Digital Marketing vs Traditional Marketing in Real Estate
Cynthia Saint-Paul, MBA,MSM, Realtor?
A Hunter, A Result Getter and Closer! Business Acumens: Sales, Simplify information, Relationship Building, Service & Product Knowledgeability, Negotiations, Digital Marketing Specialist, Who have Indulged in Reality TV!
Marketing is the building block for success in any business. In real estate, marketing communications differentiation can typically be overwhelming as there are many modes and even more platforms to choose from nowadays. Since the emerging of technology, digital marketing has become the ideal way of reaching a vast amount of people at one time causing traditional marketing to suffer in numbers. While incorporating both forms of marketing, will lead a business to its optimal success. The great thing about real estate among other businesses is the target market to choose from is broad. Narrowing your niche is a great way to decide which form of marketing communication works best when reaching your audiences.
Digital World
Digital has made a forceful appearance and change the typical way real estate agents market themselves to connect with their audience. Now, with social media being at the tip of the fingers, uploading content is being done in a strategic way as every social media platform navigates differently. For example, Instagram is phenomenal for storytelling and you are in control. The ideology behind a picture is worth a thousand words is now caption with mental directions and commands. Real estate agents can create the imagery and persona they want their audience to associate with them or their work ethics. Per the Pew Research Center, Facebook is linked and can be used interchangeably with all social media platforms, which makes it the second most-used platform globally, following youtube. ( 2019)
Youtube is the no.1 used social media. It allows for Realtors to capture their audience by subscriptions and provide information on a consistent basis with storage memory the builds capital every time its viewed. Let's not forget the click -per-impressions. Just to name a few digital marketing creating an impact with one click, that's fast and powerful.
Traditional World
Remember to cater to your market. If your audience is up an age, the best way to reach them is through traditional marketing. Newspaper ads, radio, newsletters, billboards door knocking are some of the traditions ways to reach your market. With all the amazing things that are happening in the world, some of us choose to remain humble. Now, would probably be a great time to dominant this form of marketing because most businesses are leaving the traditional way behind. In a recent article, Kris Lindahl mentioned, “Traditional marketing still works for real estate because it still reaches large numbers of people. Newspapers, while losing a significant portion of its audience in the digital era, still reach 69% of the population, with 81% of those reading a traditional print edition. Traditional radio remains a powerful force, reaching 93% of adults weekly. Television, despite the increasing presence of cord cutters, still has significant reach in the U.S. On top of all this, many real estate professionals find success with “low-tech” marketing options such as direct mail and billboards”. Where there is a demand, there is a need for supply. Great news, for real estate agents, do not give up, just yet on Traditional marketing; it is still an impactful way to market.
Ideal World
In an interview, Ann Handley mention, “a plan that does not start with the due date but starts with what the audience needs”. When it comes to which form of marketing works best in the real estate industry between digital marketing and traditional marketing, it depends. It depends on why are you creating the content? Who is your audience? What do you want to achieve? and How are you going to achieve it? The best answer is to choose the marketing communication that caters to your target audiences. Many times, these small important details are missed. When creating content always keep your target market in mind, after all, they are the prospects.
When I started my career in real estate, one of my toughest moments was figuring out how to impact my target market. Great! I got it. But wait, who is my targeted market?! What helped me figured this out was first establishing who would be my target market, what are their needs, how can I fulfill those needs, why would they choose me and then which platform would be the most effective way to reach them. At this point, there were many factors to consider. However, narrowing those factors into steps provided a clear direction that helped me analyze avail information and established interpretable market communication(Digital and Tradition marketing) that would help me reach my objective; in this case my target market.
In short, when it comes to marketing there are tons of marketing methods out there to choose from. Ideally, picking the one that best fits your objective is gold. In real estate, it is not all about keeping up with the “Jones”, but doing what will get you to your ultimate goal. The benefits of using both digital and traditional marketing are knowing how to reach your audiences. Be flexible and make decisions based on the information you have. One thing that helps me is putting myself in the prospect shoes. Realistically humanize my approach to efficiently cater to my market. Some markets may require more than the other, either way, be present and supportive. In a world full of choices pick the ones that match your objectives.
I challenge you guys to try my approach, provide me feedback and share this article. Check out the links I provided below with more information, tips and a bonus video on how to approach content.
Until next time….. Target your market using Market communication that reaches!
Links of Videos and Articles to read:
Gary Vee https://youtu.be/G9FGwnr4-lQ
Hubspot
https://www.hubspot.com/marketing-statistics
Ann Handley
Attorney at Pierre Legal, PA; Executive Director of HLA Foundation Pro Bono Program
4 年Great read! As the world around us changes & technology advances, it becomes more & more vital to find new & innovative ways to reach prospective clients or maintain a connection with existing ones. Both of the approaches you mentioned have their merits, but it appears from what you wrote that being fluid & adaptable is key when determining how best to reach the audience you intend to make your target market. Thanks for sharing!
VP & CMO at Parfumaire
4 年Cynthia your article was insanely cool, I find it really interesting how you discuss the various ways (traditional and digital) that marketing techniques can be used in your industry. Our generation has really birthed some effective and innovative ways of marketing that I guess work in almost every industry. I had no idea you were a real estate agent and I had no idea that the radio was still so powerful. Personally I am also in the real estate industry but from the development and architecture side. I am now thinking of putting out a radio add just to see the type of response we would get to one of our open houses possibly.? I will definitely turn the radio on more often to hear what I have been missing out on.
Cynthia, Your article was very insightful! I have never seen someone focus on real estate and marketing. Tailoring different types of marketing tactics for different age groups, platforms and demographics wasn't something I thought applied to real estate. It's great to see that real estate agents have changed the way they market by posting pictures, videos and other informative posts that can reach potential leads. This behavior allows for greater communication between buyer and seller.
Digital Media | E-commerce | M.S in Marketing
4 年Hi Cynthia, Since real estate is not my field, your article makes me open my mind on how marketing can work in real estate. I’m impressed with how you utilized data to support your points. As a digital person, I’ve seen the huge change in media: moving from traditional to non-traditional. Thus, your data surprises me about how big proportion of audience still engages in traditional advertisements. “Traditional radio remains a powerful force, reaching 93% of adults weekly.” This fact is the most interesting for me. It makes me think of allocating a marketing budget to radio to target Millennials as well as gen X in the real estate industry. Thank you Cynthia for this interesting article!
Copyeditor
4 年Cynthia, I think your article does a really good job of highlighting the differences between digital marketing and traditional marketing. Beyond highlighting the differences, you did a really good job of conveying which platforms are strongest amongst digital marketing outlets. While this may seem minor, with so many digital platforms it can be hard for a marketer, new and experienced, to decide where to put their efforts.??