Digital Marketing Playbook For Real Estate Part 1/3
Real Estate Digital Marketing Strategies
Many real estate agents are using digital marketing strategies to reach out to their existing clients and to get good quality leads. So why shouldn't you do the same?
Step 1 Create a sales funnel
The first step in a digital marketing strategy for real estate agents is to set up what I call a social media sales funnel. A sales funnel typically is a posting to the agent's Facebook business account or LinkedIn account written to get the target market’s attention with a clever hook eg. “Would you like a free valuation of your home?” or “Would you like to own an award winning heritage hotel and restaurant in Penang?” See also my Facebook post on behalf of a real estate agent below.
An effective hook tries to create an emotional response in the target audience to take some kind of action. The basic idea is not to overwhelm the target with too much information but to get her to do a simple action. Like click on an email or WhatsApp business account number to get more information.
Step 2 Present USPs & Financials
Usually an effective sales funnel gets around a 1-2 % click through rate. What happens next after the target has proceeded to ask for more information about the New Projects property you are marketing?
Case study: Quill Residences
I responded to a Facebook ad for Quill Residences, a KL New Projects luxury property at Jalan Sultan Ismail with 500+ apartments and was invited to a “one on one” Zoom session with a Team Leader, J to discuss the project's USPs as an investment property. Quill Residences (tag “City living at its finest”) is expected to be completed in late 2022.
During the 25 minutes “one on one' Zoom online session, J shared the following with me :
a spreadsheet showing projections of rental income from a 700+ SF unit,
the project's USPs,
the developer 's background and original development plans,
the availability of a furnishings package (the Quill Residences units are partially furnished) and
the services of an Airbnb hosting service operator to rent out fully furnished units on behalf of owners.
J said he was a former engineer before joining the real estate agency business. I think J’s online presentation was professional, he also offered to speak in Mandarin or English.
Step 3 Handling Potential Objections - Use A Tested Playbook
Unlike many agents, I felt J was able to answer most of my questions. J promised he would follow up on any of my questions he did not have answers to. To his own and his company’s credit, he did.
I suggest you sit down and think about the questions your target might ask, including possible objections. For example if the developer is not a listed company or does not have a proven track record. Write your own playbook to the answers on what you think will be reasons for the target to reject the property. It is probably a good idea to get another agent to do a role play as the prospectice buyer. Test if your provided answer satisfies your prospect's question on the project.
For example, I asked if J could get me a credit report on the developer (a subsidiary of the Quill group which has interests in retail, interior design, property etc) and a hotel sector report (Quill Residences' most likely competition is from the Platinum Face Suites & Hotel down the road at Jalan Sultan Ismail )
Step 4 The Follow Up
What often differentiates a rookie agent from a real estate professional is the degree of follow up. If you have promised to get more information or more financials, make sure you always deliver. Impress your target by doing more than what you agreed to get.
Remember the saying, “Promise Little, Deliver Big”. Selling property requires a lot of interpersonal skills like reading your target's wants, identifying who the real decision makers are, and of course how to close.
Step 5 The Close
The art of closing - I mean of course getting the target to sign on the dotted line to buy a New Projects property or rent a property deserves a separate article in Part 2 (to be announced later)
POST SCRIPT
For examples of effective hooks used in social media marketing see my post at Real Estate Marketing 101 , “Effective LinkedIn Marketing Is Easy” with an example by Knight Frank Malaysia and “”Why every REN should get a LinkedIn profile” by KW Reapfield . I have included one of my Facebook posts for a hotel for sale with the hook, “Do you want to own an award winning heritage hotel and restaurant?”. See below.
Example of a sales hook question in a Facebook post
For further reading:
“The Digital Transformation Playbook” by David Rogers, Wiley.
See information on his book at his website:
Globally recognized digital expert David Rogers argues that digital transformation is not about updating your technology but about upgrading your strategic thinking. Based on Rogers’s decade of research and teaching at Columbia Business School, and his consulting for businesses around the world, The Digital Transformation Playbook shows how pre-digital-era companies can reinvigorate their game plans and capture the new opportunities of the digital world.
Rogers shows why traditional businesses need to rethink their underlying assumptions in five domains of strategy―customers, competition, data, innovation, and value. He reveals how to harness customer networks, platforms, big data, rapid experimentation, and disruptive business models―and how to integrate these into your existing business and organization.
Rogers illustrates every strategy in this playbook with real-world case studies, from Google to GE, from Airbnb to The New York Times. With practical frameworks and nine step-by-step planning tools, he distills the lessons of today’s greatest digital innovators and makes them usable for businesses at any stage.
Many books offer advice for digital start-ups, but The Digital Transformation Playbook is the first complete treatment of how legacy businesses can transform to thrive in the digital age. It is an indispensable guide for executives looking to take their firms to the next stage of profitable growth.
