Key Instagram Marketing tips and tricks for realtors provided by Digital Marketing experts.
Table Of Contents
- Why should we focus on creating a strong Instagram bio?
- How to create a strong Instagram bio?
- How to showcase your personality on Instagram?
- Why is location feature important for businesses on Instagram?
- How to utilize IGTV and Instagram Live properly?
- How to properly move leads through your marketing funnel?
- Why are Instagram reals important?
- How important is a keyword search for Instagram?
- How to properly make use of Instagram ads?
Instagram has become so popular in such a short time that I fear in the coming years, it will replace every other social media platform out there. Owing to its handiness and wieldiness, it has been ranked one of the top social media platforms in terms of user engagement after Facebook.
This photo- and video-based platform with its unique features like short stories, Instagram reels, and IG TV satiates the needs and demands of almost every age group.
Real estate and Instagram
In my opinion, real estate and Instagram are a match made in marketing heaven. Wonder why? The answer is simple. Real estate requires exposure and showcasing of properties if you want clients and customers and what better medium than a visual-based social media platform with millions of users and thousands of potential buyers for your property and that too, with convenience and efficiency.
As a real estate agent, you are aware of all the challenges in this field. The competition is steep with more and more pressure building with every passing day. If you plan to survive this real estate marketing world, you will have to start exploring options to broaden your reach.
Instagram with its one billion active users every month provides you with the golden opportunity of expanding your reach. The platform has just started exploring its potential in the business world and the response has been very promising. Stats show that around 200 million Instagram users visit at least one business profile daily.
As a realtor, you will find it interesting that almost 83% of home buyers demand pictures and information of properties online and what is more interesting is that only 72% of the realtors have an online presence on different social media platforms. So, if you are confused about whether you should proceed with this idea or not, this is the right time to start exploring opportunities for your business online!
Instagram marketing ideas for your real estate business
Having an online presence for your business is not enough. You need to make sure your platform is updated according to the recent trends and interests of the users. This will not only help you increase customer engagement but also is important when it comes to gaining the trust and confidence of your potential clients.
The more time and energy you invest in your business presence online, the more trusting and solid image it portrays of your business.
Here is a guide on different ideas and trends along with different features on Instagram that you can use to make your real estate account more attractive and engaging:
1. Creating a strong Bio
In the marketing world, a book is judged by its cover. So, it is really important to have an impressive first impression as it is going to decide the fate of your future dealing with your client. It helps you portray a strong front for your business. For an Instagram account, your bio and your profile picture make up your first impression. You must invest your time and skills in making it as impressive as possible.
A bio for any business account mainly consists of your business essential data and information, location, and any relevant material that might add to the introduction of your business.
Essential data and information
Make sure your bio contains all the essentials including the name, owner information and contact information, etc. of your business. Not only does it portray a good first impression but is also convenient for the user as all the information is available at the same place.
Location
Location is very important when you are making a business account for your real estate agency. It informs people of the area where you operate and if you are suited for their needs or not.
Links
As an Instagram account is only a marketing strategy to get more reach and prospects for your business and actual sales and dealings take place on the official website, you need to provide the link to your business's official website so that the interested people can contact you there.
Call-to-action
In this last section of your bio, you give a message or direct the viewer to act in a certain way. It does not necessarily have to be a direction. It can be anything that you want to convey to your viewers as a part of your introduction. An example of directional call-to-action is “DM for queries” etc.
2. Showcase your personality
The real estate business is time-taking. It requires a lot of patience, negotiations, and interaction before a final deal is made. That is why people prefer agents best suited to their nature and dealing style, whom they can deliver their concerns to easily. Therefore, people need to know what kind of agent they're going to be dealing with.
Your Instagram account is a good place to showcase your nature, interests, and dealing style but to a very limited extent so much so it portrays your personality without giving it a personal profile touch. It should be informative enough for the clients to get an idea of your personality and decide whether they will be comfortable dealing with you or not.
There are many ways and content formats for you to showcase your personality.
Instagram highlights
Typically, Instagram stories disappear after 24 hours but with this feature, your viewers will have access to your highlighted stories even after 24 hours. This way, the new viewers can also access your past stories. You can showcase your personality through visuals or written content by putting it up on your story and highlighting it for later.
Short videos
You can also achieve your goal by making a creative, short video for your Instagram account. In this short video, you can give a brief introduction of who you are, your journey up till now, your way of dealings, and any other thing that you think will help your client in understanding your ways of dealing.
This way, you will be able to make a connection with your client and help gain his trust and confidence in your dealings.
3. Use location feature
For an ordinary user, it might be any other Instagram feature but for realtors like you, it is the golden feature that helps in increasing your discoverability. When you post something, Instagram gives you the option of tagging your location.
Now, when someone is looking for a realtor and properties nearby, your tagged properties will be shown to them. This all is possible because Instagram has enabled its users to search products, businesses, and services through the location. Indeed one of the most useful updates till today.
You need to be careful while tagging the location. It needs to be as precise as it can be otherwise will harm your business as it will lead to misinformation causing inconvenience to the user.
Another way through which you can mark your location on Instagram is through hashtags. When you search the hashtag for a specific area, it shows every possible result for the search, including your property listings. Keeping your hashtags pinpoint and directed helps to get a more useful lead.
4. IGTV and Instagram Live
Some Instagram marketing services are better than others. IGTV and Instagram LIVE are one of them. They help provide visual aids to your property listings. IGTV has its app but can also be accessed through the Instagram app. These IGTV videos let you upload videos of up to 1-hour duration and also are optimized for vertical videos.
You can access IGTV videos on Instagram by going to the explore section. There, you will find a button right beneath the search bar that says “IGTV”. By clicking on it, you will have access to the top IGTV and recommendation for you according to your searches.
Then we have Instagram live. It works the same as any other social media live. It lets you broadcast videos of your properties in real-time.
This IGTV and Instagram live feature lets you give a detailed virtual tour of the property and its neighborhood. Especially in these times, when your movement is restricted due to the pandemic, these virtual tours are the best way to get an idea about the property and its surroundings.
You should always start the tour from the entrance of the house. During the video, try explaining as much about the property and its neighborhood as possible. During live, answer any query the viewer might have.
Refrain from getting into an irrelevant topic like details about your business. The viewers are there to know about the property, not your business. Try to stay on topic as much as possible. This is among the most successful digital marketing services provided by Instagram.
5. Move leads through your marketing funnel
The four ways that we have discussed up till now were to increase the exposure of your business, increase customer engagement and get prospective clients to your account. Any step up till now does not directly convert your lead to your client. Honestly, you cannot do so while staying on Instagram.
To convert leads to clients, you will have to move them away from this platform. How are you going to do this? It is simple. When someone asks you about any property through a direct message, show interest and make them feel prioritized. Engage them in conversation and ask them for an appointment. This way you will be filtering your leads from the rest of the follower community. It is one of the top lead generation services provided by any expert digital marketing company for Instagram marketing.
6. Use Instagram Reels
Instagram reels are short 30-second videos with audio and AR effects. This is one of the newly launched features of Instagram and is available in most of the regions of the world. These 30 seconders are also known as Instagram's TikTok.
Now you might be wondering how are these reels any better than IGTV and Instagram stories? The answer to it is very simple. As these are newer features, Instagram is more likely to promote them in the explore section.
In real estate, you can use it to highlight the outstanding features of the property you are selling. For example, if the property that you are selling has a rooftop garden, you show that on reels, if it has a basketball court, you show that on the reels, etc.
This feature can also be used to make behind-the-scenes clips of open houses or a sneak peek into the life of a realtor.
7. Keyword search
It is one of the upcoming Instagram updates for businesses. Up till now, you had to include hashtags in your posts to make them reachable to the target audience. Now Instagram is testing a feature when you can use a keyword to approach specific content. It works similar to the hashtag search. You search the keyword in explore section and it will show you all the posts which include that specific keyword.
Although this feature has not been applied on a worldwide basis, it is always better to stay ahead. Start optimizing your content keeping this upcoming update in mind. This will help you a lot in the coming future.
8. Instagram ads
Although requires investment, but this is one of the guaranteed ways of expanding your reach to the right audience. To enable targeted Instagram ads, you need to make sure that your Instagram account is a business account.
Advertising on Instagram is not difficult. It is similar to Facebook advertising and can be done within the Instagram app but it is recommended to use Facebook Ads Manager to run ads on Instagram.
How to create a relevant target audience?
There are many ways to create a relevant target audience. The most suitable one for the real estate business is a geographic location basis. To use this tactic, you need to make sure that all the posted properties on your account are geotagged.
Another way of targeting the audience with Instagram ads is through the factor of lookalike audience. It targets the users having similar Instagram activity and interests to your current clients.
Yet another way to that is through retargeting ads. It helps to convert leads into new clients. It targets ads to viewers that have already visited your account as a reminder so that if they need similar services in the future, they will contact you.
Audience size
Audience size is the primal factor for the success of your Instagram ad tactic. You need to make sure that your audience is of optimum ratio, neither too specific nor too broad that it consumes all of the budgets.
Investing money is a critical step and should be monitored carefully. That is why it is recommended to take marketing and SEO services from the experts to make sure that your investment is bringing in maximum ROI.
Instagram is a very versatile platform with a lot to offer. You need to explore and experiment with all the available options to come up with a plan that best suits the needs of your business. Hopefully, the above information is helpful to you and helps you get your goal through Instagram.
This is I for today’s blog. I hope you enjoyed reading it. Do share your valuable feedback with me and if you have any questions about Instagram Marketing, write to me and I will get back to you soon. Thank you and Goodbye.
About The Author: Lovetto Nazareth
Lovetto Nazareth is a digital marketing consultant and agency owner of Prism Digital. He has been in the advertising and digital marketing business for the last 2 decades and has managed thousands of campaigns and generated millions of dollars of new leads. He is an avid adventure sports enthusiast and a singer-songwriter. Follow him on social media on @Lovetto Nazareth
