Is your real estate PR program effective? Do you maximize the value of your earned media placements? Do expert articles become newsletter sidebars and fodder for personal outreach to prospective buyers and sellers? Is your firm effectively repurposing your real estate PR successes for social media marketing?
A strategic, research-informed real estate public relations program can yield meaningful and measurable outcomes. It can help to fill the pipeline with prospective clients, enhance expert positioning and help to bolster organic search engine rankings. How do you build an effective real estate PR program? Start by following these public relations tips:
Highlight your differentiators
What makes your firm unique from others in the market? Do you specialize in a specific asset class or geography? Are you the “go to” for municipalities, corporations or another clearly defined audience? Use your unique value proposition (UVP) as the baseline of your real estate PR program.
Be audience-driven
What matters to your target audience? What is most important to the readers of the publication(s) you aspire to be featured in? At the end of the day, everyone wants to know what’s in it for them, so allocate resources to ensuring this is a salient message in your real estate PR program.
Tie your news to the news cycle
How can you leverage timely media stories to enhance the news value of what you are already doing? While you must abide by the mantra “Add value, not clutter,” newsjacking, as it is called, is a great way to maximize the news value of your media pitches, news releases and the like.
Be a source…and a resource
How do experts become “go to” sources for their target media? They provide relevant industry expertise without being self-promotional. Further, they are willing to connect media with other contacts within their network who can provide value to their readers, listeners or viewers. When building a relationship with a reporter, consider what information and assets are most valuable to them and how you, along with your trusted colleagues and contacts, can provide the most value to them and their readers.
Have a nose for news
What are the current trends in your industry subset and/or market? What data has been recently released by industry trade associations that can strengthen your story? Having your radar up for opportunities to maximize the value of your real estate public relations is key to achieving optimal ROI.
Think visually
We say this a lot – which is a testament to its importance. A great TV news package is nothing without a suite of compelling visuals that help the story to resonate with viewers. When building the editorial calendar for your real estate PR program, consider which visuals are available to strengthen the story and enhance its salience. (Bonus: this will give you great branded visual content to populate your social media marketing channels as well.)
Conduct proprietary research
Engaging a third-party firm to conduct primary research can provide a wealth of compelling statistics around which to build stories. The results of surveys and omnibus polls are inherently newsworthy and provide the media quantifiable data to work with. Investing in research is also a great way to help your PR program stand out from the competition.
Effective public relations programs seamlessly blend strategy and creativity to drive organizations forward. They generate a consistent stream of multi-faceted media coverage – think short-format news briefs on new hires and contracts awarded to long-format features on major economic development projects – and are leveraged in social media marketing, email marketing and sales.
Looking to maximize the value of your real estate PR program? Start with a SMART marketing strategy. Contact us today!
