What Real Estate Agents Should Know About Inbound Marketing

As a real estate agent, you’re responsible for wearing many hats. Not only do you have to work with buyers and sellers and manage transactions, but you also have to do your own marketing. Fortunately, though, inbound marketing is a tool that you can use to help make the marketing piece a little bit easier.

If you’re unsure what inbound marketing is, read on below. We’ll cover what this technique is, how it works, and how you can use it to encourage leads to come to you.

What is inbound marketing?

In the marketing world, there are generally two distinct types to consider. There is inbound marketing and outbound marketing.

Outbound marketing is usually the type of lead generation that real estate agents are taught to consider. In this case, the agent offers his or her information and services to the client. It could be in the form of a cold call, a mailed letter, or a pop-by gift.

With inbound marketing, on the other hand, potential clients seek out the information offered by the real estate agent. This could be from a blog post, opt-in gift, or social media post. Here, if the potential client likes the information they are given, they could then reach out to the real estate agent and inquire about their services.

The benefits of inbound marketing

The client comes to you

The biggest benefit of inbound marketing is that, instead of you having to take time out of your busy schedule to cultivate leads, the lead will find you. Whether it’s a blog post that leads back to your website or an opt-in gift that adds a new subscriber to your email list, inbound marketing allows leads to voluntarily sign up to receive information from you. This makes them much more likely to eventually convert to a client than if you had simply marketed to them.

You can use the same content over and over

With inbound marketing, the bulk of your lead generation efforts is spent creating content. However, once you create a piece of content, it can stay on the internet indefinitely. With this tactic, it’s possible to receive a lead because of a blog post that you wrote a year and a half ago. With that, the more content you create, the more leads you have the potential to capture.

How to use inbound marketing

Now that you know what inbound marketing is and what its benefits can be, the next step is to learn how to use it. The tips below will help you get started.

1. Get clear on your target market and their pain points

The first step to inbound marketing is to get clear on your target market. While most agents will say that they’ll work with anyone who wants to buy or sell a house, in this case, it may be helpful to pick a smaller niche, such as millennials, seniors, or luxury buyers and sellers.

Once you have an idea of who your target market may be, the next step is to figure out what their pain points are in the process of buying or selling their home. Ask yourself: what questions do I get asked most often by my clients? What information do I share with them most often? What do I wish my clients knew about real estate?

2. Create shareable content that meets a need

After you’ve taken some time to figure out the answers to those questions, you can use that information to create original content.  This content is the way that your leads will end up finding their way to you, so you’ll want to make sure that anything you’ll create is on topic, easily-digestible, and informative.

As far as what content you can create, there are a multitude of options. For example, you could publish blog posts, infographics, videos, printable materials, or ebooks. If you don’t have time to create this content on your own, consider hiring someone to do it for you.

3. Share your content via social media

Once you have your content in hand, the next step is to share it as much as possible via social media. When you share content, you allow it to be found by a large segment of the people in your network. By using hashtags, you can also expand its exposure beyond your network to people who are searching for information on that exact topic.

Plus, social media has the added benefit of allowing you to engage with followers who may comment and like your posts. You can use these tools to establish yourself as an expert in your niche by asking any questions that your followers may have.

4. Collect leads

The last step to this is creating a system for collecting the leads that come to you because of the content that you’ve published. Usually, people use an opt-in form, which is a short form that your social media followers will fill out when they consent to receive more information from you. Typically, this form will be prominently placed on your website.

Once someone signs up for your email list, you can continue to nurture them by sending them additional information until they are ready to come to you and ask for help buying or selling a home.