Omnichannel Marketing in the Real Estate Industry: A Few Key Insights

Published by Ashton Elder

Ashton has an M.S. in Marketing from Florida International University and has been working as a marketer for over five years. She is currently serving on the University of North Florida’s Department of Communications Professional Committee Board. Ashton has been a guest on several media and marketing panels throughout her career. She also holds a degree from the University of North Florida where she studied political science, journalism, and mass communications. Prior to working in marketing, she worked as a journalist for several news outlets and publications, including an internship at NPR where she produced several radio features. This site features a collection of her articles and radio features from her career in journalism. This site also features some of her insights and projects from her career in marketing. Ashton’s background in journalism has provided her with a solid foundation on which to build enhanced media and social media strategies to provide creative, innovative marketing solutions. Ashton also has first-hand experience with brand design and brand building. Ashton also works on an array of marketing projects from social media to email marketing and everything in between. View all posts by Ashton Elder

branding, content marketing, customer journey, digital marketing, Marketing, omni channel marketing, real estate marketing

I have been the head of marketing at a Florida real estate brokerage for five years. I recently did a marketing strategy consultation with an agent who had a sister about to list a million dollar home in Trinidad. The agent wanted to build a marketing strategy which would target a very specific type of buyer looking to purchase the property in order to receive a significant referral check and a segment of buyer leads with behavior characteristics such as “looking for a tropical vacation home,” and “American ex-patriots.” This experience is very common in the real estate industry, I build custom campaigns such as these on a daily basis. It also illustrates a great point to me, which is that omni-channel marketing has increasingly become more important in my industry.

The need for a customer centered omni-channel marketing strategy has driven me to do several things for my company in recent years. One of them was to move onto and utilize a variety of new platforms such as a branded company blog, Top of the Coast, a YouTube channel, a variety of social media platforms and other digital channels.

Another was to start focusing more time investing into a strong company brand that can be reflected across all of our channels. A strong cohesive brand experience across all channels is an essential aspect of a successful omni-channel marketing strategy. I discuss this further in a previous post here.

Another thing I started doing was to shift my focus onto gathering the right data and harnessing that data to build micro-targeted marketing campaigns. I have increasingly used customer data to tailor my marketing campaigns. For example, building specific customer segments and custom content for my email marketing and paid ad campaigns. Also doing this to craft content marketing on the company blog and YouTube channel posts.

Tech has changed the nature of the real estate industry, and in today’s digital world, the customer experience is now driving the need for more customer focused content and marketing strategies. Looking towards the future, I try to stay current on any new trends in the industry and one of those trends is jumping onto connected TV and advertising on streaming platforms. This is something I have discussed doing recently for my company. In addition to the ways I highlighted above, essentially I believe the next steps for further development of omni-channel marketing in the real estate industry comes down to focusing on and mastering some simple concepts: channel optimization, developing a strong brand and utilizing the right customer data.