We’ve already gone over the numerous benefits of having a blog on your real estate website in some of our recent articles, such as ‘Why You Should Have A Blog On Your Website’. Now, we think you’re ready for the next step: building a subscriber base through your blog posts.
Why should I build a subscriber base?
With today’s market and competition you need to do more than just ‘being’ out there to stay ahead of your competitors and win listings. You need to build a strong brand in order to actually pop up in your clients’ minds when they need a real estate agent.
Contrary to what some people may think, a strong brand is not just about on-point advertising, a sleek looking logo and a consistent digital and physical profile. It’s about positioning your brand in people’s mind so they think about you differently than they do about your competitors. Your real estate blog is a great tool to strategically position yourself, as you have full control over what you put out there. It provides you with the opportunity to establish yourself as a leader or expert in the real estate industry in your area.
So, let’s see how building a subscriber base helps with creating that strong brand we’re talking about.
Once a person subscribes to your blog, it means they are interested in your expertise about the real estate industry. They instantly become a person of interest for your agency. The more people subscribe to your blog, the more people will have regular contact with your agency: they will all receive regular email updates and regularly visit your website. By doing so, you ‘force’ these people (potential clients) to think about your brand every time they receive another email or update. This is a great step that will help you move up in the brand awareness pyramid, ultimately leading you to top of mind awareness. When the time comes that these subscribers need a real estate agent, they’re likely to think of you first, because you’re the real estate agent that’s been popping up in their mind all this time.
If you manage to build a true subscriber base that’s genuinely interested in your content, that’s a great way of building your real estate brand and ultimately generating and selling more listings.
How to build a subscriber base
So, now you know why you need to build a subscriber base, it’s time to get into how you will do this effectively. Needless to say, you’ll need to start with actually having a blog on your website and posting valuable content regularly.
Once you have your real estate blog up and running and are regularly providing valuable content, there are a few easy steps that will help you build your subscriber base:
1. Add a ‘subscribe’ button to each post
This one is quite self-explanatory. If you want people to subscribe, you need to give them the option to subscribe. Believe it or not – if you don’t offer it, you can write as many amazing blog posts as you want, you’ll still end up with 0 subscribers.
Add a clearly visible subscribe button in each blog post (and possibly to each page of your website). This will ensure that every visitor sees the offer and has the opportunity to easily engage with your agency in the future. Position the button in a clearly visible spot so it doesn’t get missed.
2. Make it easy to subscribe
So, the button and offer are there. That’s a great start. Now, you should ensure you make it as easy as possible for visitors to subscribe to your mailing list. Of course, it would be great to collect as much information as possible from your potential clients. But please – don’t add a huge form to the subscriber button with all kinds of irrelevant fields for the subscriber to fill out. Whilst we understand this may help with finding your high-quality leads, you’re likely to lose them before they even finish subscribing. It makes the process too complicated, and will leave many visitors questioning why they have to fill out so much information.
Ideally, you’ll keep your subscribe form minimal, only asking for a few key details such as an email address and name. You will have the opportunity to obtain more details at a later stage.
3. Create a specific landing page
If you’ve worked with us before or are currently using our digital marketing services, you’ll know all about this one and how important landing pages are.
Create a specific landing page where people can subscribe, such as our subscribe page. This is a great tool to convert visitors into subscribers, especially when they’re coming from outside sources such as your social media pages. You have the opportunity to optimise this page further by showing some of your best, most-valuable content, so visitors can see what they’re subscribing to.
A specific landing page also makes it easy to share the ‘subscribe’ option to other channels, such as via your social media pages or email marketing.
4. Include a valuable offer
As a business owner, you likely already know you have to offer value to your clients in order to convert them. This also goes for building a subscriber base – you want to give your readers an incentive to subscribe. An easy way to do this is to offer something ‘extra’ for people who subscribe.
A great way of doing this is to include a valuable offer in your Call To Action (CTA). Let’s compare the following examples:
- Subscribe to our blog now!
- Subscribe to our blog now and receive a free eBook on how to prepare your home for a sale!
Need we say more?
5. Allow for indirect subscribers
The subscribe button which opens up a specific form, as mentioned in our first point, is a great way of building your subscriber list. But some of your leads will be filling out other forms on your website, and may never visit your blog. A good way of still getting them to subscribe is to add a subscribe checkbox to the bottom of each form.
This is an extremely common way of building a database with subscribers – most likely, you’ve subscribed to many lists yourself this way (it’s sometimes even a required field in order to submit a form).
Simply add a checkbox with something along the lines of ‘Subscribe to our newsletter for the latest research, market updates, suburb reports, offers and more’ to each individual form on your website.
6. Promote it!
The last step is to support your real estate blog and promote the subscriber option. Share the subscribe landing page on your social media, share your individual blog posts with a CTA to subscribe, and always add share buttons to your blog posts and website pages to allow for further sharing from visitors. This will help drive more traffic to your website and blog – and the more traffic, the more subscribers you will get!
If you manage to build a true subscriber base that’s genuinely interested in your content, that’s a great way to build your real estate brand. Remember it takes time to build a strong brand, but it will pay off in the long run.
Good luck!
If you’re interested in setting up your real estate blog, you may like these posts as well
Make sure to check out our other posts about having a blog on your real estate website – they’ll help you get started and make the most out of it.
- Why You Should Have A Blog On Your Real Estate Website
- 17 Blog Post Ideas For Your Real Estate Business
And, of course, to finish this post in style: if you like our content and would like to receive regular updates, tips, tricks and resources about digital marketing for your real estate business straight into your mailbox, make sure to subscribe to our mailing list via the button below.
