Twenty years ago, an agent would print out flyers, organise a mail drop and base their cold calls off surnames listed in the White Pages. The entire process relied on mass distribution and a little bit of luck meaning inbound leads were rarely qualified.
These days much of the guesswork has been eliminated from prospecting and every piece of advertising implemented can now be traced right down to a single ‘click’. This visibility is one of the great advantages of real estate’s digital revolution.
What hasn’t changed since the early days is the importance of understanding a customer’s journey down the path to purchase. What we see now is a growing trend for lead generation through digital channels and social media platforms such as Facebook and LinkedIn. These allow agents to get in front of contacts with targeted advertising. Once you’ve captured the attention of potential clients and these leads find their way into your database, ActivePipe kicks in.
As our platform is specifically designed for real estate, ActivePipe profiles new contacts and nurtures them with ongoing automated email communications relevant to their property intentions. This makes the platform just as important to an agent’s marketing mix as a ‘For Sale’ sign with their smiling face on it.
The listings in these email communications drive customers to click through to the agent’s website which can be tracked via a cookie, web hook or Facebook pixel.
So you’re probably wondering what a choc-chip cookie has to do with your marketing efforts?
I’m not saying you need to spend your Saturday mornings whipping up a batch of the sweet stuff to hand out at your open homes (although it probably wouldn’t hurt). What you need to do is get your office’s resident tech-head to install a digital cookie or pixel. This is a small file with an ID tag that tracks visitor movements on your website so you can serve them Facebook ads and Google adwords.
If this sounds too complicated it’s best to get a digital agency such as our friends at StewArt Media onboard who can take care of the technical stuff for you. It’s a worthwhile investment that I encourage you to make.
So, let’s talk about ActivePipe’s role in digital marketing mix
As I said earlier, the platform is designed to nurture your contacts. The detailed reporting of their interactions will give you a bigger picture of what your most popular properties are and who they interest. You can use this data to select the listings you should prioritise in your sales efforts.
Let’s say that 123 Smith St is barely getting any engagement. You look at the reporting and see that it’s quite run down and in an up-and-coming suburb that is about to take off. You instantly know that this is the ideal property for an investor.
It’s time to jump onto your ActivePipe account and look at the list of people who thanks to our behavioural driven algorithms are classified as ‘investors’. You can extract this list and upload it into Facebook Ads Manager and it will automatically create a Facebook audience based on the data you’ve input. You can also set targeting parameters such as age, distance and interests. Once you’ve done all this, activate the campaign with a simple click and your ad will go straight onto the screens of your intended audience.
You may have noticed this working on your own newsfeed. Remember that time you were dreaming about a holiday in Thailand? After having a quick google for cheap flights, you spend the next three weeks inundated with Jetstar and luxury accommodation promotions. That’s targeted remarketing advertising at work.
So, what can you take away from this article?
With the ability to target potential leads in minute detail, digital technologies have revolutionised the prospecting process for agents. Everything online is trackable and marketing strategies can be enhanced by the data intelligent platforms such as ours provide.
So stop just thinking of ActivePipe as an email builder and distribution tool and start using it to its full potential. Really dive into the data and use those insights to direct and develop a true multi-channel marketing strategy. While it might sound complex, the reality is It couldn’t be easier. The best thing is everything you need is right there on your dashboard, it’s up to you to make the most of it.
