4 Important Things Realtors May Be Getting Wrong About Online Marketing

Nowadays, online marketing has become an important part of every realtor’s day to day business operations. After all, it’s the easiest, most convenient, as well as one of the most effective ways to gain new leads and clients.

It should be noted, though, that while online marketing can be easy, it isn’t necessarily foolproof.

Here are four things about online marketing that realtors have to AVOID in order to have a successful, and flourishing business.

Relying too much on canned responses and automatic content

While having some parts of your online marketing plan be automated can be very convenient, it’s also important to remember that this shouldn’t be how you do things ALL the time.

Don’t allow your social media accounts to just automatically repost things for you. Even if you can schedule tweets or Facebook posts in advance, take the time to add your own caption or comment to the tweet or post, at least.

When it comes to emails, automatic and canned responses can only get you so far. Make it a habit to spend even a few minutes each day to send personalized replies to the people who reach out to you, even if it’s just a short message.

The internet is already a rather impersonal place to begin with, and at the end of the day, people still want to know that they’re communicating with a real person.

Take this opportunity to add your personal touch, and let prospects know that they are really being listened to.

Not blogging actual content

It’s easy to set up a blog, but putting up content is another story altogether.

While it’s nice to have your new listings published as blog posts, and it’s easy to fill up the blog with open house announcements and the like, it still boils down to quality over quantity.

Instead, make sure to mix in blog posts that offer interesting and/or useful information for your site’s visitors. It could be a small news piece, or even your own commentary about a certain topic. Maybe it can even be a few photos from a recent open house or conference.

Basically, don’t allow your blog to look like a classified ads page!

Sending too many emails

More is not always necessarily merrier.

Be mindful about how often you send emails to the people in your contacts list.

Make sure that the people you are reaching out to are actually interested in the topic, or at the very least, are actual subscribers to your mailing list.

It’s considered bad form to a.) just send an email blast to random email addresses, and b.) flood people’s inboxes with your promotional materials.

These practices are to be avoided as you run the risk of getting your messages marked as spam. This, in turn, comes with a whole slew of problems that can really hinder your online marketing efforts, and trust us, you don’t want to get involved in any of that.

Instead, make sure that your messages

• Are reasonably spaced apart
• Are sent to people who opted in
• Offer useful content
• Are accompanied by well thought-out subject lines

Keep those four points in mind, and your audience will LIKE receiving messages from you.

Not proofreading their content

It may seem like such a little thing to misspell some words, or confuse some terms, but these small errors DO make a big impression on readers. In a bad way.

It gives the impression that the author of the message can’t be bothered to check their own writing, and therefore can’t be trusted to handle other, more important things… like contracts.

Before hitting that “publish” or “send” button, make sure you run a spell-check first. Check your grammar, check your capitalizations and punctuations, make sure your usage of “your” and “you’re” and so on, are correct.

Take the time to read over any blog post, tweet, or email you’ve written, and check it several times if necessary. If you need a fresh set of eyes, get someone else to do a quick check for you.

Keeping an eye on details like this are absolutely worth it.

These are some of the most basic, as well as some of the most important best practices to keep in mind for realtors when pursuing online marketing for their businesses.

How about you? Do you have any online marketing advice for other realtors as well? Feel free to share it in the comments!

Last Updated on November 28, 2023 by myRealPage