Have you been considering boosting your real estate marketing? That’s a great idea! However, there’s one major question: where do you start?
Nowadays, there are a number of clever and effective marketing tactics that can help boost the popularity of your business. Generally, these strategies fall under two major categories: traditional or digital. As a consumer, you’re probably familiar with both, although it can be difficult understanding the nuances and particulars of these two methods.
As a business owner, it can be even more difficult determining which of these strategies is the best for you and your business. As you look to showcase your skills and offerings to potential clients, you’ll certainly want an inexpensive, effective, and timely game plan. In that scenario, which of these methods will best support your company or services?
Below, we elaborated on our explanation of both digital and traditional marketing, and we even provided some pros and cons for both methods. This way, when it’s time for you to opt for a strategy, you’ll know which method is best.
What is Traditional Marketing?
Essentially, traditional marketing represents those advertising tactics that were utilized before the rise of the internet. For the real estate industry, this can mean a number of strategies. Business cards and newspaper ads tend to be a popular options, as they’re inexpensive and can easily reach your intended audience.
Of course, there are pricier traditional marketing routes that have also proven effective. Television ads may be a tough way to advertise your listings, but they’re a good way to showcase your services. The same logic goes for radio, although this medium provides you with significantly more options, allowing you to better focus in on your demographic. Depending on the size of your town, you can even opt for a billboard.
Finally, word of mouth is one of the most common marketing techniques, especially in real estate. However, this strategy is limited by your number of clients, and even then, it’s not all that reliable. We’re not doubting the integrity of your business, but do you really want to rely on your former customers to help grow your company?
What are the Advantages?
There’s no denying that people are used to these traditional marketing techniques. After all, they’ve been around for decades, while digital marketing has really evolved over the past decade. Therefore, people are still going to search the newspaper for real estate ads, or they’ll rely on a friend to refer them to a realtor.
What are the Disadvantages?
Depending on where you live, you’ll be limited to advertising to a small area. This means you won’t be allowed to advertise your services to as wide an audience as you would online. It’ll also be hard appealing to a certain demographic via these routes.
Furthermore, there’s no real way to monitor if these advertising methods are even working. At least with digital marketing, you can keep tabs on how far your social media posts have been shared, and you can monitor the number of visitors to your website. You’ll have no idea how many people are viewing (or not viewing) your ad in a newspaper.
What is Digital Marketing?
This route is directly online, and there’s a good chance that you’re already familiar with the various methods inherent in digital marketing. You’re probably already running a website for your business, which means you’ve started implementing these digital strategies already.
Some of the most common digital marketing routes include video or banner ads, which you’ve surely seen on other websites. This is a good way to reach an intended audience, but it costs considerable money, especially if you’re looking to advertise on a popular website. Furthermore, many customers have started tuning out this method, as it rarely interferes with the content they actually want to access.
However, there are digital real estate marketing methods that don’t require you to purchase an advertisement. Social media is a clever way to boost your online standing, as these profiles showcase your services while also ushering visitors to your website. Boosting your business’s search engine optimization (SEO) will also give you an advantage over any rival realtors. The higher you show up on a search engine, the better chance someone clicks on your website.
Digital marketing is generally considered a type of inbound marketing, so it’s intended to help an unknown business turn into a known business. By slowly highlighting your business on social media or in search engines, clients will eventually become familiar with your name.
What are the Advantages?
Digital marketing essentially solves all of the issues of traditional marketing, especially when it comes to the real estate industry. Businesses will be able to track how effective their digital strategies are, and they can institute these techniques as soon as they want to. Digital marketing also allows you to personally connect with any of your potential clients, as they will expect an answer to an inquiry as soon as possible.
Best of all, the internet continues to evolve, and this means digital marketing will, as well. Traditional marketing has seemingly hit a plateau, but we haven’t seen how far digital marketing can grow.
What are the disadvantages?
The lone downside to digital marketing is the amount of time it will take until you see results. If you’re especially looking to boost your SEO, it can take a good amount of time before you start to see an increased number of visitors. Don’t give up, though! While it takes time and effort, it will prove worth it in the long run.
Now, we’re not saying that you should opt for only one of these routes. Rather, utilizing a mix of real estate marketing strategies (whether digital or traditional) has proven to be one of the most effective methods. This way, you can start getting acclimated with the newer strategies while also satisfying a potential client’s desire for traditional advertising.
Overall, if you’re truly looking to boost your real estate marketing, we suggest relying on experts to guide you through the process. While you may assume that you can run all of these mediums by yourself, it’s best to allow the professionals to handle all of your advertising requirements.