Every day, thousands of people search online for available listings, the latest in mortgage rates, and whether or not the housing market is going to crash. They want to know how much of a down payment they need, how they could possibly buy and sell at the same time, whether they should go FSBO or hire an agent, and what the heck "escrow" even means.
Many of these people are googling these questions early in the process, before they've even thought about reaching out to a real estate agent. So what would happen if you met them exactly where they are in their consumer journey, providing answers to their biggest questions? What if you provided that content on a consistent basis and ended up becoming their #1 resource for all things real estate?
When it came time for them to choose an agent, you'd be at the top of their list.
This type of lead generation strategy is called content marketing. "Content marketing is a strategic marketing approach focused on creating and distributing valuable, relevant, and consistent content to attract and retain a clearly defined audience — and, ultimately, to drive profitable customer action." (Source: Content Marketing Institute)
One of the quickest ways to begin with content marketing is to start a blog. A blog is the perfect platform for publishing content on a regular basis. Every article you put out into the world has the potential to reel in your next big client.
So, let's talk about blogging best practices, and how you can turn your blog into a lead-generating machine.
Some real estate website providers offer a platform with a blog already included. But if you need to use a third-party blogging platform, be sure to have your web developer integrate it into your existing website.
Your blog shouldn’t be a separate domain. So, let’s say your website URL is www.myrealestatesite.com. Your blog URL should be something like www.myrealestatesite.com/blog or blog.myrealestatesite.com. If your blog is on a separate domain (for example, www.realestateblog.com), your primary website won’t get to benefit from your blog traffic.
The key to crafting an effective blog post—to write something that is relevant and useful to your potential clients—is to really, deeply understand your target audience. To get started, consider your 5-10 most recent clients, and answer these questions:
Once you have a deep understanding of your target audience, you'll be able to craft relevant, useful, and highly valuable blog articles.
Related: How To See Things From Your Client's Perspective
SEO stands for search engine optimization, and it's an important component of content marketing.
SEO is the practice of improving your website (and in this case, your blog posts) to make them more "findable" in search engine results. When you're writing blogs, one of the most important SEO practices you'll want to keep in mind is keyword optimization—using words that your target audience commonly uses in search engines. A trick for choosing good keyword phrases is to search your topic in Google and look for the "People also ask" section.
To learn more about SEO, check out Moz's guide to SEO best practices.
It's not enough to simply write down your thoughts, throw in some keywords, and slap it on the web. If you want people to actually read your blog post, it has to be engaging. It has to be approachable and easy for the average adult to understand (that means no scary jargon). It should be an easy, conversational read—as if you were explaining something to a friend over coffee.
Here are some tips on how to craft an engaging blog post, courtesy of Sonia Simone for Copyblogger:
Read Simone's full article—How To Write A Good Blog Post—for more in-depth tips!
This is where the marketing magic happens.
You've gotten a visitor to your blog post. They've read the article and found it useful.
Now what?
Without giving your reader a next step, they might leave your website and never return again. We don't want that to happen. So you need to include a call-to-action in every blog post (or in a sidebar on your blog).
Your call-to-action might be a button that says Subscribe to the blog that brings them to a lead capture form to fill out. Or, for a blog post titled "How To Buy A Home In Dallas When You Don't Have A Down Payment," you might include a call-to-action to View Available Listings or Get A Lender Referral.
The call-to-action, and the pursuant offer (what we call a lead magnet), should be something that extends the value of the blog post. So if someone is reading your blog post about home-selling, you might invite them to fill out a form for a free home valuation.
Every time someone clicks your call-to-action button and fills out a form, they're raising their hand and saying, "Hi, I'm a qualified lead! Reach out to me!"
And this is how your blog generates leads.
Now that you know how to start a blog and craft posts that will generate leads, let's talk about how to boost traffic to your blog—so you can get even more leads!
You don't have to depend solely on organic search traffic (people finding your blog in Google). For every new blog post you publish, you should be sending out an email to your subscriber list and sharing the link on all of your social media platforms. You might even choose to boost your post on Facebook with a paid ad.
Finally, blogging and SEO best practices suggest you should publish at minimum once or twice a week, and never exceed more than one post per day. Data from SEO.co shows that frequent blogging has a direct impact on the number of leads you'll generate through organic web traffic.
Get your website set up for a blog, create your list of topics, and start crafting relevant and valuable blog posts that will attract your target audience to your website!
For further reading on blogging strategy, check out my favorite resource, copyblogger.com/blog.
Sammy Harper is a content writer at Firepoint & Realvolve. Her nine years of digital marketing experience include SEO, email marketing, social media, and blogging. Fascinated by the real estate indust...
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