🏡 The Real Estate Marketing Update - Edition 16

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Welcome back.

This edition covers everything from psychology to AI to social media, with each offering valuable and effective elements that can generate more leads for your real estate business.

If you missed our previous editions, you can check them out here.

Or, if you’re caught up, let’s jump right in.

Scroll down to get…

• One actionable tip that can immediately boost your lead generation

• One handy tool that can simplify your tech stack management

• One essential news story

…and become at least 1% better at generating the right type of leads.

Sell an Experience, Not a Service, to Ignite Desire and Boost Your Conversion Rates

In today’s competitive real estate market, you must go beyond traditional selling tactics. You need to create a lifestyle that buyers and sellers not only desire but see as aspirational.

This is where the concept of memetic desire comes into play, a powerful psychological phenomenon where individuals are influenced not just by their personal preferences, but by the desires of others.

For Realtors, leveraging memetic desire means selling an experience, not just a property.

Here’s how you can use memetic desire to generate more and better buyer and seller leads.

1. Craft and Share Compelling Narratives

The Power of Storytelling:

Storytelling is not just an art; it's a strategic tool in real estate marketing that can set you apart. Every property has a story, but the key is to tell it in a way that resonates with the aspirations of your potential clients. Whether it’s the history of a home, the lifestyle of a neighborhood, or the journey of previous homeowners, these stories can create a powerful emotional connection.

Actionable Tips:

Develop Property Narratives: Create a compelling narrative for each listing. Was the home designed by a notable architect? Is it located in a historically significant neighborhood? Such details can transform a simple property listing into a piece of a larger, desirable lifestyle.

Utilize Multimedia: Enhance your stories with high-quality photos, videos, and virtual tours that allow potential buyers to visualize themselves in the home. This visual storytelling can be particularly effective on platforms like Instagram and Pinterest.

Share Client Testimonials and Stories: Use your blog or social media to share stories of happy clients. When potential clients see others achieving their dream lifestyle through your services, it reinforces their desire to attain the same.

2. Showcase User-Generated Content and Testimonials

Building Aspirational Communities:

In the context of memetic desire, seeing others express satisfaction or happiness with a product or service can be incredibly persuasive. For a Realtor, leveraging user-generated content (UGC), such as photos, videos, or testimonials from clients, can demonstrate the aspirational aspects of working with you.

Actionable Tips:

Encourage Sharing on Social Media: Create a hashtag for clients to use when they post about their new homes. This not only provides you with additional content to share but also shows potential clients the real-time satisfaction of current ones.

Feature Client Stories on Your Website: Dedicate a section of your website to client stories and updates. Regularly update this content to keep it fresh and engaging.

Host Virtual Q&A Sessions: Invite past clients to share their buying or selling experiences in live sessions. This real-time interaction adds authenticity and can drive engagement.

3. Create and Promote Experiential Events

Beyond the Open House:

Traditional open houses are about showing a property, but an experiential event turns a showing into a memorable experience. Think about hosting themed events, community days, or lifestyle-focused tours that not only highlight the property but also the kind of life one could lead by purchasing it.

Actionable Tips:

Themed Open Houses: Instead of a standard open house, host a themed event that matches the lifestyle the home promotes. For example, an elegant evening showing with a local jazz band for a luxury listing, or a family fun day for a property in a family-friendly community.

Partner with Local Businesses: Collaborate with local businesses to provide catering, entertainment, or decor. This not only enhances the event but helps you build relationships within the community.

Utilize Virtual Reality: For high-end or unique properties, incorporate virtual reality to allow potential buyers to visualize customizations within the home. This tech-driven approach can create a futuristic buying experience that’s likely to be shared.

Remember, you’re not just selling properties; you’re selling a lifestyle, a community, and a dream.

Use these strategies to showcase not just the value of the homes you're selling but the desirable lifestyle they represent. This approach can transform casual viewers into motivated leads, ready to live the lifestyle you’ve showcased.

How are you communicating the inherent value you offer and the true benefits that your clients get when working with you?

Let us know! We’d love to see how you’re separating yourself from your competition and setting the bar even higher in your area.

AI-powered search experiences are not, currently, setup to send traffic to other websites. Even the ones that do display source links (Perplexity and ChatGPT) make those links so inconspicuous that the click-throughs on those have to be very low.

We think this will change.

And when it does it will become increasingly more important that your content and brand have visibility in AI-generated results.

Even if these tools decide never to include source links, preventing referral traffic, brand visibility will still provide a lot of value in the form of authority.

So, start using a tool like Otterly to monitor how your content and brand are performing in these popular AI tools, which will only continue to grow in popularity and usage.

Have you noticed any of your content, or your competitor's content, being used in AI-generated answers?

We’ve been collecting examples of these instances in an effort to pin down some concrete strategies to help content perform better in these AI tools. Thanks in advance for sharing any examples.

Meta Wants to ‘Correct’ Its Ranking System to Help Smaller Accounts

Instagram has updated its content guidelines emphasizing the importance of originality in user-generated content. The platform encourages creators to post authentic, original content for better visibility and engagement, rather than reposting content from other sources.

Here are a couple of things we have taken away from this update…

1. Original Content is Key: Instagram's algorithms now prioritize original content over reposts. Content that is unique and created by users will receive more exposure compared to content that is seen as duplicated or unoriginal.

2. Engagement and Recommendations: Authentic content tends to engage viewers more meaningfully, which increases the likelihood of it being recommended further by Instagram's algorithms. This includes appearing on Explore pages and recommendation sections.

What does this mean for you and your real estate marketing?

Leverage Instagram Stories and Reels: You should focus on creating and sharing original Stories and Reels that showcase your unique insights into the real estate market, exclusive tours of new listings, and personalized homeowner tips. This approach not only aligns with Instagram’s preference for originality but also enhances engagement with your target audience.

Has Instagram been important/valuable to your business?

We’re curious as to whether or not this news is even that compelling to you. If Instagram has been a good source of leads or even just branding, then we’d love to follow you and see what you’re doing right.

Thanks for reading.

See you next week.

The Real Estate Marketing Update Team @ imFORZA