Looking for the most effective online tools to win exposure for your real estate listings? If you’re struggling to get more eyes on what you have to offer, consider these online tools to promote your listings better.
Your real estate website might be one of your most powerful online assets, but you’ll have to go beyond that. Naturally, the first thing to do is to invest in a website that will do a stellar job of showcasing your listings. That done, start expanding your reach.
Effective online tools to promote real estate listings
1) Dedicated neighborhood landing pages
A neighborhood landing page is a fantastic way to showcase your local area and one of the great online tools to promote real estate listings. Filled with hyperlocal keywords, it can turn into a great boost for SEO. Real estate websites with nice, informative neighborhood pages create a richer, more powerful impression on your visitors.
A neighborhood page is also a perfect place for promoting your properties in the area you’re describing. All you have to do is to create a section with featured properties. It’s important to do this right – content has a higher priority than listings.
For more info on how to create these pages, check this post: How to Write a Perfect Neighborhood Page in 5 Easy Steps.
2) Email newsletter
Email is 40 times more effective in generating new leads than social media. In fact, people want more email communication from businesses rather than social media outreach: 72% say they prefer receiving promotional content via email, not social media.
Add to this that email is 5 times more likely to be read than a social media post, and you get a powerful reason to incorporate it into your marketing strategy.
However, remember that sending purely promotional emails rarely works. Instead, prioritize content and include your listings as an additional piece of information. Just like with a neighborhood page, a good structure is important. For example, you can organize your newsletter into something like this:
- a quick greeting + a short opening line, if you like;
- content block;
- call to action;
- featured listings;
- contact info;
- unsubscribe link.
See how you can waive the listings into the structure of your email? If done this way, it looks much less promotional and more engaging to your readers.
[Related post: 7 Steps to Crafting an Outstanding Real Estate Newsletter]
3) Property portals
More traffic equals more leads. It’s a good idea to feed your properties to large property portals to get a boost for SEO and more inquiries in your inbox. Regional, national and global portals gain huge traffic every day so why not let them take over and find some leads for you?
These portals also dominate search results so people naturally land on them while looking for properties online. Likewise, people can go directly to these websites to find their next home as they’re popular and trustworthy. All in all, this means sites like Craigslist, Rightmove, Realtor.com, Zillow, national portals, etc. should be one of your handy online tools to promote real estate listings.
4) Your own real estate blog
Never underestimate the power of your website and blog. This is your dedicated online space that works on promoting real estate listings and showcasing your expertise. Link to the listings in your blog posts in a natural manner and where it suits the context best of all. It might be a good idea to include featured listings at the end of the posts. You’d want to use every possibility and online tools to promote your listings so why miss out on something you own?
Besides, internal linking is extremely important for SEO. Search engines favor sites with good structure and navigation. Placing relevant links throughout your real estate website’s content improves user experience. Remember to use your keywords as an anchor text.
[Related post: 7 Types of Real Estate SEO Content That Make an Exceptional Blog]
5) Social media
Agents report that social media is one of the most effective online tools to promote real estate listings. For one thing, they do deliver large volumes of traffic to your site so you’d want to integrate them into your digital strategy the soonest. Chances are big that you’ve already done so.
Here’s a brief recap of what to expect from different social media.
Facebook business page and Facebook group
If you use a real estate CRM, you probably don’t even have to post anything manually – you can automatically share your listings to your Facebook business page. To add more powerful functionality to this page, you can add also add custom Facebook apps.
Also, consider running Facebook ads and sharing your listings in dedicated Facebook groups. Typically, agents find Facebook to be the most effective among all social media.
With its hashtags, Twitter may be very interactive, but it typically performs less well than Facebook or Instagram. People looking for properties want more photos and information and Twitter with its 140 characters dis more limited.
Instagram & Pinterest
For this reason, you should consider Instagram and Pinterest. Both are great online tools to promote real estate listings. Additionally, you can use Instagram hashtags to make your posts more accessible in searches.
Snapchat
Snapchat is a recognized social media to reach millennials. The way it works is different from most social networks so it might be confusing to grasp how its features may apply to real estate. Here’s a great roundup on using Snapchat for the the real estate industry: Field Guide to Snapchat for Realtors.
YouTube
It goes without saying that all videos you have for your properties should be published onto your YouTube channel. This is a good boost for SEO and a signal to search engines that you produce diverse and popular forms of content. While uploading your videos to YouTube, remember to write a proper description and include links to your site.
Google+
Don’t forget about Google+, either. It’s not usually a top performer in terms of traffic but can be a good boost for your SEO.
Active Rain
Active Rain is the world’s largest real estate blog. More than 200,000 members share their advice, experience, latest online listings, testimonials and best practices to boost their reach.
6) Retargeting
Only 2 percent of your website visitors convert on a first visit. 98% just go away and you might never get the chance to engage with them. To reverse the situation, use retargeting tools.
One of the most effective online tools to promote real estate listings, retargeting redirects people back to your site. The image below should give you a better idea of how it works:
Here’s also a dedicated post: Retargeting for Real Estate: a Complete Guide to Bringing People Back to Your Site
7) Google AdWords
If you’re ready to invest more in online advertising, Google AdWords could be a great solution. Here’s a great guide covering all the basics and even more: Google AdWords Made Simple: a Step-by-Step Guide.
8) Mobile apps
A mobile-friendly and responsive website is no longer enough to reach new people and impress them with what you have to offer. 85 percent of mobile usage is apps, not browsers. This means designing your native real estate app gives you an unmatched opportunity to promote your listings.
It turns out that all engagement comes from apps. They provide you with all those bits of interaction you need to build personal connections:
- downloads;
- referrals;
- calls;
- emails;
- social messages.
Mobile apps are tailored for simplicity and offer an easy way to contact the agent, view listings and leave reviews and feedback.
[Relate post: How a Native Real Estate App Can Generate You Leads]
What’s next?
It’s hard enough to cut through the noise in today’s marketing landscape. Use these tools to secure yourself a better chance of reaching your audience and generating more business online.
