Love it or hate it, social media’s impact on property marketing has been profound, but there is far more to this dark art than meets the eye.

Some estate agents simply upload all their stock to Facebook or Twitter and hope for the best, but that can just alienate people.

However, a sophisticated social media marketing strategy, delivered by digital marketing professionals who really understand this critical estate agency resource, can work wonders.

For example, we harness the power of social media advertising to ensure that we engage with people that we have identified as having an interest in property. We are then able to feed specific properties to relevant purchasers based on their recognized demographics, lifestyle and behavioral patterns.

So if we are instructed to market a property on a golfing development, we would be able to promote it to people of a certain age, in a certain income bracket who are known to enjoy golf. In the same way, we can approach people who have recently checked out education-related websites when we are marketing family homes within a specific school catchment area.

Well placed Facebook ads can work well, but we find it’s far more effective to place such ads among items of genuine interest to the home moving public. This might include news items, market comments, competitions, economic forecasts, housing trends, and property-related human-interest stories. These can sometimes be picked up by property journalists as well, resulting in exceptional exposure for our clients.

We also find that our use of social media prompts people to associate our agency brand with the type of properties that fit well with our portfolio. As any agent will tell you, “Stock breeds stock”, which in turn attracts relevant buyers in an ongoing cycle of proactivity. And because digital marketing is budget friendly, we find we are able to extend our reach much more effectively than ever before, when all we had in the past was a local newspaper and a website.

So when the time comes to sell, even if you’re not a fan of social media yourself, do make sure your estate agent is, and ask them to explain their digital marketing strategy in detail. Needless to say, we’d be delighted to talk you through ours.

Peter Ryder

Managing Director

Thorntons Property