13+ Real Estate Content Marketing Ideas for 2023
Instead of cold calling expireds, paying $1000s/mo to Zillow, or sinking money into Facebook ads and praying your ROI makes it worthwhile, content marketing leads come to you!
Also called “attraction marketing”, content marketing involves creating something for free that your potential customers want.
Even better, content marketing is often free, costing only your time.
I recommend every agent have at least one content marketing lead generation strategy as one of their four lead generation pillars. It is a long game, but is passive lead generation that over time can sustain your real estate business into the next tier of success.
Below are all the primary ways I can think of that real estate agents make use of content marketing in their business.
Blog Posts
Blogging is the obvious form of content marketing for real estate agents.
Writing hyperlocal articles for relatively uncompetitive keywords can be a great way for agents with patience to earn organic leads that are practically free.
There are numerous brokerages and even individual agents earning over 100,000 visitors per month to their website. I put together a list of agents successfully blogging, as well as my own guide to blogging for real estate.
Content sites are different from other real estate websites in that they don’t focus on conversion in the same way. You will be less likely to have forced registration on listings. And instead of trying to get visitors into a funnel as quickly as possible, you generally want them to explore the site, improve your bounce rate, and become repeat visitors.
Blog posts can easily be repackaged into newsletters for email marketing.
Getting started blogging means you need a website. One option is to build your own site in WordPress. The nice thing about this option is that you have complete ownership, but can also still get help as a hired professional can easily upgrade and work within the WordPress CMS.
Other options are built-for-you sites that are optimized for SEO. The website providers below are particularly successful at blog content marketing and building SEO-friendly sites.
Easy Agent Pro
$179+/mo, $199 setup cost. Easy Agent Pro gives a good balance of performance vs ease of use. Easy Agent Pro websites have a rather recognizable design that is sharp, colorful, and modern. It comes with add-ons and tools like sharing landing pages on social media. It is a strong solution for any agent wanting to take their web presence seriously, use landing pages generously, and without having to be too technical themselves.
Sierra Interactive
$499/mo. Sierra Interactive is a small company that builds a full-service brokerage and team product including one of the better website offerings for SEO. Their website product includes a CRM, brokerage reporting, managed PPC campaign offerings, and even an integrated dialer. It is a great choice for anyone looking for an affordable website platform that can rank on Google.
Real Estate Webmasters
$500+/mo. A Canadian company and the premium real estate website service in the space. Real Estate Webmasters is not cheap. But they also deliver, with their websites reliably outranking the competition on Google with the best SEO game by far.
Real Estate Listings
It seems so obvious that we may forget that it is content, but listings themselves are content!
Why do people visit Zillow and Realtor.com? It’s not due to the Porchlight blog.
It’s their listings!
Thanks to IDX, your own site can have listings, too.
That said, it’s hard to differentiate your website based on IDX alone. You’re not going to stand out from the crowd based on this alone. The exception is brokerages who are flirting with pocket listings. Listings are content! If you have exclusive content like pocket listings, you can earn customers that way!
That said, I’m personally not a fan of the business model.
Instead, leverage listings by advertising them to your audience, host open houses, or door knock around just solds.
Images
Chad Carroll’s Instagram has half a million followers featuring beautiful, luxury pictures. Being an agent on Million Dollar Listing Miami probably helps, no doubt. But he’s not the only real estate agent succeeding on Instagram.
In addition to social media platforms like Instagram and Pinterest, some agents talk about posting their photos on photo-sharing sites like Flickr. This can be an especially interesting tactic when sharing hyperlocal photos of your community and area landmarks.
You can also share your images on Google Maps of the local area, and your Google Business Profile.
Creating a library of your own local stock photos is a complementary strategy to the other ideas on this list. Images come in handy when creating social media content and blog posts. You can even use them as a clever backlink strategy to improve your website SEO.
Social Media Content
Your social media posts are content!
The question is: it is valuable content?
It’s not hard to find free content to share on Facebook and make your business page look alive. But it is extremely unlikely that it is going to earn organic eyeballs.
That makes it critical to share engaging, authentic posts that rely on shareability first and foremost.
YouTube Vlogging
Video marketing was all the rage in 2015 and it hasn’t changed since.
It’s especially attractive because it can be so easily applied to multiple strategies: turn it into a blog post, share it on social media, make it a podcast, etc.
I have a list of agents with great YouTube channels if you’d like to copy success.
Meanwhile, there are podcasts that focus almost exclusively on video as a content marketing strategy, like the Real Estate Marketing Dude and Karin Carr’s channel.
360 and 3D Tours
Virtual tours takes listing content to the next level.
Apart from the obvious benefit of helping buyers engage with the home before they’ve even stepped foot, a 360 tour on Facebook or YouTube is a much more shareable asset than a boring listing video or, worse, a slideshow of the listing photos.
All it takes is a 360 camera which is becoming more and more affordable. In some cases, virtual tour software may come in handy.
Seminars and Webinars
Event content like a seminar is a favorite tactic of the newbie agent because it’s free! And a great excuse to partner with a local lender and begin building those relationships.
You can also perhaps partner with your community or state housing authority that offers downpayment assistance (in my market, that is TSAHC and the Killeen HAP.
Going digital with a YouTube or Facebook Live webinar is a great way to multiply your content efforts. Not only can you reach more people, but you can often utilize it with the rest of your video strategy.
Relocation, Buyer, and Seller Guides
Having a complete guide on more than just a webpage can be a great lead magnet to capture an email address and phone number. A physical copy makes the content feel more “real” and valuable.
Realty Austin offers 350-page relocation guides to would-be home buyers moving to the area. Featuring paid ads from local businesses, I’d guess that the guide may have paid for itself!
Market Information
Sharing your MLS’s monthly market report on social media and email contacts is fine. Gussying it up under your own brand and republishing it is better. But including your own original research is great.
The above example from GreatColoradoHomes is spot on, and does an excellent job of being consistent with their branding.
The MLS makes this very easy! What percent of homes sold were foreclosures? How is the duplex market doing? What is the average $/sqft for homes with pools compare to homes without pools in your county?
Heck, if you create some market stats compelling enough, you might even manage to get your own competition to share it on social media!
Finally, this is a good time to talk about who your content is for. Obviously you are looking to attract new buyers and sellers. But there is another audience that you should not forget: your past clients! These are now homeowners, who will be interested in keeping track of the market, their home value, local news and events, and housekeeping best practices. Don’t forget to keep them updated with valuable content that will keep you top of mind for repeat and referral business!
You can use market report software to help automate some of this process.
Homebot
$25+/mo, $50 setup. Homebot is “client engagement tool” for agents and lenders. It creates sophisticated home equity reports that can be sent to your database, keeping them apprised of their home value and market conditions. It’s a great way to stay top-of-mind with past clients.
Subject Matter Expertise
Bill Lublin is a Realtor who is active on Twitter and earned himself over 10,000 followers there. He posts his real estate listings, but also comments on market trends and the real estate industry as a whole.
Twitter is a great place for anyone interested in what real estate influencers are saying and joining the conversation.
Showcasing your expertise and joining the industry conversation may not seem like an obvious way to earn clients, but it can easily lead to agent-to-agent referrals, a deeper understanding of your craft, exposure via local news and events, and an opportunity to demonstrate to potential clients your value proposition.
One way to leverage real estate expertise is to answer questions on HARO (Help-a-Reporter-Out). HARO is a service for publishers and journalists who have questions for professionals when writing an article. They post their query and experts can email answers. The publishers will select the good answers and feature them in their article with a shoutout. This is a popular way of earning backlinks for your website SEO as well.
Your expertise, freely given with nothing directly expected in return, is a form of content.
Infographics
Making your own real estate infographics is an easy, completely free piece of content.
Infographics can be both visually arresting, shareable, linkable, and informative! It’s a well rounded way to communicate information quickly to audiences accustomed to scrolling quickly.
Checklists, Templates, and Resources
How-to guides are great. But folks especially love checklists and worksheets that they can actively complete.
Buyer checklists or listing checklists for FSBO sellers are taking the content up a notch and making the material that much more appealing. Be sure to include links to either an Excel, Word document, or pdf to make it easy for them to either fill it in online or print and complete it.
This checklist above is from The Preferred Realty home buyer guide.
Other resources can be things like mortgage calculators.
Podcasting
Podcasts are a lot of work and can be a thankless task during the months or years it takes to build an audience. I imagine this is even more difficult when your audience is limited to single geographic area. But especially for agents in larger metro areas, it might be a very effective way for your business to stand out compared to agents doing all the traditional stuff.
As an example of a successful real estate agent podcast focused on the local community, News For Reasonable People, formerly the Seattle Real Estate Podcast. It is put on by Seattle Properties NW. Sean Reynolds is the host and is a complete pro with the radio voice and high-quality production. It has transitioned to an entire local news and commentary production with over 70k followers on YouTube!
Other Ideas
I love content marketing because it is giving before you get. You provide value and then earn. It is a win-win for both agent and consumer.
Thinking creatively about other kinds of content marketing has me wondering how they might be useful in real estate. I don’t have an answer, but wanted to share in case it got you thinking about creative business models.
- User-generated content. Forums are the classic example of user-generated content. Comment sections is another. Is there a way to turn that into a lead generation strategy for your business? The only obvious ideas I can think of is being active on Reddit communities and managing Facebook groups for your area.
- Surveys and Polls. Surveying people can help you get engagement and original content that nobody else has! Survey results can create interesting and shareable insights. That’s what NAR’s profiles are: surveys. Here are some examples from QuestionPro.
- Ebooks. I found the book on Amazon How To Buy A Condo In NYC: A practical guide to purchasing a condo in New York City. It isn’t written by a real estate agent, though, but an attorney! I don’t know if any agents have found success generating leads via ebooks but would love to hear if you know of anyone!
- Testimonials. Your client testimonials is a form of content that is of course shareable and reflects well on your business. Likewise, reviews are content, even if not always on your own site, that are important to your business. Be sure to take reviews and testimonials seriously!
- Email Marketing. Your database is an audience you own. Emailing relevant content to them is a form of content marketing. You can repackage the best of your other content in the form of a newsletter, or incorporate it into drip campaigns. You can even have custom campaigns to help educate your homebuyer and home seller during the process, after they’ve already converted into clients.
Monetization
One last note about content marketing.
Another reason to love content marketing is that most of the content above gives you alternative ways to monetize your business once you are established. You can sell ads on your podcast. Ads in your relocation guide. Ads on your website. YouTube creators earn money if you have enough subscribers and views.
That’s a long game and not what your focus should be on if just starting out, but something to keep in mind! Turn your content marketing into a real estate side hustle!
That is, in fact, what Hooquest is. I was a Realtor who enjoyed building websites and blogging, and decided to dive in even deeper by creating a website for agents.
Conclusion
My favorite marketing strategy is inbound marketing. It’s such a strong foundation to build a business on. Hopefully, my content marketing ideas for real estate agents have at least triggered an idea or two you can implement in your own business.
If you want to learn more, dive into the Content Marketing Institute. They have great resources and a conference focused on Inbound marketing.
And check out my Content Marketing 101 article.
Updated April 28, 2023; Originally published May 18, 2021
