How to Use Inbound Marketing to Grow Your Real Estate Business

What is Inbound Marketing?

Simply put, inbound marketing is a strategic approach designed to draw leads to your website or online hub - think: inbound = traffic and exposure you draw to you, vs outbound marketing where you reach out to customers directly. Inbound marketing is achieved by increasing your visibility online and providing value to attract leads to your real estate website or online portal.

One of the most effective ways to maximize your growth potential is through implementing inbound marketing strategies, primarily focusing on providing valuable content through:

• Social Media Marketing (Paid and Organic)
• Search Engine Traffic (SEO and SEM)

Strategies for Inbound Marketing Success

Social Media Marketing: One of the best ways to implement a modern inbound marketing strategy is by harnessing the power of social media to promote your brand and draw more visitors to your site. Your leads are on social media - meet them where they are! Using your social media for your real estate business, you can introduce your brand to a new potential audience and increase your exposure through posts like:

• Listing Highlights
• Virtual Tour Videos
• Open House Alerts
• Agent Bios
• A Day in the Life of an Agent

Posts like these not only let your consumers know who you are and what you can offer, but have been shown to be highly effective in encouraging engagement and promoting lead generation.

Tip: Use a combination of consistently posting organically on your accounts WITH paid advertising on your social media outlets as your budget allows. This is a powerful duo for maximum inbound marketing success.

Search Engine Marketing: Search engine marketing is arguably the most effective way to drive traffic to your website. It is exactly what it sounds like - marketing that focuses on increasing your visibility on the search engines. This is where more than 90% of all of your future clients will start their real estate search. The more exposure you have to search engine traffic, the greater your lead potential.

Search engine marketing is broken up into two categories:

1. SEO - Search Engine Optimization (organically boost your rankings)
2. SEM - Search Engine Marketing (utilize paid ads to appear in search results)

Ideally, you want to use both methods to promote success, both short and long term.

Tips for SEO:

[It is all about content]

Content on your website that provides value to your audience is key to successful inbound marketing.

1. Blog consistently
2. Enhance pages with relevant keywords
3. Optimize page titles and meta descriptions
4. Cross-promote with your social media
5. Implement a backlink strategy

Tips for SEM:

1. Conduct keyword research prior to launching your campaigns
2. Focus on mid-range high-traffic keywords to avoid too much competition and costly PPC rates, while ensuring your ads will have reach (think long tail keywords:waterfront homes for sale vs homes for sale )
3. Be realistic with your budget - different keywords have different costs per click. Understand how many clicks you can expect based on the keywords you are choosing
4. Run different ads and monitor analytics to see which ones perform better so you can maximize your budget and click through rate
5. Always include a clear call to action in each ad

[Learn More Strategies for Real Estate Marketing]

Benefits of Inbound Marketing vs Outbound Marketing

Outbound marketing casts a wide net and brings a narrow ROI.

Inbound marketing, on the other hand, is more highly targeted to meet your leads where they are - providing what they are looking for when they are looking for it - and has a higher conversion rate as a result.

Inbound marketing is a long-term strategy. Increased organic traffic from inbound marketing methods, like blogging, driving traffic from the search engines and social media are amongst the most effective in real estate lead generation and conversion. In this way, inbound marketing can help set you up for future success instead of a single access type of marketing like a cold-call, or traditional advertising.

Traditional marketing tends to be an outbound strategy. Actions like sending mailers, cold-calling, and door knocking all require you, as the agent, to go to your audience. This can be incredibly time-consuming and means that a large percentage of those you reach are not in the market for your services when you get in front of them.

Your level of success in the modern real estate industry revolves around your ability to use the internet to reach and convert leads. Using inbound marketing is the best way to maximize your reach, promote your brand, and compete for more leads so you can earn more business, period.