daily/weekly/monthly traffic and engagement (shares, likes, comments, etc) on each social network.
• Marketing Automation: Drip campaigns can be scheduled and launched automatically to nurture leads in your CRM. There are a ton of affordable marketing automation software options available for real estate agents!

Influencer Marketing Best Practices

• Always be transparent. Be clear about sponsored content on your website or social media.
• Check each post to ensure FTC compliance. It’s your responsibility to ensure that influencers you work with are following through.
• Users prefer hashtags that aren’t spammy (#ad)
• Share content that adds value instead of promoting your listings exclusively. Create your own original content that influencers will want to share with their followers.
• Target a niche audience instead of trying to appeal to everyone. Focus on a specific type of prospect and find influencers they turn to.
• Don’t overlook the little guys (and girls). Micro-influencers with under 10,000 followers can be very effective for hyperlocal campaigns targeting local buyers and sellers.
• Track and measure results to determine your ROI and improve on your campaigns.

Think you could become a real estate micro-influencer?

Conclusion

That’s our complete influencer marketing guide for real estate agents. If you’ve been building a reputation in your chosen niche, now is a great time to start connecting with influencers from different industries.

Leverage your content to attract and collaborate with influencers who share your values. Seek out individuals with a proven track record for integrity and join their circles. You’ll meet like-minded peers and professionals who will become referral generators for you as well.

Lastly, don’t forget to monitor and assess your influencer marketing campaign with analytics tools. Capitalize on the power of marketing automation to reduce missed opportunities for engagement and fill your CRM with new contacts regularly!