So be honest – is your real estate website really helping you score more leads these days? If not, it might be time for a fresh approach. I’ve seen firsthand how real estate content marketing can work wonders when done right.
But the path to content success has plenty of pitfalls. In fact, according to Content Marketing Institute, the #1 content challenge real estate brands face is simply creating the right content for their audience (57% struggle with this).
You can’t rely on old-school salesy hype about you and your business. Today’s consumers demand truly useful info tailored to their most pressing questions. The trick is providing that value upfront to organically build trust and awareness over time.
But even valuable content won’t convert readers if it doesn’t get found. Without a solid promotion strategy fueled by SEO, your amazing advice could sink unseen by Google searches. This applies for any real estate business – from brokers to property managers to proptech startups.
So what should you do? Well, let me break down proven content marketing approaches used by leading real estate companies…
Understanding real estate content marketing
Content marketing is a big part of any good digital marketing strategy these days. It’s when you provide valuable information that answers the questions your ideal customers are asking as they search online. When you meet their needs with truly helpful info, your website stands out and builds trust over time.
Let me give you a real estate example. Say a family is moving to your city and starts googling stuff like “best neighborhoods for kids” or “top schools” or “fun activities for children.” Now, pretend your real estate website shows up in all those searches with some great articles you wrote months ago. These folks start thinking, “Hey, this agent really knows their stuff!”
See what just happened there? Those website visitors now see you as an expert source when it comes to local real estate. Not pushy at all, just helpful. The great thing about content is that it keeps working its magic months after you hit publish.
So when the time comes for this family to reach out to an agent, chances are they’ll come knocking because they recognize and trust your brand. They might sign up for your email list for more tips. Or use your website’s chatbot. Or fill out a contact form for a consultation.
That is real estate content marketing at work! By answering their questions every step of the way, you nurture complete strangers into leads and eventual happy clients. No cold calling needed—just helpful insider info. 😁 And that personal touch is what makes content marketing so incredibly powerful.
Who is your customer and how do you help them?
Before you build your content marketing strategy, take the time to think through your ideal customer and how your real estate company can support their needs through content creation. Start by asking – who are the specific people you most want to connect with? In real estate, you may be targeting various groups with distinct needs.
Here are three steps you can take to define your customer and how your content can help.
1) Real estate customer demographics
What are the demographics of your customer? Your real estate content marketing strategy can help you reach:
Home buyers: These could be first-time buyers, upgraders, downsizers, and investors. Their needs may vary from basic educational content about the buying process to more detailed information about the real estate market, investment opportunities, and property management.
Home Sellers: People looking to sell their property. They might be interested in content that helps them understand how to increase their home’s value, tips for staging their home, home maintenance tips, or market trends that indicate the best time to sell.
Renters: They might be interested in content about the rental process, tips for finding the best deals, and understanding their rights as tenants.
Investors: People looking to diversify or expand their investment portfolio through real estate. They are interested in market trends, investment opportunities, property management services, and real estate business software.
Location
Your real estate content should also be tailored based on the location of your audience. For proptech and real estate fintech companies, this is less relevant. But for real estate agents, brokers, or property management companies, it matters. Showcase local real estate market trends, neighborhood guides, and local regulations.
2) Potential customer needs
Now, think about what your potential customer needs or wants to learn. What content provides value to them and supports the products or services that your real estate business delivers? Types of content ideas can include:
Educational content: Many customers in the real estate market are looking for information. This can range from guides on buying or selling a home, financing, and mortgage tips to how to choose the right property. Or for investors, how to find below-market opportunities and how to manage properties.
Market insights: Detailed analysis and insights into the real estate market, including trends, forecasts, and investment opportunities. This can be local or it can be national association-type reports. As an example, I subscribe to Marcus & Millichap’s market reports, which you can use to highlight nationwide trends.
Personalized advice: Consider providing advice content that addresses individual customer needs, like personalized property recommendations.
3) Helpful content for potential real estate customers
Blog Posts and articles: Create interesting and helpful articles that cover a wide range of topics relevant to your target audience. Your blog post types can include ‘How-to’ guides, market analysis, tips for buyers and sellers, and much more.
Social media: Use social media platforms to share your content, engage with your audience, and provide quick updates about the market or your listings. Social media posts that include video tours and live Q&As can engage prospective buyers. For software companies, creating content that shows live demos of your solution is a great way to increase engagement.
Email marketing: As you develop an audience, send newsletters that provide value through market insights, new listings, and exclusive content. Segment your email list to provide content that’s relevant to your future client’s interests and stage in the buying/selling process.
Webinars and workshops: Host online events that educate your audience on various aspects of real estate, from investment strategies to home improvement tips to using your software.
Content creation process
Now that you’ve mapped out a strategy for attracting prospective buyers, it’s time to produce helpful content. But between finalizing deals and running your business, writing articles likely falls low on your priority list.
Real estate professionals and software companies can face this content challenge. Hiring a real estate agency is a smart solution if you can swing it.
But if you are a proptech startup, a new property management company, or an agent starting your business, I get that hiring real estate agencies is not always an option.
So, let’s cover DIY options that real estate professionals can use to grow their real estate brand.
Keyword research
Keyword research is how you can find what people are looking for online. It should be part of your process for creating content so that you don’t write a bunch of blog posts that never get noticed. You might think an article is helpful and provides value, but if people aren’t searching for it, writing about it won’t help your real estate brand.
Basic keyword research for real estate
Use an SEO tool like AHREFS to do keyword research. This work involves finding search terms that are easy (green) and have a higher search volume. I use the Chrome extension just to check out terms in Google, see details behind the search, the factors to rank, and the chances of success for a real estate agent website to show up in results for certain topics.
Here is a screenshot and a video to walk through this with you:
AHREFS, Semrush, and Moz are tools you can use to plan your content marketing strategy. You’ll look for as many keywords as you can and plan a series of articles that use the right keywords to help you rank your articles and content. Here’s how I use AHREFS to plan out a larger content strategy:
When I hit “search” here are my results:
Creating content
Now that you have researched relevant keywords and topics, you can start creating optimized real estate content. I recommend using Surfer SEO, a software that helps integrate your target keywords into articles.
As you write each piece, it tracks the terms you want to rank for, ensuring content directly aligns with your high-potential search targets. This eliminates guesswork by connecting your writing to a keyword-focused SEO strategy from the outset.
I’ll take a screenshot right now so you can see what this looks like for me right now. 👇
Now, you’ll repeat this process over and over to keep producing content that is relevant for your potential clients. There’s a lot more to the articles in terms of how they are structured, linking within the articles, and on-page SEO details, but I’ll save that for another blog post.
Content strategy for real estate
Now, let’s talk about content marketing for several different areas of the real estate industry.
1) Real estate agents
If you are a real estate agent spending all of your lead generation efforts on social media marketing, you are missing the boat. Now, don’t get me wrong — having active social media accounts that showcase your latest listings or thoughts on the local real estate market is valuable content. But… what about your prospective clients that aren’t on social media? Or, what happens when the social platform changes its algorithm and your content doesn’t show up as much?
A good real estate marketing strategy doesn’t put all eggs in one basket.
So here’s what you need to do.
Set up a personal brand website: Your broker’s site is fine but you don’t have control over how it looks, the message it conveys, and the content published. Without your own website, you can’t even begin to implement a full content marketing strategy.
Connect all your social media accounts: If you are active on social media, connect all these accounts to your website. It’s a great way to repurpose the time and effort you have already spent on this type of real estate content marketing.
Brainstorm a list of real estate content ideas: Here’s a quick brainstorm you can use to start researching these keywords for your local real estate market and see if they are good targets to add to your content marketing plan.
Home buying guide for first-time buyers
Tips for selling your home quickly and for top dollar
Local market trends and analysis
Financing your home purchase
The benefits of pre-approval for a mortgage
How to choose the right neighborhood for your family
The impact of school districts on home values
Renovation ideas to increase your home’s value
Understanding home inspections and appraisals
The role of a real estate agent in your home search
The pros and cons of new construction vs. existing homes
How to prepare for an open house
The importance of curb appeal and how to enhance it
Once you’ve identified relevant keywords and topics to focus on, map out a content calendar in a Google Sheet. Here’s a basic example for my real estate investing blog, Nic’s Guide:
Choose a posting frequency that works for your schedule – whether weekly, monthly or quarterly – and stick to it.
2) Brokerage firms
For brokerage firms, your content marketing strategy might have some overlap with real estate agents, but you can also create content to help you recruit and retain talent for your real estate business.
Some real estate content ideas for you can include:
The benefits of joining our brokerage
How our brokerage supports agent growth and success
Unique marketing support provided to our agents
Training and development opportunities at our brokerage
The advantages of our technology platform for agents
Understanding our competitive commission structure
Why our brokerage culture stands out in the industry
Our approach to lead generation and management for agents
The role of mentorship and support in our brokerage
Navigating market fluctuations: How we support our agents
Work-life balance: Supporting our agents’ well-being
The importance of a strong agent network and how we foster it
Professional development: Continuing education and certifications
It’s also a good idea to create video content that you can post on social media channels and in each blog post. Video content ideas can be:
Interview top agents at your brokerage and highlight their success stories. This brings more authenticity.
Film video tours of your office space and technology hubs to showcase infrastructure.
3) Real estate fintech
This is one of my favorite areas for real estate content marketing. These real estate brands need to find a way to stand out in a crowded marketplace, and relevant content is a way to do just that.
Brands can create a real estate SEO strategy around the problems that their software solves. For example, if your real estate software helps landlords better manage rent payments, some ideas for content can be:
Maximizing rental income with smart pricing strategies
Understanding and reducing payment processing fees
Automating financial reporting for better business insights
Enhancing security measures for online rent payments
The benefits of integrating property management with rent payment systems
Improving tenant satisfaction with mobile payment options
Let’s say I’m a new landlord, and I start searching for “best way to collect rent”.
You can see that Stessa is in the first position with helpful content. The blog post has screenshots and descriptions that can help a new landlord see how easy it is to collect rent with their software. But you could take it a step further and include video demos, client testimonials, and other interactive information to help landlords choose your software.
Besides blogs and social media content, some other ideas you can add to your content strategy to increase brand awareness can be:
Host webinars that don’t even need to be about your software. I know one software company that holds a weekly mastermind for real estate investors to bring their questions and get ideas on strategy.
Offer free trials and partner with complimentary real estate-related companies to help get the word out.
Be a guest on real estate or personal finance podcasts to share your perspective on an industry challenge and how your software helps solve it.
5) Property management
Property management content can target local or national audiences. To attract more real estate clients, provide valuable education and insights. For example, take that “best neighborhoods in Phoenix” search. The #7 ranking article comes from a property management firm, focused on potential clients eyeing Phoenix investment properties – and future management needs.
Smart move on their part. Put yourself in an out-of-state investor’s shoes. If you found that article, wouldn’t you see them as local experts?
This is the power of content done right – showcasing your specialized knowledge to establish credibility. And subtly hinting at services that align with reader needs, like management for Phoenix rentals. The same approach can work for your property management business wherever you operate. Offer useful local perspectives that make audiences stick around and take notice.
Maximizing your investment returns with professional property management
The benefits of leveraging local property management expertise for investors
How property management can enhance the value of your investment
Understanding the cost-benefit analysis of hiring a property management company
The role of property management in investor work-life balance
Strategies for scaling your real estate investment portfolio with property management
The advantages of professional maintenance and repair management for investors
The value of a property management company’s network for real estate investors
How property management companies handle difficult tenants and protect your investment
Customized property management solutions to meet investor needs
I think property management companies are very well-positioned to create a community. This marketing strategy concept brings together current customers at a local level to share ideas and trends. You could host meetups or other events and help investors get connected to each other.
6) Proptech
For proptech companies, you might have a varied audience – it could be real estate investors, brokers or consumers. Let’s say that you provide virtual closing software. You can use content marketing can speak to this audience by focusing on concerns brokers might have about increasing the efficiency of their real estate business:
Best practices for digital document management in real estate
Automating real estate workflows to save time and reduce errors
Protecting client information and transactions in the digital age
I Googled “virtual closing” which turns out to be a great keyword to go after…. The first result is an article more focused on the prospective buyer of a property. But the second result is a proptech software company that facilitates secure transactions in the real estate process. It’s a great example of content strategy in action because their article provides valuable information that matches my search intent.
For proptech, your real estate marketing strategy can also include demos, webinars, podcasts and short videos to help increase organic traffic to your website.
I’ve seen firsthand how this can work. Here’s an example of a company that I’ve been working with on valuable content that increased their traffic from 9k monthly visitors to 45k monthly visitors in just 6 months.
If you’d like help with your content strategy to achieve similar results, get in touch!
Measuring success
Once you’ve put your content strategy in place, how do you measure success? The obvious ways are an increase in traffic, generating more leads or getting more brand recognition. But you can also track metrics at a more detailed level using free tools from Google — Google Search Console and Google Analytics.
Google Search Console
In Google Search Console, you can see trends in traffic growth and top-performing pages. For example, here is what I show for traffic growth on my blog, NicsGuide:
And by seeing the top-performing pages, you can increase your efforts in those topic areas:
Google Analytics
This tool provides details about things like your traffic sources and user engagement. Below is a screenshot from my newer site, NicsGuide.com. You can see that I’m getting traffic from organic searches as well as people directly searching for my site. I’m also getting a small amount of traffic from other sites that are referencing my site.
You can use this data to look at your real estate marketing strategy. Do you need to increase the number of sites that are referring to your website? Is your brand starting to be recognized such that future clients are directly searching for you? These are the types of metrics you can track.
Now what?
Once you’ve created an initial real estate content marketing plan, begun publishing posts, and are tracking performance, the next step is refinement. Now is when you analyze what content is resonating and what isn’t to optimize your strategy.
Set aside time to do this each week or month. A checklist you can use includes:
💡 Review keyword reports to identify high-traffic, high-conversion search terms to guide future content.
💡 Check Google Analytics to pinpoint your best-performing existing content by visits, engagement, and conversions.
💡 Look for patterns in top posts and aim to emulate these approaches more.
💡 For poorer-performing content, consider updating approaches or switching topics.
💡 Double down on proven successful topics and formats that connect with your audience.
💡 Phase out or refresh content that hasn’t met expectations to test new ideas or angles.
💡 Use key metrics and learnings to shape ongoing content development and strategy.
💡 Continually test and analyze to determine what works and what doesn’t.
Wrap-up and my experience with real estate content marketing
Look, if you’re hustling in real estate without content putting in work behind the scenes – we have to change that. Closing deals or coming up with new proptech takes focus. But leaving your online visibility to chance means lost opportunities.
The sooner you start implementing a content strategy providing helpful information that gets noticed by search engines, the sooner future leads start finding YOU rather than competitors. Think of all those curious first-time homebuyers or investors Googling their way to decisions. Be there, offering knowledge at every turn!
Look, you already know my blog and client sites didn’t get popular overnight. Creating a steady stream of traffic and trust takes time. But I’ve proven firsthand that consistently providing value to readers can slowly but surely establish online authority.
So here’s the simple truth…
If tackling content on your own sounds doable, I’ve put together a handy startup checklist for picking winning keywords, mapping topics, and scheduling posting. Follow those guidelines, and you’ll ve on your way without needing to hire help.
Or if you’d rather skip straight to an executable plan because you’ve got bigger real estate priorities, hit reply, and let’s chat. I’d be glad to turn your goals into a tailored content strategy as your virtual real estate marketing manager. 😎🔎
Real estate content marketing: FAQ
Why is content so powerful in real estate?
Content is powerful in real estate as it educates, informs, and engages potential clients, builds trust, showcases expertise, and enhances online visibility and SEO. This helps attract leads, foster relationships, and drive sales.
What are the 4 P’s of marketing in real estate?
The 4 P’s of marketing in real estate are Product (properties and services offered), Price (cost and value proposition), Place (location and distribution channels), and Promotion (advertising and communication strategies).
How do you write contents for a real estate company?
Writing content for a real estate company means you should understand the target audience, highlight unique product features, incorporate market insights, and use an engaging, informative tone.
