The world is always changing. While alone, we can’t choose the direction of the change, we can choose whether to go along with it, or not. The digital direction of which our world is moving towards makes some professions fall into uncertainty and excitement while others are being threatened to cease existing.
Luckily, real estate agents can benefit highly from the digitalization. For those who see the half-full cup, this change brings only opportunities that need to be tested. On the other hand, for those who see the half-empty cup, the change might bring some ideas, but in the end, it won’t be anything ground-shaking.
1. Using Google Ads
Google is the biggest search engine in the world, where 63,000 searches per second are made any given day. That’s 5,6 billion per day. What are the chances that someone is looking for real estate? As of the date of writing, the term “real estate agents near me” gets 8,700 searches each month in the United States. That’s just one of the term; there can be many. Using Google Ads, you can show ads to people who are already looking for you.
2. Using Social Media
Some great practices are launching your own Facebook page or even a group, where you can give tips and ideas to your existing and future clients. Also, there are many tools within Facebook that not everyone is already using. These tools include Facebook Ads, the marketplace, offers, events, videos, surveying, live-videos, stories, buy and sell groups, jobs, and even fundraisers. Moreover, there’s even more potential for the younger generation on Instagram. On the other hand, Social media for real estate might seem like an overwhelming task to do everything at once, but learning digital marketing skills will help you out drastically. Also, you can always hire an agency.
3. YouTube
You must have seen popular real estate YouTube channels like Erik Conover or Ryan Serhant. Creating a successful YouTube channel helps to build authority, not only for yourself but for your team as well. You can also create videos to sell apartments faster, educate people, share your opinion, or just create overall useful and entertaining content. On the other hand, this needs a lot of creativeness, storytelling, and most importantly, good filming and editing skills.
4. Blogging
This could also be a handy tool in your arsenal. The problem with blogging is that it usually takes quite some time to build up your audience and needs a lot of time upfront. The advantage, on the other hand, is that you could also earn some passive income from sponsored posts, Adsense, affiliate links, etc.
Digital Opportunities Require Digital Skills
As the title says, you need digital skills to grasp the success that rises from all those digital opportunities. While the list is not that big, it can show perfectly that there’s a lot of things to do out there. However, it also shows how much knowledge it’s needed to succeed. You would need an understanding of digital marketing, PPC, storytelling, video, and photo editing, maybe a bit of HTML and CSS programming, writing and many other different skills.
The problem is that knowledge doesn’t come so quickly. Like any other important thing that you need to nurture and take care of, learning is no different. Luckily, there are many local classes, online courses, even online courses with free certifications, that can help you learn enough to make at least you have a basic understanding to get started. Of course, you can always hire someone to do the work for you, but knowing the basics will still make you understand things and make you come up with ideas of your own.
