BRANDCAST MAKES IT SIMPLE
Chapter 2
Table stakes: Why you need a website marketing strategy
Most likely you’ve already seen change happening across the real estate industry. From boutique residential to large-scale commercial, companies across the board are putting websites at the heart of their marketing strategy. They recognize that today, the top of the sales funnel is primarily online. This includes not only lead generation, but also much of the discovery, research, and consideration aspects of the sales cycle. Homebuyers and commercial investors alike depend on websites to find out as much as they can about the properties, agents, and firms that interest them—before they commit to taking next steps.
In many industries, innovation often starts within small, entrepreneurial organizations that have their finger on the pulse of the latest trends. They are hungry enough to experiment with new ideas and have the freedom to adopt new technologies. Large, long-established enterprises have difficulty competing with the speed, flexibility, and agility of these startups.
The Changing Face of Real Estate
We see a similar trend in real estate. Small firms and independent branch offices are dramatically changing the face of real estate listings by using the latest web technologies. Marketing properties are inherently visual, and the website format is ideally suited to creating an elegant visual showcase. These progressive firms are replacing stodgy property listings and static PDF flyers with beautiful, interactive websites that provide a rich presentation of a property, including video, 3D fly-throughs, interactive maps, local area content, and other marketing assets.
Not only are innovative firms creating beautiful websites for their property listings, they are also creating content-rich websites for individual agents, specialist teams, branch offices, nonprofit activities, and any other aspect of their business that can drive leads. The inherent flexibility of websites offers endless marketing opportunities for real estate companies of all sizes.
Fine-Tuning Your Marketing Performance
Websites offer even more advantages to real estate marketers. Because a website is a living asset, marketing teams can take advantage of a wide range of content marketing strategies, such as search engine optimization or digital advertising, to drive more traffic and new leads to their firm’s websites. And because a website is such a flexible medium, marketers can easily experiment with new ideas for content and presentation. They can test what works and what doesn’t in order to fine-tune website content and maximize its value.