The Importance of Marketing on Social Media for Real Estate Investors

Social Media is a marketing powerhouse and a necessity for any business that wants to get noticed by audiences. In 2021:

• 55% of customers learned about new brands through social media, and
• 68% said social media let them interact with brands

We live in a digitally-driven society, and social media matters. You need a presence on social media if you are to improve lead generation and your brand identity.

What is Social Media Marketing?

As you can guess, social media marketing refers to the use of social media and social networks to market your products and services. It lets you engage with your current audience and reach new leads through targeted content and purpose-built data analytics, so the social media algorithms know when to show your posts or social media ads.

You can tailor posts based on geographical and demographic information, and employ keyword lists to reach your seller persona types in your real estate market.

What are the Pros and Cons of Social Media Marketing?

Every form of marketing has its advantages and disadvantages. Social media marketing is no different.

Advantages

Your Customers Are There

Social media is for everyone, of any age and background. You can use social media marketing to inform your target audiences about who you are and what you offer. This way, you create relationships with the people who are interested in selling and may not otherwise know who you are without the help of a social media presence.

Improves Brand Awareness

A company without a social media page is questionable. It makes you “real” to your leads, provides basic information, links to your website, and is a platform where you can interface with audiences and show your expertise.

Personality is key to branding. Posting regularly, and showing your personality through your writing style and tone, instead of being robotic, develops a good impression. This way, you stand out, and are memorable and build credibility.

Broadens Your Digital Footprint

Social media has the largest audience base for you to target. In 2021, Facebook alone had 2.80 billion monthly active users, and 1.84 billion users visited the social network site daily. Imagine if you could reach even 1% of those people.

If you want to get noticed on the internet, having a website is not enough. Think about this: each time a follower shares one of your posts, it puts you on a unique social network. Your brand is exposed to people who may not have discovered you otherwise.

Low Cost

Creating a business profile is free on most social media platforms. Posting is free. Commenting and carrying online conversations is free. The only things you pay for are boosts on your posts and social media ads. The latter charges per click, while boosts are adjustable to your budget.

Gives You Insights to Audiences

Most social media platforms provide you with analytics on your posts. This way, you know what visitors like and respond to, so you can expand and follow up on topics of interest. You can also discover demographics and age groups that engage more than others, and what they like, share, or comment on most frequently. Also, you’ll learn the best time (of the day and the week) to post and where posts generate interest in a particular state, region, or country.

Disadvantages

Takes Time

Rome was not built in a day, and your presence on social media is not a one-and-done shot. It takes time to build a profile, manage content, answer comments, and build an audience of followers.

It takes patience and practice to make it work for you. You must create a content strategy, post often, and engage with your audiences daily, while also gathering their likes and responses to help evolve your strategy. Dedicated planning and effort are essential. It will help to keep a social media calendar that plans your content out several weeks in advance.

Slow ROI

The biggest drawback to social media marketing is you will not see results right away. It can take 90 days to 6 months to see results from your organic tactics. So long as you are consistent in your content strategy, people will eventually notice you despite the competition that was already there. But it takes time to perfect your content strategy, and there will be some trial and error before you get it right.

Special Challenges of Social Ads

Due to the nature of the real estate investing industry, when advertising on social media, the ads fall under the Special Ads: Housing category. Using Facebook as an example, in 2021 an ad in a special category had limitations, such as:

• Locked age range from 18 to 65+
• Forbids using Zip Codes
• Prohibits the use of any excluding attributes based on employment, income, etc.

Before the Special Ads Category was implemented, real estate investors could literally target “homeowners,” but that possibility has since been eliminated. However, the data is still there.

Special Ads require an experienced Paid Media Specialist to make them work. Once optimized, and with enough data, the ads will start showing to (mostly) just homeowners and within the ideal age group, as they are the most likely to convert.

Risk of Public Backlash

Anything you publish is open to criticism. There will always be people who negatively comment on your business feed, whether they have personal experience with you or not. You’ll have to learn to handle bad comments to protect your brand reputation.

Hiding all negative comments is not the best solution, as it decreases the engagement score of your post or ad. Whenever possible, address the objection with an answer. This way, others who read it have their seller objection answered as well.

Potential PR Risk

Social activism and political correctness are an essential part of any social media marketing campaign. You need to self-monitor your content and filter out trigger words and sensitive topics that spark animosity. Even if you delete a controversial post, the damage is done, and bad press does not go away.

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