BRANDCAST MAKES IT SIMPLE
Chapter 3
Six high-impact trends of digital focused firms
To start, let’s take a look at the six common trends of websites created by digital focused real estate firms. Your company’s website marketing strategy may not need to include all six, or it may also include others that are specific to your business. Most likely you’ll need coverage in at least three of these in order to maximize your lead generation opportunities.
1. Single Property Listing Websites
At the heart of your business is your inventory of properties. Progressive firms will create an individual website for each property in order to showcase it in the best way possible. A dedicated site gives realtors plenty of room to creatively market a property and paint a full picture of its potential and context. Single property websites typically include rich visuals and video, as well as embedded interactive maps, 3D animations, and relevant details about the neighborhood, city, or other amenities.
This approach enables your current clients to better evaluate the properties that interest them, as well as inspire them to browse and discover others in your inventory. In addition, it also communicates your firm’s marketing sophistication to potential clients, partners, and employees—elevating your brand and amplifying engagement opportunities.
Case Study
A Portfolio of Property Listing Websites for EQ1
EQ1 is an innovative real estate firm based in San Jose, California. The firm was founded on a commitment to quality in every aspect of their business, and their brand strategy leverages modern technology to communicate this positioning. As such, the company manages a portfolio of beautiful, content-rich property websites that maximizes the marketing potential of each listing. A code-free website platform enables the in-house design team to easily create new listing sites as quickly as needed to support the business.
John Smith, Director, EQ1
“We wanted to create a strong brand for EQ1 that put quality at the heart of everything we do. In order to accomplish this, we’ve set very high standards for all our listings.”
2. Agent Team Websites
Most likely, some realtors within your firm have banded together to create agent teams. This helps them share resources in order to accelerate their business and increase their capacity and reach. Some teams adopt a specialist strategy and target a particular industry vertical or niche. For example, residential agents may focus on a particular community, and commercial agents may focus on the business sector, such as hospitals or hotels. Agent teams showcase their business on an individual team website, including such details as current inventory, past sales, and agent bios. These teams also typically adopt a more sophisticated content strategy than usually found in day-to-day real estate marketing. They optimize their site for discovery in search engines (SEO) and include in-depth content, such as blogs, white papers, and industry reports, in order to attract targeted prospects.
An agent team website provides your firm’s teams with a self-contained, dedicated online space for marketing their collective expertise. Because the website format is so flexible, each team site can easily be co-branded to highlight both the team and company brands. A team site can be as customized as needed and reflect the visuals, messaging, and content strategy that will best market the team to their clients and partners.
Case Study
A Branded Showcase for Colliers Agent Team
Based at Colliers San Diego, the Miller Occupier Services Team represents local, regional, and national corporate office tenants. The team wanted to amplify their marketing strategy with expanded content, such as social media, video, and industry research reports. However, their online presence consisted of a single page on Colliers’ main website. The San Diego office had two in-house designers who were highly experienced in creating print materials but had no digital expertise. A code-free website platform empowered the designers to create a custom, standalone website for the team that beautifully showcased their services while adhering to Collier’s brand guidelines.
Paul Booth, Director of Marketing Technology, Colliers International
“Enabling our field to better position local teams and Colliers professionals through sophisticated web experiences is a key goal.”
3. Individual Agent Websites
Like any entrepreneur, a realtor’s reputation is his or her personal brand. Your agents work hard at making a name for themselves in order to drive their business. As property buyers and investors become increasingly web-centric, agents respond by creating their own dedicated web presence that markets their business value and successes, as well as captures new leads. Agents also use their personal websites to strengthen their brand by integrating blogs, Twitter and Instagram feeds, client reviews on Yelp, and other social media content.
Websites are ideal vehicles for your agents to market their services to new and potential customers. A dedicated website offers so much more than a simple profile page or online portfolio. It is a flexible, scalable, highly visual marketing tool that can effectively communicate the full breadth of an agent’s own business story. It can also engage clients through new and interesting content, reflecting an agent’s creativity, personality, and professionalism.
Case Study
Content-Rich Websites for EQ1 Agents
EQ1 was founded on innovation, breaking away from traditional real estate marketing approaches and using modern technology to sell properties. Their agents have carried this perspective forward into their personal business development activities. Many EQ1 agents run their own sophisticated websites that not only include their current property listings, but also their expertise and perspectives delivered through social media integration on their sites.
John Smith, Director, EQ1
“Our beautiful sites not only add value to the property itself—to our sellers and buyers—but they help our agents be successful, and also showcase our brand and our firm’s capabilities to prospective customers. Our sites make people want to work with us.”
4. Social Responsibility Websites
Today, real estate companies of all sizes embrace social responsibility as part of their company values. Your firm may be dedicated to “giving back” in any number of ways, from supporting charities to participating in community volunteer events to operating a nonprofit foundation. Many real estate firms will create dedicated websites to effectively spotlight their philanthropic activities, as well as drive donations and participation in charity events.
Almost all giving campaigns today include an online component. Your marketers may leverage social media to spread the word, but they will want an online web destination to send people for more information or further action. Campaign websites range from a single landing page to a full-featured website depending on the need. For nonprofit foundations, a dedicated website that is separate from your main company site gives this organization space to develop their own distinct web presence.
Case Study
Scalable Charity Event Websites for Colliers
Across the nation, Colliers’ Links for Life Foundation runs events and fundraisers, from charity poker in the Bay Area to golf tournaments in Las Vegas. Each region needed their own mobile-friendly website to promote events, drive registration, and collect donations. However, the process of mobile-optimizing their existing websites using WordPress was costly and cumbersome. A code-free website platform enabled the firm’s in-house designers to create any number of mobile-ready sites for regional events, update content themselves, and easily integrate registration and donation technologies.
5. Branch Office Websites
A dedicated website for your local real estate office is a no-brainer, right? Not always so. For many large firms, branch offices are provided with a single templated page to promote their entire business. However, to ensure that a branch office has an edge in its local market, it requires much more than simply posting contact information and a list of agents. A modern web approach allows branch offices, regardless of affiliation, the freedom to market their services based on their community needs and expectations. It also supports their efforts to recruit new agents by demonstrating the organization’s sophisticated marketing practices.
A website full of lush images and video of the local area grounds your website visitor in the context and community that you serve. Depending on your marketing strategy and resources, your office site can generate leads and recruit new talent through social media integration, property listings, agent stories, and other creative content that resonates with your clients. For large companies, web technologies allow centralized brand control, so branch office websites do not stray from brand guidelines.
Case Study
A Unified Branch Office Website for Colliers Columbus
Colliers is a leading global real estate services and investment management company. Over time, the firm’s web presence became fractured by multiple websites, each built on different platforms. However, all the web-building platforms they tried limited the firm’s ability to create their ideal website without hiring developers. Colliers Columbus seized the opportunity Brandcast provided, empowering their in-house designers to take full control over the design, launch and management of their new branch office site.
6. Industry Report Websites
Many large real estate firms distribute periodic reports, such as commissioned industry research and company quarterly or annual reports. Typically, these reports are delivered as static PDFs that are downloaded after a lead capture process. Some progressive firms are leveraging the power of the web to gather more information from their leads than just name and email address. They recognize that a report is a powerful engagement tool that can give them valuable insights into how this information impacts their visitors.
Turning reports into dedicated websites breathes life into these valuable assets. Your designers can deliver dry industry data through beautiful, immersive experiences that showcase the sophistication of your brand. Gating access, i.e. requiring users to fill out a form to view your report, collects leads, and data analytics can track which parts of the report generated the most interest, and from whom. The flexibility of the website format allows you to embed interactive elements into the reports—video, polls, social media—that encourage deeper engagement with your firm.