In the very fast developing business landscape as occasioned by technology and digital communication, businesses across the World are fast leveraging social media marketing as a catalyst for their business development and growth plans. As a matter of fact, leveraging social media for business growth should be a must-do in the business development and execution of strategies by brands irrespective of the sector the business is domiciled.
For forward thinking real estate brands that aspire to stay ahead of the curve and remain relevant in the local and global real estate market space, leveraging social media is a must for awareness, market penetration, growth and dominance. With the emergence of new media, it presents a formidable and effective marketing platform for businesses to leverage on irrespective of the size, market share, industry and location.
Strong online presence for a real estate brand – agents, firms or agencies has so many advantages especially at this time of operating on a tight budget as engendered by the unfriendly global and macroeconomic weather. Leveraging social media platforms like Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube will not only allow the brand to be more customer centric, but it will also allow the brand to competitively stay ahead of industry trends. In recent years, social media has become a very powerful marketing communication tool in the real estate industry and real estate firms should quickly move in this direction and take advantage of its many benefits. Even with the increasing social media channels, so many real estate firms have zero online media footprint and thereby limiting their business growth and opportunities. The marketing and media visibility plan of real estate and other brands is a must-do for the overall business success. As a matter of fact, a solid media footprint is a sine-qua-non for the overall brand success in today’s competitive business environment.
To compete favourably in the real estate market space, real estate professionals should be able to connect with their clients and prospects in most resonate ways such as video sharing, property listing, relevant information, news articles and pictures. To make most use of the social media platforms, good and captivating contents should be created and professionally posted leveraging all the social media platforms in its messaging. For instance, Tik Tok and YouTube are two of the practical social media tools that can assist real estate professionals to share videos of their new projects and property listing. Impressions and conversation rates are always high on these platforms if well utilized.
Where a business concern, real estate business in this context, is not on social media, the business is arguably missing on a lot of opportunities that can be captured online, delivered offline, and significantly contribute to the bottom of the brand. Here are some of the many benefits of leveraging the social media as a real estate business;
Brand awareness is the extent to which customers are able to recall or recognize your brand. In the saturated real estate industry, one of the ways of building brand awareness is through aggressive social media presence across all customers touch points. With social media marketing, a brand can build its brand equity and reach so many clients and prospects with the speed of light and with very low budgets as well.
Building a very strong brand equity is a must-do for real estate firms that desire to remain competitive in the challenging real estate space. Simply defined, brand equity is the perception allotted to your brand by your clients and prospects as it relates to the quality of services rendered over time. Customer loyalty is achieved with a very strong brand equity, and good engagements by real estate brands via social media is a sure way of building a mutually beneficial client and brand relationship.
Client/Customer Relationship Management (CRM) is very key in the real estate business space as most real estate transactions are not one-off affairs. Social media handles remain one of the quickest ways to engage clients for diverse reasons. Most brands today celebrate new products, new listings, birthdays and other special anniversaries through the social media space. Unlike other methods of brand exposure, social media marketing is not only cost effective but also far reaching, and engaging as well. For instance, with just a single post, your brand can connect to so many clients and prospects in more than one social media platform at the same time. No newspaper, magazine, or television ad can achieve this even with repeated insertions and slots. Simply put, social media budgets for brands are packet friendly and have more engaging and wider reach.
Understanding your audience through social media is one of the surest ways of researching and marketing your brand to them. A well-tailored content targeted at your audience is a skill your brand must adopt and adapt to. To excel in your social media posting, the messages (postings of all categories) must reach your audience at the right time and the right channels.
Victor Okocha is a Brand and Marketing Communication Professional. He currently works as the Head, Membership Services Department in a leading real estate professional body in Abuja, Nigeria.
