Online communication in the real estate sector

Fotocasa, one of Spain's leading property portals, presented at the recent SIMA 2016 an initiative dedicated to driving the creation of a strong, professional and innovative real estate sector

Fotocasa Academy it is a real estate dialogue forum among all professionals in the sector, offering training in the form of educational material and courses (both in-person and online).

In February of this year, I was contacted regarding the launch of their first publication Challenges to boost the real estate sector of the future (you can download the book in PDF format) so that I would write an article about real estate marketing to be published alongside those of other business people and theorists in the sector. 3,000 copies of this book have been printed (in addition to the digital edition at the link above) and are being given away free of charge in the courses that Fotocasa Academy has been running since last April for all Spanish real estate agencies. 

Below I include my contribution to this wonderful initiative, which I wish a long future.

«I keep six honest serving-men (they taught me all I knew); their names are What and Why and When and How and Where and Who.»

This poem belonging to the story «The Elephant's Child» by Rudyard Kipling, identify the keys to any communication strategy: Who, What, Where, How, When and Why. 

• Who: What is he like?
• What: Interesting, useful and fun
• Where: the gift of ubiquity
• How: there is no defined standard
• When: the perfect trip
• Why: DNA 2.0

Who: What is he like?

Today, across all sectors, The customer is the centre of gravity around which all the organisation's actions revolve, and among them, the communication strategy. He is our point of contact and knowing him well is key to knowing how to catch his attention and how to keep it, something difficult in an information-saturated environment.

And what is he like? How does he spend his free time? These are not just questions in a song by Perales, but matters of vital importance to our business. Knowing what worries him, what he consumes and where he hangs out, for example, is essential to determine what kind of message we should convey to him, in what format and in what places we can communicate it to him.

Let us draw an initial dividing line: does your agency offer services to the buyer or the seller? Be clear about this, your client is one of the two. If you engage in property finding, it is obvious that your client is the buyer, isn't it? And if you target the seller, allocate your resources to addressing their many concerns: “Is it a good time to sell?”, “How much can I ask for the house?”, for example, and stop showing them photos of properties, as property portals are already there for that purpose, serving as true highways for buyers.

What: interesting, useful, fun

We belong to the world of housing, which as a thematic axis represents an infinite universe of content, shared in turn by a multitude of stakeholders in a multitude of forums. Decorators, architects, bloggers and enthusiasts fill hundreds of thousands of pages every day, both on and offline, about decorating trends, amazing home transformations or cupcake recipes.

In short, housing isn't just an issue, it's a massive issue. Don't you think that limiting ourselves to talking about its square footage, orientation or number of rooms is missing out on a great party? Besides, if you only talk about your product, your communication will soon lose interest. There is a lively conversation out there and if you want to take part in it and help keep the wheels turning, provide interesting, useful and entertaining content.

Where: The gift of ubiquity

Since there are no barriers to entry, more and more real estate agencies are obsessed with making a place for themselves on social media, being present on all of them, and getting a huge following overnight. But social media is not a popularity contest. We must choose the platform where we know our client is, learn its rules and its own style of expression. If on Facebook you say “I like this property”, on Twitter it’s “I’m going to view this # property”, whilst on LinkedIn you would say “I’m an expert in selling properties”. Each platform has its own language, and before we speak, we must learn to listen.

How: there is no defined standard

In the digital environment, there is no single «how» and that is why, as an estate agency, it is important to stay alert, focus on our clients, see what content interests them, what they like, share, comment on... and cast the ad hoc content hook so that they bite, allowing us to maintain authentic and meaningful interactions with them where we can convey our value proposition and gradually build their loyalty.

Let's consider this: why should we, as estate agencies, limit ourselves to having a relationship with our clients that is dependent solely on the provision of the service? Wouldn't it be better to extend the relationship both before and afterwards through well-deployed content marketing across various digital platforms? To have users who then become clients who will become users once again?

When: the perfect trip

In this digital environment, what is shared is just as important as when it is shared. There are tools that allow us to manage and schedule tweets (Hootsuite, TweetDeck, Buffer...) for delayed publication, and that is undoubtedly very useful, provided we bear in mind that it makes no sense to publish a tweet on a Monday at 3 in the morning...

This is an important aspect of the when. But there is another much more important one: avoiding falling into automation will allow us to be alert to the moment when a real estate need arises in our user/content consumer that we can cover. That is, when we roll out our content strategy via social media, what we are doing is sowing the ground for potential interactions (conversation) that build loyalty within our community and that can catch the attention of new users. From all these interactions, business opportunities can blossom if we detect that our user needs us. If this is the case and we manage to establish a bond of trust with them, we will reap the rewards and we will no longer be talking about a user, but a customer (conversion). And if we have done everything right and as they expected, the fruit will be juicy and we will have gained a satisfied customer who will recommend us, closing the circle of the perfect journey.

Why: DNA 2.0

Most people who want to sell or rent their home start by looking for information on the internet. It is necessary to be visible if we want to be considered and contacted. When well managed, the website and social media offer companies a platform for visibility and multi-channel communication that is both immediate and direct with their users and customers, position the brand, build loyalty among a community of users, and serve as a channel for disseminating news about the company itself and its products.

Who, what, where, how, when and why are six parameters that must be aligned to ensure our communication strategy is consistent, powerful and effective.

Who, what, where, how, when and why are six parameters that must be aligned to ensure that our communication strategy is consistent, powerful and effective. Communicating an interesting message to the wrong recipient, or using the appropriate channel at the wrong time are very common mistakes that ruin a communication strategy. Therefore, if we consider online communication to be one of the levers for improving our business results, the answers to each of these questions are just as important as a well-orchestrated rollout of all of them. 

«Online communication in the real estate sector», article by Olga Sala, marketing and communication director at the Monapart real estate agency network, written for the book «Challenges for boosting the real estate sector of the future», published by Fotocasa Academy (2016).