While effective inbound marketing programs require companies to develop a high volume of audience-centric, high-quality content, the benefit of building and maintaining an arsenal of thought leadership content is always having new educational material to share with target audiences. Whether this content lives on your blog, populates your email marketing, energizes your social media marketing or inspires whitepapers and ebooks, it has legs beyond inbound marketing and can play an important role in executing an effective real estate PR program.
Inbound marketing 101 (a.k.a. the basics of content marketing)
Inbound marketing pulls online audiences into a company’s website by offering high-quality content that the target audience is already interested in. Components of an inbound marketing program include optimized blog posts, lead nurturing emails, whitepapers, ebooks, toolkits, and other forms of premium content. This content is combined with compelling calls-to-action and peppered throughout a company’s website. Traffic is driven to the content through social media marketing, search engine marketing (SEM), and email marketing. Inbound marketing programs closely align sales and marketing to drive organizations forward, cultivating leads and converting new customers.
What do real estate PR and content marketing have in common?
Public relations and content marketing programs are both great avenues for showcasing a real estate firm’s thought leadership. Whether the CEO of your property management company is an expert on local market trends, the vice president of your construction company’s retail division is an economic development advocate or the legislative affairs lead at your commercial leasing firm is an established policy expert, there is an opportunity to showcase their thought leadership through both content marketing and real estate public relations programs.
Both content marketing and real estate PR require consistency, creativity, and clarity to maximize returns. Companies need to commit to proactive, ongoing programs that can showcase the many facets of their organization while maintaining a strong focus on aligning content generation with overall business goals.
Repurposing content without diluting its value
Maintaining a real estate blog, executing a real estate PR program, and ensuring all of the content you create is audience-centric, high-quality and on-brand is no small feat. While some companies have an in-house marketing team to manage content development, others turn to real estate PR and marketing agencies to help shore up the gap. Regardless of which approach is best for your organization – or if you choose to adopt a hybrid model – it is advantageous to identify opportunities to repurpose existing content into new, dynamic assets. For example, can you take your whitepaper “10 tips for crafting an effective real estate investment strategy” and extract two or three tips for a teaser blog post? Is the bylined article you just drafted for your local real estate trade association’s quarterly magazine a good focus for an upcoming eblast? Is there an opportunity to use your recent press releases to keep LinkedIn current and to give the sales team content to use as a touchpoint with prospects? The key is to ensure that repurposing content doesn’t come at the cost of diluting the value of your content. Thus, you must always have something new (and exciting) in the pipeline to share.
Both inbound marketing and PR can help companies to enhance their expert positioning, cultivate leads and convert new clients. Whether your firm specializes in commercial or residential real estate, design-build or construction, property management or investment sales, the key to success is focusing on what makes your company unique and finding opportunities to share that educational, thought leadership content with clients and prospects.
