5 ways to use real estate content to turn prospects into customers

Of all the real estate marketing strategies at your disposal, creating content that helps your clients is one with real legacy benefit.

What do I mean by legacy benefit? It's the ability to add value long after the initial action has taken place.

When you drop flyers around your local neighbourhood it can be a disheartening experience. Sometimes you can drop hundreds, even thousands of leaflets and not receive a single call. You know most of those flyers are going straight in the rubbish bin with barely a second glance.

Useful real estate content on the other hand, has an eternal shelf-life. If you create an advice guide like '5 ways to add value to your home this weekend' and publish it on your website and social media channels, it has the potential to build your credibility and help you generate business for years to come.

Why is real estate content marketing so important?

Look at it this way: Most of the time, your future potential clients aren't interested in your latest listings. They want content that helps them make better buying and selling decisions. So, if you want to stay top of mind, you need to send out real estate content that your audience will benefit from. Right now.

What kind of content do buyers and sellers want to see?

When you stop and think about it, you have so much knowledge that you could share with potential clients in your area. Knowledge that would help them through the process of buying and selling a home, while also positioning yourself as the go-to local expert.

Buyers want to know

• Whether now is a good time to buy?
• How to avoid losing money when buying a home
• What to look for when viewing a home

Sellers want to know

• How to buy a home when you have one to sell
• How to avoid under-selling
• What questions to ask before hiring a real estate agent

5 ways to use real estate content to turn prospects into customers

Focus on sharing information that helps your potential clients make smart real estate decisions.

1. Sell the experience of working with you

Publish case-studies explaining your most successful sales. Explain what the owner did to attract buyers and which marketing avenues you employed to generate interest. Include specific stats on number of visits, email enquiries, hits online and social media engagement. Potential sellers are attracted by transparency.

2. Turn your real estate blog content into a broader resource

While most real estate agents are busy shouting to the public: "Pick me! Pick me!" and "Now is a great time to sell" (isn't it always?), you can quietly provide the most helpful information in your market place, sustainably growing your business and attracting homeowners who trust your opinion.

3. Use AR/VR virtual tours to help market your listings

Do you want a sure-fire way to make your listings stand out from everything else on the market? Provide virtual tours for every property you sell. These are relatively inexpensive and add massive value to buyers, who can explore every part of their future home without leaving the couch.

4. Stay active on social media

Every time your audience sees one of your posts in their timeline, it reassures them that you are proficient at what you do and that you are the person to talk to when they need to buy or sell. The key thing is, you need to publish a lot more than just 'latest listings' or local sales. Most social media experts suggest following an 80/20 rule. 80% of what you post should be helpful, education or fun content. The other 20% can be 'I'm out here doing the business' style posts.

5. Engage with your potential clients using newsletters

Regular customer engagement is everything in real estate. Sadly, most agents focus purely on instant gratification. They undertake prospecting activities that seek instant results (and are often doomed to fail) rather than developing a long-term communication strategy which leverages their knowledge to build a consistent pipeline of leads from their database.

Real estate is a major life transaction and potential clients need to hear from you multiple times before they know you, like you and trust you.