How to Build Your Most Effective Real Estate Marketing Strategy

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Real estate professionals must utilize a variety of marketing tactics to separate themselves from the competition. With the emergence of digital marketing, there are several ways in which agents can showcase services to their target audiences while maximizing their reach as well. As you explore the many tools of digital marketing, consider these tips on how to build your most effective real estate marketing strategy this year.

Video marketing

Video marketing is one of the best tools for raising your online engagement rates, as people are now reliant on videos for both research and entertainment purposes. Due to their ease of accessibility, homebuyers will often turn to online videos as trusted resources in their home buying search. By investing in video marketing, you can create campaigns that will drive traffic to both your website and social channels.

Invest in an updated site design

If you are looking to revamp your marketing efforts this year, your website is arguably the best place to start. A professional website with an updated design will help to provide a strong first impression to potential home buyers, sellers, and professionals in the industry. To gain new prospects, strengthen your brand visibility with an attractive, user-friendly website.

Boost your accessibility

How easy is it for potential clients to contact you? If people are struggling to get a hold of you, it may result in a loss of business. Agents should make themselves accessible to clients by providing contact information in multiple high-visibility locations, such as their email signature, website, social media accounts, business cards, and other marketing materials.

Maintain an active LinkedIn presence

With over 500 million users, Linkedin is one of the best platforms for engagement with industry professionals. Users can use Linkedin to join discussion boards, as well as post both written and video content. All real estate professionals looking to network and maximize their target advertising should have LinkedIn in their real estate marketing arsenal.

HUD Foreclosures

HUD foreclosures and VA Foreclosures are some of the best homes to buy when price is part of the equation. As with most Americans, price is always a concern. If not buying the same house for less, why not buy more house for the same dollar invested? When looking for a good deal it is hard to do better than the VA or HUD foreclosures market. The simple truth is that there are just more VA and HUD homes on the market, as they represent such a large number of mortgages that are generated each year. This translates into more foreclosures just by the magnitude of difference between all others comparing to the two largest.

The two largest also being government owned and operated means that they have less time to wait to make money back on the home. The FHA is especially known for selling HUD homes for less than the average sales price in a given area. FHA foreclosures represent a fraction of HUD but they are still a significant number of homes and both should be considered.

VA (Veterans Administration) and HUD (Housing and Urban Development) have different and unique opportunities for the buyer. Both are often forgiven for the local taxes normally associated with the purchase of a home (this is on a county by county basis). Be sure to ask the local title company or escrow company to look into it for you before closing as this is often missed due to their are not used to dealing with the 2 to 3 percent of the market that VA and HUD foreclosures represent.

Foreclosure Listings Increasing

As the market settled after the mortgage meltdown foreclosure listings also settled and fewer homes were on the market with a placard reading “Bank Foreclosure” in big red lettering. This was a good thing for the entire real estate market. Having an abundance of foreclosures brings the entire market down and it makes it harder for home owners, who would like to move, to get the appropriate price for their home as a similar home down the same street was sold for substantially less and the appraiser is using the foreclosure as a comparable sale.

This is just one of the problems when there are too many foreclosure listings in any area. Another issue is the television set that sits in everyone’s living room harping about the price of homes based on the number of foreclosures and this constant barrage of negative information makes most people sit on the sidelines waiting for the market to either implode completely or to correct itself. Meanwhile while they wait, others are buying foreclosure listings and making great investments.

Whatever the reason, a market can only handle so many foreclosure listings at any given time. The more foreclosures, the lower the market gets and this is a lesson the banks that were foreclosing and selling off realized too late. The market and their investments would have been better off if there had not been a rush to divest themselves of the toxic assets made more toxic by their own actions.