You’re in the real estate business but want to take a different approach to advertising listings at community events or other places. We hear you!

The old way of promoting properties is no longer as effective as it used to be. 

You want something new and digital that can help increase sales. 

What you need is… content marketing! A digital marketing strategy where content is used to promote products.  

This alternative lets you educate the audience about real estate and how to make smart choices. Plus, it’s more cost-effective than other approaches.

But, what is it and why is it an option to consider?

Keep reading to find out.

Why is content marketing important in real estate?

Imagine you're a first-time homebuyer (congratulations btw), scrolling through endless listings, trying to make sense of mortgage rates and wondering what factors will influence your investment. 

You then come across a blog post that not only explains the home-buying process but offers insights into current market trends and tips for negotiating the best deal. 

If the owners of that blog are selling properties, you agree there’s a good chance that there’s a good chance you’ll want to buy from them. 

That’s the power of content marketing. Beyond stuffing a blog post with keywords, content marketing helps provide real value that guides and informs existing and potential clients. 

In addition to that, here are other reasons why leveraging content marketing can transform your real estate business:

• Helps showcase expertise: Your audience (first-time homebuyers and others looking to buy or sell) is out there wondering if there’s a property within their budget, what trends to look out for, or how much return on investment they can get from a deal. 

Creating content that responds to their challenges or curiosity, sends out signals that you’re trustworthy, have their best interests at heart, and are knowledgeable. 

In other words, it positions you as a thought leader they can count on to help them make good investment decisions.

• Increase your brand reach: Posting helpful content online (e.g. documents new homeowners should prepare before applying for a mortgage loan) has the potential to travel far. 

When people who desperately need the information you’ve published see it, they’ll (hopefully) like and share it with others. 

Know what that does? It increases the number of people who check you out, so more people get to know about your specialized services.

• Improve sales over time. In the past, people interested in buying real estate started their search by chatting to real estate agents that would show them around different properties. 

Now, that step comes later and the journey starts with a Google search. 

A report by the National Association of Realtors says that 97% of homebuyers use the Internet in their home search. 

So when you publish content that's helpful and stands out during their search, it increases the chances of them buying from you. 

Now, what type of content can attract potential buyers and convince them you’re the best option?

Find out below!

What are effective types of real estate content ideas for attracting buyers?

Here are some of our top content picks realtors can use:

 1. Educational blog posts

Blogs allow you to provide the audience with information they’ll need on the entire property acquisition journey. 

You can create content for first-time buyers without experience wondering how to pick a location or what to look for when buying the dream home.  Then, you can produce content for people with experience who want to know how to identify areas with future growth potential. 

People often don’t know these things so creating content that can teach them shows you’re an expert in the field. It’ll convince them to trust you and eventually buy from you as they know you’re looking out for their best interests. 

2. Interactive real estate catalogs

This is essentially a brochure showing the listings in your collection and the unique amenities each property has. 

Start with an intro of your business and a unique selling point (your brand’s superpower that differentiates it from the horde). Then, a table of contents for easy navigation before diving into the different properties. 

The properties should have photos from different angles and videos to help the audience visualize themselves living there, or what could be done with the space.  

And FYI, you can create catalogs for residential, commercial, and industrial properties.

Here’s an example design on Ceros of what a catalog can look like:

Image Source: Ceros

The catalog here was designed with a sidebar menu of the different listings available. Viewers can check different properties by clicking on the available options to the left. 

Then each listing has an automated slideshow that allows people to have a good view of the property. And to the right are more property details including the price and available amenities. This way, readers don’t miss anything as they interact with the content.

3. Client testimonials and success stories

Social proof is a huge deal among customers regardless of what they buy. 

They want to know if other people have had a good experience with your brand. That’s why 99% of people rely on online reviews before making a purchase,  according to an online survey by Cardrates. 

So, share testimonials of people who have benefitted from your service as it can help build trust with potential customers. 

You can take it further by sharing success stories and discussing all you did for a customer. The challenge they faced, what you did to solve them, and the outcome; like getting a fantastic deal on a property or repurposing their loan to take out another mortgage. 

That’s what this realtor did in her ‘just sold’ social media content:

Image Source: Instagram

She highlighted her negotiation skills and the value she added to her customers. 

4. Market updates

What’s happening in local businesses and international markets?

How does it affect sellers and buyers?

If you’ve studied the market in your area, creating a report to share with your audience can be effective content to use in a campaign. 

It can be a survey of real estate trends in the last five years to help companies know how to invest or the impact of migration in the city and how it’s affecting development and real estate. 

Something like that is what RE/MAX a Canadian real estate company did with the report below. 

It’s a study of the impact of property and land transfer taxes on homeowners and intending buyers. It shows where people are migrating from to find more affordable housing and the opportunities that’s opened up in regions with high migration rates. 

Content like this is original content that provides insights for buyers to make informed decisions.

5. Listing presentations

Posting hot listings as they come out is another kind of content to create. It can be a social media post of the properties, price, and special features like this Instagram Reel:

Image Source: Instagram

Or you could make it into a blog post, adding more details to the listings such as proximity to social amenities, and compare them with other properties on display.

6. Home maintenance and DIY interior design tips

Got ideas on how your customers can spruce up their new homes and make them more ‘homely’?

That’s a content idea you’re sitting on. 

Create a post on maintenance tips or one showing them how to add curb appeal to their properties.

Content like this isn’t just to rake in likes or views, it shows the audience you’re thinking of them and that you’re trustworthy enough to do business with.

7. “Day in the Life of a Realtor” videos

You could produce videos that show what a typical day in your life looks like. 

Not a “get ready with me,” but a “follow me as I meet a client” post. 

Show people how you interact with other clients, and the kind of properties you deal in. Ultimately, sell them the experience they’ll get by doing business with you. 

Another approach is to sell what their life can be if they buy the property you’re advertising. A morning walk or stroll to the gym might be a good place to start.  

8. Interactive infographics

This content format lets your audience understand complex information with ease.

You take complex information like how a new NAR policy will affect homeowners' mortgage payments and simplify it by transforming the content into a visual blend of images, text, and data. 

And by adding interactivity, it becomes even more engaging for them. 

A good example of an interactive infographic is this one designed on Ceros by Skanska, a construction company.

It’s a forecast report on construction trends people should pay attention to. 

But instead of long text with static graphs, it was like a slideshow people could swipe through with clickable elements that revealed information in an interesting way.

9. Email newsletters

Newsletters are emails sent to potential and existing customers about offers or updates they should know about.

This content format has a reputation for making recipients feel special as it’s usually like a personal letter sent to their inbox. 

Email newsletters can include:

• Access to local events and resources.
• New listings on the market.
• Time-bound offers and discounts. 
• Recently sold listings.
• Changes in a home’s value they’ve checked out. 
• Details about the buying process.
• Tips about buying or selling a property. 

10. Interactive neighborhood guides and maps

This type of content is a good way to capture people’s attention especially if your focus is in a specific locale. 

You can design an interactive map showing amenities future customers can access in the environment. This could be schools, transportation systems, shopping malls, restaurants, offices, or parks people can click on for more information.  

Apartment Therapy, a company focused on home design and decor created a guide that showed how people across different states in the U.S design their homes. 

This way people intending to buy homes in those areas know what to expect if they move into the neighborhood.

Overall, engaging with an interactive map or guide tells the audience what they need to know about their prospective neighborhood so they can make informed decisions.

11. Virtual open houses

Open houses are like virtual tours or video walkthroughs where the audience can see a property you’re listing from anywhere. 

They experience everything as if it were a physical tour. 

It’s a great option for people who aren’t physically present to check out a property or want to see if it’s worth visiting.

You can make it a live event – a great method for lead generation – where people register to watch and repurpose it for your social media accounts to get more reach. 

***

Now that you know which type of content can attract future clients, let’s discuss how to make them appealing.

What are the key elements of effective content for real estate agencies?

Knowing what type of content to produce is one thing, ensuring people love it is where the work is. 

But don’t worry. With the key elements highlighted below, your marketing efforts will pay off.

Storytelling

Regardless of which type of content piece you create, ensure it has storytelling elements. 

A 2022 study by Thomas Graeber, an assistant professor at Harvard Business School showed that stories leave a longer impact on an audience’s beliefs than just static facts. 

So how do you infuse storytelling? 

• Share stories about the listing. What motivated the people who built it? Is there a history of the property? 
• Talk about the lifestyle associated with the property. Is there a status it’ll help them attain? For instance, a cozy property might be a good fit for tech bros. So you can speak about the lifestyle of a techie. 
• Highlight client testimonials and case studies to draw people in. 
• Throw memes into your content. 

High-quality visuals and multimedia content

You’re marketing a product people want to see every inch of before buying. 

As such, you need to ensure they can see it properly by using high-resolution visuals. 

Hire professional photographers to take pictures of the properties and videographers to produce eye-catching videos. 

Let these professionals take charge of your multimedia content, video tours, or TikTok videos. And if you want to host a virtual open house or tour, get them to set up for you. 

Because you see, your competitors are already using great visuals. So using high-quality visual content isn’t an option, it’s a necessity.  

Interactivity

Adding interactivity to your content will make people fall in love with it and keep coming back.

Brands who’ve used it in the past have said interactive content helped attract more visitors and hold their attention much longer than static content.

It means instead of people just reading content, they actively engage with it by clicking, scrolling, hovering, or answering a question. 

Now, there are different ways to add interactivity to your content. 

You can create: 

• Interactive maps to help people virtually navigate areas around the real estate listings. 
• Quizzes to help people figure out what they're looking for.
• ROI or mortgage calculator so they know how much profit a property will get them or how much their monthly mortgage rates will be.

Informative content

Ensure that the content you create holds great value for the audience. Beyond just the property price, it needs to provide what they need to know. 

And that could be: 

• The property’s square footage, special features, and the number of bedrooms and bathrooms. 
• Market trends and future predictions. 
• Neighborhood guides containing information about the neighborhood where your property is.
• How-to guides showing people how to go about purchasing a property or how to build a DIY project.

Search engine optimization (SEO)

Optimizing your content for the search engine ensures more people see it. 

Here are some ways to do that: 

• Find and use relevant keywords in your content to increase its visibility. Ahrefs’ keyword explorer is an appropriate tool for this. You type in popular keywords in the real estate industry and it’ll show other trending terms to help boost your rankings. 
• Create meta descriptions that give people a brief overview of what the content is about to encourage clicks when they’re searching on Google or other search engines. 
• Link to other internal pages on your site to boost navigation and overall SEO performance. 
• Use hashtags in your social media posts.

And now for the icing on the cake, how to run an effective content marketing strategy for your real estate business. 

Shall we?

Tips for running an effective real estate content marketing strategy

Esteemed folks of the real estate empire, behold the keys to the doors of a successful marketing campaign. 

The first door to open is to…

Understand your target audience

At the end of the day, not everyone will invest in real estate. So, you must find your very own audience. 

Here’s how to do that:

• Go through your existing customer base and interview them. Do they have families? What’s their age group? Yearly income? What do they care about?
• Leverage Google Analytics (GA) if you have a website. Connect it to your website so it can monitor people who visit. Then, go to GA’s dashboard and click the demographics tab to see who’s visiting. 

Set your goals and objectives

Your campaign needs to have a purpose as you begin. What do you want to achieve with it?

Do you want to boost brand awareness? Or increase sales?

Brainstorm with the team members and consider where you fall short before choosing a goal.

And when you do, make sure it’s specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound (S.M.A.R.T). 

An example of a goal, if you’re struggling to get leads, could be to generate 150 leads using email marketing campaigns within 100 days. 

Run a content audit

Content audits are an analysis of your current content to know what’s working, what’s not, and what could be better. 

What content format or distribution channel gives you the most return on investment?

One way to perform a content audit is by using the Google Analytics app. 

Visit the dashboard and click on the Reports tab > Lifecycle > Engagements > Pages and screens.

Here, you’ll see different pages on your website with metrics like views, user visits, and number of conversions to know how they're performing. 

For social media posts, use the social media platform’s analytics tool to see the performance of your posts. It’ll show you the different posts and their views, shares, likes, and comments. 

Choose a good content creation platform

Now, you’ll need a tool to produce the content we’ve talked about. 

And what better option than Ceros, a no-code interactive content creation tool? 

It’s not just any content creation platform. Ceros helps create fab interactive content. 

All you have to do is find a template, edit it, and publish it. Or use Studio to build from scratch; you create the static content and add interactivity to it.

Measure results and make changes, if necessary

After you publish the content, you need to start measuring its performance. 

Remember the goals you set earlier?

That’s what you need to track. Are you any closer to them?

Using Ceros to create content makes tracking its performance simple as it features an analytics tool. 

Another option to measure results is using Google Analytics. Visit the Reports dashboard to view campaign data and you’re all set.

***

Now that you hold the keys to a successful campaign, it’s time to go our separate ways.

Over to you!

You’re ready to create a campaign for your real estate brand. But before you start, keep in mind you may not begin with a perfect strategy. 

What you can have though is perfect content. 

And that’s what Ceros offers by allowing you to create interactive content with ease. 

Would you like to give it a try?

Book a demo with Ceros and see for yourself.