At AAJneeti, real estate marketing is one of our key businesses. We do online branding of our clients and generate leads for their real estate projects. We help them drive sales by running online ads for them. We have been doing this for more than a decade. Our biggest strength has been to adopt new technologies early and evolve with social media platforms and their policies.
Since last year, real estate marketing automation has suddenly taken a huge leap. We have seen increasing use of generative AI in content creation, predictive analytics becoming more popular, and AI-powered lead qualification tools and deep CRM integrations being adopted by our industry rapidly. In this article, we will discuss the top 8 most powerful real estate marketing automation tactics that helped us deliver the best results for our clients – and what we think are here to stay.
1. Using Generative AI in Creating First Drafts of Our Content
We have hired the best of the content creators: copy writers, graphic designers, video editors, visualisers, photographers, video graphers, and drone operators. But like every other industry, generative AI has become a part of our everyday operations.
We use ChatGPT, Gemini, Canva, Turboscribe, and several other tools every day in our content creation process. We work on dozens of campaigns every day – each with their own set of brochures, flyers, layout plans, videos, location maps, price lists, images, creatives, and more. We sometimes use generative AI tools to glean the main information we need from them.
We also use AI tools to design our creatives and edit videos sometimes. And to make proposals, write emails, and automate a lot of tedious tasks that would waste hundreds of manual hours otherwise. We choose to spend this time on more creative and higher thinking tasks instead.
But here is what our expert content creators say:
- Do not rely on one-off prompts if you want to create good content. It takes multiple prompts to generate good ad copies or scripts – if you don’t want to sound monotonous or robotic.
- Do not rely on generative AI tools like ChatGPT for research purposes. Always cross-check the facts and numbers it spits and the sources it cites.
- While you might use generative AI tools to suggest multiple headlines with different approaches for A/B testing of real estate ad campaigns, the ultimate test is the real-time learning and insights based on the actual performance of your ads. So, monitoring them play a big role in optimising real estate ad copies, creatives, and videos.
2. Using Predictive Analytics to Optimise Our Campaigns
We run hundreds of real estate campaigns every month…and our experience says that even the minutest changes in how we present project details, timings of running our ads, and consumer behaviour can significantly impact the outcomes of our campaigns. Hence, predictive analytics has become a crucial part of our real estate marketing automation process. It helps us to spot patterns much before they become noticeable to human eyes.
Earlier, we only depended on the instincts of the best of our campaign managers to find out such patterns. Using predictive analytics has made it easier for us to achieve the same results more consistently and efficiently. Some of the questions our predictive analytics tools can answer are:
- Which real estate micromarkets in India and abroad are attracting more buyers’ or investors’ interest?
- What kind of buyers are showing more interest in a specific property?
- How to do budget allocation among different ad campaigns we are running for a client for optimal results?
- When to launch, pause, or stop a real estate campaign to maximise conversions without wasting funds?
Our campaign managers use predictive analytics tools to study ad performance data, CRM data, website behaviour, as well as, insights from the sales teams of our clients to derive at the conclusions and come up with the right strategies for campaigns they are working on.
We request feedback on our leads within 24 hours – and use it to check which content formats ad viewers are responding to. We adjust targeting, creatives, ad copies, video scripts, and bidding of our campaigns to make sure the projects we are promoting attract high-intent buyers that are easy to convert.
3. Deep CRM Integration to Offer Leads to Our Clients in Real-Time
We use Google Sheets for smaller clients but almost always go for deep CRM integration for all our big clients. Zapier, Zoho, Hubspot, and LeadSquared are some of the top CRM tools we work with (but we are not limited to these). Deep CRM integration allows us to direct all the leads from every source (our ad campaigns, landing pages, website forms, WhatsApp, calls, etc.) automatically to the next stage of lead processing.
Also, CRM integration also allows us to see where the lead is coming from: Meta Ad, Google Ad, website…and through which campaign. It means that this real estate marketing automation tactic gives us an idea which of our efforts are working best.
We can set up CRM to:
- Initiate Drip Campaigns: The CRM can straightaway be programmed to direct a potential lead to the next stage of the customer journey. We can set up a sequence of emails, WhatsApp messages, and/or SMS that get triggered based on what the lead did.
If someone downloaded a brochure, they may receive a WhatsApp message sharing a video of real-time elevation of the project and a call to action to book a site visit. Or if someone clicked on the ad but didn’t fill up the lead form, we may send them more details about the project to offer greater clarity about it.
- Create Reminder Tasks for Sales Teams: The CRM makes sure you never miss a lead. As soon as we generate a lead for you, the CRM assigns it to a team member. If it needs to be followed up after a certain number of days, it can create reminders for the person. Since everything happens automatically, manual slip-ups reduce considerably.
- Schedule a Meeting Automatically: As soon as a prospective buyer confirms interest in the project, the CRM can shoot off a meeting link, update calendars, log the appointment, and send a notification to the sales team member handling the lead.
- Set Up Automated Lead Nurturing Flows: Based on our experience and after in-depth discussions with the clients’ sales teams, we can set up the CRM to automatically send location advantages, project USPs, investment insights, and other related updates to prospective investors or buyers to keep them engaged until a human salesperson can take over.
It means that with the help of CRMs, we can help you process leads even when you are sleeping or busy elsewhere.
4. Running Behaviour-Triggered Retargeting Ads
As digital marketers, we realise the true power of real estate marketing automation when we combine it with buyer actions. That’s when our ad campaigns feel intelligent in the real sense. And our retargeting ads are solely based on ad viewers’ behaviour.
If someone has seen our ad and didn’t enquire about it, we may target them with carousel ads highlighting project USPs. If they filled up a form but didn’t pick up calls for the sales team, they may receive SMS reminders or follow-up messages on WhatsApp. If they went for the site visit but didn’t pay the booking amount, we may target them for ads highlighting payment plans or construction updates.
Using retargeting ads intelligently has improved our results by up to 90% – and we consider them a vital part of our overall marketing strategy.
5. Experimenting with AI-Powered Lead Scoring and Qualification Systems
We have recently started using AI-powered tools to do lead scoring and recommend to some of our selected clients which leads needs immediate attention and have high chances of conversion based on their source and past engagement pattern.
For starters, we are segregating leads into Cold, Warm, and Hot categories based on:
- How often do they visit our clients’ website or landing page?
- Which ads they interacted with?
- What devices were they using?
- How quickly did they respond to the sales team call?
- How many questions did they ask about the project in question?
We predict which leads have higher chances of converting based on the behaviour of actual buyers before (what sources they came from, their location and economic status, which campaigns they responded to, etc.).
We are also building AI agents to respond to these leads immediately. We will elaborate more about them in the next point.
6. Experimenting with AI-Powered Call Automation and Chatbots
We strongly believe that virtual calling agents and intelligent chatbots are the need of the hour – and we are working on them right now. In an effort to take our real estate marketing automation to the next level, we are designing them to respond just like our clients’ sales teams do.
Our AI-powered chatbots and calling agents will contact the lead immediately, confirm the basic details, answer the most common queries, and fix a meeting of qualified leads with a human salesperson for a more nuanced conversation.
We have done a few trials and we are highly excited about the awesome results we have got. We will soon introduce it as a full-fledged service on our website.
7. Experimenting with Advanced ROI Dashboards for Ad Spend
On the feedback of our clients, we are building advanced AI-powered ROI dashboards. These dashboards will show how your ad spend translates into Leads, Qualified Leads, Site Visits, and Bookings.
We might also refine it to show which of your sales team members stalled responding to the leads, who were most prompt, who followed up well (and for how long), and who had the most closures.
We would love to hear what more you would want from our ROI Dashboard!
8. Experimenting with Workflow Automation to Facilitate Sales and Post Sales Functions
Real estate marketing automation is still a work in progress for us. We can help you automate your workflow too. Some of the things real estate professionals can easily automate today are:
- Generate checklists and send reminders for meetings and site visits,
- Collect documents and do KYC,
- Facilitate loan processes,
- Send payment plan reminders, construction progress reports, and milestone updates,
- Send requests to buyers or investors to review your service, project, or real estate brand,
- Ask for referrals from past clients and inform them of new investment opportunities you are offering,
and more.
The AI has ushered in a new wave of real estate marketing automation – and we are loving it. If you are as excited as us about the new ways of reaching out to prospective buyers and investors, we would love to hear your ideas!
