Real estate marketing is a crowded space especially in tier 1 and tier 2 cities where you have an astronomically high ratio of real estate agents to actual homeowners. While we are all excited to welcome a new decade, we also think it’s a good time for you to reflect on your real estate marketing plan.
Before proceeding any further, we would like to mention that this blog is purely opinionated based. Extensive research on recent market trends and industry data has been compiled by our expert real estate marketing team and we are only presenting our views and perspectives.
In 2020, many upcoming marketing channels will go mainstream. Facebook Ads have managed to increase their inventory and the cost per lead has actually gone down (despite what others are saying).
In this article, we will share the top 5 real estate marketing trends that will play a significant role when it comes to marketing your real estate business.
#1 More regulations for running real estate ads in 2020 across all paid channels (and it’s a good thing)
One of the biggest regulations that Facebook Ads introduced in 2019 are new rules for advertisers running ads under the so-called “Special Ads Category”.
What this means is anyone running ads related to real estate cannot target people based on age and have limited targeting capabilities when it comes to selecting an audience in the Facebook business manager. While many agents are worried that they cannot target specific demographics and segment their Facebook ads using age-based filters, we think this is a trend that will likely continue across all major advertising platforms.
Here’s the thing, it’s not just you who is running housing-related ads online, it’s everyone.
How To Adapt To The New Special Ads Category Limitations For Running Real Estate Ads
The main goal of the Facebook Special Ads category is to ensure that data remains private and that agents cannot laser target certain demographics in their local market. The Facebook Special Ads category still allows for broad age and life event-based targeting. This means that when you are running a real estate lead generation campaign on Facebook you need to make sure that you are targeting the overall demographic that is likely to buy a home. (i.e. parents, newly married, etc.)
#2 Video Marketing Will Significantly Dictate The Growth Of Your Personal Real Estate Brand in 2020
In 2020 video marketing will play a key role in building your local brand in your target market. Most online social networks that are also content platforms are now switching their focus to creating more videos for their brand and this is for good reason. Unlike text, videos are not only engaging but you can repurpose them in different ways depending on the platform that you are sharing them from.
Bonus: (Check out our beginner’s guide to real estate video marketing)
What Types Of Videos Should Real Estate Agents Create For Their Social Profiles?
Now that you understand that a main piece of content can be repurposed in different ways (including extracting audio files for podcasts), let’s take a look at some of the best platforms to focus on when repurposing content.
- Instagram Videos – Create 1 minute long videos with an enticing CTA (Call To Action). A CTA can be asking visitors to go to your bio or asking them to swipe up on your stories.
- Facebook Videos – Facebook videos are something you need to double down on in 2020. Post videos on your page and make sure you are tagging local businesses or people that are featured in your content.
- LinkedIn Videos – You probably thought LinkedIn is for those seeking jobs or professional networking. Well, in 2020 experts predict that LinkedIn will become 1 of the top 5 social platforms. Also, Linkedin’s organic reach is superior to that of Twitter and Facebook. This means you should repurpose your content on LinkedIn to get the attention of people in your local area.
- YouTube – This is the most standard video marketing platform leading up to 2020. YouTube is introducing new features to help improve SEO (Search Engine Optimization) and visibility. Bonus: Check out our advanced YouTube and video optimization guide.
#3 Bots Will Actually Help Pre-Qualify Your Leads & Prospects In 2020
Bots have been around for a while. It began when Facebook Messenger launched features that allow any page to have a bot specifically for prospects. These days you can use software like Drift, Intercom and ManyChat to create highly engaging bots that interact with prospects or leads for your real estate business.
In 2020 we predict that bots will play a major role in pre-qualifying incoming traffic to real estate websites. The goal of a bot is to distinguish from visitors that are actively looking to buy, actively looking to sell or just browsing. This should be the most bot that real estate agents should learn to utilize.
To learn more about bots, we highly recommend that you read our guide on “real estate prospecting with messenger bots”
How to use messenger bots effectively on your real estate website?
Messenger bots will be used by more people in 2020 than ever before. This means that you need to start exploring ways on how to leverage this new medium if you want to capture leads from your real estate websites.
There are three main areas where messengers bots will be widely used in 2020 by many real estate agents and brokers.
- Bots to book appointments – One of the most common use cases for creating bots is to book appointments. Most of the bot platforms allow you to sync your calendar to them. This means visitors will see your availability and can then easily book a free consultation or a time to talk with you.
- Bots to pre-quality a website visitor – Another use case is to prequalify a website visitor and direct them to a specific landing page. For example, your bot can ask a visitor whether they are a buyer or a seller and direct them to a specific page based on their answers.
- Bots offering targeted marketing materials – Bots can begin with a question like, “Do you want a free market report for an area?” This allows you to get their information (email in most cases) in exchange for the item of value you are providing. You can even customize the item of value depending on the web page visitors land on.
#4 Hyper-Targeted Google Affinity Audiences For Better Results In 2020
Google Affinity audiences have improved dramatically over the last 12 months. Just in case you are not familiar with affinity audiences, think of them as clusters of users grouped by Google under specific interests or past purchase behaviors. Google recently announced that they are bringing affinity audiences to Google search.
This means that in 2020 you can target a broad keyword like “your area real estate” and segment that audience by people who are looking to buy or sell under the affinity audience. This will result in better targeting when it comes to running your Google Ads campaign in 2020.
#5 Agents & Brokers will finally realize the power of inbound marketing to set themselves apart from the competition in 2020
In 2020 more real estate agents and brokers will adopt a value-first approach understanding the power of giving something first before asking for business. This simple inbound methodology is crucial to setting yourself apart from the competition and ensuring that your visitors are completing an online form in exchange for an item of value.
We talked about this briefly when discussing one of the strategies under the chatbot section, however, we think this marketing method will be crucial when it comes to generating more qualified prospects and to rapidly growing your sphere of influence.
In order to execute a proper inbound strategy you need three key elements.
- Content for your local area branded under your real estate business.
- A proper landing page for each of your value offers or conversational bots to capture their information.
- An effective email marketing strategy to nurture these leads for the long term and convert them into clients.
What 2020 Holds For Real Estate Marketing – In Conclusion
2020 will be saturated with more agents who are competing to grab online leads and who are creating social media marketing for their local area. In order to separate yourself from the rest of the competition you need to create a unique value proposition for your target audience.
If you are going after investors, create a white paper on why investing in your area is the right thing to do then drive traffic to that.
In the end, 2020 will be a year where targeted and relevant marketing will yield a better result than ever before.