text: Off plan real estate marketing can be a challenge considering you are marketing a property that is still in the development stage. Essentially, you are creating a marketing strategy to promote and sell an unconstructed property. The process may be hard, but through smart content creation and a variety of digital transformation tools, the process becomes easier to manage, market and sell.
  The best way to manage your off plan real estate marketing efforts is through marketing automation and sales automation. This technology is designed to improve your efficiency as a marketer, eliminate manual tasks and streamline recurring marketing and sales activities. This ensures that no potential lead falls through the cracks and your sales team has all the information they require to qualify a sales ready lead.
  So, what is marketing automation and how can it improve your off plan real estate sales?
  What is Marketing Automation?
  Marketing automation is the mechanisation of marketing tasks using transformative technology and helps marketing professionals effectively market on multiple digital channels from a single place. Sales automation is also a part of this technology, and refers to the mechanisation of time-consuming sales tasks, artificial intelligence and related online tools. Essentially, these automations tools are designed to manage marketing and sales responsibilities.
  This is especially important in the off plan real estate industry as sales representatives are able to spend more time with sales qualified leads as opposed to wasting resources contacting leads who are simply in the research stage of the buying cycle. Marketing automation allows your marketing team to keep an eye on these stages, ensuring they pass on sales qualified leads to sales representatives when the time is right. All of this is done via digital marketing tracking, analytics, lead scoring and more.
  The Benefits of Marketing Automation for Off Plan Real Estate
  - Aligns sales and marketing teams
  - Increases marketing and sales performance
  - Marketing content reaches the right audience, at the right time, with the right message.
  - Accelerates sales
  - Ensures no leads are missed
  - Reduces lead and customer response time
  - Stores customer data in a single place making it easily accessible to sales reps and marketing teams
  Now that we have an understanding of what marketing automation is and how it can benefit your off plan real estate sales efforts, let’s take a look at how you can make it work for your business.
  Marketing Automation Strategy and Processes
  Before we dive into marketing automation processes, it is important to understand what Inbound Marketing is and how it plays a role in all these processes. The inbound marketing methodology is designed to attract potential customers by creating valuable content that is tailored to their specific needs and where they are within the buying cycle.
  By developing your off plan real estate marketing efforts around this methodology, you have the ability to create an automated marketing and content strategy that reaches the right person, at the right time, with the right message. The marketing automation process is designed around this philosophy and the tools offered by Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems make all of this possible. HubSpot is the platform that solidified this methodology and it provides the tools listed below that make your inbound marketing processes run smoothly - which in turn, increases sales.
  Below, we take a look at how HubSpot Marketing Automation can better your off-plan real estate marketing efforts.
  Content Marketing and Lead Magnets
  Marketing Automation software such as HubSpot allows you to manage all your marketing efforts from a single location. This means your marketing team is able to create, distribute, publish and track all marketing campaigns through the platform. The platform houses all your marketing efforts, from social media marketing, search engine optimisation (helping your website be found online), blogging, pay-per-click advertising and more.
  However, content marketing is one of the most important elements when it comes to off plan real estate marketing. With strong content marketing you are able to show your audience what your development has to offer and provide them with all the information they require, while generating leads and capturing necessary data.
  But how do you capture lead data through content marketing? This is done by using a marketing automation tactic referred to as a lead magnet. A lead magnet refers to a free service or item that is given away to a website visitor for the purpose of collecting contact details. For example: you can offer an in-depth e-book that provides your audience with important information related to real estate investment. In order for your audience to gain access to this information, they will have to insert their information into a lead form, giving way for the free download. A marketing automation system will then collect this information and store it in a lead database.
  That’s all well and good, but how do you continue the conversation with these leads? And more importantly, how do you continue the conversation without wasting marketing or sales team time?
  Lead Tracking and Nurturing
  As real estate companies adopt the inbound marketing strategy as a way to generate quality leads, it is important that there is an effective lead nurturing strategy in place to keep your property top of mind at all times. You see, the leads you gain through content marketing, website optimization and social media are (in most cases) not immediately ready to make a property purchase. This is a big decision and you need to nurture them, build trust and gently guide them through the buyer's journey.
  It is important to remember that all leads are different and you need to create lead nurturing strategies specifically for individual leads. This is why it is vital you develop highly targeted content. In order to implement this successfully you need to understand each of your leads unique buyer personas and where they are within the buying cycle. With this information at hand, you can create a variety of targeted marketing content that is designed to nurture each of your personas based on how they found your business, their characteristics, interests, objectives and more.
  By investing in a marketing automation platform such as HubSpot, you are able to use transformative tools to help your marketing team identify, track, segment and target your leads.
  So, how do you get your lead nurturing content to your leads?
  Email Automation for Lead Nurturing
  One of the most powerful lead nurturing tactics is email marketing. This continues to be one of the most effective tools for sales acquisition however, it is vital that these emails are personalized. If this process is done manually, it is time-consuming, overwhelming and leads fall through the cracks. This is why email personalization and automation is key - especially in the off plan real estate industry when your marketing and sales teams are busier than most.
  Marketing automation platforms such as HubSpot allow for the automation, segmentation and personalization of emails. Through this software your marketing team is able to send triggered emails.
  For example: when a website visitor downloads your content and supplies their contact information in order to do so. This shows the visitor that you offer a hands on service, and they feel “seen” because they are seen. In the example given, your email automation will deliver a welcome email, giving the lead more information about your service offering while supplying helpful content to direct them to take a specific action or lead them through the buying cycle. It is important to note that this email will be personalised, using the contacts name and sending content relevant to the lead.
  The power of personalization and behavioural triggered emails helps you deliver the right message, to the right person, at the right time. And this drives the lead nurturing process, helping you track the viewer and pinpoint when they have become sales-qualified leads. Your marketing team can then pass their information on to the sales team, ensuring no wasted time and of course, increased sales.
  But how can marketing automation help your teams identify sales qualified leads?
  Lead Scoring with Marketing Automation
  Lead scoring is the act of assigning “values” to every lead you generate for your organization. The score helps your marketing and sales teams prioritize leads. There are a variety of ways to score your leads, and this is usually attributed to how they have engaged with your website or social platforms, their professional information, online behaviour and characteristics.
  The process of lead scoring, as stated previously, helps your sales and marketing teams understand the priority of leads through this process, allowing them to respond to them appropriately and at the right time. This hands on, automated and analytical approach to marketing and sales alignment ultimately makes way for greater property sales.
  Through a CRM like HubSpot, you are able to implement lead scoring by assigning numeric values based on certain user behaviour, conversions and social media engagement. Once a leads score identifies them as sales-qualified, their details will be handed over to your property sales representative who will then be able to follow up with the lead via a phone call, whatsapp message or email. Think about it like this: it is far more effective for your sales representatives or real estate agent to make a well planned and timely call to an inbound lead, than spamming unqualified leads with cold calls.
  The Wrap Up
  The above outlines just a few benefits of marketing automation for off plan real estate sales. By using marketing automation tools to capture, nurture, analyse and qualify leads, you ensure that your off plan real estate representatives will only engage with only the highest quality leads. This in turn, leads to increased sales.
  Marketing automation and sales automation has changed the game for the real estate industry and has turned real estate marketing on its head. Rather than constructing expensive billboards or creating print ads that reach potentially unqualified leads, inbound marketing places emphasis on getting your message to quality leads who are already looking for what you are offering.
  As opposed to traditional off plan real estate marketing that “pushes” sales on a less targeted audience, inbound marketing automation is a form of “pull marketing” that is designed to reach a highly targeted audience. And thanks to Customer Relationship Management software such as HubSpot, this tactic is scalable and measurable - which makes for great returns.
  How We Can Help
  Nexa is proud to be a Diamond-tiered HubSpot Partner and this places us in the top 2% of HubSpot Partners globally.
  If you are interested in implementing marketing automation and sales automation processes for your off plan real estate business, we are here to help. Our experience in Real Estate marketing stems from our work with CBRE, JLL, Savills, Sotheby's, DAMAC Properties and countless other agencies and real estate developments. Contact us today for more information and to learn more about our offerings.