Top Real Estate Marketing Plans for Toronto & GTA Agents

Thanks so much for taking the time to read this blog post. I know that as a real estate agent, you are probably very busy, but I guarantee that it will be worth your time. As a property videographer, I understand what realtors need to do when marketing a property online. Many of these marketing plan ideas may seem obvious, but they are often overlooked.

The Rise of Social Media Marketing

The rise of social media has drastically changed real estate marketing strategies everywhere. If you aren’t innovating, you’ll easily fall behind in this highly competitive industry. So, let’s lay out some steps and strategies that have worked for my Niagara and Toronto-based clients, in order to get top dollar for their listings, and sell them fast!

Traditional Marketing vs. Digital Marketing

Let’s start by comparing real estate social media marketing to other methods. Printing and mailing postcards is one method agents have had a hard time leaving in the past. It can be part of a broader marketing campaign for your real estate professional services, but this approach has many issues.

The Challenges of  Real Estate Email Marketing

First, email marketing campaigns cannot be nearly as targeted as social media campaigns. The other issue is that printing and mailing postcards is very expensive and bad for the environment. Open houses are a better tactic than postcards, in my opinion. But compared to online ads, they are incredibly time-consuming.

Advantages of Social Media Marketing

The key thing that distinguishes social media marketing from traditional forms of marketing is that it is searchable and shareable. This means that you get a lot more reach for your marketing dollar, and a lot more people will see your property.

Even if you don’t have a huge following, listing videos on social media can receive thousands of views. Imagine how long it would take to show a property to that many people by traditional means. Choosing the top types of real estate videos can greatly enhance your listing appeal and capture audience attention effectively. You can see how prioritizing social media marketing for your properties can save you time and money, as well as provide better results for you and your clients.

Developing a Unique Real Estate Marketing Strategy

Now let’s get into some of the details of how you should approach your real estate marketing plan online. Let’s be honest, it can be an intimidating endeavour. There are many different platforms, and each has its own rules and best practices. That’s why I’m going to break it all down and provide some step-by-step instructions so you can get the most reach to sell your listing.

Securing Permissions for Online Presence

Before you do anything, you need to have the seller’s permission to list their property online and market their home on social media. This may seem strange, but some sellers don’t want this sort of marketing and prefer to sell it exclusively. If you plan to do online marketing, make sure you have those rights outlined in the listing agreement.

MLS as a Foundation of Real Estate Listings

Now, let's get into marketing your listing with effective strategies for real estate agents. The home base for your listing is your local listing service. Here in Ontario, that is MLS (Multiple Listing Service). This listing contains photos, videos, floor plans, and basic information such as price, square footage, number of bedrooms, etc. In addition to real estate strategies, learning about effective content marketing strategies for Toronto businesses can offer inspiration for engaging diverse audiences

Social Media Platforms and Strategies

Now that we have gone over why social media marketing is so important for your real estate business, let’s take a look at the top platforms you should be utilizing. 

YouTube: The Most Powerful Tool for Real Estate

Let’s start with YouTube, as it’s the platform with the most users, and it is the first choice of many marketing agencies. Uploading your listing video to YouTube isn’t hard, but there are some unique steps you’ll need to take in order to make sure your video reaches the most people.

Ensure you have a catchy title and thumbnail, and remember to include tags to improve your video’s searchability. For thumbnails, you can make them yourself with Photoshop or Canva, or you can hire a designer to help you. These tools can improve your marketing efforts and create visually appealing content. Also, remember to include details about the property in the description. If you want to increase engagement, a pinned comment asking a question to your audience is a great way to encourage that.

How to Reach the Right Audiences on Facebook

Next, let’s talk about Facebook. When posting your listing on Facebook, you’ll want to make at least two posts, one for the video and one for the photos. Just like on YouTube, you should include a thumbnail, description, and tags. Facebook allows for longer-form videos, it also allows for up to 50 photos, but you’ll most likely only need 15 to 20 property pics to show the key selling features of the property. Don’t forget to have external photos as well as internal ones, and you can even include some of the neighborhood and amenities.

Instagram: The Benefits of Visual Storytelling

Lastly, I want to discuss Instagram. This platform is incredibly popular, and users spend a lot of time browsing on it. However, it is limited in ways that YouTube and Facebook are not, and we should discuss these special rules here.

On Instagram, videos are limited to 1 minute, and photos are limited to 10 per post. If you need to show more of the property, consider using a photo collage or including a link to a longer video in your bio. Instagram reels are also a great place to show your property, and this type of content gets a lot more reach than traditional Instagram posts.

Investing in Paid Promotions For Luxury Real Estate Listings

Before we conclude, let's discuss the matter of paid promotion. Of course, you can simply post images and videos of your property online, and it will get some views/comments and maybe even bring in a potential buyer. But if you want more reach, and you want to sell the property faster, paid promotion is available to you.

I recently discussed this matter with one of my clients. They pointed out that if you’re posting your listing on social media, but not promoting it, then you are missing out on a huge opportunity. Their advice was to spend around 100 dollars a day marketing a property that you plan on selling in less than two weeks. To me, this was really enlightening especially when you consider the amount of money you stand to make from commission when you sell the property for top dollar.

Contact Information

Thank you again for reading this blog post. If you have any questions or would like to know more about video marketing for your real estate business, please reach out to Jared today: jared@galaxycreative.ca