Use Your Real Estate Website to Boost Your Brand
There are ways agents can use their real estate website and online assets they already have to solidify their brand. Real estate PR is perhaps a lost art, but it doesn’t need to be. With a little fine-tuning, your website and social profiles can boost your brand, improve social proof (your online reputation), and nurture leads right into your sales pipeline.
Your brand shows the world that you are different from other agents and it inspires trust and whatever other emotion you hope to elicit from your potential clients. If done right, it also shows how you will solve their biggest frustrations and challenges.
“Who are you? The core of your personal brand is the person you are, the things you believe in and the gifts you aim to share,” suggests Seth Price at Inman.com.
Determine your target client and then, every word and image you post on your site and on social media should appeal to this audience and reflect this brand. Keep it human, not sales-pitchy or sterile.
Website content
Google can distinguish web content written by an amateur and that written by a pro. I can also tell you that pages written by the latter will rank higher in Google.
Your site needs valuable information to rank well. But if that information is sub-par – if it’s riddled with poor grammar, spelling mistakes and shows a lack of research, it won’t get you anywhere. If you want to be perceived as an expert or thought leader and you want your content to rank well, you will need to offer professional content.
“If you’re looking to win in the content marketing game, don’t mess around with low-quality writers or articles. Go for the best. Hire writers who have expert-level writing ability and a mastery of the selected topic,” cautions Neil Patel at SearchEngineJournal.com.
Polish up your web content to prove that you care about your image by offering relevant content – market analysis, community resources, guides to the home-buying process, etc. Only then can real estate consumers trust that you will care about their home’s image enough to properly market it.
Social proof
Put yourself in the shoes of the average real estate consumer for a minute. How will you find a real estate agent that will listen, respond and put your interests first?
“Smart marketers know that social proof is the marketing tactic for easing the minds of worried customers,” claims Help Scout marketing expert Gregory Ciotti on the blog at KissMetrics.com.
More than 70 percent of Americans claim that before making a purchase, view product reviews. Reviews and testimonials are your social proof, honest feedback by third parties and previous clients that speak for you and your services. The best way to publish testimonials is on your own website. This way, you can control what gets published, from whom, and control that portion of your online reputation.
Since you and your skills are your business’ product, what do your reviews say? Of course, in real estate, we call them testimonials, but they’re essentially the same thing. Do you have reviews on Yelp? If you’re chasing millennial business, Yelp reviews are essential.
A recent study that found “testimonials are more likely to be believed when they are accompanied by a corresponding picture.” So, include high quality photos of your clients (with their permission, of course) alongside their testimonials to get that extra humanizing oomph.
On the flipside, if your site is lacking in social proof, visitors may assume your brand is either untrustworthy or “it isn’t being used by anyone because it sucks,” according to Ciotti.
Moral of the story:
Your website and your social profiles are the biggest tools you have to boost and manage your image. You control everything on them, from content to photos and testimonials. These tools are a real estate agent’s biggest assets in the digital world, be sure you’re using them to their potential!