The real estate industry is constantly evolving, and staying on top of the latest marketing trends is essential for success. 2022 was a highly successful year for pretty much everyone involved in the real estate industry, especially here at SM Digital Partners, where we helped our real estate developer partners close over $50 million dollars in luxury real estate transactions.

The fantastic response and growth of the real estate industry brought forth new concepts and marketing trends, as well as ideas for real estate digital marketing. Initially, the adoption rate of digital marketing was very slow, which now they are the latest and most popular trends in helping to sell real estate.

Being able to drive your marketing message to an audience that wants to see your message creates a much more targeted and engaged audience that will hopefully lead to a real estate sale!

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First of all, what is a Digital Marketing Report?

Marketing reporting is the process of gathering and analyzing marketing data to create an informative report. Typically a document, or it could be a digital dashboard, a marketing report combines data from multiple marketing channels, like Google Pay per Click, Facebook, TikTok, your local newspaper or print journal, ideally in real-time, and shows the overall performance results of your marketing strategy, whether it’s local, regional, national or global.

Why is it important?

The goal of a digital marketing report is to inform future marketing decisions, strategies, and performance. Well built, real-time and accurate digital marketing reports identify meaningful, actionable insights and allow you to take action accordingly.

Got it. But, what’s the purpose?

The purpose of your marketing report is to understand whether the marketing strategies you currently use are going in the right direction and how to further improve them. The scope of the report can vary depending on the subject matter and the number of platforms you are collecting your data from. 
 
 

Okay. So Why Again Should I Use A Digital Marketing Report?

  • Encourages Better Marketing Decisions –

 
For example, you’ll be able to tell whether your Google Ad spend is profitable, or you’re spending too much on your social media strategy and need to change course or stop it all together.
 
  • Establishes Benchmarks for Performance –

You’ll see what channels are working well – and which aren’t – so you’ll know what your target benchmark is when you look to new digital marketing channels or campaigns.
 
  • Keeps your Marketing Budget On Budget

A well structured report will tell you how much you’ve spent each day, week month and quarter and should keep you from overspending.
 
 

In Sum – What We’ve Learned

Many clients come to us after realizing their reports are either not correct, not real time, or simply non-existent. But the facts are clear. In order to responsibly manage your marketing budgets, you must have access to marketing reports that give you accurate, insightful and immediate data so that you can grow your business optimally and intelligently.

Many businesses have experienced huge returns by investing in email marketing campaigns. Recently, marketers have seen the rise of other digital marketing channels like social media marketing and content marketing.

But companies should still invest in their email marketing platforms. 80% of American consumers have email and check it at least once a day. Businesses that invest in email marketing enjoy an average ROI of 4,200%.  So they earn $42 for every dollar invested in email marketing services.

This is a huge potential market that you can’t afford to miss out on. Keep reading to learn more about email marketing platforms and their benefits.

What Are Email Marketing Platforms?

An email marketing platform is a type of software that helps users effectively send out emails to a mailing list. Businesses have hundreds of email subscribers. So it would be inefficient to manually send out emails one subscriber at a time.

Email marketing software allows you to send out hundreds of emails at the touch of a button. Email marketing platforms also help you to track the open and read rates of each email. These platforms also have tools that enable you to segment your mailing lists and track leads throughout their buying journey.

Key Benefits of Email Marketing Platforms

There are multiple reasons for investing in the right email marketing platform. Below are the benefits of using an email marketing platform.

1. Increase Sales 

The main reason why businesses invest in any kind of marketing is to increase revenue. Well, email marketing provides the highest ROI out of all the marketing tools out there. Marketers that use targeted sales emails have reported sales increases of up to 760%.

Why does email marketing work so well? First, most people prefer communicating with brands via email. So, it is easier to get their attention and win their trust that way. Also, by clicking on the subscribe button and staying on your email list, subscribers show that they trust you.

Subscribers would be more willing to buy from an email from you than a random company advertising on social media. You can also use email to sell to buyers that have abandoned their carts. Email can help silence the objections they had when they decided not to buy.

2. Communicate With Your Audience and Add Value

Another benefit of email marketing platforms is that they allow you to communicate regularly with your audience. Your email subscribers have a need or pain point that you speak to, otherwise, they wouldn’t have subscribed to you.

For instance, someone that has subscribed to a fitness company’s mailing list is looking for ways to get fit and healthy. They’ll enjoy receiving emails from you that are full of valuable tips on how they can live a fit lifestyle. If they get all the information they need from your email, they won’t feel the need to search social media pages or Google for the information you are providing them with.

When you do decide to sell a product, they will be eager to buy from you because of the trust you have built with them through previous emails. Yes, you can communicate with your audience through your website or social media platforms. But you won’t be able to write long messages or speak as freely as you can via email.

3. Keep Full Rights Over Your Content and Mailing List

Email marketing platforms give you full ownership over your mailing list as well as any content you post on your emails. Many modern marketing platforms belong to big digital firms like Meta and Google. So, any marketing content you post on social media is owned by the social media platform.

Anything you post on their platforms has to adhere to their content rules or your post may be taken down. The platform also owns your account as well as your list of followers so they can decide to shut down your account.

Hundreds of social media influencers have lost all their content and followers overnight after a social media platform decided to shut down their accounts. The influencers started scrambling for ways to reconnect with their audience and send them messages.

The lesson learned from these experiences is that every business owner must have their own mailing list that they fully control. This is possible when you invest in email marketing services.

4. Create Targeted Content

One of the main benefits of email marketing tools is that they help you to personalize the emails sent out to your subscribers. For instance, you can add a personalized greeting to each email whereby you salute each subscriber by their first name. Or you can send emails referencing current events in the different locations that your subscribers come from.

Personalized marketing campaigns get much higher returns than generic campaigns. Statistics show that emails that include the name of the recipient in the subject line get opened more frequently than those that don’t.

Successful email marketing occurs when the right information is sent out to the right audience at the right time. Email marketing software allows you to send the right information to subscribers that are at different stages of your marketing funnel.

New subscribers may get informational welcome emails whereas repeat customers may get instructional emails about how to use their purchased products or services.

5. Increase Traffic to Your Site

Email marketing platforms are a great tool to increase traffic to your site. There are over a billion websites on the internet, each competing for the attention of your audience. Unless you promote your site content you will never get any traffic and your site won’t feature on the first pages of search engines.

Email marketing platforms can help increase the visibility of your site by sending an email to your list whenever you release or update content. When subscribers click on your site link on the promotion emails your site statistics and SEO ratings will improve.

Take Advantage of the Benefits of Using Email Marketing Platforms

Email is still one of the best ways to communicate with your target audience. Email marketing platforms have one of the best ROIs in the industry. They also allow you to own your content and mailing list, so you never have to worry about losing the subscribers you have worked so hard to get.

For more information about email marketing tools or to get help with your digital marketing, contact us today for assistance.

Local maps marketing is a critical component of any successful local marketing strategy. Maps and navigation tools are used by almost anyone looking for a specific destination or address. What’s more, online maps are ubiquitous tools in virtually every mobile device. People use local maps to find businesses, buy products or use services, find specific attractions and explore a geographical area.

In other words, we are constantly connected to our maps and navigation tools, making it a very important marketing tool for every business. Let’s delve deeper into the details of local online marketing and see how you can implement it into your campaigns.

Also, if you truly want to understand Local Marketing in depth we have prepared this useful information on Local SEO.

In this article, we will discuss the following:

 

How to do Local Maps Optimization?

How to do Local Maps Marketing

What is Local Maps Marketing

Google consistently ranks local businesses higher in its SERPs. Whenever you search for something, Google will firstly display local results. This is obviously very important for anyone looking for a plumber in Florida, for instance, and Google knows it. In order to be visible in the search results, businesses have to work on their local maps SEO. Here’s how to do it:

  • Keeping your NAP consistent – your Name, Address, and Phone number, abbreviated as NAP, is one of the most important factors in your Google Maps optimization strategy. It’s the first thing the search engine and your customers come across when searching for a local service. Accuracy is very important: try to pay attention to your NAP across all platforms – your website, Google My Business, and Google Maps. According to Google, mismatched NAP details have been one of the major causes for low rankings.
  • Collecting reviews – every business should focus on collecting reviews on multiple platforms. Each platform has different restrictions and requirements, so pay attention to your profile settings and information. Rest assured, Google will pick up most reviews and your local visibility will grow.
  • Creating local content – local rankings are influenced by locally specific content, so try to create include geo-tagged photos, locally relevant videos and blog posts for your Posts on Google and Google My Business profiles. Similarly, include your locally specific content in your social media profiles. Make sure all your online profiles are optimized for local search and are relevant for a specific geographic location.


How to Get Listed on Google Maps?

Getting listed on Google Maps is the first thing you need to do for your local advertising strategy. The whole process is simple and you can get it done in just under an hour. Here are the steps you’ll need to follow:

  • Start Google My Business – go to www.google.com/business to get started. Here, hit the Start button and log in with your Google account. If you don’t have one, hit the Create account button.
  • Add and claim your business – after you sign in, you are taken to the main Google My Business page where you can edit your Google Local Map listing and claim your business (if it already exists in the directory) or add it. Check if your business is already in the directory by searching for it in the search box. If you find it, check if the information is accurate and claim it. If you don’t find it, you’ll have to manually add it in a separate form.
  • Filling out your information – pay close attention to this step; include your NAP as it appears on your other online profiles (website and social media platforms). For instance, if you use “blvd” instead of “boulevard”, use the same version everywhere. Next, choose a category that best describes your business.
  • Verifying your business – as soon as you’re done, Google will send a postcard with a verification PIN to your email inbox.
  • Confirming your business – confirm the email from Google and include any additional details in your profile, like photos, opening hours and your logo. This will encourage people to leave reviews and rate your business.
  • Check and update your information – review the information you provided and make sure every detail is accurate. You are good to go!

 

How to rank in Google Maps?

How to Rank On Google Maps

Getting in the top positions, also known as the 3-pack, on Google Maps can immensely boost your traffic and visibility. Let’s see how you can rank higher in Google Maps and blow your competition out of the water:

  • Make sure you pick the right categories – sometimes, the categories listed may not be right for your business. Try to match your main keyword with your primary category. Search for your main keyword together with a major city on Google and copy the most common ones. Also, make sure to use the secondary category feature in order to increase your reach.
  • Build local citations and get reviews – use SEO services from your Agency to help you get citations back to your business. Directories, review platforms, associations, and other aggregators are your best friends when it comes to citations.
  • Get local social signals – social media is becoming increasingly important for ranking on Google local search. Make sure you use the major social media platforms to your advantage and get shares, likes, and comments from local people and businesses. This will make you an instantly recognizable player in the community
  • Create press releases – having a press release focused on your business shows you are a professional and an authority in your industry. There are multiple press release services online and they are quite affordable. Ideally, you should launch a press release whenever you implement new features or launch special offers.

How to mark your Business on Google Maps?

Mark your business on Google Maps

How to Mark your Business on Google Maps

Pinpointing your exact address on Google Maps will help your customers find your store more easily. Here’s how to do it:

  • Sign into your Google My Business profile
  • Open the location you want to mark
  • Hit the Address button and check if it’s correct
  • On the map, you’ll see a red pin; drag it to the precise location of your business;
  • Once you are sure of the location, click Apply

Note: your location may be reviewed by Google. Wait for 2 to 3 days to see the changes in Google Maps.

About 80% of new leads never translate into sales. Without a strong lead nurturing campaign strategy, you could miss the chance to convert leads into paying customers.

Before you can nurture your leads, however, you need to make sure you’ve optimized your strategy for generating leads. Otherwise, your business may never grow. Unfortunately, about 65% of marketers struggle with lead generation.

Are you struggling to generate leads for your business? Read on for the top five tips you need to generate leads through your marketing campaign strategy today!

1. Update Your Website

In order to set your lead nurturing campaign up for success, you first need to consider your target audience. How are consumers finding your brand online?

Chances are, they’re visiting your website to learn more about your products and services. They’ll also review your site to determine if you’re a credible resource. Without brand credibility, consumers might not trust your brand.

If they feel like they can’t trust you, they won’t convert into a lead or sale.

Update your website to provide consumers with the information they need to learn more about your business. Make sure your website is fast, secure, and mobile-optimized, too. Use Google’s Core Web Vitals to improve the user experience (UX) on your site as well.

A well-designed website will function as the backbone of your remaining digital marketing strategy. Without it, you won’t generate leads.

For example, a negative UX will cause people to leave your site without exploring your pages or blog content. When they leave, your bounce rate will begin to increase. A high bounce rate can hurt your search engine optimization (SEO) or pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns.

Instead, make sure your site is easy to navigate and use.

Consider how you’re converting visitors into leads as well. For example, perhaps you’re using a form, pop-up, or click-to-call button. Make sure each conversion opportunity is easy to complete.

You can condense your forms by requesting essential details (name, phone number, email address) only. Make sure the pop-ups you use don’t intrude on the user’s online experience.

2. Create Personalized Content

Creating personalized website content can help you show consumers you understand their needs. It will also allow you to empathize with the problems they’re facing. Then, you can become the consumer’s go-to resource for help.

After reading your content, they might feel more inclined to reach out, allowing you to generate more leads. Your personalized content will benefit your lead nurturing strategy, too. You can continue offering consumers helpful advice and insights on an ongoing basis.

In order to create personalized content, first gather keyword and audience research.

If you’re targeting more than one consumer group, create distinct buyer personas. Imagine each persona as a real customer. Determine their age, gender, income, marital status, and other demographic details.

Research psychographics like the pain points they’re facing, buying behaviors, interests, and hobbies, too.

As you define each buyer persona, gather keyword research to determine what they search for to find your offerings or content online. Then, create content that aligns with their existing needs.

About 74% of consumers get annoyed when web content doesn’t align with their interests, causing them to leave. Over 50% will leave your brand for another if your content doesn’t match their interests.

Another 50%, however, will pay more for products and services once brands provide personally relevant content. Your ROI could improve by eight times while sales could lift by 10%.

3. Use SEM

Once you start creating content for your blog, optimize it. Search engine optimization is a type of search engine marketing (SEM). You can use SEO to improve your organic rankings on search engine result pages.

A strong SEO marketing campaign will help you generate brand awareness, website traffic, and leads. It can also help you nurture your existing leads. Remember, consumers will continue coming back to your site for help or information.

Add a strong call to action at the end of each blog post to convert those readers into customers.

PPC advertising is a form of SEM, too. You can create PPC ads that will appear on Google, websites, or social media platforms.

Use remarketing ads to appear in front of people who previously visited or converted on your website. Appearing in front of these consumers will help you nurture recent leads and existing customers.

4. Know How to Nurture

Once you use your marketing campaigns to generate quality leads, develop your lead nurturing campaign.

First, use targeted content to nurture each buyer persona based on where they are in the sales funnel. Provide these leads with the information they need to make a buying decision.

Develop an omnichannel lead nurturing campaign to appeal to consumers at different touchpoints. Consider:

  • Marketing automation
  • Email marketing
  • Paid remarketing
  • Dynamic website content
  • Direct sales outreach
  • Social media marketing

You can automate many of these processes to nurture your leads.

Make sure you follow up with each lead you generate in a timely manner (either by email or phone). Then, you can convert more inbound leads into qualified sales!

5. Hire an Agency

If you’re struggling to develop a successful lead nurturing campaign, hire an experienced digital marketing agency. They’ll ensure you’re using the most effective techniques for lead generation and nurturing.

Their techniques could improve your ROI over time. Improving your ROI will help your business grow, setting you up for success without stress.

Fresh Leads: Strengthen Your Lead Nurturing Campaign Strategy Today

Remember, to develop a strong lead nurturing campaign strategy, you first need a strategy for generating quality leads. Use these five easy tips to set your marketing campaigns up for success. As you begin generating and nurturing leads, your ROI will improve.

A strong marketing campaign can help your business experience lasting growth!

Need help strategizing? We’re here for you!

Book a free consultation with our team today to discover how we can help!

5 Web Development Consulting Tips for 2022

The latest web design and development trends in 2022 are the key to success. Learn what they are and how to get web development consulting here.

If trends continue, there will soon be more websites on this planet than people! At the last count, there were almost two billion websites worldwide. And ambitious new entrepreneurs are sending those numbers skyrocketing.

As exciting as these numbers sound, they also pose a challenge to business owners.

How do you do something different and stand out from the crowd? How do you get customers to bookmark your website when there are thousands of others?

Keeping a close on web trends is one way you can do that.

And using professional web development consulting to help you apply those trends to your business is another. Here’s what you need to know about the top website consulting tips in 2022.

1. Mobile-Friendly Becomes Mobile Beautiful

Mobile-friendly web development used to be the buzzword in web development and SEO. The thinking behind this was that you built your website for desktop and then tweaked it, so it still worked without issue on a small mobile screen.

Mobile technology has advanced so significantly that the number of mobile users as a percentage of all web traffic has increased. Mobile is no longer an emergency option to view a website on your phone; it’s a daily leisure activity.

So what does this mean in terms of web development trends? It means you must develop something more innovative, intuitive, and user-friendly for mobile. It should be a feature, not an after-thought.

That means having more images and video, large font, and a beautiful web design. It also means implementing apps and tools such as Google maps and chatbots to get a fully interactive experiment.

It also means having sophisticated payment integration. That way, mobile users can rely on one-touch technology like Apple Pay for a fast and efficient checkout procedure on an eCommerce website.

2. Personalization

Personalization has always sat at the cutting-edge end of website development. That’s because advanced personalization can directly impact a company’s ability to generate more revenue.

Encountering content and products you like when visiting a website will encourage you to stick around and tempt you to buy.

Personalization is still a big trend as technology companies create tools and apps for website owners.

So if you are considering web development consulting, think about what type of personalization you could incorporate onto your website. Some ideas might include:

  • Personalized headlines and welcome messages
  • Personalized video presentations on the homepage
  • Featured content or recommended posts
  • Featured products or product discount offers
  • Personalized lead magnets to get people on your email list

Personalization is a fun, exciting, and valuable area to explore as a website owner. So read up on ways to provide a richer experience to your website visitors and see what potential it can offer your company.

3. Chatbots

You’ve probably noticed a surge in chatbots when visiting commercial websites. They’ll usually appear in the bottom right of the page, asking if you need any assistance.

Chatbots are more than a customer service tool. They can help visitors with questions and navigation, but they have another valuable use as a business: web advertising.

Modern chatbot technology can help move customers through a series of exchanges designed to get them interested in the business through their sales funnel journey.

You can design these exchanges as a sequence of micro-commitments for the user to encounter, slowly bringing them forward to the offer you want to present.

Chatbot technology will continue to advance and become more human-like in the next few years, so it’s a trend you’ll want to monitor.

Chatbots are also a great way of providing a more personalized experience to visitors when they first land on your website. Customers enjoy having the one-to-one assistance that helps them get the most out of a website.

4. Data and Privacy

Data is going through a tricky series of growing pains at the moment. For years, companies have harvested user data and used that information for sales and marketing purposes.

Governments globally are starting to limit this through laws. They’ve designed these regulations to ensure businesses seek explicit permission from visitors when they land on your website (the EU’s GDPR is the perfect example).

That means you need to have a more upfront interaction with your customers if you want to continue using advanced analytics. There’s lots of good technology you can add to websites now to help you seek permission.

Still, it’s also worth hiring a copywriter who can turn this rather mundane but necessary process into a friendlier and more engaging interaction with your site visitors.

You’ll also want to ensure that you use that information effectively in your business if you capture data.

In other words, if you want someone’s permission to log their location, ensure you capitalize on that by providing geo-relevant content to that visitor. People are more likely to hand over personal data when they feel they are getting a benefit.

5. App-Style Design

You may have noticed a trend for newer websites to interact with you like an app.

Apps have had a lot of success in recent years by employing a step-by-step welcome sequence to visitors to help lead a customer through a sales funnel.

Now some companies are trying this exact model on their website to help turn site visitors into a customer. For some websites, this model will be basic.

It might be as simple as gathering the visitor’s email address before browsing the rest of the site.

For others, this could be a more sophisticated model, where the customer completes a form or questionnaire to help introduce them to the service or product.

Subscription businesses like the styling website Lookiero are an excellent example of this.

Five Website Development Consulting Tips

If you want to get ahead with your website in 2022, use these tips as your starting point.

Don’t stand still in this competitive and rapidly changing world. Get ahead of your competition today by applying creativity and technological innovation to your website.

You can start your journey today by getting in touch with our team. Book a free chat with our specialists, and we can give you our recommendations for your business.

Book a Free Consultation.

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