Have you ever wished you could read the minds of homeowners or home buyers? To find out exactly what will appeal to them? Neuromarketing is about as close as you can get. Here, I explain what it is, and how you can boost the success of your real estate marketing.
What is neuromarketing?
Marketing is often thought of as a creative activity, but you can increase the success of your marketing activities by using a bit of science and psychology too!
Neuromarketing is a way of applying various techniques to create an emotional connection between a consumer and a brand or product. In the case of real estate marketing, it can be used to help potential buyers or sellers become more emotionally attached to a particular property, agent or agency.
Neuromarketing has been widely used by advertisers for many years – some test subjects have even had their brains wired up so marketers can see what they respond to best!
In real estate marketing, it is not this extreme, and it doesn’t tend to be referred to as neuromarketing either. But there are a number of creative methods you can use to create stronger bonds between your ads and your audience.
How to use neuromarketing in your real estate marketing mix
Neuromarketing can be applied to real estate in a number of different ways. Some of these might be techniques you already use in your marketing activities, but once you understand the power of the connection you can create with your target audience, you’ll start applying the techniques much more effectively.
1. Colour
The colours you use in your branding and home styling can send powerful messages about your brand and the properties you are marketing. For example, if you are based in a beachside location, you could reinforce this fact in the minds of your audience by using colours such as yellow, turquoise and light blue. This will enhance the appeal of your brand and your properties to buyers looking for a beachside property.
Alternatively, if you deal mainly with high-end city properties, you may need to use a darker, more sophisticated colour palette to appeal to high-flying executives in search of a more glamorous lifestyle.
2. Eye tracking
Eye tracking and click tracking technologies, such as HotJar or CrazyEgg, can give you a great insight into the psychology of your target audience. These tools show you which areas of your website people are spending the most time on. You can then use this information to make your marketing more appealing by refining it to show your target audience exactly what they want to see.
3. Targeted marketing
Behavioural tracking and ad targeting, using pixels and conversion code, are now commonplace in real estate marketing, but they are in themselves a hugely powerful type of neuromarketing. They track people’s online behaviour so that if someone has clicked on one of your ads or visited your real estate website, they can then repeatedly be shown ads for your brand or particular properties. These ads then follow the user around the internet, appearing on practically every website they visit.
This keeps your brand at the forefront of people’s minds – as soon as they have shown any interest in what you have to offer – making it much more likely that they will come back to you.
4. Ad testing
Many real estate agents feel unsure about what makes an effective ad, so it makes sense to test different ads against each other before they go live online or are committed to print. You can use AB testing, also known as multivariance testing, by showing different versions of your ads to sample segments of your email list or social media followers.
This will enable you to discover which ads generate the most interest, so you can publish the ones which are most likely to produce the best results for you.
5. Price manipulation
This is a form of neuromarketing which all real estate agents do instinctively. When you set the price of a property for sale, auction or rent, you are in fact engaging in direct neuromarketing. The price is designed to attract the most interest based on market conditions and whether the vendor wants a quick sale – two psychological factors that can’t be ignored.
The benefits of neuromarketing for real estate agents
Applying neuromarketing techniques offers a number of important benefits when it comes to real estate marketing:
1. It saves you time
Using carefully considered targeted marketing enables you to automate some of your online marketing, as your ads will automatically be seen repeatedly by people who have previously clicked on them or visited your website. This frees up more of your time to spend on other aspects of your business, while still hitting those all important qualified leads.
2. It saves you money
If you test your ads before publishing them, and ensure they are designed to appeal directly to your target audience, this means your campaigns are much more likely to generate qualified leads that turn into sales. This increases the ROI of your marketing activities, as you are no longer wasting money on lacklustre campaigns.
3. It helps you understand your target market
Neuromarketing offers some great insights into the minds of your audience. It helps you to understand what appeals to them, what they are looking for and how they like information presented to them. This takes a lot of the guesswork out of your marketing activities, as you can show your audience ads which are directly designed to grab their attention. By doing this, you reinforce the fact that you are a real estate agent who truly understands the needs of your clients (be that buyers or sellers), boosting your reputation and the level of trust people have in you.
Simple real estate marketing techniques
You most likely use many of the above techniques in your everyday marketing activities. Many agents do not even realise how exactly they are connecting directly with their audiences. But by understanding neuromarketing a little better you can increase the success of your real estate marketing and ensure it produces the best possible results for you every time.
It might not be mind-reading or mind-bending – but it isn’t far off!
Written by Melanie Hoole
My team and I specialise in helping real estate and property professionals perfect their personal brand, build a first-class digital profile and implement inbound marketing activities to attract leads. If you are unsure which direction to take with your digital marketing contact me for help.
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