How to use social media for estate agents
Read our blog to learn more about how to utilise social media to grow your estate agency or property business.
Buying or selling your home is an extremely important (and emotional) decision. So, it’s important to reach your potential customers, whether they’re property buyers, sellers or investors in the right places, at the right time, on the channels that are likely to resonate most with them.
Social media can often be overlooked in a marketing strategy for estate agents or property businesses but having a social media presence for your brand can provide a valuable way to build a relationship with your potential customers and keep your business top of mind when they’re ready to buy or sell a property. It has become a crucial way for brands to interact with potential and existing customers, and the property sector is no different.
In 2023, it’s estimated that 4.89 billion people are using social media and internet users spend an average of 151 minutes per day browsing various channels. So, as you can see, there is a huge audience to tap into to help you grow your business.
If you use it properly, social media can provide you with the perfect way to build ongoing relationships with buyers, sellers, renters and property investors while sharing advice and guidance to help them choose you as their estate or letting agent.
In this blog, we’ll take a look at why social media is important in the property sector and how you can build a successful strategy.
Having an effective social media strategy in place can help to raise awareness of your business with your target audience. It can help you to build trust and loyalty with your target customers which is essential when it comes to the property and estate agency sector.
The benefits include:
While social media isn’t always the best place to directly sell your services or the properties you have on offer, it’s a great tool for engaging with your potential customers and providing them with valuable information throughout the customer journey so that they’re prepared with everything they need to buy or sell their property with you,
When it comes to social media and your audience, there’s no right or wrong answer for the channels you should use, it’s about choosing your ideal target audience and finding the channels they prefer to use.
Here are some of the channels available to you and how you can use them:
Facebook has a wide demographic of users from first time buyers to people who are approaching retirement, as well as property investors too. So, if you find the right audience, Facebook can be a really valuable tool for your business whether you’re looking to drive brand awareness, traffic, leads or conversions. If you get your strategy right, it can help you reach your business goals.
Instagram provides all the same benefits as Facebook but it’s a visual channel so you can use it to showcase images and videos of the properties you have available, as well as provide advice and guidance on buying or selling a home.
It might not be the most obvious channel but LinkedIn can help you to build a network of potential property investors and future clients. Being active on this platform can help you to network with B2B’s and potential clients by sharing your knowledge and expertise.
Video marketing is highly effective and TikTok is one of the most popular video channels available. If you want to build a brand and reach new clients, sharing property videos and showcaisng your expertise can show your potential customers that you’re an expert in your industry and they can trust you when using your services.
If you want to get the most from your social media channels, it’s important to utilise them properly. Here are our top tips.
Whenever you post on social media, always think customer first. What do they want to know? What will be helpful to them on their journey?
Always keep your customer’s pain points in mind when you’re creating content and posting on your social media channels. Make sure you educate, inspire or entertain your customers with the content you provide. It’s not just a direct selling tool - you need to provide value.
Property images are aspirational and platforms such as Instagram are the perfect platform for posting high-quality photos of the properties you have on offer. If someone is actively looking for a property, these are helpful but they’re also inspirational for people who might not be looking just now but will be in the future.
Think about sharing video tours of your properties too to show potential buyers their potential future home and to add another level to your marketing strategy. Instagram is a highly visual channel so reels and videos can be highly effective.
For estate agents and property businesses, building trust with potential customers is key and can be difficult in your sector. Using social media and your website to share reviews that current and past customers have left for you provides social proof and helps you to build trust with your customers until they’re ready to use your services.
Many customers will actively look for reviews from other customers when doing their due diligence so it’s something you should use on your channels.
You’ll probably find that many customers ask the same or similar questions when they come to you. If you want to provide value, make sure you create content that your customers want. Use social media and your website to answer any questions or concerns they might have about buying or selling a property or using an estate agent.
You might already have a list of FAQs but you can also conduct some keyword research to find out what potential customers are looking for online throughout their journey and create blogs, social media posts or videos to help answer them.
Make sure your answers are honest and detailed to show your customers that you want to showcase your expertise and share your knowledge with them for free.
Social media is a great way to build a following in your local area or the areas that you have branches in or you’re buying and selling properties in.
When it comes to organic social media, post local content such as promoting local events or news. People living in a particular area are interested in what’s going on so being a good resource of local information is a great way to engage with people in your local area.
You can also use local and location based hashtags in your post captions to improve the searchability and reach of your posts. When it comes to finding a new home, customers will almost always pinpoint one or two specific locations in their searches. Making sure your brand shows up and showing them that you’re a local and relatable brand helps them to make the decision to use your services.
If you have the budget, paid social media ads or boosted posts can help you to reach people in a specific area. Using specific targeting options will help you to get the most from your budget and reach the right people.
Create educational, informative and engaging social media content that’s going to resonate with your target audience and lead them to make an enquiry with you or prompt them to request more information.
For example, providing content about the common house buying or selling challenges and pitfalls is valuable to customers and provides them with a smoother buying experience. This makes them more likely to want to use your services when they need them.
If you have a blog, use it to share hints and tips and then use social media channels to promote the content to a wider audience.
We usually recommend the 60-30-10 rule. This means 60% of your posts should provide valuable, informative or engaging content, 30% from external sources and only 10% of posts should be promotional. Being too salesy with your posts can put customers off and it’s not conducive to building relationships or trust with your customers.
When you post something, make sure you provide a call to action or ask a question to your followers to drive responses whether it’s a comment or a click through to your website.
Buying or selling a house is a stressful process. It’s likely that many of your customers are stressed, on a time limit and really want to move processes along when they’re moving house.
Make sure you show customers that the service and journey you provide is easy and smooth to provide them with the reassurance they need to use your services.
Show them that you’re easily contactable. Existing customers in particular are likely to turn to social media if they have a query or need information so make sure you’re responsive to build the best relationship with them.
Social media provides a valuable way to build relationships with your potential customers and keep your brand top of mind when they’re ready to buy. Buying or selling a house is a huge decision and a long process so it’s important to engage with customers at all stages of the customer journey. Social channels are a key tool for helping you to do this.
If you’d like to find out more about building an effective estate agency social media marketing strategy, please contact us on hello@logica-digital.co.uk. We can provide you with a free digital marketing audit to show how effective social media could be for your business.
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At Logica Digital, we take the time to understand your business and customers to create a bespoke marketing plan that will deliver the best return on investment for your business. We always get results.
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