35 Must-Try Real Estate Marketing Ideas to Bring Qualified Leads

To say Australian property owners were delighted with their performance would be an understatement, with many of the country experiencing double-digit and some reaching, an annual growth of 20% in prices over the last year. While forecasts predict an easing off the gas, real estate agents are currently relishing a record-breaking year. To catch the momentum you need to only implement up-to-date real estate marketing ideas that are sure to bring more traffic and qualified leads to your agency. 

At Geonet, we have celebrated our real estate clients’ successes this year, with listings pages filling up, Open Homes and Inspections across their regions, and record-breaking sales for individual agents and agencies.  

What real estate marketing ideas does your agency need for success?  It will require every facet of digital marketing to rise above your competition and take your brand to new heights.

Are you ready?

Australian Real Estate Marketing Trends 

The main focus of the performant real estate marketing strategy is omnipresence. Being omnipresent means spreading your message across all platforms, including your website, your blog, social media, ads, emails, video platforms, offline events, and many more. Marketing channels are endless, you need to make them work for you. Otherwise, it will be your competitors who do so.

At Geonet we work with leading real estate agencies and implement strategies with a variety of marketing ideas. To get you on top we are sharing these 35 ideas for real estate agencies looking for success in the competitive Australian market. 

Ideas for Australian Real Estate Marketing Websites

If you haven’t updated or upgraded your website lately, such as the last two years, add the task to your plans. While it is important to regularly update the content on your site with blogs, team updates, or local news and reports, there are other technical upgrades that you can add or improve to help potential home buyers. If you still don’t have a website, then you absolutely have to create one. 

1. Make sure your website has a responsive design for mobile. Your site may look beautiful on your desktop at work, but 60% of internet traffic is mobile or tablet. Upgrade: In 2022, the best websites will be responsive with coding for media queries, adaptive images and videos for every screen size, and fluid grid layouts.

2. Only use high-quality images and video tours for properties. Upgrade: Add drone footage for outside and aerial views of the property and neighbourhood. Upgrade #2: Film and upload a video walkthrough for each listing. People love visiting houses, but they also love saving time.

3. Easy navigation and search capabilities are essential for your website. Upgrade: Heat map technology can track the behaviours of your website users and give a clearer picture of navigation than Google Analytics.

4. Add share, saving, and social buttons. Upgrade: Sharing for social media is useful, but being able to send personal messages with links to Whatapp, Facebook, or Twitter. For example, McLaren Real Estate provides sharing buttons on each listing page that they have on their website to make it easy for visitors to share it with family, spouses, friends, and network.

5. Don’t lose anyone – implement lead capture and data collection. Upgrade: Integrate your website with your CRM, with leads and data automatically saved for reporting on lead source, timelines, and communication, as well as cutting steps for sending e-blasts, newsletters and property updates.

6. Use blogs for news updates and relevant topics. Blogs help with search engine optimisation (SEO) and online traffic, so they may help you rank higher in search results for topics your clients ask online. In addition, it keeps users on your site longer and increases links to your site via interlinking and backlinks from other websites. Being in the top search results increases visibility and organic (free) traffic.
7. Add Suburb profiles to your website. This will make you the local expert both for Google and for readers. They want to know more about a suburb before moving in, give them this opportunity and add your contacts.
8. The About Us page is crucial. It is estimated that more than half of website visitors said the first thing they want to see when they land on a website is a company’s ‘About Us’ page. First impressions shape future relationships. Allow potential customers the opportunity to get to know your company and the team members. This page should include photos, bios, your awards, and a short history of the company and its connection to the local area.
9. Create featured listings that convert. Featured Listings shine a spotlight on your best or newest listings by creating dedicated pages on your website. This may help clients and website users navigate your site to locate suggestions or the best homes or areas
10. Learn about Backlinks. Backlinks are vital for SEO because they tell Google that another source values your content enough to connect to it. As a website gains more backlinks, search engines assume it has quality material worth ranking highly. (Read more: First-Page Ranking SEO for Real Estate in 3 Steps)
11. Add Mortgage Calculators. A mortgage calculator can help your client save time and money by making it easy to calculate mortgage payments. By adding a mortgage calculator to your website, you can offer your clients a convenient way to estimate their monthly mortgage payments, without having them visit other sites. This can be a valuable tool for anyone shopping for a new home or considering refinancing their current mortgage.
12. Offer free appraisals for potential seller leads. Add to your website a form to request a free appraisal, to start the conversations with home sellers on how much their home would be worth in the market and the right time to sell.
13. Create a Recently Sold page to showcase your results. Nothing is more reassuring to see the successes of the agent you are about to hire. When applicable, include the sale prices and big wins for happy clients.
14. Connect a live chat to your website. Live chat can provide instant customer service by connecting potential clients with a receptionist or member of your team to answer any questions regarding listings, open homes, or other services. You can send them photos, short links, and other important information, all at the touch of a button.

Pay Per Click Advertising for Australian Real Estate

2021 proved to have an emergence of search engine marketing. 

Advertising costs on social media platforms have increased, in some industries as much as 40%. This is due to data blocking for Apple users on Facebook and Instagram. All advertisers felt the ax drop last April, as it became more difficult to target audiences who were holding iPhones. Not only that, there are more advertisers using social platforms than ever, as all businesses see social media advertising is vital to attract new clientele.

With social media ads becoming more expensive, advertisers expanded their marketing mix and turned to search engines and PPC. The search platforms excelled with new technology upgrades and feature enhancements to search engines like Google, Microsoft, and YouTube.

Leads and conversions from search engines can be more expensive, but they can also prove to be more valuable. 

How can your real estate agency upgrade your PPC marketing?

15. Review your content. This is an obvious step, but make sure your ads are up to date with current offerings. And that your ads are relevant to the page your visitors are landing on.
16. Add more exact match keywords to your search queries, especially for your specific suburbs and locations.
17. Review your competitors – there are many tools to help you spy on competitors. Note what they are doing right, to adapt, or wrong – to never make such mistakes.
18. Target local markets. Use location-based keywords to personalise ads. Add names of the area, streets, malls – make it relevant and recognizable for future customers.
19. Test dynamic keyword insertion to upgrade your ads campaign and make Google dynamically change your ad text so it matches perfectly the query.
20. Use retargeting ads. Never lose anyone you were in contact with! Create special segmented ad campaigns for those who visited a certain page on your website. Test different offers on them to just remind them to take action.

Australian Real Estate Marketing Ideas for Social Media

Apart from having social media, you actually need to make them work and follow trends. Yes, you have to create an Instagram account, a Facebook page, even Tiktok, and Pinterest can make you money. 

21. Perfect your YouTube content and keep it updated. YouTube is owned by Google, it’s the #2 search engine in the world. As a real estate agent, you have to focus on keywords related to your local market, particularly ones that include your city’s name. Make video tours, local activities, and other topics related to your local market, and profile your team members. It’s not just about homes, it’s the people who are selling them.
22. Use Reels. This is the biggest trend now. Reels are a great way to build a community on Instagram, as they can get featured on the Instagram explore page to attract a brand following and create company reach on Instagram.  Create short videos adding trending music under 100,000 uses. It is a free and powerful tool to gain followers quickly as well as attract relevant audiences.
23. Create Guides on Instagram. If you have relevant content to share that requires more than one or two slides, create a guide that users can swipe through and read, share, and save for later. 
24. Go Live on Instagram and Facebook. Make virtual open homes, Q&A segments, or invite speakers to go live with you on social media. Live broadcasts can be any length of time, as long as you have engaging content.
25. Join local Facebook groups for rentals/accommodation in your area, or nationally. A lot of people ask questions before they actually rent or buy property. Help them. Answer their questions, share your listings and contact information.
26. Use infographics. Infographics are an extremely effective tool for education and marketing. Social media, as well as your blogs, are the perfect platform to share infographics.

Upgrade: Infographics are useful not only to communicate with your future buyers or sellers but to get attention from across the industry. The best infographics are shared thousands of times. Don’t forget to brand yours and publish it. 

27. Don’t forget your Pinterest boards. Pinterest is a highly visual platform, but not only that. One of the top leading categories on Pinterest is Home, and the majority of the users are women (60%). Upload pictures of your staged houses or previews for your blogs and get free traffic to your website. Pinterest also can be used.

Real estate marketing ideas for other online channels

28. Email marketing is absolutely not dead. But boring letters are. Talk to your subscribers, share news, analysis, stories, case studies, sold or active listings but in your particular style – funny, serious, visual, friendly. 
29. Host or join a Webinar or even a small Virtual Summit for home buyers or sellers. Free webinars and virtual summits share short live interviews or educational content and promote services or products of every speaker (if they want to), and normally earn dozens of thousands in a matter of a few days. 
30. Collect testimonials and reviews, and publish them across your online platforms. Create a simple template for a testimonial so your clients can just follow it, making it easy for them to leave reviews for you that can be shared on your website and social media.
31. Design and publish Online Guides – landlord guides, templates, tenants form – all of it people are searching online and why not step in and offer to download it from your website? They are also likely to share it with friends or colleagues, spreading the word about you.
32. Update your Google Business Profile and Google Local ads for top PPC placement – Google prioritises map pins, high-quality content, and search terms. If you haven’t reviewed your Google Business Profile, now is the best time, and above all else – make sure you have testimonials and 5-star reviews from your happy clients.
33. Do video interviews with happy clients. This is not quite a testimonial but an actual short interview and video with happy clients, which can be very genuine and relatable, and shared not only on your website and social media but also in an email newsletter or directly with potential new clients. 

Real estate marketing and branding ideas

34. Geo-targeting works as a high-precision tool targeting your audience in the right place when you need it. Geo-targeting has been proven to be more effective than broad, one-way advertising, because it allows you to provide customised information to the right audience, in the right location, at the right time. By layering demographic and behavioral data over the location target, this strategy can make sure you will get more feet in the door or clicks to your site and eventually leads to increased conversions.
35. Hire the right agency specialising in real estate marketing in your region. 

Understandably, it may seem unnecessary to commit to an agency if you think you can manage everything by yourself. However, an agency usually has a whole team dedicated to your project, including a project manager, a copywriter, an analyst, a few ads managers, SEO experts, and more. You will be surprised by the results even after the first month. With Geonet we are focusing on real estate marketing in Australia and Indonesia, working both with emerging companies and award-winning agencies.