Social media marketing plays a vital role in any digital marketing strategy that lets you connect with past, present, and potential clients, as well as ensuring your presence in the real estate market.
For one, social media is more dynamic and interactive compared to a static website and helps provide real estate agents with the tools to reach out to broader and extensive audiences. This is why having the right social media marketing strategies are essential to modern marketing drives.
If you happen to have a good social media marketing strategy, it can take your business to greater heights. However, a lot of people are reluctant to invest in social media especially when they do not get to see immediate returns on their investment.
Different dynamics
Compared to most industries, real estate works differently. For one, it is mainly because it has a long buying cycle and may be challenging to determine and monitor ROI based on dollar-for-dollar.
Unlike in eCommerce where you can spend $10 for advertisements and be able to sell those advertised products for $20 which shows you how your money doubled.
In real estate, how can you easily equate your ROI based on a phone call, birthday gift, open house, or a letterbox brochure campaign?
In short, it’s not as easy to calculate your ROI for brand awareness, social media, or content marketing.
Nonetheless, there are ways of equating and determining your ROI goals in real estate, and here’s how.
Generating leads
One of the easiest metrics to track for real estate in terms of ROI is lead generation, which is less challenging compared to brand awareness. The good thing about lead generation is that it can also be easily measured in each step of your sales funnel.
Measuring lead generation can allow you to easily compute your ad spending in acquiring your customer and how much it was worth.
Here’s a sample computation;
Ad spend / total number of leads= cost per lead
For instance, based on the calculated sample if you can convert 10% of your total leads into customers, then your cost per customer is $400. If your leads generate an average of $5,000 from your generated earnings, then you get an ROI of 1250%.
But it does not end there. What if it turns out as a cold lead? Well, consider this. You get to establish a follower who has come across your marketing funnel and may be able to look you up should they need your services or expertise in the industry.
This is why social media marketing should not only focus on one element alone, but should consider several elements that play on the interests, emotions, and preferences of each person, which can help measure and determine your ROI goals and efforts.
Long term ROI
Most real estate agents fail to realise the real value of relationships as a long-term and invisible ROI, which is a result of brand awareness and relevance to the industry.
This intangible value is not only a result of your lead generation efforts but also becomes a long-term resource that also needs money and time to help you establish loyal customers who count on you for their real estate needs.
Not all of your leads may be able to buy immediately, but the real value comes when they sense the need and turn to you to fulfill that need.
Tangible values that help determine ROI
As mentioned before, tracking ROI on a dollar for dollar basis is difficult, but there are ways to measure your ROI.
Social proof
People engage when they find your content and materials relevant and useful to them, which makes them aware of your brand and follow your lead. This makes you more credible and trustworthy.
Use your engagement indicators such as likes, follows, and shares to your advantage and use measure it in terms of a subscriber or follower count on your real estate social media pages.
Audience reach
Real estate agents always need to be in front of as many people as possible, in social media, the same rules apply where your reach is as important as your physical presence with your clients and prospects.
Social media platforms allow you to have this data especially for boosted posts or ads that you run and see how many have been reached by it.
Links and earned media
You can measure this by the number of times your content gets shared or featured in mass media and the press. You also get to be promoted by those who have decided to feature or use your content.
Insights and analytics
There’s no doubt these are just the best ways to gain intelligence on audience behaviour, preferences, attitudes, and other valuable insights that can help you build your marketing strategies and where to channel your marketing investments.
Search engine rankings
Compelling content and relevant blog articles can give your Google rankings a big boost. You can use this metric to help you calculate your ad spend ROI.