Real Estate × Digital Strategy 12 min read

Social Media — Money Drain?

Extracting value for money has always been a challenge. Here's a systematic framework to turn social media from a cost centre into your most powerful real estate sales engine.

So What can be done? →
Framework Overview

How to use social Media to our advantage in the real estate business

It's imperative to understand the social media funnel of real estate

A sales or marketing funnel is the journey that the customer experiences while making a purchase. Depending on the product value the complexity of the funnel may vary but the journey would be similar or steps may get combined. The higher the value of product the more careful we need to be while managing the customer. The other part we need to be mindful — our process maybe as complex at the back end, the customer journey should always be made simpler.

Diagram showing the full social media funnel: awareness, interest, prospecting, call to action, and conversion stages

Fig. 1 — The complete social media funnel for real estate inorganic marketing

The Bigger Picture

A Large opportunity in the current business

Digital awareness spends happens at call to action

Facebook and Instagram understand that well and they then play on the bids — and the business ends up spending more than what would be needed if larger efforts are put into a proper awareness program. It will also reduce ad hoc pressure based decisions which end up to be more harmful than beneficial for the brand.

Its important to mention that the marketing funnel cannot be treated in parts. Each and every part of the funnel has a critical role to play in the success of the digital marketing strategy. So tagging each post with the targeted funnel will help in improving the digital strategy and measuring what is working too.

Let us address each part of the funnel separately.

The sections below walk through each stage in sequence — from cold awareness all the way through to loyalty. Each one has a distinct goal, distinct content strategy, and distinct measurement approach.

Stage 01 Awareness

Awareness

Awareness is like suspecting that a customer might buy — like a cold call. It is as simple as seeking interest towards land as an investment. This is where the process becomes critical and it's not about selling a product. But, about what value we offer as a brand, build trust, and motivate the customer to know more about the brand. It's also important to add that this is where the landing page becomes important, and the content has to be highly engaging.

Diagram showing awareness as the top of the real estate social media funnel — cold audience, brand introduction phase

The awareness stage: building brand familiarity with cold audiences

These are good creatives towards building awareness

Let us just break these two powerful sentences of HOABL (The House of Abhinandan Lodha) brand. Peace of land has lot of value for those who seen how land gets stolen or occupied by anti-social elements. So, peace of land indicates that our land is in safe hands forever. To top it the brand is willing to commit towards liquidity in case of emergency — which too is a powerful commitment. Those who have seen this at the start of the funnel will end up improving the conversion in a large manner.

HOABL creative ad communicating land security and liquidity promise — example of strong awareness-stage content

HOABL example: building trust through liquidity and security promises at the awareness stage

Awareness Goal

Introduce the brand to strangers. Create enough curiosity for them to want to know more. Do NOT sell yet.

What to measure
Impressions Reach CTR Website visits Cost per view

The beauty is that it does not cost much

1.4p
Cost to show one ad
₹1
Cost per website visit
Infographic showing how proper awareness campaigns dramatically reduce cost per lead versus pure performance marketing

Proper awareness funnels reduce overall cost-per-lead significantly

The cost for such campaigns is very low. It costs around 1.4 Paisa to show the ad. Similarly, it costs around Rs. 1 per website visit. So, how do we take it forward?

The answer lies on how well we engage the customer on the website, how good we are in creating content that is of interest to the customer. Finally, building in a strong brand recall. Then leading the customer to take an action.

The important point to mention — these are interest based actions and not necessarily customers that will purchase now. So we cannot pass each and every lead to the sales team but at the same time they cannot be left without proper engagement. So different buckets need to be created based on their intent.

This leads to a proper digital website strategy engaging customers. Finding their needs and intents using SEO and the content they are engaging with.

So how do we segregate a launch and a general awareness program

A general awareness program is an ongoing brand awareness program that would lead to swelling up of cold leads — which can then be effectively used for nurturing and generating quality leads out of them. Get them to latch on our App. Get our email whitelisted so that we do not need to spend on digital marketing to connect with these customers again.

A product based awareness can change to a specific awareness campaign around the components of the product — like a land parcel near Mumbai or Pune, a place to build a second home with all five-star amenities, a getaway from the daily hustle bustle, etc.

Using remarketing on these specific leads to filter the hot leads from the cold ones.

Stage 02 Prospecting

Prospecting is an Art and the crux to any kind of sales

Funnel diagram showing the transition from anonymous website visitor to identified prospect

Converting anonymous visitors into identified, qualified prospects

Getting a person on a website is the easiest part

Getting the interest of a person physically was easier. It took around 30–40 seconds. But, getting a person interested on the internet is tougher. It may drop within a second — a nicely designed website that takes time to upload could lead to vital loss.

Technology part — Use HTML and avoid Javascript in Website Design

First time user have to load the whole page

We make a common error while testing the speed of the page and its performance. We should use two tools to find the performance. Use a tool like pagespeed.web.dev to test the speed and performance; second, test incognito as the whole website gets uploaded. Not to miss — a good host like AWS is definitely beneficial.

Screenshot of PageSpeed Insights showing performance scores for this website — used as a benchmark

PageSpeed Insights benchmark — a well-optimised page loads in under 2 seconds

Stage 03 Interest

Don't Sell Now — Create interest leave a mark

So now that we have got the customer on our page — this is where it becomes interesting and complex. We should never have a single pitch for every customer but the challenge lies on how to segregate the various personas. First we need to make an assumption on what kind of personas are buying the product.

Based on them create different visuals, creatives at the awareness and create different journeys for each one of them. Then use search engine optimization on each journey to identify where the customer or specific personas spent their time, what created interest, what did not, time spent on the page, etc. This is where we create a brand impact, on how we are going to help the customer solve their problems, on how we as a brand are different, why should the customer rely on our brand, why us ultimately.

How to create interest

This is where we need to share to the customer on how we as an organization can support him and add value. The potential customer should feel that the information is valuable and should ask for more information from us. Show the value of our business through content, such as blogs, educational videos, guides and webinars. Answer the questions our customer is searching for. This in turn will bring potential leads to our website, where we will have the opportunity to build more awareness and trust. A combination of educational videos on Youtube, Facebook, Instagram, etc. — leading to our website.

Visual showing the mindset shift from hard selling to building interest and brand recall at the interest stage of the funnel

The interest stage is about brand recall — not product pitching

Diagram showing the call-to-action stage — where warm prospects are converted into active enquiries

Call to actions target warm prospects with specific, intent-driven messaging

Stage 04 Call to Action

Call to Actions

These are our serious prospects or buyers that are looking to purchase our product. These are customers that would be looking for more specific information — considering to purchase from us or from our competitors. This is where our performance campaigns start. It is important to mention that awareness and performance go hand in hand.

Awareness primes the customer. Performance converts them. Running one without the other wastes both.

Stage 05 Prospects & Sources

The prospects and their sources

Prospects are like gold nuggets — treat them well.

Source Quality Conversion
Organic leads
Reached via search without intervention		 Best Clearly defined intent, self-qualified
Through awareness
Nurtured through the full funnel		 High Primed properly — good sales conversion
Through Google Ads
Clear purchase intent		 Good Strong intent, competitive environment
Facebook Performance Campaigns
Push-based ads		 Good Will convert — lowest ratio of the four
Visual metaphor of prospects as gold nuggets — illustrating that qualified leads must be handled with care and personalised engagement

Not all leads are equal — qualifying and treating each source differently protects conversion rate

Stage 06 Remarketing

Important Points for remarketing

The landing pages of performance campaigns should be different and not the same for Google, Facebook and organic — as we end up putting their cookies to capture customer details, which will expose our leads to both Facebook and Google.

Remarketing is very important and helps in keeping the customers that have visited our website engaged. So we should keep remarketing in mind and not share data that is purely ours — or data of Google with Facebook or vice versa.

If we have nurtured the relationship up until this point, customers should feel receptive to being sold to at this stage of the funnel.

Stage 07 Engagement

Engage the customer and measure his engagement

Diagram showing how to engage website visitors — content mapping, heat maps, scroll depth and dwell time tracking

Engagement mapping: understand which content holds attention and which loses it

Engaging is the key

The customer maybe looking for something totally opposite to what we have created, or what we believe is engaging the customer is actually doing the opposite. So how do we find what is engaging the customer? What content, which creative, where is he spending time on the page, etc.

Technology — SEO — Use various tools to identify the engagement of a customer

Funnel of customer website flow

This will help in understanding the customer behavior as well as identify the behaviour of a person making a purchase versus someone who has come from a future intent to a customer who has just come for window shopping without any purchase intent. The tool should finally be able to tell you which video was viewed the most, how much time was spent reading an article or a particular paragraph, static image viewed or carousel. Based on the customer monitoring we should be in a position to align content for those who are purchasing.

Screenshot of SEO and analytics tools used to track customer engagement — heatmaps, session recordings, scroll depth

Tools like Hotjar, GA4, and SEMrush reveal exactly how customers behave on your website

What is engagement

"Engaging" content is content that entices people to take some kind of action. This is a problem because it makes it nearly impossible to determine whether one's content is successful in driving engagement. And most of us know the saying — "What gets measured, gets managed." But, still we need to put in KPIs in place to measure performance.

Social likes Follows Comments Pageviews Unique visitors Time on page Bounce rate Pages per session Page scroll depth New vs returning Conversion rate
Dashboard showing digital marketing KPIs for real estate — likes, pageviews, bounce rate, and conversion rate

Key performance indicators to track at each stage of the funnel

Stage 08 Prime the Customer

Prime The Customer — Need Identification

Journey map showing how to prime a potential buyer based on their identified need — investment, second home, or legacy property

Priming maps content to the customer's specific buying motivation

Once the customer has shown an intent to purchase we should start with helping the customer identify his needs. We could create a detailed journey for his different needs of investment, wealth creation, second home, legacy, etc.

Deep Dive

Need Identification

The defined needs and the latent needs

Need identification is used to identify what the customer is looking for, what are his pain points, what are the problems that he is trying to solve and his motivations to make a purchase. This will help create value of our product to the customer. Further, the information gathered will help create a customised offer, pitch and will help in reduced negotiation in turn improving sales conversion.

Simple Ways to identify needs

Have you yourself made a similar purchase?

This could be a nice way to understand what needs your actual customer would have. Your own behavior and experience towards purchasing the product could help identify the needs better. Some of the questions that could be addressed are: "Why did I buy the product what did I look to achieve through the product?" "What motivated me to buy the product?" "Why did I buy this product over other competitor product available in the market?" "What other options were available?"

Observation is really important

At times just observing the behavior of other people is sufficient. Keep observing them on why they bought a product and what needs did it fulfill — as they may have totally different needs to what you had. That's one of the reason why everyone buys a different product. Like a second house need is totally different to that of investment. The questions and the problems both of these types of customer would be very different. So you may even start with different creatives for both these customers.

Customer Insighting is another effective manner

Customer insighting of our existing customer is useful in finding more reasons, needs and what motivated them to purchase our product over other competitors product. Similarly customer that did not buy from us could help us make understand on why they went with competitors and what different needs that we could not address. Some questions that could help: "What prompted to buy our product?" "What problem were you trying to resolve?" "When did you really decide that you needed land?" "What other options did you see before making the purchase?" "What made you buy our product ultimately?"

Defined vs latent needs: the deeper motivation often drives the final purchase decision

These are points you need to use for priming the customer

For example: A customer looking for a second house journey should be primed starting with creatives showing a second home in the awareness program, taking the customer to a landing page focused on the second home, solving problems related to a second house, etc.

Setup for a digital sales presentation — studio lighting, camera framing, and screen sharing for remote property walkthroughs

A well-produced digital presentation converts better than a physical site visit

The Conversion Moment

The digital Sales presentation — An experience to remember

Why a digital presentation is better?

There are various aspects that need to be addressed while handling the objection. It should start with a question — why do you need to visit the plot and travel when we can share every aspect online? Create a presentation that creates awe. The presenter should be visible on the screen along with the presentation. Create trust, create a studio effect, no noise, good and clear video, good lighting, 360 degree images, payment on our website, etc.

Studio-quality video 360° imagery On-screen presenter Good lighting Zero background noise Website payment
Closing the Loop

The final sales steps

Order, Keeping the customer engaged and Loyalty business

These steps are large subjects in themselves and hence I would cover them in another post. The journey from order confirmation through post-purchase engagement and loyalty-building completes the cycle — turning a one-time buyer into a brand ambassador who fuels the awareness stage once again.

The funnel is not linear. A delighted customer feeds awareness for the next. Every closed deal is the start of a new cycle.

Illustration of the final stages of a real estate sale — order, post-purchase engagement, and loyalty programme activation

Order → Engagement → Loyalty → Advocacy: completing the full cycle

Continue Reading

Explore the full Sviva Digital Framework

Organic Growth
Search Engine Optimization
Read article → Video Strategy
Youtube strategy
Read article → Automation
Chatbot
Read article →