Marketing is crucial to business. When done right, it ensures you receive a steady stream of new clients who discover you, like what they see and want to work with you. Simple right? So why is marketing a mystery to so many?
Finally, the real estate marketer is coming of age. Judging the REB Awards this year, I was pleased to see that most of the entrants were qualified marketers with strong creative talents and numerous marketing roles under their belts.
Let’s meet six professional marketers and learn about the campaigns they crafted to help real estate agencies prospect for new business.
A sea change to real estate marketing roles
With marketing directly affecting your business’s bottom line, it has always perplexed me why this role in a real estate agency is often delegated to the office receptionist or a recent school leaver.
Why put unqualified staff at the helm of your business? After all, marketing is what helps set the course (strategy), and steer the ship (tactics) through turbulent seas (competitors). Sails alone (or should I say Sales) won’t get you where you need to be.
Our brand manager at Hoole, Danielle, calls unplanned marketing “Tick Box Marketing” or “Feel Good Marketing,” I.e. the only objective is to have some marketing task ticked off your list as done each week. There is no care (or dare I say belief) that your marketing will yield results, but just in case it might, the view is “Something is better than nothing”.
To be frank, nothing can be better than something mediocre. Believe it or not, bad marketing can scare potential customers away.
Brand marketers in the REB Awards
The stand-out for me with this year’s REB award for marketing was the number of entrants that were actually marketing professionals. Historically, the finalist list for the real estate marketing category has been dominated by sales agents and one-hit-wonder property marketing campaigns. But this year, there was a much higher talent level, and brand marketing was front and centre in the submissions.
Most of the people I judged were marketers who had gained their stripes in other industries and are now applying their technical marketing knowledge and know-how to the real estate industry.
The old real estate marketing approach
In the past, real estate agents and principals were content with their brand marketing as long as someone on their team posted a social post, stuffed a bunch of DL cards through letterboxes, and organised a team ad in the local newspaper asking the neighbourhood if anyone wanted to sell their home. It was the spray and pray approach, or what I often refer to as the Kath and Kim ‘look at me’ approach. I.e. there is nothing on offer to the reader, only a seemingly desperate plea from the business spruiking for more work.
There was nothing sophisticated about the office marketing strategy; in fact, there was no strategy or campaign objective, and the results of the marketing activities were never tracked.
Thankfully, this archaic approach is becoming a thing of the past as it no longer or makes the grade or yields results in today’s competitive real estate industry landscape.
What is real estate brand marketing?
Brand marketing is a long-term strategy that focuses on building brand name recognition and respect with people who own a property located in the neighbourhoods you serve. They might live in that home or live out of the area; either way, you must become the most favourable agent to use to sell, lease or manage a property. Your personality and approach to property transactions must resonate with these prospects, who should be able to recall your name before your competitors. Simple right?!
An effective brand marketing campaign must be unique to the agent or real estate agency it promotes. A brand marketing campaign requires a strong strategy, alongside clear and measurable objectives so that you can ascertain if it met its goal. Executing the campaign requires careful planning, creative thinking, consistent messaging and a deep understanding of your target audience. A professionally qualified marketer with small business experience will be able to develop strategies unique to your real estate office and tap into the unique culture of the local area to achieve maximum exposure and brand recall.
Case study 1 – Move office, make a mural
When Sciberras Group RE decided to move its office, REB award winner Georgia Eccles, the head of marketing, knew it was the perfect opportunity to overhaul the agency’s marketing strategy on all fronts.
Starting with an update to the office branding, the logo was modernised and made bolder to stand out more on the new office signage and in their marketing materials. Combined with a new suite of team photography, the real estate agency was well-positioned to ramp up its digital marketing presence to help ensure people knew the business had moved premises.
By leveraging the power of visual content and social media, Georgia propelled their agency into the spotlight with a brand awareness campaign using paid advertising. Through engaging video content that used clever transitions and upbeat music, they shared what the new office Scinerras office looks like, including a Monopoly board mural that mentioned local street names. Very cool!
By allocating a paid advertised budget on social media platforms, they showcased their new office, updated team shots, and agency culture. In addition, she heavily promoted a publicity event held outside the office, where 100 people were invited, made up of past clients, suppliers, family and friends. Georgia successfully attracted the right type of attention for the campaign, which resulted in a 30% increase in social media followers and a wave of new clients for Sciberras Group.
Case study 2 – Find your point of difference
When Samuel Brotherson joined LJ Hooker Adelaide Metro as their in-house marketer, he identified an opportunity to position the real estate agency as the leader in auction campaigns. Unlike Sydney and Melbourne, Adelaide real estate agents only sell approx. 30% of homes by auction.
Using social media advertising, Samuel convinced home sellers that auction campaigns would achieve higher sales prices and created a steady flow of new client leads for his sales team. Thanks to the campaign, the agency also attracted more attendees and registered bidders to each auction.
The outcome of this increased level of confidence and competition in auctions saw LJ Hooker Adelaide Metro achieve more record sales for their clients than any other competing real estate agency. Samuel’s strategy not only helped to improve the sales price result for local home sellers but increased the overall perception and awareness of the agency as well.
Case study 3 – be fun, be bold, be better known
Brisbane real estate agent Tamara Hall, who sells under the banner RE/MAX Advantage, knew that to stand out from her real estate peers and take her income to the next level, she needed to vastly improve her social media presence and online reach.
Marketer Camille Vowles joined Tamara’s team and set forth to develop and execute strategic marketing initiatives to grow awareness of Tamara’s personal brand, Tamara Hall Properties. Focusing on high-quality and entertaining social content, like this TikTok video showing home styling hacks (featuring that all-important trip to Bunnings), was watched over 100,000 times.
Camille has helped Tamara become better known in her neighbourhood with home sellers, focusing mainly on social media platforms such as Instagram and TikTok, which has increased the annual gross commission income (GCI) for Tamara’s real estate business.
Case study 4 – lead campaigns that convert
Consumers are smart; they can smell a sales campaign and run a mile. So don’t kid yourself that your “book an appraisal” or “list and sell with me” campaign will cut through. It will be ignored. Clever marketing taps into society’s interests and trending topics and finds ways to capture attention and stop those thumbs from scrolling on by.
With a whole world of data at our fingertips, we can see behind the scenes of your campaigns to see what resonated, captured people’s attention, and generated clicks to your website or social media page (to check you out).
Zander Snape, a talented graphic designer and REB award winner, heads up brand marketing for Stone Real Estate and developed several clever and highly creative brand marketing campaigns for the network, including the “We know Real Estate” and “Real [Estate] People” messages.
Zander’s marketing campaigns send leads to a customised website landing page where homeowners are encouraged to submit their property addresses in exchange for a price estimate. A property owner’s details are immediately forwarded to the appropriate real estate office for prompt follow-up. This strategy offers Stone Real Estate a significant advantage in a time-sensitive industry like real estate.
In addition, a series of drip emails also kicks in to ensure that the Stone Real Estate brand stays top-of-mind for home sellers. These leads are also added to a digital retargeting list, where they will see further Stone Real Estate brand messages on multiple touchpoints, further increasing conversion rates.
One campaign, targeting homeowners on the NSW Central Coast, delivered 100 appraisal leads and identified over 500 addresses whose owners were in the real estate mindset.
Case study 5 – use pixels and cookies to be seen
Marketing Manager Brittany Lazarus who previously worked with Richard Matthews Real Estate ensured their real estate agency used pixels and cookies to track user behaviour and retarget prospective home sellers and landlords who visit their real estate agency website, with brand ads relevant to their interests and preferences. Over several months, they have achieved an uplift in conversion rates from website visitors right through to form enquiries.
Case study 6 – get personal with prospects
Having higher-quality marketing campaigns appearing in the real estate industry is exciting. What we need now is for more principals and agents to be willing to break the mould and step out of their comfort zone. There is no benefit to copying what your real estate competitors are doing. You must conjure up your campaign message to be unique, different and distinct.
After moving into the real estate industry from the banking sector, Kollosche‘s head of marketing, Alex Wallace, identified that real estate agents were largely approaching their marketing in a reactive and sporadic fashion, with no overarching strategy and using content that lacked relevance to their clients.
Alex enhanced Kollosche’s real estate marketing campaigns by developing a custom-built software program to deliver personalised content and website experiences based on user behaviour and preferences. Such a level of personalisation is believed to be a first in the Australian real estate industry. The software also provides insights into consumer trends.
Brand marketers monitor results
A professional marketer will create and distribute marketing messages and track the results of each campaign or piece of content to see if it resonates with its audience. Having a feedback loop is vital for ensuring you are not wasting dollars on messages that don’t cut through. It ensures that you focus on what people are truly interested in. Topics such as local history, ways to improve your home or rental, and insights into recent property market price changes are most interesting to readers.
Brand marketers are raising the bar
There is no doubt that a marketer can make a difference and increase your annual revenue. The important part is taking your marketing needs seriously and hiring qualified and experienced professionals who understand the real estate industry. Whether you employ a marketer and add them to your staff headcount or outsource your brand marketing to a team of creatives such as us at Hoole.co, who have a bird eye view of what works or doesn’t at large, is up to you. The most important thing is that they are ‘real’ real estate marketers with professional marketing qualifications and years of experience under their belt.
If you want to discuss your business’s brand marketing and develop a sound strategy, book a FREE one-hour consultation with me, Melanie Hoole.
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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