Staying in touch with previous clients relates directly to the business goal of increasing referrals in 2023.
If you continue to nurture previous clients and leads, you'll increase referrals and position yourself as a market expert.
To continue to stay top of mind in 2023, you'll need to build a presence on social media.
By building a social media presence, you have direct access to your target audience—and a wider reach!
Professional listing content includes real estate photography, 3D tours, and floor plans.
These tools are incredibly popular with the overall home buying population, meaning you need to adopt them to stay ahead.
Video marketing is a great way to show your personality, engage, and connect with your customer base.
Utilizing listing marketing tools that leverage video, such as virtual tours and showings, are also a great way to connect with your target audience in a format they're comfortable with.
Professionals want to be an expert in educating consumers on market trends, interest rates, etc.
Market changes can be shocking to consumers, so knowing the best way to educate clients can help you retain business.
Key Themes: Standing Out in 2023
Feedback from agents about where they see themselves in 2023 and what efforts they believe are most critical to get there revealed three key themes for agents to focus on in 2023:
Client Experience
The majority of home buyers are millennials, so professionals are looking for marketing efforts that provide a more online and interactive experience for clients.
Additionally, this highlights the fact that millennials and the upcoming Gen Z generation see home buying as a "not to bother" experience. Before committing to an in-person visit, they want to view the homes online.
While a vast majority of agents—95% of our survey respondents!—are already using professional photography to market their listings, they plan on using more:
As reported by NAR, 84% of all buyers in 2022 consider listing photos on websites to be very useful, with floor plans and virtual tours being considered very useful by 55% and 43% of all buyers.
If you want to stay ahead of the competition and close deals, you can't be the 5% that's not utilizing professional photography or enhancing your clients' experience with professional listing marketing.
Building an Online Presence
As building an online presence becomes key in 2023, resist the urge to try everything.
As Anna Furmanov noted when detailing how to successfully create content as a real estate agent, “..for real estate agents that are just starting out, I would start with one idea: you have to go simple. Think about your point of view. How is it different? Just try to simplify because I think a lot of people overcomplicate marketing too soon.”
Blogging and paid social ads are two marketing strategies agents want to focus on to build an online presence, with over 20% of agents looking to begin these marketing strategies in 2023.
However, along with a 20% drop in social media and email marketing compared to previous surveys, we found these numbers surprisingly low!
Social media, blogging, and email marketing are some of the easiest ways to connect with a real estate professional’s target audience with minimal effort and relatively low cost.
According to a survey conducted by Adobe in 2019, 31% of Millennials and 26% of Gen Zers check their email multiple times an hour.
If you aren’t staying in front of your target audience with a medium they use every hour of every day, you’re missing opportunities to generate leads and close more deals!
And with a lower number of agents looking to utilize these marketing tactics, you have a chance to lead the pack in 2023.
Investment in Marketing Education
Agents have a wide variety of marketing interests they'd like to explore in 2023.
These real estate marketing topics include:
As previously mentioned, our survey showed a decline in social media and email marketing, but we found agents would like to learn more about them in 2023.
The drop in usage further implied that some agents are hesitant to participate in digital marketing—even if it is less time-consuming and easier to engage with a wider audience.
We can also gather that the constant changes in social media can be daunting, causing usage to drop among professionals.
Social media marketing, SEO, and paid social ads are all great efforts for improving the effectiveness of your marketing.
Taking a little extra time to learn and fully comprehend how they can benefit you and your business is all it takes to set you apart from others in the industry!
Investing in education for you and your team will be vital in 2023.
Learning new strategies, such as SEO, can help you and your team adapt to a slower, changing market.
While SEO can be complex to navigate at first, it's an essential part of building a strong online presence.
Once you understand the basics of SEO, you can utilize it to target your ideal audience, ensuring you rank higher and are seen more frequently on search engines.
Market fluctuations and changes within social media platforms, coupled with a lack of education, has likely contributed to the decline in social media marketing.
As we move into 2023, focus on finding educational resources to help you understand the ever-changing social media landscape, like our Dominate Instagram Webinar.
Understanding social media and how to use it effectively can also help build a community with your customer base, ensuring you continue to connect with them, prompting new leads and referrals.
Apart from learning more about social media marketing, updating your marketing methods to include more digital ads—such as paid search ads—can help you get ahead of the competition.
As 95% of home buyers begin their search online, continuing to find ways to market to them will be crucial to maintaining a competitive edge.
Looking Forward: Crush Your 2023 Goals
As we reflect on marketing trends from the past year, business challenges and goals real estate professionals had were interlinked.
Lead generation, improving marketing, home buyer education, and identifying the best marketing tactics related to the efforts our respondents implemented—such as hybrid marketing and professional photography.
In 2023, real estate professionals should focus on digital marketing, such as email, video, and social media marketing, along with taking the steps to build a community with their customer base. Doing so will ensure you continue to connect, prompting new leads and referrals.
Also, if you haven’t adopted listing marketing tools, such as professional photography, 3D tours, and virtual staging, doing so will help increase lead generation as the majority of first-time home buyers begin their home buying journey online. Finally, investment in education for you and your team in 2023 will be vital. Learning new strategies, such as SEO, paid social ads, and social media marketing can help agents adapt to a slower, changing market.
Download the Report!
If you're looking to start 2023 off right, download the full PDF version of our 2023 Marketing Trends Report.
The PDF of our 2023 Real Estate Marketing Trends Report details the existing marketing strategies and business challenges for over 400 real estate professionals. It also provides insight into their marketing strategies and goals for 2023, which can help you stay ahead of the competition and focus your marketing efforts for 2023.
