How to Build an Online Presence Strategy for Your Real Estate Brand
As a real estate agent, you’re probably concerned about your image and the way people see you, your brand, and your business (or at least, you should be).
After all, the way people see you, and the impression they have of you, will determine whether they reach out to you or not when they’re ready to buy or sell a home.
In the past, it was relatively simple to control this because there weren’t too many moving parts to manage. A person either saw your print marketing or they were told about you, and it ended there.
But of course, that has drastically changed. Nowadays, the first place a person will go to learn more about a real estate agent, or to discover one in the first place, is online, whether that’s through a Google search, a social media profile, or increasingly, by asking an AI platform for a recommendation.
How you appear online isn’t something that should be an afterthought. To be successful as a real estate agent, how you appear online deeply matters and can play a major role in whether you’ll be successful or not.
As an agent, if you don’t think about or care about your online presence at all, and you’re still successful right now, you won’t be in the future. Period.
Your online presence is the sum of everything someone finds when they search for you, research you, or ask an AI platform about you. Building a strategy around it is setting yourself up for success right now and in the future.
There are two core components that make up a modern online presence strategy: your appearance strategy and your discovery strategy. To be successful, you need both.
Your Appearance Strategy
Your appearance strategy is about controlling what people find when they research you. To gauge where you stand right now, do a Google search for yourself or your team, and ask an AI platform about yourself, and look at the results. Do they inspire trust? Do they show expertise? Do they display authority?
If you were looking for a real estate agent, and you searched yourself, would you choose to work with you?
The main thing you’re trying to do as part of your appearance strategy is build trust with the people who are researching you, and a lot of that will be based on the experiences others have had working with you in the form of online reviews.
Your online review strategy is extremely important. You probably wouldn’t buy a new TV, check out a new restaurant, or stay at a hotel without at least checking out some reviews first, and choosing a real estate agent is no different. What your online reviews say about you determines whether someone will contact you. If you don’t have plenty of strong, positive online reviews in place, you’re probably losing business right now without even knowing it.
The second piece of your appearance strategy is your website. Your website is the one place where you can completely control how you, your brand, and your business are presented. It needs to be well-designed, up to date, and reflective of the image you want to project. If someone finds your website and it doesn’t look professional, doesn’t clearly communicate what you do, or doesn’t resonate with them, they’ll move on to the next agent without a second thought.
Your Google Business Profile also plays a critical role in how you appear online. For example, for many people, your Google Business Profile is the first thing they see when they search your name, and the information it displays, including your reviews, your photos, and your business details, creates an immediate impression before they ever visit your website.
★ Want to learn more about building a strong online appearance? Have a look at these posts:
- How Your Referral Business Is Tied to Your Online Presence
- How to Build an Online Review Strategy That AI Search Can’t Ignore
- The Steps to Building a Trustworthy Personal Real Estate Brand
Your Discovery Strategy
Your discovery strategy is about making sure new people can find you in the first place. To gauge where you stand, search for terms relevant to your business, your area, and the types of transactions you want to do. Do you show up in the search results? Do you have an active strategy in place to show up? And if you do show up, do you like the way you and your business are projected?
If you were looking for a real estate agent, and you searched these terms, would you find yourself and choose to work with you?
The most powerful part of your discovery strategy is your organic search presence. When someone turns to Google or an AI platform to look for help with a real estate question or to find an agent in their area, the content on your website and the strength of your overall online presence is what determines whether you show up.
Your organic search strategy is built through your content, by consistently creating high-quality, well-written content that’s relevant to what your target audience is searching for. The more opportunities you have to display in those search results, for the right audience, at the right time, the more opportunities you have to build authority, connect with potential clients, and eventually have them reach out.
But discovery now extends beyond traditional search. AI platforms like ChatGPT and Google Gemini are becoming a meaningful discovery channel for real estate agents. When someone asks an AI platform to recommend an agent in their area, the platform looks at your entire online presence, including your content, your reviews, your brand mentions on other websites, and the consistency of your information across every platform where you appear. If that picture is strong, consistent, and authoritative, you show up. If it’s not, you don’t.
That means your discovery strategy needs to account for both traditional search and AI search. The good news is that the same investments, quality content, strong reviews, consistent brand information, and a well-maintained website, support both.
★ Want to learn more about building your discoverability? Have a look at these posts:
- Building a Real Estate Online Presence Strategy to Get Found in LLMs (like ChatGPT)
- Creating an AI Visibility Strategy for Your Real Estate Brand
- How to Effectively Monitor Your Brand’s Online Presence
Your Online Presence Is Your First Impression
When it comes to choosing a real estate agent, people have a lot of options. By building a strong online presence strategy that covers both how you appear and how you’re discovered, across traditional search and AI search, you put the foundation in place to make sure that when someone is researching agents or looking for one for the first time, they find you, they trust you, and they choose to work with you.
Want to get better, more qualified leads and build your authority? Our Inbound Marketing Guide is a walkthrough of the overall philosophy of inbound marketing, why it’s effective, and how you can build it into your own real estate marketing strategy to get better marketing results.
