The Digital Media Strategy for Real Estate

The Secret Sauce (Price, Product, Location)

The simplest thing most digital media agencies who aren’t familiar with the real estate industry fail to do is what we consider the secret sauce — always include price, product & location in every ad delivered. It’s actually quite shocking how often one or even all 3 of these elements are missing from ads.

We never want to trick a prospect to click on our ads. We want to pre-qualify them with these three elements so they know what they’re getting into.  We don’t want them to click on our ads (costing you money and wasting their time) if they 1. can’t afford it 2. aren’t interested in a specific home style or 3. don’t know or like the area.

Including these 3 elements enables the prospect to self-select. This is also critical as evolving polices around privacy protection alter our ability to target various audience segments. Instead, let the audience effectively decide for themselves.

Paid Search

When developing your digital media strategy, always start with Paid Search — people looking for what you have to sell.

Maximize this tactic. You’re likely never going to have the budget to maximize your share of voice (the number of people looking for what you have to sell) but get in front of as many as you can.

Don’t Buy Brand

Unless your company name is unfortunately very generic, you shouldn’t need to buy brand related keywords. This is a great way for your digital agency to make themselves look good, but is a waste of money for you.

Search your brand name, chances are, you come up in the free, organic search results. That’s because those search results are predicated on relevancy, and there’s nothing more relevant to your company than your company’s name.

If you’re buying brand related keywords, you are simply wasting money on prospects who were already aware of and searching for you.

Instead, focus your keywords on prospecting. More generic terms that introduce your brand to an unfamiliar audience looking for what you have to sell.

Naturally, these prospects are early in their exploration and, thus, are less likely to convert (become a lead) upon their initial visit to your website. But they’ll likely come back, showing up as direct or organic traffic.

Because they’re less likely to convert, this makes the Paid Search efforts seem less effective. This is another reason most digital media agencies buy brand related keywords. It makes them look good by delivering low cost-per-click and low cost-per-lead in the channel (Paid Search) they’re responsible for.  But it doesn’t help you get in front of new prospects not already familiar with your brand. In our view, that’s cheating you out of both traffic and sales!

The sky’s the limit for doing this wrong. Does your digital media agency specialize in the real estate industry? AdsIntelligence Marketing has been providing digital media services exclusively for the real estate industry for over 20 years (and full-service agency services within the industry for longer). Let’s talk about how to do this right!