As an estate agent, it is extremely important to fully utilise your current database while continuously using strategies that enable it to grow. Not only are databases B2B organisations but they are a vital part of any estate agency! Fully utilising your database will allow you to gain competitive advantages as well as amazing opportunities to form and grow trustworthy relationships with potential customers! Stay ahead of competition by following our marketing guide below!
Not only are databases key for B2B organisations but they are an essential part of any Estate Agency. If you are not utilising the database you currently have or you don’t have one at all, you are missing out on gaining that competitive advantage as well as the opportunity to grow your relationship with potential clients!
Happy and loyal customers are one of the most valuable assets to any organisation, keeping in regular contact and creating a trustworthy relationship with your clients is one way any business can achieve this.
Known that more than 95% of first-time visitors to your site will not make a purchase, databases are a vital way of not letting these customers fall through the cracks. Throughout this blog, we’re going to display just how much value your agency can receive from growing your existing database and how you can utilise this to reach your agency’s full potential.
Firstly, we will discuss how you could go about growing your database. When it comes to growing your database you need to make a good first impression, if you instantly come across as reliable and trustworthy you are already one step ahead of the competition…
There are plenty of ways you can capture the email addresses of potential customers, one way being lead magnets…
What is a lead magnet you may ask? A lead magnet is a marketing term for a free service that is given away in order to gather details from a target audience. This is an extremely common and effective way to grow your database in order to attract more potential clients for your business.
Of course, lead magnets are going to help you expand your database as the ultimate goal is to enter your email address to receive a free incentive, but isn’t always as easy as it sounds. If your lead magnet hasn’t been designed in a way that will engage your audience then the chances are people are less likely to stick around and complete your form.
When creating a lead magnet it is important to ensure the content you are creating is relevant and related to the subject your audience is coming to you for. By using this opportunity wisely you can establish yourself as having good knowledge in your business sector, already creating that trustworthy relationship with your potential prospects leaving them more likely to leave their details. You can then gather a database of high intent prospects due to the nature of how they provide you with their details.
Another way you can build your database is to create unique and engaging content. One of the reasons as to why you or someone else could be reading this article now is because it is extremely relevant to your search query on Google, the title has tempted you in via a social post or you are part of the Property Webmasters email database and have found the article that way.
What defines good quality content? Quality blog posts should be targeting a place within the first page of the SERPs for relevant terms. But beyond that, if a user was navigating around your website, what would they like to see in your news section? How about in-depth location guides about the properties you have upon the website or property pricing forecasts that display data surrounding pricing and demand of property in your target market? Those topics are without a doubt useful for someone looking to purchase a property.
If you make it easy for a user to see where and how to sign up to your existing database they will be more likely to do so. Users are becoming more and more used to stuff being at arm’s length, make sure that the call to action and forms to sign up are easy to read, locate and fill in. The reason I use ‘forms’ plural is because there should be multiple ways for a user to sign up, not only one small email form to capture a user’s information.
Another important strategy to deploy on your agency’s website is behavioural overlays. Most importantly is an exit intent strategy that, as the name suggests, tries to stop users from leaving the website by displaying some sort of offer or promotion that could entice them to stay and engage further with your website.
A simple but effective exit intent strategy for estate agents is to give away a snippet of your knowledge for free. If a user is on the valuation page of your website and is thinking about leaving, why not add a pop up strategy that displays a link to your agency’s ‘sellers checklist’. With the user being upon the valuation page we can assume they are thinking about selling their home, they then may be tempted into downloading the guide rather than leaving your website! In exchange for their email and phone number of course.
One way that is often overlooked or forgotten about when growing your database is guest posting for industry leading sites. Although this may not be the first strategy to pop into your head it can be extremely effective when done correctly. By doing your research and ensuring that the site you are collaborating with has the same target audience and demographic as yourself, you are putting your foot in the door and potentially reaching an audience you may never have come across.
Once you have chosen a site to feature on you need to ensure your content is of good quality and relative to the audience as well as ensuring your CTA is clear and attractive as first impressions count! Not only will this open the doors to potentially hundreds of new database contacts and leads but you are also increasing your overall brand awareness which is great when wanting to build a strong database.
One key platform that can be used to generate new email subscribers is Paid Campaigns, by using Facebook & Google to target new prospects you can be potentially growing your database with audiences from across the globe. With the ability to create lead forms for your campaigns you can alter and design the form to suit your business and what you want to achieve making your lead form as personalised as possible.
As well as creating a lead form targeted towards new audiences, you can also target those who have already visited your site using your website pixel. By targeting those who have already visited your overall site you are not only targeting an audience with higher intent but you are helping yourself receive the best ROI possible. Another way you can utilise your website pixel to grow your database is by using a specific URL from your site, this is targeting an even more specific audience tailored to your campaign.
Have you gathered a database and are now unsure of where to start? After creating a database one of the most important things to do is to utilise your database and keep your audience engaged and up to date with content. Whether this is through email marketing or utilising your database to create an audience on platforms such as Facebook Ads, by remarketing to your database who already showed an interest in your business you have a higher chance of receiving a lead and your prospects being further down the marketing funnel.
This is where the Marketing Rule of Seven comes into play. The marketing rule of 7 suggests your prospects need to be in contact with you seven times before they make a purchase/investment from your business. By utilising your database and reaching out to prospects on a variety of different platforms you will have a higher chance of engaging with them at the right place at the right time. On average marketers use 9 different channels to market to prospects so if you are only utilising one platform you are seriously missing out.
With so many competitors out there it is easy for your marketing tactics to become lost in the oversaturation of the market. Using your database to market your products and services allows you to create more personalised ads that are specifically directed to what the customer is interested in, this can be as simple as using their first name in an email campaign to remarketing products they have already engaged with. Not only does this give your prospects a better overall experience of your business but it also shows that you are putting your customer’s needs first making you one step ahead of those who aren’t!
Taking into consideration all of the above, Facebook Ads allows you to direct and re-engage your database audience to an ad personalised for them. With over 2.45 billion monthly active users, Facebook is a platform you can not miss out on.
Not only does Facebook Ads allow you to directly target your overall database audience, but it also allows you to target those based on Demographics, behaviours, interests and location making your marketing strategies more personalised and specific than ever. To do this Facebook matches the email addresses out of your database to a user and shows the ad directly to them!
One key benefit of targeting your database audience is that you are more likely to see a high return of investment and a low cost per result than any other audience due to it being of greater intent and quality. As well as using your database to solely target those users, you can also create an audience based on the demographics and interests of your database, this is called a ‘Lookalike Audience’. A lookalike audience can be one of the most beneficial ways of directing new users to your site due to the audience they are based on being of high intent and quality. You can also control and adjust the percentage of how similar your Lookalike audience is to your original audience, allowing you to base the audience size from narrow to broad depending on the product/service you are marketing within the campaign, maximising your opportunities and ROI.
Growing your database is not something that can be done overnight. Making sure that you are making a good first impression and utilising the right relevant platforms is one of the most important first steps as well as making sure that the data you are gathering is relevant to what you want to utilize it for.
Once you have a database it is important that you come up with a plan that enables you to utilise your database with a variety of platforms and strategies to ensure you are maximising your ROI. With thousands of advertisements and potential competitors fighting for customers’ attention every day, a database marketing strategy is essential as if you are using more targeted and personalised campaigns your customers will prioritize you over your competitors who may not be putting their customer’s needs and experiences first.
If you are reading this and are now unsure of where to start, get in touch with us today and we will be happy to take you through how you can utilise your database in a variety of ways to help you get one step ahead…
By Ben Spowart
By Ben Spowart