Today’s consumers rely on online research and social media ads to find information about products and services before making any type of purchase. While realtors go through plenty of trouble to generate leads and promote their businesses through traditional means, convenient and effective online resources can be used to maximize home sales as well!
If you’re hoping to grow your real estate business and enter the new age of internet marketing, social media is the place to start. By building a presence on all of the most popular platforms, you can connect with colleagues and clients in new ways and gain more exposure for your business than ever before.
While the benefits of social media marketing make it an attractive strategy for realtors, it can be difficult to juggle multiple social media accounts along with your business’s daily tasks. To lessen the load of this new project, you can hire a social media marketing company to help you create and manage business profiles across different platforms and keep your marketing plan on track.
If you’re ready to get started on social media but you feel like you may need professional help to succeed, here’s a brief guide that will help you determine your marketing strategy and find a company that will suit your needs.
Why Should You Hire a Social Media Marketing Company?
While many realtors may attempt to manage their own social media profiles, there are plenty of reasons why outsourcing your profile management to another company is the right way to go. Since social media marketing is proposed as a cost-effective way to promote your business and your listings, you may wonder why you should allocate extra funds to hire a separate company to handle your pages and posts.
Projections show that social media is the best way to reach the masses, so building your business’s online presence is essential for growth. Managing pages across multiple platforms can quickly overwhelm busy realtors, leaving them less time to focus on their existing projects and clients. With a little extra help, you can give your work your full attention and even push ahead of the competition with expert advice and tactics.
That said, these companies don’t just simplify your daily tasks and offer tips. If you’re on the fence about hiring a social media marketing company, the following reasons will show you why their services and insight are essential to your success.
Bypass the Learning Curve
If you choose to start from scratch on social media and build your business profiles by yourself, you may run into some problems that will set back your progress and cost you some time. While you may be familiar with some of the most popular platforms through personal use, most platforms offer unique features for business accounts that require a bit of time and practice to utilize perfectly.
Without timely advice and guidance, you could spend hours a day creating content for your social media pages that doesn’t quite hit its full potential. If you don’t know how to access advanced advertising features or make use of analytics data, you could keep posting underperforming content for years without realizing that your follower count, leads, and page views could have been exponentially higher.
Hiring a social media marketing company can resolve that problem entirely. While independent realtors may fumble with unfamiliar platforms and fail to meet their goals, professionals can help you make the right choices from the get-go and avoid social media stagnation.
Start Off with Strong Content
One of the ways that a social media marketing company can fast-track your success is by helping you create better content. If you’ve started your social media journey and you’re starting to struggle with content creation, these resources can give you ideas and prompts that are sure to attract leads and interest your clients. Alternatively, some companies may even make posts on your behalf.
While every platform hosts a wide variety of different users and communities, there are certain formulas and standards that businesses can follow to create content that is guaranteed to bring attention to their pages and boost their businesses. If anyone would know exactly what to post and when to post it, social media marketers would!
Further, these professionals can help you learn the right ways to format your posts and translate information from your website or blog. Many realtors use their social media pages to redirect traffic to their web page or listings, but each platform has different rules for incorporating links into your posts and converting external content.
For instance, linking a blog post on Twitter or Pinterest will look vastly different if you use a Twitter Card or a Rich Pin. Learning how to format posts for every platform may be taxing and time-consuming, but professional marketers will be able to streamline those conversions and create a buzz around your blog in no time.
Get Professional Insight on Advertising
Further, professional social media marketers can help you better understand each platform’s premium advertising features. There are plenty of ways for businesses to advertise their products and services online for free, but some platforms offer paid upgrades that can significantly boost your business’s reach. Before you start breaking down your marketing budget and investing in ads on your own, you may want to confer with a professional marketing company first.
The two most popular social platforms for realtors, Facebook and LinkedIn, offer paid features that could help you further grow your business. Facebook has extended its business features to allow users to create entire marketing campaigns that include paid ads, while LinkedIn requires a premium membership to network with distant connections and send direct messages. If you’re looking at programs like this on your own, it may be hard to determine what is worth your time and money.
Social media marketers don’t just have industry insight that can help you sort through available features, they also know how to make use of your platform-specific analytics reports to see where you need to spend extra time and resources. After reviewing your metrics, they may advise you to skip or purchase certain features based on the areas of your profile that need improvement.
Which Qualities & Services Should You Look Out For?
If you decide to seek out a social media marketing company, you’ll have to know how to identify the best options and select the perfect team for your business’s specific needs. Realtors have to balance multiple marketing goals at once–promoting property listings, gaining new leads, interacting with existing clients, and building a recognizable brand–so you have to prioritize your goals and choose a team of marketers that is proven to get results.
After you narrow down which of your goals are the most pertinent and where you need the most help, you can start fielding marketing companies and do a bit of research. If you need some help coming up with criteria for your search, the following factors will help you find a company that can shape up your social media pages and ensure the best possible outcome.
Goal-Oriented Consultations
First, it’s essential that you find a company that will help you realize your goals. However, if you are struggling to get a handle on the ins and outs of social media yourself, you may need a professional’s insight to help you identify areas of concern and potential solutions.
For instance, new users may not know how to navigate each platform, make use of complicated features, and apply savvy tactics to boost their pages and posts. Many realtors simply post about their open listings and announce dates for showings without much forethought. If you’re currently employing a similar strategy, you may need a marketer’s input on the state of your current pages to understand the correlation between different types of posts and practices and their effects on your business.
Further, social media marketers can help you make connections between your current content and posting strategies and the numbers in your analytics reports. For those who aren’t well-versed in online marketing and platform dynamics, it can be difficult to translate the available information into concise goals. While it’s ideal to begin your search with an ideal outcome in mind, a good marketing company will help you make sense of your current situation and come up with effective solutions.
For this reason, realtors who are just getting started with social media should be on the lookout for a company that is willing to go over their existing plans and describe what they’re doing well, where they can improve, and how their services will affect your pages and your business. This way, you can go forward with their proposed plan and feel confident in the projected results.
Custom Service Plans
As all realtors know, no two clients’ needs are totally alike. For each person and project, you have to reassess your strategies to suit the specifications and situations at hand. Good marketers will take the same approach to your social media management. Whether you know your goals from the start or follow their guidance, you should make sure that the social media marketing company you hire will customize your service plan to suit your specific needs.
While every company will rely on tried and true tactics to promote your business, social media marketing isn’t one-size-fits-all. There are plenty of factors that determine what type of marketing strategy would benefit you and your business most, and the right company will be able to identify what makes your business unique and tailor their services in response.
Real estate businesses may have a lot in common with each other, but many realtors prefer to specialize in certain services or build their brands around a particular niche within the larger market. For instance, a real estate business that revolves mostly around luxury home sales will have vastly different marketing needs than one that simply serves local clients. Realtors may need to work harder on cultivating a brand voice and aesthetic on apps like Instagram and Twitter to connect with their clientele, while location-specific real estate businesses may need to focus on expanding their reach and rank with SEO techniques.
Professional social media marketers should be able to respond to either situation with helpful tips and tactics. No matter what your goals are, make sure that the social media marketing company you hire is open to developing a strategy that is specific to you.
Industry Knowledge
To truly understand your goals and how to achieve them, the social media company you hire should be familiar with your industry. Ideally, they may have even worked with realtors in the past and learned the best ways to promote properties, engage with leads, and translate timely real estate topics into compelling content. If they don’t have experience working with other realtors, make sure that they are willing to get up to speed. Otherwise, you may find their work superficial and irrelevant to your business’s specific needs.
While real estate businesses function similarly to other businesses, the client-realtor relationship is unique and your social media presence should help foster bonds with your new leads. Thus, engagement and follower retention may be more important to realtors than other marketing goals. Since your services require more communication and engagement to land a sale, the tactics that marketers use for other businesses may need to be adjusted.
Further, the content they post to your page shouldn’t be designed simply to attract attention. It should also be substantial and educational for leads who are looking for up-to-date information about the real estate market and how to buy or sell their homes. If the company you hire is already well-versed in real estate, they won’t have trouble finding reliable industry resources to inform their posts.
If you’re hoping to bolster your current social media presence with more general marketing tips, industry-specific knowledge may not be necessary to get the results you want. However, companies that are able to put your marketing plan in context may better understand your goals and serve you better.
Testimonials & Case Studies
To determine if the company you’re considering is the real deal, check out their track record and seek out proof of their results. Take a note from your own leads and clients and do some online research to see what previous customers have to say about the company’s services. Alternatively, you can check to see if the company’s website includes any testimonials, case studies, or examples of their work to get an idea of what they can do.
To get a sense of what the team you’re considering can bring to the table, make sure to check a variety of online resources for reviews and comments on their work. In addition to browsing the company’s website and other reliable review channels, you can also look into the company’s own social media pages. Make note of their posting habits, the quality of images and writing on their posts, and the way that they engage with other users on the platform. While this evidence is more general and may not align with the work they provide to their clients, it’s a great way to get a first impression of their vibe and their social media knowledge.
Social media marketing skills can be developed quickly, but you will want to entrust your business (and your money) to experienced professionals who can prove their expertise. If you’ve attempted to manage your own social media pages, you know that frequent posting alone won’t increase engagement or expand your business’s reach. To get real results, you have to factor other elements–such as timing, aesthetics, tone, format, and more–into your strategy.
After you determine how the company transformed their clients’ content in prior projects, you should start looking for the effects of those changes. If the team improved their clients’ page by posting about on-trend topics, how many more followers did the client earn? Did the rate of engagement on their posts increase, and by how much?
While companies may not be willing to dig too deep into past clients’ projects, try asking about how much other clients have had to pay to get the results they advertise. Similarly, you should check how long it took to see a significant change in their social media performance. If the company claims that they assure certain results–like an increased follower count, more page traffic, or higher engagement on posts–they should be transparent about the time and money it takes to reach those points.
If the company’s reviews don’t state these figures, don’t be afraid to ask for more information. Any expert should be willing to openly discuss the effects of their services and give prospective customers realistic estimates for time, costs, and expected results.
What Should You Bring to the Table?
As veterans of a notoriously difficult market, realtors know the difference between good and bad clients better than anyone else. To ensure that you get the most out of your social media marketing service, you should make an active effort to develop a positive working relationship with the team that you hire to handle your accounts and campaigns.
While most of the time you spend on this project will be dedicated to finding the right company to suit your needs, it’s essential to remember that a successful marketing campaign will require your input to work. Coming prepared with ideas, questions, and insights will help the professionals you hire get acquainted with your business and come up with appropriate solutions.
Before you start reaching out to companies that fit your criteria, keep the following tips in mind and make sure that you come prepared as well. A client who knows what they want will always get a better deal!
Realistic Expectations
While you may not have all of your social media marketing goals clearly defined before you meet with a professional, it’s essential that you have realistic expectations for what their services can provide. If you feel that your current social media presence is lacking, it’s best to be upfront about the areas that you want to improve so the team can offer their insight.
For instance, broad goals like increasing your follower count or creating new online ads are ideal. While both of these examples will have a noticeable positive impact on your business, they are easily measured and achieved. If you ask a new marketing team to realize more specific goals–like gaining a certain number of leads by a certain time or making your business the top-ranking search result for realtors in your area–you will be disappointed when they can’t return fast results.
Social media pages may grow quickly and offer your business many benefits, but there is a limit to what can be achieved during the span of your project. Marketing companies understand the time and effort that goes into achieving results on social media, so proposing your ideas upfront will give them a chance to reinforce attainable goals.
Further, being clear about your expectations will help you get more information from the team as you discuss your project. If you present the team with a realistic goal, they can give better estimates for pricing and timelines.
A Clear Brand Voice & Image
Before a marketing team can get to work on creating custom strategies for your proposed goals, you have to share more information about yourself and your business. There may be a set number of social media marketing tactics that the team can use to reach your goals, but your brand’s voice and mission should influence the decisions they make as they develop your plan.
To effectively build your brand, all of your social media posts should align with the tone and vibe of your other online material. For instance, your Facebook posts shouldn’t be vastly different from your blog posts or the text on your website. These differences don’t just cause inconsistencies across channels, but they can also make it harder to reach and retain your target audience.
If you market your business in a specific way, potential clients who arrive on your social media pages from other avenues may get conflicting messages from your content if it differs too much across different platforms. While each platform requires a bit of variance in format, your business’s overall mission and message should be clear no matter where a client finds you.
Being transparent about the way you want to portray yourself and your business will help your marketing team stay on brand. For example, if you hope to represent your business as the leading authority on real estate in your area, all of the content that they create for your social media pages should align with your informative tone. If you prefer to cultivate a more personable, down-to-earth approach for your professional accounts, you should share that information as well.
When leads connect with your pages on social media, they are more likely to reach out and follow up on their interest if your business’s values are present in your posts. Sharing your philosophy on real estate with your marketers will help them boost your pages’ performance while staying true to your values. If they are successful in representing your approach to real estate, you will earn more and better leads by connecting with the right people.
While these tips pertain mostly to text-based content, you should also be clear about the aesthetic you’re hoping to build for your business. If you don’t already have a business logo and a preferred color palette, your marketing team may be able to help you curate those features to give your profiles a more cohesive and recognizable look.
Open Communication
Further, it’s important that you are upfront and honest about what you need from the company you hope to hire. Beyond discussing your goals and expectations, you should talk with the team about the specific services you need and maintain good communication throughout your entire working relationship.
While the marketers you hire are professionals, their work is representing your business. You should be available and willing to review their work and ensure that it fits all of your needs and specifications before it is posted publicly. It may be tempting to take a hands-off approach and let the master marketers handle your profiles, but you will save yourself a lot of time and trouble if you make sure that the work is up to your standards as it is completed.
Throughout the course of your campaign or project, you will have to maintain communication and frequently inquire about scheduling and timeline changes. As will any extended partnership or project, there is potential for deadlines to change and for the team to fall behind on your established schedule. If you communicate well with the team you hire, the fallout from schedule changes can be minimized or resolved quickly and easily.
The timing of social media posts may not seem important to everyday users, but marketers know that sticking with a strategic posting schedule makes a huge difference. To get the most out of your collaboration, you should ensure that the team you choose is able to keep up with the deadlines you’ve determined. As this chart shows, engagement varies based on when you make posts. These findings represent the general behaviors of Twitter users, but your analytics reports may show that your followers’ habits differ from this standard or vary from platform to platform. If your posts don’t go up at the right times, you may miss out on major opportunities to grow your audience and engage with leads.
After you talk with the marketing company about your goals, the state of your social media accounts, and your expectations, be sure to express the importance of following the terms and schedule that both parties agreed upon.
Conclusion
Ultimately, hiring a social media marketing company to handle your business’s profiles and posts can help you build your online presence quickly and effectively and take full advantage of each platform’s unique features and opportunities. If you’ve been struggling to manage your accounts by yourself, professional insight could help you improve your strategy and help you get back to what you do best: selling homes.
Once you decide that you’re ready to seek out a marketing company’s assistance, be sure to look for one that offers specialized services, evidence of their expertise and previous successful campaigns, and industry-specific knowledge that will serve your real estate business well. If you match their offerings with the right outlook and the willingness to openly communicate your needs and ideas, you’re sure to have a successful collaboration!