The most powerful way to improve your marketing is to bolster every part of the digital marketing ecosystem, building a relationship between each element that communicates well with one another.
Vermont Real Estate Company is a full-service real estate brokerage with offices in Downtown Burlington, the Mad River Valley, and Stowe. It was founded in 2016 by co-owners Kara Koptiuch and Bryce Gilmer. Just one year later, in 2017, Vermont Real Estate Company turned to LONDONmiddlebury to build a Wix-based website and promptly incorporated social media management. We expanded our role to cover everything marketing, continuing to grow alongside the brokerage as they grew to a brokerage of 27 agents.
We started with a brand discovery workshop to kick off the relationship. This gave us the opportunity to align goals and hear from the partners about where they’d like to be over the next one, three, and five years. From there, we worked together to develop customer personas and define brand values. This information propelled the creation of the new website.
The website was originally Wix-based, later moving to a real-estate-specific platform, PropertyBase. The website needed to be a highly-functional hub for real estate listings as well as a resource to potential buyers and sellers in the state of Vermont. We placed special emphasis on search engine optimization (SEO), tailoring website pages to incorporate relevant keywords and developing area profiles and blogs to direct more traffic to the website.
The area profiles are a perfect resource for people searching for a new home in Vermont—it gives them a snapshot of the area they’re interested in and allows them to easily browse available listings there. The blog shows Vermont Real Estate Company’s thought leadership about both real estate and Vermont, giving readers confidence that the agents can help them find the perfect home for them.
We continue to manage and update Vermont Real Estate Company’s website, adding new agents, making sure information is up-to-date, creating new and relevant pages, and connecting with PropertyBase support if there are glitches or issues with the site.
The social media accounts also feature listing updates indicating when a listing is brand new, sold, coming soon, or has a change in price. These listings are spontaneous, but we stay on top of them to provide the brokerage’s followers with the most relevant information.
In addition to brainstorming and executing content ideas, we also monitor comments and messages, interacting with people on both social media accounts to foster engagement and build a relationship with followers.
After the success of the website and social media, Vermont Real Estate Company asked LONDONmiddlebury to manage all marketing efforts. The development of the marketing ecosystem started with a marketing strategy, focusing on brand awareness and lead generation. We determined that, in addition to social media, the marketing strategy should include digital advertising, email marketing, print advertising and collateral, as well as public relations efforts.
We implemented Meta, Google Search, and Google Display digital advertising strategies for Vermont Real Estate Company. On Meta, we focus on video content, creating “Featured Listing” videos one week after a listing has been on the market. The Google Search ads focus on specific keywords that support personalized conversion goals. Google Display ads, on the other hand, appear as banners and boxes on websites, apps, and videos within the Google Display Network, targeting potential home buyers and sellers on relevant websites.
Email marketing is one of the most valuable ways to nurture leads and audience members. For Vermont Real Estate Company, we distribute a monthly newsletter that includes blogs, resources, company updates, recent market statistics, and recent listings. We also send out a quarterly internal newsletter to all agents, sharing recent highlights and applicable resources.
Beyond our consistent newsletter strategy, we also share email blasts and automated sequences as needed. Our templates allow agents to reach out their clients in a streamlined and seamless way, whether they want to share a new listing or a reduced price on a listing. Email blasts also give us the opportunity to share communications about special listings and updates about the brokerage.
Email automations allow us to nurture potential leads, letting potential buyers and sellers know Vermont Real Estate Company is thinking about them without giving agents the hassle of communicating on a consistent schedule.
While digital marketing is an extremely valuable tool, it’s important to consider the value of print advertising and collateral. Vermont Real Estate Company’s ads in local newspapers and magazines are a great way to connect with potential buyers and sellers. When it comes to real estate, nurturing relationships is a must; our agent-specific mailers and annual holiday cards are a perfect example. These are a physical touchpoint that remind past customers who they worked with, and who they should work with in the future if they decide to buy or sell a home.
In addition to online resources through our blog, we also developed multiple physical resources, like our Buyer’s Guide and Seller’s Guide, for Vermont Real Estate Company agents to share with their customers. We also developed listing presentations for agents so their clients can get to know individual agents and the brokerage as a whole.
Press releases on behalf of Vermont Real Estate Company are often about special listings and significant achievements. The main purpose behind these press releases is to push the information to a wider audience, connecting with valuable local news sources across the state.
Vermont Real Estate Company has the ability to focus on their buyers and sellers while we manage all of their marketing efforts. This in turn generates more buyers and sellers for them to serve. The brokerage’s social media accounts have seen significant growth since we took over in 2017, connecting with and engaging followers on a new level. The email newsletter has above-average open and click-through rates compared to industry standards. Multiple blogs and area profiles rank on the Google Search Engine Results Page for their intended keywords. Overall, all elements of the marketing ecosystem work together to allow Vermont Real Estate Company to continue to grow and flourish as a brokerage.