How to create content that works for your real estate agency

Creating content can be difficult, but creating content specifically tailored to the audience of your individual agency is a whole other level of difficulty.

Staying in-tune with your audience is crucial for the success of your agency so it’s important that you track and plan your content accordingly. This will allow you to identify what works and what doesn’t.

Here are the measures you should be taking to ensure you are creating content that is right for your audience.

1. Set goals for your content
   
   Treat content marketing as you would in any other area of your business. You need to set goals, measure success and review as necessary. Some things to measure include:
   • How much website traffic are you currently getting? How does that change when you start posting regular content?
   • How much engagement are you getting on social media? How does that change when you post more regularly?
   • How many new leads do you get using existing marketing methods? How many new leads does posting content consistently deliver?
   • What is the conversion rate on leads from your existing marketing methods? What is the conversion rate on leads coming via content marketing channels?
   • How many past clients re-engage with you when you share content?

   Remember, a commitment to regular, consistent content is critical. No dial will swing wildly after only a few weeks. Content marketing takes time and much like your own business success, it builds and builds.

2. Track the right metrics
   

   You should never be a slave to metrics, but using data to track the impact of your content marketing is always a good idea. It’s up to you how much credence you put on the results, as opposed to your own instinct. Here are a few pointers:

   • Spend: Measure your spend and quantify the hard return. Assess where your return on investment is coming from.
   • Awareness: Focus on the increase in web traffic and social media channels. Does your audience really know about you and your agency? Consider a quick survey to find out.
   • Likes and sharing: Gauge how many times and through which channels your content is being shared by your audience. This is a great multiplier that enhances the impact of your strategy. Remember though, that while sharing is great, you can’t take ‘likes’ to the bank.
   • Leads: Measure the number of enquiries coming into the office against the baseline you began with.
   • Sales: Arguably the most important measure, but if that’s not moving and the other metrics have all gone up, then ask what’s really happening and why you’re not closing more deals.
   • Responsibility: More generally, if you’re not getting the desired results from content marketing, it is often because of a lack of commitment or consistency in the execution. If you can’t maintain the workload yourself, look to either allocating the role to a staff member working with a trusted real estate supplier or an outsourcing solution. To learn about the benefits of outsourcing, check out this blog.
3. Tools to track your metrics
   

   There are heaps tools to help you manage your social media and content marketing initiatives. Each one measures your activity and many can help you batch content placement and posting.

   Tools to consider include:

   • Hootsuite
   • Buffer
   • Hubspot
   • Coschedule
   • Zapier
   • Social Sprout
   • Smarterqueue
   • Infusionsoft.

   This will let you schedule posts in advance across a myriad of platforms meaning you can block time out to manage your content, rather than being a slave to social media.

   You should also look at Google Analytics and consider putting tracking codes on each content URL so that you can see how it performs.

4. Understand your audience
   

   Before we start leaping into creating content, let’s begin with something much more important. Because if we start immediately by looking at the content you should create, we’d be guilty of doing old school ‘me marketing.’ We’d be creating content based on what you think you want to tell people. And I hope you’ve worked out by now that’s not how we roll any more.

   Instead, let’s start with the most important person in this conversation. Your audience. Or your customer. Do you know who they even are? Really. The clearer your ability to picture them in your mind, the easier you will find it to tell them a story that they will relate to.

   The most common audience persona in real estate at their most basic level are:

   • Home sellers
   • Home buyers
   • Renters
   • Investors.

   What are the questions that these four different types of real estate customers most commonly ask you? I’m going to take a guess:

   • How is the property market in (my suburb) performing right now?
   • How much did that house up the road sell for?
   • Is now a good time to buy/sell/invest?
   • How much will I get for my property?
   • How much does it cost to buy a property in (my suburb)?
   • How much does it cost to rent?
   • What are rental vacancy rates like in (my suburb)?
   • Are you a good agent? Can I trust you?
   • What new properties do you have for sale?

   If all you did as a result of reading this blog was to go away and start producing content specifically targeted at those four groups that answer these questions, you’d still be ahead of 90% of real estate agents.

   But let’s now think a little harder about who your customers are in each of these categories? What is their gender? Age? Demographics? Breaking it down a little further will give you even more clues as to what kind of information you need to provide and stories you can tell.

   If you’re a sales agent, who are you selling the most homes for at the moment? What do those people look like in terms of age, gender and their lifestage? What are the questions they most commonly ask you?

   If you’re a property manager, what does a typical landlord look like for you? Or tenant?

   You can go crazy with this. But let’s keep it simple. Write down the top two or three types of people that you’re selling or managing property for right now.

   Here are some ideas:

   Audience type	Gender	Age	Lifestage	Most common questions they ask you
   Home seller	Couple	50s	Empty nesting	How much do I need to buy a smaller property but stay in the area? Will I need a loan to downsize? What sort of properties locally would make a good downsized home?
   Home seller	Female	Late 30s	Divorcee	How quickly can I sell my home? Can you help me sell during my divorce? What’s the best method of sale during a divorce?

In real estate we never truly know what the year will have in store for us.You may read my previous article, "6 predictions for real estate in 2020" early this year for some insights.