Looking for a real estate marketing company to get your business more clients? Property Management SEO might be exactly what you are looking for. People have become more efficient at ignoring traditional marketing efforts and equally as efficient at using the internet to find the information they’re looking for. 92% of people now use the Internet in their home search (source). There’s no doubt that real estate customers have shifted towards preferring inbound marketing and because of this there’s an ever-growing importance of generating an online presence for your business.
But how do you find a reliable marketing agency to help your company achieve its online goals? When you meet with a marketing agency you generally meet a partner who’s a professional salesperson. They’ll get you excited with their perfected pitch and lead you down the path to making a decision. You need to make sure you don’t get caught up in the hype and evaluate the company using rationale. We’ve put together a list of principles you should be following in your decision making:
1) Does the Agency Drink its Own Champagne?
If their services are worth investing in they’ll be applying the same principles to their business. If they’re pitching your company content marketing and the importance of having a blog with high quality articles, do they have one themselves?
There are too many real estate marketing companies out there who don’t follow their own advice. If you’re going to talk the talk, you’ve got to walk the walk. Make sure to do your own online research about their company before hiring them. Run their website through a free tool at https://website.grader.com/. They should be receiving a score of 85 or higher to even be considered reasonable. Check out their website and make sure they have engaging content and proper CTAs in place. If they aren’t drinking their own champagne, our advice is to run as fast as you can.
2) Choose a Marketing Agency that Specializes in your Niche
An internet marketing company that specializes in a niche has a strong competitive advantage over a general internet marketing company. The reason being that they’ll be much more efficient at getting your company results.
To begin with, they’ll already have a better understanding of your business, your target market, and the keywords people are searching to find your business. For example, a real estate marketing company will understand the property management industry much faster than an internet marketing company who has never dealt with real estate clients before. This will allow them to know the right keywords that will generate leads for your business and more importantly generate high quality content for your company. The specialized marketing agency will also have established relationships with other websites related to your niche that they can use to benefit your company.
As long as your company is part of a common industry, there should be a marketing agency out there with a specialization in your niche. If your company specializes in underwater basket weaving…then you might be out of luck.
3) Bigger is NOT Always Better
A bigger agency must mean bigger results right?
Not necessarily.
Unless you’re one of the biggest clients (Fortune 500 type of client) of a large marketing agency, odds are your file will be handled by junior marketers who have a few months experience. Large agencies only have a few of the top digital marketers working for them, meaning they don’t have time to focus on the smaller clients the agency takes on. They’ll need to hand off most of the work to the junior employees. So while you’ll be paying big agency fees, you’ll likely be getting below average results.
4) Do they Back Up their Work?
We understand that it can take some time to get marketing results but that doesn’t mean they shouldn’t be showing you what they’re doing to get there. How will they show you the work they’ve been doing for your company? You’re paying for results, so they better be able to show you how they’re going about achieving those results. Make sure you ask them upfront if they’ll provide you with reports documenting their work and how often you’ll be given status updates.
A few items you should look to see covered in their reports:
- The marketing efforts they’ve provided for your company.
- The results they’ve achieved (traffic increase to your website, keyword rankings, conversion rate of traffic).
- Their plans for your company going forward.
5) Are they Transparent?
It’s important to have an open and honest relationship with your real estate marketing company. You’ll be paying them a fee and therefore you deserve to know exactly what you’re getting in exchange. Would you pay your phone company without knowing the exact plan you’re receiving? Probably not. The same principle applies to hiring a real estate marketing company.
They should be providing you with all the information related to the services they’ll performing for you like:
Timing – How long do they expect it to take for your company to see results from their marketing campaigns?
Procedure – What exactly will they be doing for your company each month? How will they be getting back links to your website? How will they determine their bid for the cost-per-click of a paid ads campaign? How much time do you need to spend with them each month?
Team Members – Which members of their staff will be handling your company? Will it be mainly junior marketers? Do they outsource their work to freelancers or is it all done in-house?
Fees – How much does this cost? Are there any more fees to be incurred in the future? Is this a long term contract?
6) Cheaper can be more Expensive in the Long-run
Generally, when it comes to inbound marketing you get what you pay for. Don’t base your decision solely off of price. While you may feel great only paying $100/month at first, you won’t be happy 6 months down the road when you realize you’ve seen no results from your investment.
A good real estate marketing company will generally cost more, but they’ll also bring you a much greater return on your investment. In the end, paying $100/month and getting zero clients ends up being more expensive than paying $1000/month and getting 20 new clients each month. Online marketing can pay huge dividends when it’s applied correctly. Like any good investment, it requires capital to get started and provides high returns over time.
7) Do they Take the Time to Teach You?
Hiring a quality real estate marketing company requires making an informed decision on a topic you likely have little knowledge about. It would be easy for an agency to throw a lot of jargon at you and watch you sit there dazed and confused. It takes effort for them to take the time to properly explain what it is they’ll do for your company and how they’ll do it.
Look for an agency that takes the time to teach you. You want to work with a company who explains the concepts of online marketing to you and gives you advice on how to track their marketing efforts.
Look to see if they:
- Teach you how search engines function
- Teach you how they determine which keywords are best for your business
- Give you in depth answers to any questions you have
- Show you which keywords your website is ranking for
- Prepare reports and take the time to sit down with you and explain what they mean
8) Do they Ask You the Right Questions?
In order for a marketing agency to create an effective real estate marketing plan they need to properly understand your business. How could they reach your target audience without even knowing the areas your company services? How can they reach your goals without knowing them?
Pay attention to the questions they ask you throughout the entire process. They should be prying you for information about your company, your past marketing initiatives, the services you provide, your areas of service, etc. This info allows them to design their marketing plan to fit your business needs.
While it may not be an easy choice, choosing the right company will allow you to focus on your business without worrying about where your new customers will come from. By following these 8 principles you’ll avoid being sold to by the partner, who is an expert salesman, and then being moved to the junior marketers once you hire them. There are a ton of high quality online marketing agencies out there, you just have to make sure to do a bit of digging to find them.
If you’re still looking for an agency for your real estate company we would love provide you with a free consultation!
Have some additional tips or any questions? That’s great. Leave us a comment below.
