Creating Relevant Reach for the Real Estate Project
Every single day, the amount of marketing digital content increases exponentially and so is your job to reach the right audience and yet you have to promote with an ever-increasing difficulty your proposition. What’s a good marketer to do? Answer:
- Make your content relevant so you can cut through the clutter.
- Make your content actionable so you can increase your chances of engagement.
But despite this simple (in appearance) advice, here are the challenges this advice hides:
- How to create messages that truly resonate with your potential clients?
- How to distribute these messages in such a way that it would not only catch the attention of the users but get them to engage and act upon this message?
In this article, we’ll talk about how to adapt the messaging for a personalized approach for different types of audiences based on their knowledge of your real estate business.
The Groundwork
The groundwork for marketing strategy generally follows a framework like this one:
- You need to get data – and the more data you have, the better. Multilevel marketing campaigns & analytics instruments help to get that data from different sources.
- You need to design customer avatars to describe your potential customers and their potential needs. This step helps to personalize your approach as well as bring your marketing team on the same page.
- You need to create a content map and personalized content based on the information that is relevant to each segment and this is what we’ll focus on in this article.
When you design your content, do it with user engagement in your mind and adapt the messaging to match the level of users’ knowledge about your real estate business. It’s a fact that people don’t convert from a single visit to your website, therefore it’s important to build a relationship with them.
Three types of traffic/leads will interact with your business:
- Cold traffic
- Warm traffic
- Hot traffic
Let’s talk in detail about what works for each of these segments and what actions you should consider implementing to guide them along the path to conversion.
Cold Traffic
What is cold traffic? Cold traffic is people who have no idea about your business or brand. Something in your copy of the images you’ve chosen attracted their attention and they decided to click on the display ad. These people are most likely to be interested in learning more about the general topic than concrete solutions that you have to offer.
Why is cold traffic important? The people who have been to your website or social media pages once can be used to create lookalike audiences and they are the ones you should target for remarketing (i.e. showing them more specific advertising and content pieces in the future.)
Where do they come from? Most often, cold traffic comes from display ads (banners) in Google Display Network or Facebook ads. People see something that resonated with what they were thinking about and they clicked the ad.
How can you reach them? Purchasing a real estate property is not the same as buying yogurt or a chocolate bar, you need to establish a sufficient level of trust before you can sell anything. Cold leads don’t yet have enough information about you, therefore, craft the messages in such a way that aren’t imposing on them. Don’t sell right away, instead, you can do the following:
- Introduce your real estate property and your company
- Learn as much as possible from their behavior (we’ve talked about analytics) so you can later personalize your approach
- Implement remarketing strategies based on their behavior to show them the ads that are most likely to get their attention and transform them to warm (or even hot) traffic
One of the easiest content pieces to offer to cold traffic is a specific landing page that talks about the project and the company in general. Other options include informational and educational blog posts, YouTube videos (video content is becoming more and more popular lately), guides to real estate, etc.
Lead magnets are also a very useful tool at this stage, where you offer your visitors a free resource that’s valuable enough for them to share their personal information like an email address in return for it. It can be a comprehensive guide to homeownership, for example, or research you’ve done on real estate prices around Switzerland, for example.
What is your business goal for cold traffic? The main goal is to get them interested in learning more about your project and your company, i.e. warm them up. They have already reacted to what you have shown them, so continue building upon this relationship. The goal is reached if they have you left their contact information.
What are the useful instruments for cold traffic? The main instrument for the cold traffic is setting up your Google Display ads (and/or Facebook Ads if you plan to do the promotion there as well). Before this, you need to create your project’s landing page (so the ads will lead to a specific place) and set up analytics for it (Google Analytics and Google Search Console) so you’ll be able to correctly track the information about the visitors.
Warm Traffic
What is warm traffic? There are several ways to describe warm traffic in terms of real estate. It can be:
- People who have visited your website before (i.e. who were previously warm traffic and who showed interest in your company and project and, perhaps, downloaded an informational brochure from your site.)
- People who got to your website from an industry-specific portal, such as homegate.ch or immobilier.ch (i.e. those who have been specifically looking for real estate properties or more information about the companies.)
- People who have got to your website by entering specific keywords in Google search and clicking on your website (i.e. those who have shown interest in specific benefits or locations, for example.)
What differs warm traffic from a hot lead? Warm leads aren’t ready to make any purchases from you yet. They are interested, yes, but they need to be convinced that your real estate project is the one that would fit their needs and wishes.
Why is warm traffic important? These people are looking for real estate properties – whether for purchasing or just interested in comparing the options. Unlike cold traffic that is mostly interested in general information, these visitors have a much higher chance of converting to hot leads and then to customers.
Where do they come from? As mentioned above, they can come from real estate portals, Google search, or your social media pages. If you have launched a remarketing email chain for the visitors who have downloaded a brochure from your website, they can also come from that source.
How can you reach them? Since they most likely know the basic information about your company or property, you need to tell them more about the property’s benefits. Talk about the benefits of particular houses or apartments, the neighborhood, transportation, the natural surroundings.
Segment the warm traffic according to the locations people are interested in, age, job titles (if you have that data on hand from the analytics), etc. This would help you understand how to optimize the user experience in such a way that it would be straightforward and lean.
Types of content and messages that might be good for warm traffic:
- Educational webinars
- Downloadable floor plans of the apartments
- Segment-specific ad content like “3.5 room apartments in Crissier” or “2-bedroom houses near elementary schools,” etc.
What is your business goal for warm traffic? Build a deeper relationship and trust with these people and convert them to hot leads – or get them on your side to become word-of-mouth partners. Everyone has friends or relatives who might need a house or an apartment at one point, and if people feel like they can trust you, they will tell their friends about your company.
What are the useful instruments for warm traffic? The cold traffic goes to the general information landing page, the warm traffic needs more detailed information about the property, therefore you’ll need more content on your website. YouTube is also a convenient platform for promoting to warm traffic – consider the webinars or personalized ads there. Finally, consider taking advantage of email marketing instruments (for example, MailChimp) that help to build the relationship.
Hot Traffic
What is hot traffic? In our line of business, the criteria for “hotness” are people who have filled a contact form on the project’s page or signed up for an in-person (or Zoom, due to the lockdowns) meeting. These are people who are looking for very specific types of properties, they know what they want, and they are ready to purchase within a short period of time.
Why is hot traffic important? Hot traffic is all about sales. These people are the most important to the business since they are the closest to the purchase and need careful follow-up strategies.
Where do they come from? Most often, hot traffic comes from email chains and newsletters or real estate portals. They have learned about you before and now they are ready for the next phase.
How can you reach them? These people are looking at concrete properties, therefore you can reach them by setting up online or offline meetings with them since this is where you’ll be able to discuss the details and answer the questions they might have. Besides the meetings, you can also design sales-oriented landing pages for specific apartments or properties to guide the person in the purchasing process.
What is your business goal for hot traffic? Besides the quite straightforward goal “to sell the property,” set up follow up processes for the clients who converted. This would make them feel like they aren’t left alone on their own with the questions they might have thought of after the meeting or even after signing the contract. And again, people have friends and relatives and you want them to spread the good word about your brand and properties.
What are the useful instruments for hot traffic? Since these people are the closest to the purchase, they need the most personal approach. Therefore, consider using Zoom or other online conferencing tools to connect with them for a meeting or your standard email service to discuss information and share documents.
Takeaways
These three traffic types complete the story of creating a relevant reach and explains the process of how a person who had no idea about your property can become your client and how you, as a real estate company, can guide people to make a purchase.
Here are three takeaways from this article:
- Cold traffic helps to create a lookalike audience and get the starting data about the people who might be potentially interested in your property, which you can use for further remarketing activities.
- Warm traffic narrows down the general audience to those, who are interested in particular properties, locations, or advantages. These are the people you work with the most.
- Hot traffic is all about sales and the best way to discuss such a purchase and all related questions are to get the leads down for a meeting.
Want to chat about these issues in more detail? Contact us, grab a cup of coffee, and let’s chat.