Social Media is no longer ‘an extra’, it’s ‘a necessity’ in 2015.
As we have now all said goodbye to 2014, many of us are now well into making plans and carrying out our marketing activities for 2015 – Building our brand awareness and increasing our market share.
Estate agents across the country, including the major property search portals and industry service providers are mostly present on social media. It is no longer an extra add on, or a craze / oddity that is making a noise on the outside and something that we can still put aside with excuses of ‘it’s full of our younger generation talking nonsense or sharing pointless stories / videos‘ – Social Media is a growing ‘shift’ in the way we are marketing our businesses online and building our audiences as it is an everyday consumer communication channel and a growing way for them to interact with brands. It is not whether we should be using social media or not, it’s how best we can use social media to see how we can gain an ROI for our efforts.
I hear from many who are looking to take their social media activities to the next level, that there is an overall lack of clear understanding on how best to use the varied platforms and add-ons in order to communicate with their target audience. Do we need a strategy? Do we need to put in more time and effort? Is there a quicker route to success, I can buy 100,000 followers for 100$ and surely that’s the point of social media? Etc, etc…
If you are a big enough estate agency, national agencies generally, then one way to improve your social media for 2015 is to break down any barriers that may exist between marketing departments, an agency may hold significant data that would help with social media. Where, how and when your audiences engage on social media may be information you already hold, or at least for smaller agencies, you’ll be able to obtain this data directly from your current consumers by simple surveys and emails.
The importance of holding an audience online by way of accounts / groups / pages / boards / channels on social media will see a greater importance for many in the property industry – Increase activities to continue in the next few years it is said. Without doubt, those agencies that have been active on social media and built reasonably sized followings that are targeted, will start to see more ‘engaged activity’ and will be the ones who’ll be able to say ‘we gain valuations on social media‘ or the one that most will say is the most important way to prove the importance of social media in the property industry ‘I sold a property on social media‘.
For agencies with the right kind of following, social media is a fantastic marketing tool that offers a reach potential far greater than nearly any other form of marketing. Done correctly, it can offer an estate agency a huge responsive marketing channel, but simply hacking away blindly on social media and spending marketing budgets unwisely can be a waste of time and money – It is important to study your current social media presence, your current client database and look to convey the right message about your agency at the right time and on the right channels.
I strongly advise that social media should form part of a multimedia strategy rather than a stand alone marketing tool. The likes of major property portals, for sale signs, websites etc are strong marketing tools and I am not here to suggest in any way that social media will over take these communication / advertising channels, but social media compliments them all. Could you run an estate agency purely on social media? Time will tell us no doubt, it’s probable, but not a certainty.
I would say that social media and those using it, gives us an incredible insight to consumers preferences, who they engage with, their likes, their thoughts and much more. For those in the property industry prepared to invest time in studying their target audience on social media, you can gain so much which will inevitably increase the chances that people will engage with your brand and importantly likely to chose you for their property needs. Not everyone is interested in property at this precise minute in their lives so those you engage with will not be interested in what you have to offer, so it is important to distribute content that appeals to everyone though still have a property theme to your posts. Debt, divorce and death usually initiate thoughts towards property so even this well know fact can increase your chances of finding potential new clients on social media by studying the ‘other businesses’ that service this sector. Social media is an up to date channel where people’s views are expressed in a ‘current form’ rather than data supplied over a period of time so it allows you to act on what people are doing and thinking about now, placing your agency in front of people who are actively thinking about their property needs.
We run many estate agency social media accounts across the UK. If you would like help on how to take your social media presence to the next level and to start to see results from your Twitter and Facebook accounts as well as information on our social media training courses, then we welcome your questions. Please feel free to contact us via 01206 700888 or admin@marketme.co.uk
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