Brand Awareness in 2022

Happy New Year! Welcome to 2022! It’s a brave new world out there, and there’s definitely been some big changes made in the last two years that look to be sticking around. Remote workplaces are the new normal, meaning less commutes and more free personal time. Social media grew massively, now being accessed by over half of the global population. And throughout it all, Australian property prices and listings have been surging as people move interstate and away from hotspots.

It’s an exciting time for us here at Properti, and it’s got us thinking a lot about the intersections of property marketing and social media. There’s one term that’s really stuck with me. You’ve probably guessed it from the title of this blog post.

Brand awareness.

Brand awareness has been a cornerstone of the agent marketing playbook for decades. Billboards, bus stops, park benches, letterbox drops — getting your name and face in front of people has long been key to securing prospective clients and new listings. It’s a fun and simple piece of psychology: the more I recognise your brand, the more successful you are, right? And if you’re successful, that means you can sell my property for a really good price.

This all still holds true, even in today’s complex online world of SEO and Google AdSense and social engagement algorithms. People just aren’t getting outside as much — they don’t need to anymore. That means that those old billboards have become Instagram Stories; those letterbox drops? Email newsletters, with subscriber lists. You’re already doing all these things and more, because, well, you have to in order to survive as an agent. But there are some best practices to consider, and some smart ways to really take your brand awareness up a notch.

Consistency.

The biggest aspect is consistency. How regularly do your posts go live? Do they all feature your agency branding? Your face, your name? Are your listings being posted and updated across all available channels? These might all seem like small things, but the small things add up. If you want to maximize your returns, you need to post consistent imagery and information on a consistent schedule that reinforces your brand.

So what does consistency achieve? Firstly, it has the same psychological effect as the billboards and bus stop ads: it makes you look like the best agent around, the one who can get me the best price. But if it was that simple, we’d just blast every one of our prospects with content 24/7.

The other key result of consistency is what we call “social proof”. It’s proof that you know the market, you know your clientele, you know your community, and you know how to treat them all with the respect they deserve. This comes with time and consideration. People are pretty social media savvy these days, and know that they don’t have to just sit and take whatever advertisements are thrown at them. But if your message is carefully considered and delivered on a methodical basis, users are much more likely to accept your presence in their social community — and that’s when they’ll start coming to you for their sales.

Targeting.

The other big aspect to your social media marketing is targeting. This blends a little with consistency and social proof, but it’s definitely one of the strongest ways to boost your brand awareness.

Targeting is the process of carefully curating both the content you post and the way you post it in order to reach your ideal audience — that is, prospective property buyers and sellers in your serviced area. There’s not much point in building a careful and methodical social marketing campaign if the only people seeing it are Mum and Dad. And just like those old letterbox drops, it can swing too far in the other direction too: people who have no interest in the property market right now can get saturated with your marketing and start to think you’re a bit of a nuisance.

The quickest and easiest way to manage your targeting is by paying for ads on your chosen social platform. This instantly amplifies your reach by orders of magnitude that you’d struggle to achieve otherwise, while still giving you control over the demographics that see your ads. With so many businesses and brands flocking to social media for cheap marketing, dropping a few extra dollars can mean the difference between getting lost in the crowd and standing out from it.

It can take a bit of technological know-how to really hit your target demographic online, but that’s what we’re all about here at Properti. There are a whole lot of tools we use to get your brand in front of the right people: custom audience software, cross-platform automation, contextual matching… These are probably all buzzwords to most, but they’re a core part of our work day at Properti. They’re what help us get your brand in front of all the right eyes, and bring those tough prospects out of the woodwork and into your office.

Want to know more? Shoot us a line over at Properti.ai.

Thanks for reading, and happy new year!