In this age of visuals and social media, it is harder and harder to get real estate marketing messages across to potential clients simply with words. The old saying of a “picture is worth a thousand words” is even truer. With the correct ideas and plans, creating graphics for marketing is a great way for realtors to reach new clients and establish themselves as the real estate expert in their market.
Below are three ways of using graphics to generate more leads:
Show Local Data
Even for long time residents, the first thing everyone asks when buying a home will always consist of, how is the neighborhood? Is it safe? How are the schools? Do kids live there that are the same age as my kids?
First of all, realtors simply cannot answer some of those questions due to the Fair Housing Act. But since those questions get asked so often, you can make a guide that simply answer these questions so you can show them to your clients over and over again. Not only would graphics make the information much more clear and interesting, you can also also attract new clients by sharing the graphics on social media, or even print them and use them on your marketing materials or mailings.
Here are some examples of great uses of graphics of local data:
- Instead of listing the home sales prices, see this example of a map of the median sales price of homes, and here is a map of the median rent. Everyone, both buyers and sellers and even people who are not ready to buy or sell, would love to know the latest home prices of their neighborhood.
- Here is a map that shows the local crime rate of New York City. You can certainly look up the crime data of your neighborhood and make a similar map.
- Many homebuyers purchase their homes based on the quality of school districts. However, it is often hard to find a map of where the school boundaries are. This is an example of a map of Dutchess County school districts that would be useful for those home buyers.
- You can actually get very creative and make a map of all the popular places in your area. Are you at a vacation town? Maybe a map of all the ski slopes, or golf courses? You can also make a map of all the different places of worship, parks and playgrounds, or 55+ active adult communities.
Showcase the Homes and Neighborhood
As a realtor, you are the local expert and visit many places within the neighborhood everyday. Everywhere you go, it is your way to shine and introduce your town to all the perspective buyers. Nowadays, you do not need a fancy camera to take attractive photos.
Now this strategy works perfect for instagram. Be sure not to only post photos of your listings, because that is very boring and too promotional. Take a photo of the lovely meal you had at the local eatery, a sunset at the park while you are taking a walk, and sprinkle in the beautiful kitchen of your listing – or even a home that you visited that is not your listing! Make sure you follow some local accounts and when you run out of photos, you can always also ask for permission to repost their photos.
Everybody loves a pretty hometown picture. Although photos are great on instagram, they also always generate lots of likes and shares facebook and twitter, which will bring more awareness to your accounts.
Infographics
While buying and selling a home is often exciting, there are lots of information that are very technical and not as fun, but are certainly important. For example, getting a mortgage is definitely not an exciting part of buying a home – the preapproval, the loan process, what the buyer needs to maintain their credit, what information do they need especially if they are self employed, etc. The same goes with the negotiation process, the home inspection, or the decluttering and staging part for the home sellers.
A great way to make your clients aware of what to do is to create infographics that introduce your clients to these concepts. You can post these infographics on your blog and share them on social media. Infographics are especially popular on Pinterest, where they are often widely shared and can bring many visits to your website.
If you employ the above three strategies for your marketing and post all of the graphics on your website and social media accounts, your clients will no doubt see that you are very involved with the community, and very knowledgeable about how to best help them buy and sell a home.
