That’s because today’s research-driven consumers rely on information before buying. But compared to text, visuals are just more persuasive and impactful when communicating, hence proving to be an advantageous tool in a real estate marketing strategy.
From the discovery stage, a high-quality photo of a property can help you attract potential leads. Near the closing of the deal, data charts make information understandable and memorable – ultimately helping your customers decide to buy.
Now, some of you may be arguing “We’re real estate agents, not graphic designers – how do we start using more visuals?” That’s valid, and I get it – I’m not a graphic designer, either. Thankfully though, visual design apps like Piktochart exist, making the job easier with a rich library of resources and templates.
In this article, I’ll give you some of the must-have visual content types in any real estate agent’s sales kit along with templates from Piktochart that will get you started.
6 Common Types of Real Estate Marketing Visuals Realtors Use
Potential buyers today often form their first impressions of your real estate business based on what they see online. More than that, it’s a powerful tool we can use for communicating key information about properties and forming emotional connections with interested buyers.
Eye-catching visual content – be it meticulously designed brochures, business cards, or an engaging property video – communicates your real estate business’s value and professionalism. Moreover, each piece of visual content asserts your expertise, earns the potential client’s trust, and ultimately converts qualified leads into buyers.
Newsletters
More than any other visual marketing strategy, a personalized email marketing campaign is a non-negotiable one for modern real estate agents. This is because lead management and client engagement are vital components of a real estate marketing plan.
Lead management ensures that we continuously earn, and avoid bleeding money on customer acquisition. And while there are certainly many other strategies to ensure we’re on top of this, newsletters are one of the most effective ways to do so.
With daily email users expected to rise to 4.6 billion by 2025, marketers are investing more, seeing the huge potential for revenue growth with this marketing channel. In fact, according to email marketing statistics, newsletter campaigns could balloon to up to around 12 billion US dollars by 2024. And will continue to grow as newsletters keep influencing consumer purchase decisions.
In property management, newsletter campaigns help Doorloop inform our target audiences of ways our technology can help improve how they do business and, subsequently, enticing prospects in the process. These newsletters, like the example below, directly reach subscribers, highlighting important features and giving them practical examples, which helps engage prospects and can lead to more conversions.
Real estate email marketing allows you to communicate information that leads to conversions directly to your customers. Use it to announce new properties that are up for sale. Send helpful content that provides tips on real estate purchasing. Or inform them of price drops and limited deals on properties. An interested client will act, but not without information.
When designing a newsletter campaign, remember to communicate clearly, and naturally – as if you were having a conversation with your lead like a friend. Personalized emails convert better than generic ones, and it’s important to keep it personal because a strong emotional connection leads to action.
That click was hard to acquire – make sure you make the most of it by:
Inserting dynamic content
Real estate, as we’ve established, relies heavily on visual information to instigate action. This applies especially to newsletters. Clicks are hard to attract, so if you’ve managed to get one, you must make the most of it.
Dynamic content will impress target audiences and engage them – creating an emotional connection that potential clients can process immediately and act on.
Personalizing communications
No one likes reading generic messages – especially not in an email. Given that the email inbox is one of the most intimate spaces for communication on the internet, personalized communication is important to connect emotionally.
To do this, you can address your reader directly in the subject line, in the salutation, and in the message itself. It’s also important to mention specific needs and concerns they mentioned to you in a conversation or a submitted query.
A/B testing your campaigns
This is especially important if you’re inserting dynamic content into your newsletters. You wouldn’t want to waste time and effort sending dynamic content that won’t deliver the results you want.
For Doorloop, I’ve tested campaigns with tools like MailChimp, Braze, and Mailjet for this. To simplify the process, you will need to develop two different iterations of a specific piece of content you’re planning to send out and compare them. Note, however, that it’s vital to tweak and test one parameter at a time. Testing too many variables will skew your data too much and will muddle your insights, rendering your tests void.
With that in mind, observe and track the results of your tests. Notice if one iteration gets more clicks than the other? Which one attracted more website visits? Which one achieved your goal better?
Let the results of the test tell you which one to send. In case it needs saying: The iteration that performs better is the one you should send to your mailing list.
Flyers, brochures, and pamphlets
These are a basic must-have for real estate professionals, especially during property viewings, open houses, or community events.
Flyers, brochures, and pamphlets are tangible marketing materials that promote your properties and engage prospective buyers. Through these, you showcase key property features, images, and a way for customers to contact you and, yes, they can exist digitally too.
When designing these, remember that brochures, pamphlets, and flyers have fundamental differences. The table below provides a summary:
Due to cost efficiency, many real estate agents lean towards flyers whenever the need for printed materials arises. This Piktochart flyer template is a great starting point for designing your one-pagers. From there, you can incorporate your branding elements, but make sure to:
Focus on key selling points
Grab the attention of customers by highlighting the most compelling features and amenities of a specific property. You must also emphasize the unique selling points of your property; and establish how different it is from the others available in the market.In this effort, mind your language – avoid the fluff and write clearly and concisely so that you’re not confusing your audience.
Use high-quality images
Images play a vital role in establishing an emotional connection with and conveying the appeal of a property to your audience.
Here, you have the option to hire professional photographers who can capture your property in the best light. Note that using stock images often puts off some buyers so I suggest that you plan for this investment.
Since it’s a small piece of paper, you will need the photo to work hard. Apart from ensuring that it’s high-resolution, it must also be clear and showcase the most striking features of a property.
Proofread carefully
A misspelled word can signal unprofessionalism to a buyer. Hence, it’s important to proofread a flyer at every step of the production – from the layout to the final proof before printing. This will also help you avoid unnecessary costs from printing a fresh batch of revised flyers.
Sales presentations
Sales presentation decks are one of the most vital parts of your real estate marketing plan. These are visual content that are meant to drive the sale. If they are made unprofessionally (eg. look cluttered, have typos, etc.), then it’s likely that you won’t close the deal.
A presentation is an immersive experience that should guide your clients through a journey of the property’s core features and amenities. It also includes information about the neighborhood, and sometimes, even a bit of history about the location and the property itself.
But, in addition to the facts and figures, Kris Lippi, Isoldmyhouse.com’s founder – true to the writer he is – tells us, “Your sales presentation is an avenue to tell a story…. that should make your customer imagine the life they could be living on the property.”
For Lippi, a well-crafted sales presentation is one with a narrative that’s powerful enough to evoke this and inspire action. And we must pull out all the stops we can to ensure that.
To that end, we incorporate as many visual elements as we can, and many marketing pitch deck templates can help us start. Just remember to be creative and tailor it to the audience you’re speaking to.
Take a look at this slide from a sample presentation from Slide Team provided below. Note how organized the information is, and how they used visual aids in the form of icons to demonstrate their points. Texts are also simple, and communicate the points directly, and sound like they are targeted to the audience of the presentation.
Apart from the details and design found in the example above, I’ve found that the most effective sales presentation decks also:
Have a clear narrative flow
You can achieve this by first creating an outline that structures your sequence. To create a compelling narrative, try to add some drama to it.
You can follow popular copywriting frameworks to achieve that. But bear in mind that we are writing for a presentation deck – not a social media post. So remember to expand on concepts that need to be drawn out, and keep nice-to-knows short.
Let the property shine
Presentations that show 3D renders, actual photos, or videos of property tours help make it feel more tangible, even if the client hasn’t seen it. Actually, more to the point, it compels them to visit the property, and you’re that much closer to a sale.
Incorporate high-resolution images, videos, and interactive elements, to bring the property to life and create an immersive experience for viewers. Similarly highlight key selling points and address potential buyer concerns in the text while keeping it minimal and focused.
Planned and prepared for
Please rehearse your presentations. I know it sounds like an additional step that you can forgo in the interest of saving time and energy. But trust me: It will make you sound more confident, read, and professional.
Those are important so that you don’t fumble around with your words and deliver the pitch effectively. Practice conveying enthusiasm and confidence. Practice your enunciation, and prepare for any and every question to be thrown at you.
The slightest hint of unpreparedness might turn an interested buyer into a skeptic.
Property tour videos
Video is the king of content in today’s online landscape. And with video heightening purchase intent by at least 97%, there’s no wonder why marketers take every opportunity to use it. Because they are effective in improving numbers for businesses and becoming more affordable, 46% of marketers are incorporating them in their strategies.
Fact is: People are more likely to purchase when they know the product is tangible, or “seen in action.” Demo videos, for instance, are preferred by 12% of customers because they directly convey how the product solves their problem.
In our industry, the same logic applies to the property tour video and virtual tours. More and more, real estate agents are relying on video tours to attract prospective clients, close deals, or compel potential them to call in for physical house tours.
“We’ve gotten more and more hits for video marketing professionals on our website coming from searchers that show affinity to real estate and housing,” reveals Gianluca Ferruggia, managing director of B2B marketplace DesignRush. He shares further that the interest coincides with the sharp rise of online video content publishing during the pandemic.
He shares, “video marketing services for real estate rose during the pandemic, in part, because brands were using it to create narratives surrounding their brand experiences. And for an impeded real estate industry, this was like a lifeline – it was a way for them to show houses to clients who were, ironically, trapped inside their homes.”
To build on Ferruggia’s point: Virtual tour videos, especially those recorded in 360 views and provide aerial footage of the property, offer immersive visual experiences that allow potential buyers to explore properties from the comfort of their screens. Whether they come across it on real estate listings or social media channels, these videos provide a comprehensive view of the property, showcasing its layout, features, and ambiance in a dynamic and engaging format.
This effectively captivates potential buyers as they gain a realistic sense of what it would be like to live in the property.
However, creating an impactful property tour video requires a ton of planning and attention to detail. While you could technically produce it yourself (according to the video below), producing it on your own can be difficult. Working with video production professionals, meanwhile, makes the work run smoothly but may cost you a lot.
Whether on your own or with the help of professionals, remember these tips for creating a property tour video:
Pay attention to pacing and storytelling
Timing and narrative are crucial here. Anything too long and you will lose your viewers. Too short, on the other hand, might make you miss capturing important details.
To avoid that, I suggest creating a storyboard where you have a visual plan of specific shots and what clips need to be longer than others. You should also mind the auditory experience of your video.
Sounds tell a story too. Make sure that the music you’re using imbues positivity and optimism alongside your property. Or, it could also sound luxe and mysterious, if that’s the vibe you’re going for.
Polish it in post-production
Here is where you decide what specific clips to add, cut, or remove for your video. This is also the part where you enhance your footage with other elements that tell your story.
You can enhance color contrasts, add text overlays, and/or graphics to highlight key features or provide additional information about the property.
Maximize your reach to maximize your investment
Because they are so effective at capturing audience attention, we should maximize the performance of videos with the help of digital marketing tactics. This is where search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click advertising is best leveraged to reach larger audiences.
With one or both online marketing tactics, you can reach a wider audience, albeit with different advantages.
Quick and easy wins are best achieved through paid advertising but may lead you to waste resources if not done correctly. SEO, on the other hand, is a long game but will cost significantly less, while building more durable, organic traffic.
BONUS VIDEO TYPE: Leverage word-of-mouth marketing by posting video testimonials of your services. Numerous studies show that qualified leads are more likely to convert to buyers after watching a positive review video.
Lastly, don’t forget to add your CTAs and contact information. Remember what we discussed in the business cards section? Let’s not lose a sale because a client can’t reach us.
Infographics and data charts
Rapid understanding of information makes our decision-making snappy. This is why infographics and data charts have become increasingly important today.
People need information, and they need to understand it before they start getting distracted by the next piece of content that pops up on their screen. Infographics are the ideal solution for these as they convey complex concepts in a visually appealing and memorable format.
Sarah Jameson, Green Building Elements’s marketing director shares that, in her experience marketing in a real estate-adjacent sector, “infographics distill intricate details about products – or, in this case – a property, neighborhood, or market trends, allowing clients to develop insights and, subsequently, act quickly.”
As an example, take a look at this statistics infographics template from Piktochart.
The example above shows an overview of the statistics around using data visualization in business marketing. To echo Sarah’s point, in real estate, we can use this to communicate various types of information. We can even tailor it for specific target markets.
For instance, a client is particular about community engagement rates in the location of a property. We can present this data similarly in an infographic to give them a quick overview.
I’ve designed many of these for prospective clients who were similarly interested in data like natural disaster statistics of a specific location. Here are my tips when creating one:
Choose the right visuals
Images, icons, and graphics that you incorporate must help tell your story. Try to avoid cluttering your design as these will often end up confusing your client.
Organize information logically
Similarly, we must organize our thoughts to communicate clearly. Using headings, subheadings, and visual cues helps guide your potential clients through the infographic, and will help give breaks in walls of text.
Maintain consistency
My rule of thumb here is to use a maximum of three colors and two fonts. The principle to this is the same as choosing the visuals – avoid confusing clutter. Ensuring consistency creates a cohesive visual experience, reinforces information absorption, and strengthens your brand identity.
Snackable content for social media
Being that we need to capture new clients constantly, another essential type of visual content for real estate agents is our posts on social media sites. Through social media marketing, we aim to promote our properties and attract potential clients by tapping into a larger audience.
These can be in several different formats like static images, photos, videos, gifs, or just text posts about property features, and/or announcements of new properties up for sale. Additionally, we can also expand to a larger audience further with paid social media advertising strategies.
The post from RE/MAX below is an example of how we can use social media channels as an avenue for educating our clients. The post is simple and easy enough to replicate with the help of a few Instagram templates and is a good medium for providing helpful information on location features.
This is an excellent way of subtly implying to prospective clients that you have properties in the location and encouraging them to inquire.
Whatever we aim to communicate or the format, make sure that you are uniquely leveraging your social media content to:
Encourage interaction
Include a CTA in the post to respond, comment, or send a message to your Instagram account. I know this sounds like it should go without saying but we need to tell audiences what they need to do to follow up and take action on their feelings or the new information they’ve received.
On another note, engagements, and interactions on social media can also be used to understand our audiences better. By running polls, surveys, or other data-gathering activities on X or Instagram Stories, we can gauge the level of interest in specific locations and/or properties.
Here’s a poll we ran on the Doorloop Instagram. We know Loopers use our platforms for different purposes. But to better understand what features they love best (and what we can further improve) we asked a simple question like “What’s your favorite Doorloop feature?” to instigate engagement and get direct feedback.
Timed well and posted consistently
This is essential for maximizing engagements, strengthening online presence, and reaching that larger audience on social media platforms. Developing a content calendar will be beneficial in planning and scheduling posts in advance, thereby ensuring that you have a steady stream of content published for your clients.
Another thing to keep in mind is the time of posting. There are optimal days and times when your audience is most active and engaged. Plan your post schedule around these hours so that you can maximize the performance of each piece of content you design.
As real estate professionals, we’re often juggling a dozen different things at a time. Hence, we often end up neglecting our promotional responsibilities. To work around this, it’s best to plan weeks or months of content ahead. Concentrate on their development for a few days, and you’ll have material to schedule for days or weeks at a time.
Track data and iterate
The best thing about creating visual content for social media is that it teaches you what works and what doesn’t. Thanks to the built-in data and analytics tools in these platforms, we gain insight into what types of content work with our audiences.
More importantly, we also learn what properties resonate well with a specific client demographic. Combined, this data allows us to communicate our properties more effectively, and improve upon our current strategies.
BONUS TIP: Make sure that your social media accounts are spotless. By that I mean, it should reflect your real estate branding consistently and contain all the necessary contact information. This conveys professionalism and reliability more than you think.
Final Thoughts
Visual content is a pillar for effective selling in the real estate industry. With them, we give clients a solid perception and understanding of the investment they’re making. This, above all, earns their trust and solidifies our image as trustworthy and reliable realtors among them.
Beyond the goal of selling, we must also strive to provide information to our clients. If we are to truly help them purchase a home where they can build their future, it’s important that we prioritize their needs – making them the focal point of our visual content.
Through visual content, we can inform them of important trends that might affect their purchases. Or show them how a community will be good for their well-being. Show them that this property is ideal for building their future – no matter how they envision it.