There is always something new in business and marketing. However, these last couple of years, we’ve seen a lot more changes than usual. Real estate professionals faced unique challenges due to the government’s response to the pandemic during 2020, even though real estate was on the list of essential businesses that were able to remain operational. We are at the cusp of 2022 and real estate is yet to recover.
The landscape is changed and this creates perfect conditions for trying new stuff: there was a push toward virtual solutions (virtual tours, open houses, staging, closing contracts), and this trend is here to stay. Video (live streams, ads, guides) dominates real estate content marketing, and it has become a crucial part of building social media presence. Plus, software is set to transform standard business processes, and this affects marketing as well.
So, the latest trends in real estate marketing are: virtual… everything! It’s all about virtual videos, social media, and software. We will delve into these (and more) below, but first, let’s touch on the importance of regular marketing techniques.
Before you hop onto the latest trend, make sure your standard marketing channels are in order. The baseline in lead generation for real estate investors through channels like direct mail, SEO, and online ads is important regardless of what’s hot at a particular moment. For example, you can always adapt the content produced for marketing in a way that will improve your overall SEO.
Live videos are big in marketing across all industries. And not just that, but they’re also available on multiple platforms. In addition to using Facebook live and YouTube live streams, real estate entrepreneurs also use platforms like Instagram to stream virtual house tours and virtual open house events with success.
The live stream can be easily adapted to different formats:
You can probably think of a number of other formats as well. Also, live stream videos can be easily repurposed as content that is available past its initial broadcast. To do this, you need to make sure the production level is high – so you need the technical staff to capture quality video and the control over the environment of your filming location. You know, it’s so that you can avoid someone barging in on you in the middle of a recording.
If you think about it, live video is a virtual event, but when we talk about virtual tours, we refer to the use of immersive technologies. Real estate professionals have created virtual open house events on social networks to get wider exposure in the past, but the virus changed the game. And these virtual tours will continue to be relevant even if social distancing stops tomorrow.
People who approach real estate professionals, be it to buy or rent, are becoming used to virtual tours – in a way, it’s the new standard. And you can’t blame them, because this type of marketing allows them to get a preview of the property for free without the need to visit the place. It’s especially attractive if the technology that is used provides 3D tours or high-definition 360° video.
The appeal of virtual tours is set to grow, particularly for out-of-state buyers because it eliminates the need for long distance travel. At the same time, these tours make it even easier for real estate investors to enter a market that’s a fair distance away from their residence.
Speaking of virtual tours, the virtual staging of properties is also becoming important. While a floor plan, photographs, and videos were enough in the past, we may be looking at a future where elaborate virtual staging is the norm.
This is great in terms of reaching different audiences through real estate marketing. When you launch an email marketing campaign, you can easily perform segmentation of your audience (or you can target specific audiences with online ad campaigns and Facebook ads). Virtual staging makes it easier to furnish a property based on the buyer. In a sense, you are able to segment your virtual audience and swap alternative stagings with several clicks – let’s say, one layout of furniture for bachelors, and another one for a family with a child.
Virtual home staging also relieves real estate professionals from the need to fill up an empty room with props. Not having to deal with the logistics of transporting rented furniture or with the process of hiring interior design experts for staging is a real time and money saver. It allows you to focus on the processes that are central to closing deals.
Commercially available drones transformed property listings forever, especially since they are quite affordable today. Aerial shots of a property provide an overhead view to potential buyers. Even though drone footage doesn’t reveal any new data about the property itself, it can help create a marketing buzz.
The angles of drone photography produce dramatic footage, and people are more likely to connect with drone shots than with a sheet of paper containing all of the figures that are important for the deal. Also, sharing drone footage on your social media channels will probably attract more engagement from the audience (the non-buyers, too).
As with any real estate marketing video, the focus of the drone reel doesn’t have to be a single property. You can capture aerial shots of the neighborhood, including recreational areas (parks, the beach, sports venues), shopping malls, or schools.
Yes, we covered live videos, but do note that when it comes to content marketing, well-produced video is popular like never before. The number of internet users who would rather watch a video than read a blog post has been steadily increasing over the last decade.
In fact, it has gotten to the point where even professional photography is not enough for those who want a piece of the real estate market. Particularly if you want to place an ad on social networks like Facebook and YouTube – video ads are the new standard.
If you haven’t included video ads to your real estate marketing strategy yet, consider doing it as soon as possible. If you publish the video on social media, add captions. It helps your SEO and it draws the attention of the audience.
Microsites dedicated to one single property became a trend for luxury estates. However, this method of creating a special website for the property can be used to attract buyers to different types of properties. This is a ‘microsite’ after all, and the templates can be tweaked fast.
There are two types of design for real estate microsites. One is to throw every possible media at the website visitor (catchy description, video tour, chatbot, etc,). The other is to go after a clean and minimalistic look.
Regardless of your choice regarding the actual design of the single property website, microsites are a trend that can improve your real estate marketing.
Although real estate is usually slow to pick up tech trends (like new software), marketing automation is definitely adopted whenever it makes in-house processes more efficient. Truthfully, there are many processes that would benefit from a streamlined workflow.
Take real estate investing, for example. The leads come from multiple channels and professionals have two choices regarding how to organize all the data – they can develop their own software or they can use existing software solutions.
The list of process that can be handled through software is long:
The software you need depends on the processes you have. In any case, its integration with day-to-day operation is a real estate marketing trend that you don’t want to miss.
While ‘predictive analytics’ may sound like two big words that have nothing to do with real estate, you are actually interacting with these kinds of programs every day. To have the capacity to predict anything, you need two components – a huge data set and a machine learning program. For example, Facebook delivers posts to your feed through algorithms whose goal is to increase your engagement with the content.
Is that applicable in the real world? Yes, in every aspect of your work, including marketing. For the time being, predictive analytics can provide you with insight into the preferences of your audience (similar to what Facebook is doing), however, we haven’t really tapped into other applications yet.
In essence, this concerns a topic that’s not discussed a lot – the introduction of AI into the real estate business. When we start to process data sets full of industry metrics, a program can probably provide an estimate on real estate appreciation (or property value over time).
This is what’s on the horizon: AI is great at spotting patterns, figuring out correlations, and making predictions – we’ve covered this in a podcast on AI and real estate investors.
Before the pandemic, experiential marketing started to gain traction. In a nutshell, it’s a form of networking that includes inviting a colleague or a prospect to share an experience. Like taking someone to a business dinner, but in a less formal environment – for example, you could invite them to educational events (staging classes, home buying classes, etc.) or social events (wine tasting, art gallery exhibition, or similar).
As the hold of the virus recedes, experiential marketing is likely to emerge again as a trend in real estate marketing.
If you’ve been in marketing long enough, then you know that the trends move in cycles. A specific process or a method is hot for a while and then it sinks into oblivion. It’s up to you to decide which of these real estate marketing trends hold your interest and fulfill your needs.
Keeping an eye on a trend doesn’t necessarily mean you should adopt it straight away. In fact, when John Martinez was a guest on our show he shared a tip on adopting new software in particular:
..the funny thing with real estate now, I see when a new technology comes out, everybody adopts it if it’s easy enough… the more mature investors aren’t really jumping on that ship too quickly. They let others kind of vet it out. They let others kind of come up with script and best practices… and they double down on what they know is already working. They go, hey, let everyone do this – waste time, money and effort and then I’m going to keep doing what I do. I’m going to do it better than anyone else. I’m going to focus on these one, two or three marketing avenues, and then once the early adoption is over and we know if there’s going to be legal ramifications, once we know some best practices, they’ll jump in and dominate that too.
Regardless of whether you are active in the ‘early adoption’ phase or you prefer to implement something new once others have done the bushwhacking, do keep an eye on these trends as it’s good for your business. It doesn’t take much time, yet, if some of these trends become crucial for real estate marketing, you’ll be ready to embrace them, especially the ones that can transform the industry.
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