In the latest Google Partner event held at Agency Entourage, our friends in Mountain View, CA focused on Real Estate – and rightfully so. Real Estate in the digital space has been growing rapidly for several years now! The live event covered a number of things happening in the real estate customer journey. Some were obvious while others really surprised our attendees.
Here are the highlights of what we learned but before we get into that, make sure to request an RSVP for our next Google Partner Event on Wednesday, April 19, 2017 – focus is Automotive. Space is limited so act fast – seats fill up quickly.
Leveraging Real Estate Customer Online Behaviors
When Reluca Monet, Real Estate Partner Manager with Google started her presentation she explored two things about the digital real estate customer journey. We presuppose two things when thinking of the digital real estate customer today:
- The internet is used in the same ways as it was in the past.
- The way people buy today is fundamentally different. The path to purchase is no longer the same.
Reluca turned this around into a question that we should be asking ourselves when marketing digitally in real estate, “how do I leverage people’s online behavior to my business?”
More importantly, what’s driving results? And that is, “your customer is more loyal to their need in the moment than they are to the brand that serves them.”
Understanding this is the most critical component to the “mobile first” world we live in for not just real estate, but all industries. One of the most staggering statistics Google had for us was, “a real estate customer will look at 19.2 sources of information before reaching out to a contact or service.”
This is a lot of information the customer is doing research on before getting further down the funnel. Not to mention that mobile now accounts for over 50% of all real estate searches. This is where several recommendations were made to get in front of digital real estate customers.
5 Opportunities to Inject Your Brand in the Real Estate Customer Journey
Opportunity #1 – Win the Mid and Upper Funnel Moments
- Create Snackable, Educational Content
- Provide value early one without forcing a hard sell
- Use context to reaching potential customers at the right place and time
Opportunity #2 – Do fewer things but do them well
- Build a smarter, more defined channel strategy
- Target people who signal intent and avoid those who don’t for higher ROI
- Measure (cross device, across channels)
- Understand ROI, not just cost
Opportunity #3 – Think beyond Search
- Home shopping is such a visual experience. Leverage video content, like house tours, to tell a better story about yourself and your properties
- Distribute your content on YouTube to reach Millennials, who make up 68% of first-time home buyers and are big renters
Opportunity #4 – Build Amazing Mobile Experiences
- Mobile-optimize your website for a better user experience
- Optimize your load-time to get better conversion
- Eliminate unnecessary steps and implement one-click functionality
- Provide alternatives to finish the transaction
- Design efficient forms
Opportunity #5 – Get help from Google Partners
- Agency Entourage (Google Partner) has Real Estate market knowledge and has served people like you.
- Agency Entourage (Google Partner) follow’s Google’s advertising best practices and are AdWords certified.
- Agency Entourage (Google Partner) has proven ability to help businesses succeed online.
In closing, Agency Entourage is your Google Partner to help you manage all your digital Real Estate needs. We hope that you, and your colleagues, can join us the rest of the year for many more Google Partner events. Here’s a list of what’s to come:
| Month: | Focus: |
| April 19th | Automotive |
| May | Home Services |
| June | Classifieds & Local |
| July | Video |
| August | Retail |
| September | B2B |
| October | Healthcare & Insurance |
| November | Mobile |
Agency Entourage’s Google Partners Events are by RSVP only so if you want to make sure and get the emails to RSVP please sign up to be on our email list. We’ll see you next time!
