Fierce Competition
Real estate is a crowded and highly competitive industry. With the 50 largest real estate and brokerage management companies controlling a third of the business, the thousands of smaller companies and roughly half million independent brokers have to work both hard and smart to get their share of what is left.[1] Only about 20% of realtors earn six figures per year, and just 2% earn more than $250,000. The profession’s median income is around $40,000, and those in the bottom quarter of earners bring in less than $30,000.[2] Clearly, to reach financial success in real estate, you need to go above and beyond what the average realtor does.
In Denver, where the housing market is currently the tightest in the country, competition is especially fierce. Denver’s short inventory of homes for sale is somewhat self-perpetuating, as homeowners who would like to sell their current homes are deterred from doing so by the difficulty of finding another to buy in the area.[3]
Stand Out in the Crowd
How does one company, broker, or agent stand out in this crowded field to be truly successful?
The first steps are to
- Develop a strong sense of your brand (your company’s personality).
- Build awareness of your brand among your ideal customers.
- Attract visitors to your website and engage their interest with valuable content.
- Through the content you provide, establish your brand as a trusted authority.
Sounds great, but where to start, right? A strong content marketing strategy involves many different parts, all of which are necessary to convert strangers into visitors into leads into clients. There is no overnight success, but committing to and investing in a sound content marketing strategy has the potential to allow even the smallest firm to stand out as a leader.
Attracting and engaging potential clients through content marketing involves a few core elements.
SEO
An optimized website will help search engines to identify your site as well as create a pleasing and valuable user experience. Your site should
o Be easy to navigate,
o Prominently display sought-after information,
o Naturally incorporate targeted keywords, and
o Include optimized metadata.
Blogging
Regular blogging increases your opportunities to get found online and helps to build trust with visitors.
o Each post is another page that can come up in search engine results.
o Your blog provides an opportunity for you to share information and resources that your visitors will value, building trust and establishing your authority in your field.
o Articles that address a narrow topic and answer questions your ideal customers will be asking are more likely to rank highly in keyword searches for that topic. (For example, “How to Find a Great Family Home in Denver’s Best School Districts” has a better chance of getting found than a broader topic such as, “Buying a Home in Denver.”
Social Media
Using social media channels is a great, low-cost way to disseminate your content.
o Create profiles on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and Twitter, as well as more visual sites such as Instagram and Pinterest.
o As you know, real estate is a highly visual business. Images will capture user’s attention more effectively than words.
o Create posts that encourage users to engage with your company. Likes, favorites, +1s, shares, Pins, retweets, and comments will increase your visibility.
o Point users to your website (but not all of the time). Social media can help you drive traffic to your blog and other areas of your site, but you want to do more than that. Remember that you want to distinguish your brand as a thought leader, a trusted authority, and a valuable resource. That means doing more than just promoting yourself; provide links to other helpful or interesting resources, such as newspaper articles on current trends, stories or videos about architecture or green building, or anything else you think your ideal clients will find valuable.
Optimizing your website, blogging, and engaging on social media platforms can help you to raise awareness of and interest in your services. After you’ve done that, you’ll need to make good use of that interest by turning your website visitors into leads and then into customers. For information on next steps, check out our resources page, where you’ll find free downloadable eBooks on topics such as landing pages, lead generation, and creating effective calls to action.
Blue Frog Marketing, with offices in Denver and Des Moines, provides content marketing services to large and small businesses as well as independent professionals. Contact us to find out how we can help your real estate business stand out and get noticed.
[1] St. Clair, Neil. "Playbook: How Content Marketing Solves A Real Problem for Real Estate." Forbes. Forbes.com LLC. 22 April 2015. Web. 22 April 2015.
[2] Frankel, Mattew. "Plan on Getting Rich as a Real Estate Agent? Read This First." The Motley Fool. The Motley Fool, 12 Jan 2014. Web. 22 April 2015.
[3] "Denver Home Supply Lowest in U.S." Inside Real Estate News. n.p., 21 April 2015. Web. 22 April 2015.
