As in any sector, if you work in real estate, a strong marketing strategy is vital. It will help you to attract new clients to your brand as well as encouraging return custom and positioning you way above the competition in the search engine results. This is the importance of understanding real estate marketing trends for 2022!
Actively marketing your business via more traditional avenues can go a long way towards keeping your products and services in the public eye.
However, the application of new or up and coming techniques and advanced approaches will help you to tap into new audiences and give a fresh feel to your marketing that other firms may not yet have achieved.
In this article, we explore a few of the marketing trends that are likely to experience a boom in 2022, with a particular focus on the world of real estate.
VR Tours and Imaging
Virtual Reality (VR) technology has seen major advances throughout recent years, and the benefits it offers are clear when it comes to the field of real estate marketing.
Following the outbreak of COVID-19, remote resources have proven vital for the continued effective operation of property-focused business.
Many house hunters now prefer to only arrange in-person viewings when absolutely necessary due to concerns about social distancing.
For this reason, a VR tour – in which a “map” of a property is rendered in 3D to be explored room by room or examined at different angles by the user – can help potential buyers to narrow down their list of properties as far as possible before they decide to pay a visit to the top few.
Individual spaces can also be rendered in 3D VR to aid in the visualization of certain room layouts or the positioning of fittings.
In some cases, in-person viewings are entirely unnecessary, although the majority of potential buyers still prefer to take a physical look around their chosen property before signing on the dotted line.
Interactive VR resources are easy to share with others online, broadcasting the fact that the real estate specialists who create and display them are well-equipped and able to provide significant levels of detail – potentially drawing in much larger audiences as a result.
Automation
Another invaluable remote resource, automation not only makes home working much easier for real estate professionals, but it can also help to save time and money for agents and their clients.
Chatbots are a case in point. Using AI, these handy tools can be programmed to answer any basic question that is typed into an IM-style chat box by the user.
You can even set them up to direct potential clients to further information about suitable products and services offered by your company.
“This can serve to free up agents’ phones and inboxes, enabling them to tackle other work, while increasing conversions with minimal active effort,” comments James Durr of house sales / professional homebuyers Property Solvers.
Of course, many house hunters do prefer having a “real person” to speak to. The implementation of chatbots does not do away with this resource, but instead enables clients to do basic research in their own time – then contact an adviser when they feel the time is right.
Individual Property Websites
Instead of featuring basic property information on a single page or section linked to a central website, more and more real estate professionals are opting to create entire unique sites for each individual building or project.
This offers a greater number of SEO opportunities, as site designers are able to include whole galleries of photos, detailed floor plans, VR tours and a highly detailed, keyword-optimized write-up.
Every time a property is put up for sale, the act of creating an entirely new site will help to push the content further up the search engine results.
These individual pages are easy to share via social media thanks to their unique URLs, and often look far more elegant and exclusive than traditional ways of showcasing properties such as child pages or listing-style setups.
These sites can also serve as “backlinks” to your brand’s website and social media pages, drawing potential buyers in to learn about the other properties and services you have available.
Content Marketing
Everyone knows about content marketing. The keyword optimization of websites, pages and blog posts is a long-established technique employed by a large number of leading businesses with an online presence.
However, no matter how “passé” it may seem to mention content SEO in an article about upcoming marketing trends, it should still be a vital component of your digital arsenal.
What’s more, the practice is evolving all the time. Everything can be optimized, from image tags to meta titles and more besides.
And it isn’t just about the text and code on your site. The wider the variety of content types you employ, the more you’ll be able to attract custom from different platforms.
Consider making high quality YouTube tutorials or filmed lectures about current affairs within your field, or hire a designer to create a handy and attractive infographic; the more relevant materials of this kind you produce, the more likely they are to be shared around the web.
Interactive content like “quizzes” are particularly useful for this.
It’s also a very good idea to consider how you might build “backlinks” to your brand’s website, products or services.
Whether you decide to offer to create guest blog posts for the websites of other field leaders, or you find ways to notify relevant journalists that you are available for comments, quotes or full interviews, you’ll be able to spread links to your business far and wide.
Of course, the more shareable content you develop, the more links will be formed as they are passed around on social media.
Social Media
It’s impossible to predict the myriad new directions that social media will take throughout 2022. It’s an ever-changing, constantly evolving behemoth that provides no end of opportunities for organizations of almost any kind.
For this reason, it’s vitally important that your marketing team keeps a close eye on new trends and selects up and coming approaches that are suitable for your brand.
With more people than ever using social media throughout the day due to the rise in home working, there are plenty of opportunities to attract the right clients using clever marketing techniques.
Paid ads and banners always have their place, but it’s also a very good idea to post and respond actively on as many relevant platforms as possible.
Try to tailor your content to suit each tool; it’s well known that Twitter and Facebook are best for text and the promotion of events, while Instagram is ideal for high quality image posts and TikTok or YouTube are popular platforms for video.
Make use of the right handles and hashtags to ensure that each post reaches its target and achieves high levels of interaction. Don’t forget to respond, like or repost interesting updates from other key players in the industry and to answer any messages sent to you by followers.
This can help you to develop key connections that are likely to prove very handy when link building.
Community Engagement
The period between 2020 and 2022 has been very difficult for many, resulting in increased strains on certain sectors, demographics and communities. As a result, many charities, causes and services require more assistance than ever to keep going.
If your company has the capacity to undertake certain activities – from fundraising events to the provision of grants or anything else besides – you may make a significant difference to a particular community or group and become a key player in the promotion of a vital cause.
Most of us dream of making some kind of difference to the world, so this is a great opportunity to use your brand’s influence for something altruistic.
In addition, by sensitively publicizing what you do, you can position your organization as a public-spirited entity that will continue to do good throughout its lifetime. This will attract potential clients who prioritize good ethics, equality and sustainability.
If you’re planning to go down this route, it’s vital that you are willing and able to “put your money where your mouth is”. The general public are exceptionally savvy and sensitive to any marketing “stunts” that exploit particular movements or causes purely for marketing purposes.
Naturally, you can put your logo, website and contact information on any materials relating to your community-spirited endeavours, but your company must deliver what it promises in order for this to be an effective approach as opposed to a major faux-pas.
It is very likely that the above trends will continue to gain traction throughout 2022, with new developments coming to light all the time.
The best thing you can do when it comes to real estate marketing is to keep your eye on the approaches utilized by key players in your field – and see how you might be able to develop your own techniques based on these trends.
In this highly saturated market, it is more vital than ever to stay ahead of the curve wherever you can. 
Author of “Real Estate Marketing Trends for 2022” guest post
James Durr, has been a property buyer and developer for almost 2 decades. As one of the co-founders of leading UK homebuying firm, he has accumulated a vast amount of knowledge in speaking effectively and empathetically with property owners and business owners to find genuine win-win solutions.
