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Success in real estate isn’t just about closing deals, it’s about making smart decisions that move your business forward. A little daunting at first glance, and maybe even yawn-inducing, marketing metrics are the secret to understanding your efforts, your performance, and where you can make strategic changes.
I know I know. You are here to sell houses, not to become a data scientist. I get it. But whether you’re interpreting reports from your marketing team or diving into the world of digital advertising yourself, understanding these key performance indicators is critical.
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marketing strategy
website
It’s important to know how many visitors you have on your website so you know where to rely or where to take shortcuts, and how to measure its performance and popularity.
- unique visitor: The number of unique individuals who visited your page.
- Bounce Rate: Measures website engagement. In the simplest definition, it’s the time a user leaves a website and takes no action.
- Page loading time: This is important for SEO purposes. If your page loads quickly, you’ll be less likely to increase your bounce rate. Test your website speed Do this regularly, especially after making updates.
- Search engine ranking: Monitor your website’s ranking for relevant keywords on search engine results pages (SERPs) to evaluate your SEO performance
Newsletter
Your email subscribers can be a great source of repeat business and referrals. The more emails you send and analyze, the better your chances of success. Don’t be afraid to try new things subject line, content and calls to action. Don’t try them all at once or you won’t know what works. Make small incremental changes over time to get big results.
- Open rate: Recipients who opened the email as a percentage of total emails delivered.
- Click rate: This is the percentage of people who open an email who click on a link in the email.
- hard bounce: Usually means the email address does not exist.
- soft bounce: Undeliverable due to a temporary issue, such as a full inbox or server issue.
Industry email averages from Mailchimp.com. Your newsletter provider should provide these statistics as part of their product.
social media
Everyone likes to socialize, but don’t expect to be an influencer. You’re a real estate agent, remember? If this is your preferred method of marketing your business, consider some of the following metrics, and spoiler alert—it doesn’t all depend on your total number of followers.
- got engaged: Measure the engagement (likes, comments, shares) your social media posts receive.
- arrival: The number of unique accounts that have viewed your content.
- impression: The total number of times your content has been viewed. This differs from reach, which measures unique views, whereas impressions are the total number of times content was viewed.
- Followers: Net increase in followers and unfollowers over time.
Among these metrics, engagement is the most important indicator of social media content and growth. Focus on content that will get more engagement from your audience. And don’t forget to engage with your audience and others you want to reach on the platform.
digital advertising
Metrics related to Meta and Google Ads can be very complex and are certainly not limited to what I have detailed here. However, it’s worth noting common terms and industry averages.
- CPC: The cost associated with each click on a digital ad, whether or not contact information is submitted. Clicks do not equal leads.
- Cost per lead (CPL): Calculate the cost of acquiring potential customers through each marketing channel to evaluate the efficiency of marketing expenditures.
- Cost per thousand impressions (CPM): The cost per 1,000 impressions for any ad.
- exchange rate: Measures the percentage of site visitors who take a desired action, such as filling out a contact form or requesting more information. This can also be used to determine conversion rates further down the funnel. For example, of the leads you receive, how many become customers?
This measurement can help you determine which part of the funnel needs adjustment. Are you getting a relatively high number of leads but not scheduling any appointments? Are you scheduling an appointment but not completing the deal? This data is the feedback from the process at each stage of the customer journey. Use it to significantly increase your conversion rates.
bottom line
One of the most overlooked marketing metrics is ROI. Depending on the strategy used, ROI will be subjective.
Return on Investment (ROI): Measure the overall return on your marketing investment to ensure you’re getting a positive return. The formula for calculating return on investment is:
(Net profit/investment cost) x 100
Although the return on investment Useful for determining the success of a specific campaign, a holistic view will better serve long-term marketing goals and overall assessment of business success. Think of customer acquisition cost (CAC) as a universal marketing metric to determine if you’re moving in the right direction.
Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): Calculate the average cost to acquire a new customer to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing and sales efforts.
Ideally, as you grow your business and generate referrals, your CAC will go down. This is an excellent metric for measuring your business and should be used as a key performance indicator (KPI) every quarter.
If these numbers start to go in the wrong direction (i.e. increase), then it’s time to evaluate your marketing spend and how well you’re converting in the pipeline.
Are you converting your paid leads? Are you missing out on potential clients due to lack of follow-up? Are you nurturing past customers and SOIs in meaningful and productive ways that create opportunities?
Always pay attention to CAC and strive to improve business efficiency.
Creating raving fans and cheerleaders organically adds more opportunities to the top of the funnel. This means low-cost to free leads, thus lowering CAC.
Think about your customer’s lifetime value, not what’s in front of you or behind you. When you realize their true value, you may be more inclined to stay close to them.
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV): Estimate the total sales and commission value a customer brings to your business throughout the relationship.
Consider the first-time homebuyer customer. Not only do they buy a home, but they may sell that home and buy another. They may also recommend friends or colleagues to you. This friend introduced another home buyer who also needed to sell his home. You see where I’m going with this.
Over time, that customer who started with one transaction has turned into five transactions.
These are the customers you want to retain. They will reduce your CAC and increase your commission. If your marketing costs stay the same and your sales increase – congratulations, you just got a raise.
That’s the goal, my friends.
By monitoring these metrics, real estate professionals can gain insights into the performance of their marketing efforts and make informed decisions to optimize strategies for better results.
Measure, analyze, improve
So how do you track these numbers and know how to respond to the trends? With any type of data, you need a baseline. Establish a starting point for a short period of time and then adjust from there. Please keep in mind that the images included in this article are industry averages. While they’re a good starting point, your data will vary based on your marketing efforts, audience size, market, skills, and established reputation.
If you pay someone or a company to handle your digital advertising campaign, they should be able to provide results from your campaign. Ask and find out how it performs.
If you’re up to the task, it’s best to view website metrics on Google Analytics (GA), but they can be intimidating for beginners. Likewise, if GA is out of your control and you don’t want to DIY, your web developer should be able to provide information about site performance.
Track social media metrics with professional dashboards on each platform. Take monthly snapshots or record performance metrics. Or, use platforms like Metricool, Hootsuite, Later, or Buffer to learn more about individual posts and performance. Choose the one that works best for you and your budget. They’re all a little different.
Adopting a data-driven strategy is no longer optional but essential. By continuously tracking and analyzing these key metrics, you can not only measure performance; You are discovering opportunities to grow and become more effective.
As we enter the second half of 2024, it’s your mission to understand these insights and how they can guide your decision-making and ongoing processes. While you’re at it, stay adaptable and watch your actions pay off in the year ahead.
Tara Meier is a Google Certified Digital Marketing Professional, a licensed real estate agent in Arizona, and a NAR technology trainer and coach. Connect with her on LinkedIn and Instagram.
