Is there a changing face of marketing in 2017 for Estate Agencies?

I have been speaking to a few of my contacts who work in the same industry as myself ie content marketing and building websites of influence and a popular topic is how marketing online has rapidly changed in 2017.

It is not always easy to keep up with the change in marketing trends though by just keeping up on what the focus is / news trends are for consumers will help you to reach a good B2C audience / engagement. It is important to think that all business sectors can be seen as trendy and estate agency is also in this circle, engagement with consumers online is important so it is at times necessary to copy marketing activities of other national brands from clothing to foods whose focus is nearly entirely on consumer engagement. Companies now are more focused on instant publishing over long term marketing plans, this is where content marketing has grown in importance.

For instance, what has been with us now for a number of years is the ever popular banner adverts be it via Google Ads or placing a banner on a website directly. Though Google is able to display banner ads very much to the current needs and interest of website browsers, the popularity of banner adverts has decreased and to a point that they are in most occasions not providing a return on investment.

So what exactly is in store for 2017 in the world of marketing? It is still very much dictated by the giants out there online such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn which hold a wealth of data and databases of users that enable them to direct market content on their platforms and usually put whoever pay the highest fees, ie cost per click, at the top of the list of importance. Google obviously owns Youtube and we all know the amount of ads that now appear on those videos we love watching, sometimes annoyingly so that an ad is fixed and we can not skip after 5 seconds! What is in favour currently and this comes from direct experience is content marketing, distribution of relevant content with live link-backs placed on key target influence industry websites or groups on social media / social media accounts.

Sponsored blog content is one of the current popular ways to market brands online. Writing relevant / current trending news items and stories and placing them on key influencer websites is where a lot of target traffic is being driven these days and this includes in the property industry – ‘Ten key ways to protect your home from storm damage‘ as an example would be a highly rated post if released during the time when storms such as those in the USA are in the news, add to that blog link-backs to your estate agency website, will drive key target traffic of people interested in property to your website. Social media updates are also vitally important to engage with active audiences online, delivering your latest news / content on to channels which hold big target audiences can also help to drive key traffic through – Many companies holding these audiences will allow sponsored content, ie your own content, to be published for you thus hitting the audiences you are after.

Christopher Walkey

Founder of Estate Agent Networking. Internationally invited speaker on how to build online target audiences using Social Media. Writes about UK property prices, housing, politics and affordable homes.

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