Fair Enough! It is agreed that it’s NECESSARY to have an EFFECTIVE ONLINE MARKETING. But what needs to be Done?

In our previous post “The NECESSITY of EFFECTIVE ONLINE MARKETING for Real Estate Agents”, I have explained using available statistics why it’s important to have an effective online marketing platform and maintain it properly to gain business from your online marketing activities. If you still have any doubt about the importance of having your products and services perfectly presented online, I do advise you to see this infographic.

Being convinced that you definitely must have an effective online presence, the million Dollar question is: How? Is simply having a website is enough? How should you approach management of different social media?

In such technologically advanced era that we are living in, numerous tools and services are available to help small business owners, self employed individuals, and Real Estate Agents create and maintain a very effective online presence and run successful online marketing campaigns. But finding the best tools and learning how to use them, needs a lot of efforts and takes up a lot of precious time from you. Besides, each tool has got its own cost. Maintaining a coherent and balance marketing communication and branding is also not an easy task as each tool has it’s own structural limitations.

Where to start from?

Well, go back and ask yourself why you need an effective online presence again? 90% of your prospects go online and use search tools and social media to find and evaluate their required products and services before they make any purchasing decisions. This brings to attention the importance of having an Online Marketing Plan.

A proper Marketing Plan requires Goals. Only based on these goals, you can define other steps and finally analyse if your marketing has been a successful one, looking at performances and achievements to reach the goals. So, let’s set 3 ultimate marketing goals for every real estate professional.

Goal 1- Branding

In the highly competitive real estate market you are obviously not the only one providing Real Estate Services. Moreover, not everyone provides the same service in the market. You definitely need to provide something different or serve a specific niche market, and you need to make this clear through branding. Therefore, you must brand your services or sometimes yourself to clearly differentiate your services as the right choice in your target market.

Goal 2 – Providing Services

You should strategically use Social Media, available online tools and related portals to demonstrate your command in business and provide your services to your prospects and clients. Using these tools and platforms not only shows your knowledge and industry professionalism to more people, but also is almost always regarded as your ability to leverage modern channels for customer services. Effectively using new-age channels ultimately increase your productivity and save you considerable time and money compared to delivering marketing services or messages through traditional channels.

Goal 3 – Lead Generation

Oh, Yes! I know that you were waiting for this all along. Certainly, one of your important goals to do online marketing is to generate leads and ultimately convert them to clients. Lead generation is slightly different when it comes to online marketing. The catch is that qualification of prospects in online marketing is trickier than traditional marketing. You have no way to know your website visitors and their interests (which immediately brings to attention the beauty of Social Media where you ARE able to see the demographics of the audience who interact with your business page.) If you are looking to increase your lead generation through online marketing, you need to effectively funnel your prospects through forms and tools that they can engage with, in order to qualify their interests. But wait you are not done yet. In online marketing you don’t have a lead until you establish the first connection. Therefore, get the contact info of a visitor, immediately follow through by contacting them and offering your service.

Branding, Providing Services & Lead Generation are 3 Marketing Goals For Every Real Estate Agent Click To Tweet

Now that you defined your goals, you should always define them as measurable action plans, like; “I must generate 20 new Leads”, or “5000 Households should have heard my Name or Seen My picture at least once”.

Well done, you now defined your measurable goals. You must now include TIME to make your online marketing goals actionable. Something like; “I must generate 20 new leads every quarter”, or “5000 Households should have heard my name or seen my picture within a 3 months period.”