Social media is used by businesses of all shapes and sizes in their marketing efforts, and real estate is certainly no different. In fact, we feel social media marketing is extremely important in real estate. So here at the Henry Wong Team® we place a large emphasis on using social media to market our properties and increase our presence.
We’ve built up a big following on Facebook and Instagram, and we use that to leverage our marketing efforts and really get our properties out there. Today we want to talk about the reasons we chose to focus on social media as one of the cornerstones of marketing our properties. Let’s start by looking at the reach of paid advertising through social media channels.
Paid Advertising on Social Media has Massive Reach
Listings on large property portals like realestate.com.au and domain.com.au cost a fair sum of money. And in general, if an agent utilises consistently high marketing materials such as copywriting, videography and photography on their portal listing, they can expect a fairly standardised number of buyers. Say you spend $1500 on your listing, you can expect to attract ‘X’ number of buyers.
Social media is different because you get rewarded for how active your social media account is, and how many followers you have. But you still need to have valuable content to increase your engagement. Having a lot of followers and being active on social media with content that drives engagement will vastly increase your reach.
If all you do is throw up your listings and the occasional post about what a great salesman you are, you won’t drive much engagement. Your posts need to be educational, entertaining and relatable in order for people to engage and share them.
You then get rewarded for this when you do actually post about a listing, or when you pay to promote a listing on social media. If you have a highly-engaged account with 6,000 followers, and you spend $1,500 to promote a property, it will reach exponentially more people than if you had 1,000 followers. It also has the ability to reach far more buyers than a listing on one of the real estate portals would reach.
Social Media is a Visual Medium
The visual aspect of marketing a home is extremely important. People love to see photos and videos before they commit to actually going to the property themselves for a look. It’s an important step in attracting buyers, and social media is the perfect medium to create a visual feel for a listing.
There’s also the potential for virality on social media. If a property has stunning professional images and well edited and composed real estate video, it’s going to get shared more, commented on and ‘liked’. If your visual marketing is on point, it’s going to get recognised and appreciated, and your reach will increase organically.
Social Media Ads are Targeted
You want to reach the right people? Thanks to Facebook and Instagram advert filters you can. These powerful tools allow you to directly target demographics that your property might appeal to, or to directly target users who have shown interest in properties in your area.
Social Proof
Social media is almost like one big testimonial for a real estate agent. Positive reviews, an engaged audience and great interactions with viewers are testament to a real estate agent who works hard, is good at what they do and maintains great relations with everyone they interact with.
Social media provides social proof of the success of an agent. People are much more likely to enquire about a property from an agent with 5-star reviews and great feedback on their social media than from an agent with a small following or negative reviews.
Building a Following
Building a following doesn’t just happen by sharing your property listings on social media. It takes a lot of hard work, creating and sharing content that is meaningful to the real estate industry. Helping people with advice, answering questions and generally being seen as a source of knowledge on everything real estate attracts potential buyers to your page.
Then, when you put up a listing, it reaches a lot more people.
When you focus on social media, when you nurture and grow your audience, that’s when it becomes an important medium for marketing properties.
If you want any more information about how the Henry Wong Team® uses social media to help our listings gain traction, please get in touch with us. We’d love to help market your home to the right people.
