Digital Marketing & Real Estate Investing
By GoForClose teamFirst published Updated 3 min readDigital marketing covers search, display, email, messenger, social and affiliate channels, and there is no single recipe that works for every investor or market. The advantage is the data: you can track what each seller segment responds to and keep optimizing.
Most people have heard the term Digital Marketing but few know what it means. The reality is that there isn't an absolute definition. Some may describe it as only using digital channels such as search engines, email, social and other websites, while others also consider content and devices.
What is Digital Marketing?
If you ask me, and others who had started before it was a trend, digital marketing is a form of marketing based on digital technologies. Digital Marketing keeps growing and expanding, which is why we have so many marketers now specializing in particular digital marketing channels, platforms, offline digital technology, and devices.
Common digital marketing channels include:
- Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
- Display Advertising
- Email Marketing
- Search Engine Marketing (SEM)
- Affiliate Marketing
- Messenger Marketing
- Social Media Marketing (SMM)
Digital Marketing and Real Estate Investing
In 2020, Americans spent about 11 hours on their electronic devices every single day. If you consider that most people are awake for 16 to 18 hours, that’s quite a lot.
Digital marketing has opened the doors to customers and can have a strong return on investment. With an omnichannel presence, real estate investors can get in front of potential sellers and stay top of mind by communicating multiple times a day through diverse channels.
Time online continues to increase, but so does the content available. The challenge is to capture attention above the competitive noise. The noise is not necessarily from other real estate investors: it’s from all the distractions and choices the digital world offers and your customers’ very short attention span.
Most real estate investors know that they need to go digital but face these problems:
- I don’t have a digital strategy
- I don’t know how to choose the best channels
- I lack in-depth knowledge of digital channels
- I don’t have time to learn one more channel, much less multiple channels
- I don’t know how to target my customers online
- I don’t know what metrics and KPIs are important
- I don’t know how to optimize my marketing efforts based on the metrics
- Marketing is taking too much of my time, keeping me from focusing on the sales
We have spoken with real estate investors who attended the same courses to learn one or two channels and, to some extent, they could apply what they learned and it worked, but to others, it was a complete fail.
The reason is that there isn’t a single way to do it that will work for all. Different customers have different expectations, use diverse channels, only specific messages resonate with them, and some markets are niches with unique needs.
Data Takes the Guessing Out of Marketing
Data is critical in digital marketing. One of the most significant advantages of using digital channels is tracking the performance and usage of the customers throughout their digital seller’s journey. Use data to assess what is working for specific customer segments and markets, and keep optimizing to improve performance and ROI. Integrated marketing tactics also let you track the performance of offline communications such as direct mail and test multiple pieces.
Digital marketing allows you to take the guessing out of marketing and focus on what works in your particular market.
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