Real estate is a game of risks and rewards. It’s a strategic bet by each developer that each project will generate the tenants necessary to yield a return on their investment. In today’s crowded market, it’s never been more important to differentiate your property and generate leads.

Many people view real estate content marketing as a cost center rather than as a business builder. The perception is that marketing is necessary, but also expendable. It’s often diminished to a building logo or a flowery brochure. Therefore, when you need to tighten the belt… goodbye marketing!

The glaring oversight is that real estate content marketing rarely differentiates between its audiences. Further, real estate marketing is not leveraged as a tactic for achieving measurable business goals.

What Does Real Estate Content Marketing Currently Look Like?

• One size fits all. When was the last time you were excited about wearing a piece of clothing that says “one size fits all?” Historically, real estate has used a copy-paste strategy when marketing apartments. It recycles old messaging and doesn’t take into account the resident lifestyle.

• It seldom harnesses new technology. Direct mail? Brochures? The rise of technology and a new age of consumerism has made some of these traditional promotional techniques extinct.

• It lacks measurement. With new technology comes the ability to track, trace, and affect the bottom line. What kind of ROI is your marketing producing?

What is Content Marketing?

Traditional marketing focused on disruptive tactics. TV commercials and radio programs have become less effective with the invention of the DVR and internet radio. Not to mention, today’s consumers are averse to traditional sales speak. But inbound marketing takes a drastically different approach. Real estate content marketing meets prospective customers by providing information about the topics they’re searching for.  

Let’s take a baby boomer, for example. He’s nearing retirement and sits down at his computer to search for “best retirement cities with golf all year round.” If I’m a residential resort community that practices content marketing, I’ve already anticipated what my prospects will be searching.

Throughout the past few months, I’ve been blogging about relevant topics, including a recent blog post that highlights cities with the best golf courses. I’m not directly selling my property, but I’m educating on what’s out there. The idea is that through education, transparency, and thought leadership, I have an excellent platform through which to tell prospective customers about my business!

Let’s extend the same approach to millennials, except this time I’m also engaging them on social media. Perhaps they’re interested in “active and health-conscious cities with good job markets.” Through relevant blog topics, interactions, and well-targeted social media advertising, I can open their eyes to a new city and a new property.

Why Is Inbound Marketing a Good Fit for Real Estate?

• It’s targeted to specific personas. You’re not blanketing the market with collateral material that may land on the doorsteps of folks nowhere near the buying process. With inbound, you’re engaging in a dialogue with individuals specifically seeking solutions you provide. Thus, you’re targeting individual personas, identifying their pain points, and creating solutions.

• It delivers measurable results. Inbound is a strategic alignment of tactics that surround your business goals. Inbound technology allows you to see real-time data on valuable metrics. By monitoring increased traffic to your site, you can determine the number of visitors that have further engaged. How many qualified leads did we drive? Did any of those leads turn into tenants? From there, you can associate dollars spent for dollars earned — direct ROI.

• It meets your best prospects where they are. Increasingly, all generational cohorts are using the internet to research their buying decisions. Therefore, your prospective clients are expecting you to provide this information through this conduit.