Real Estate Inbound Marketing Dictionary
Marketing changes fast. It seems like every day there's a new technique or strategy you should implement or track. We're putting them all in one place, so the next time you hear a marketing term you're not quite sure about, you can find all about it here.
A/B Testing
Comparing two different options to see which is the most effective and receives the best results. A/B testing can be used in e-mail marketing, social media posts, and online advertisements.
Above the fold
The part of the website or e-mail that’s visible without any scrolling. You want your most important content and your calls to action to be available above the fold. Many visitors to your site will judge a page when it first opens, and that decides whether or not they scroll down any further. When it comes to what you want your visitors to see, the higher up, the better.
AdWords
Google's PPC ad program that is built in to search results pages. You can place an ad with Google, set a maximum bid, and choose what keywords you would like to target. Then, based on competition and max bid, your ad may appear on the search engine results pages for certain keywords. You're then charged every time someone clicks your ad.
Blog
A collection of posts designed to inform or entertain an audience. They can also boost a site's search engine rankings by providing a variety of high value content. For a real estate or mortgage professional, blogs are the perfect outlet for sharing knowledge that consumers are searching for.
Boosted post
Due to changes in Facebook's algorithm, businesses posts are less likely to appear in user's newsfeeds. To counteract this effect you can "boost" your post. Once you share something, simply click "Boost Post" at the bottom right corner of the post. Then, you can select how much money you would like to spend, and who you would like to promote it to. It's best to promote only your most valuable content, preferably that also links to a landing page so you can capture leads. This will get you the most bang for your marketing buck.
Call to action
The most important line of text in your e-mails, blog posts, and website content. CTAs tell the reader what they need to do next, whether it’s give you a call, subscribe to your blog, download an eBook, or follow you on Twitter. They prompt the consumer to take the next step. The best CTAs are clear, concise, and tell the reader exactly what they should expect.
Campaign
A series of messages that go out to a target audience through a certain channel, such as e-mail, social media, or print. Campaigns are generally more effective when they are targeted at a narrow audience. It’s easier to define the best channels and messages for reaching your target audience when you know exactly who you’re trying to reach. Before you set up marketing campaigns, define your customer personas.
CMS
Short for content management system, which is simply a computer program, software, or application that allows users to easily publish, edit, and modify the creation of content on the web. Essentially, it’s a way to manage your website content without diving straight into the code and having to know programming language.
Content
Content is a marketing term for a piece of information for your consumer. This could be a blog post, social media update, infographic, and the list goes on. In the world of inbound marketing, content is king. No inbound marketing strategy will be successful if the content isn’t relevant and interesting.
Content marketing
A form of modern marketing that creates a relationship with the consumer through different forms of content, such as blog posts, social media updates, infographics, eBooks, or website content.
Conversion rate
A conversion can be a variety of customer actions, such as filling out a request information form or downloading an eBook. The conversion rate tracks the amount of conversions you receive for each click on your online advertisement. In real estate, a popular conversion rate measurement is lead conversion. If you buy 100 ads from Zillow, and you “convert” 15 of them to clients (whether buying or selling), your conversion rate for that lead source is 15%.
CTR
Short for click-through rate, which is a valuable statistic for measuring the success of an online campaign. Calculate your CTR by dividing the number of clicks received by the total number of ad views, or impressions. This number is generally used when analyzing a Google or social media ad, such as a boosted post on Facebook.
Drip campaign
An automated campaign designed to keep you top of mind with a customer or potential customer by sending out marketing messages over a period of time. The most common medium for this type of marketing strategy is an automated e-mail campaign, such as those in our e-mail marketing system, Promoter.
eBook
An electronic book available for download. They’re great for showcasing your knowledge of a particular subject more in depth. You can easily create an eBook using PowerPoint or Keynote, then save it as a PDF for easy downloading. If you’ve had a particularly successful blog post or website content page, you can expand upon this content and re-purpose it as an eBook. Capture contact information from potential customers by placing your eBooks behind a lead capture form.
Engagements
This is the key metric you should be monitoring on social media and your blog. Engagement is the total number of people that have interacted with something you have shared. This could be comments on a Facebook post, replies to a Tweet, or comments on a blog post. If you pay for promoted Tweets on Twitter, you pay per engagement. Though followers and likes are good vanity metrics, engagement is what furthers your relationships with potential leads through online channels.
The world's most popular social network. Though many of your past and potential clients may not be on other social networks, they're probably on Facebook. You have the option to create a personal profile, or a business Page. On a personal profile, you can choose who becomes your "friend" and can see your information. On a business Page, users are allowed to like your page without you needing to accept a request. Business Pages are also optimized for promoted posts and advertisements, so they may be a better option for your company.
Facebook algorithm
A formula that controls what posts appear on a user's timeline. If you're posting on a business Page, you have likely noticed a large drop in interaction on your posts in the past few years. This is due to an algorithm change that now requires Page owners to boost posts to be seen by a larger audience.
Google algorithm
Google's top-secret formula that decides how websites are ranked on search results pages. Many SEO experts have guessed at the different factors included in this algorithm and established some major influencers, such as traffic, inbound links, and recency of content updates.
Google Analytics
A web analytics service offered by Google that allows website owners and managers to track site statistics, such as visitor traffic, demographics, geographic location, and much more.
Guest blogging
Creating content to be published on someone else’s website. Guest blogging can benefit your site’s SEO by creating an inbound link back to your site from a reputable source. Seek out guest blogging opportunities by reaching out to other local professionals in related fields. Discover the best strategies for guest blogging and getting others to guest blog on your site.
Impressions
This is the total number of people that have seen your piece of content. For your blog, this is page views. On social media, this is the number of people that have seen your post come up in their feed. If you’re running paid posts, you will be able to see the number of impressions you’ve had.
Inbound link
These are links on any website other than your own that point back to your page. These could happen when someone shares your blog post, or links to your website on their social media. Inbound links, also known as backlinks, are important to SEO. They show search engines that your content is valuable.
Inbound marketing
The most effective form of modern marketing, inbound marketing attracts high-quality leads through content creation, social sharing, and lead capture. Read more about inbound marketing.
An Apple and Android social networking app that is focused on sharing images and short videos. This app comes with built-in photo editing features, or "filters" that result in more appealing photos. You can follow other users, then like and comment on their pictures. Instagram also features geotagging capabilities, that allow you to tag yourself at a location when you post an image. For example, if you were hosting an open house, you could share images of the home and tag the exact location that users could pull up on a map.
Keyword
Words that are used by search engines to find relevant web pages. These are the words you should be targeting in your content to get search results. Keywords help direct Google to the right pages when a search query is entered.
Keyword research
The process of finding the best words and phrases to include in your website content to boost SEO and web traffic. Effective keyword research will help you plan and execute your content and social media strategies. Here's a helpful intro to keyword research to find out more.
Landing page
A landing page is a page on a website solely dedicated to collecting information through a lead capture form. Landing pages are an integral part of your website for one reason: the convert visitors into leads. If you're wanting to add landing pages to your real estate website, here are three keys to building an effective one.
Lead capture form
This is the form that is placed on a landing page or other page of your website where customers fill out their information, such as name and e-mail address. This information is valuable and allows you to follow up with leads. Placing useful content, like eBooks, behind lead capture forms allows you to generate more leads.
The most professional social network, LinkedIn is a great space to connect with other real estate professionals. If you aren't "friends" with someone, but have worked with them professionally, it's more acceptable to stay in touch with them through LinkedIn than other social networks, such as Facebook. LinkedIn pages generally appear very high in search engine rankings when someone searches your name, so it's smart to keep your page up to date if you have one. To broaden your network, try joining local or national real estate groups on LinkedIn.
Long-tail keywords
This is the kind of keyword that real estate professionals want to attack. They’re specific, multiple phrase terms that real people would search. Since they’re more specific, they also have less competition, which increases your odds of ranking higher. A generic (or short-tail) keyword would be “Naples Florida condos” but somewhere down the long tail of this phrase is “Naples Florida condos for sale 3 bedroom Pelican Bay.”
Mobile design
The appearance of a website on a mobile device, such as a tablet or smartphone. Not all types of mobile design are created equal. While some sites simply appear as a shrunk- down version of a desktop site, others adapt and enhance certain aspects to create a better user experience.
Mobile-friendly
This is the most basic form of mobile design. A mobile-friendly website is any site that loads correctly on a mobile device. If you’ve ever visited a website on a mobile device where you had to pinch and zoom to read the text, that site had basic mobile-friendly design. With over half of web searches coming from mobile devices, it’s best to upgrade to a responsive design.
Mobile-responsive
These sites automatically re-size and re-format content, images, and forms to fit on any screen size. If you pulled up a mobile-responsive website on a desktop and dragged the web page into any size window, it would adapt to fill the screen. Mobile-responsive websites create a better experience for site visitors. Here's a quick rundown on why mobile-responsive sites are so important .
Persona
This is the profile of your client types. A single agent or broker can have a variety of different personas, like newlyweds, empty-nesters, or single men in their 30s. The more specific and accurate your personas are, the better equipped you’ll be to find and nurture your ideal customers! These personas will help you decide what kind of content you create and promote.
A highly-visual social network that acts as a digital pin board, where users can sort and store links and images to view later. Users can also follow other "Pinners" and receive their updates in a feed. Pinterest is a amazing network for sharing images of local homes, as well as information about your area or home improvement and decor tips.
PPC
Short for pay per click. When you place an ad somewhere using a PPC method, you only pay every time a user clicks on the ad. The most common PPC ad space is Google Ads.
RT
Short for Retweet, which is a tweet that has been re-posted by a new user, and will also be displayed to that user’s followers. Increasing RT’s allows more people to see your tweets, potentially increasing your audience. Say you have 100 followers, but someone with 5,000 followers retweets one of your tweets. Your message now has potential to be seen by 5,100 people instead of just your 100. Retweeting others is also a good way to build social relationships and gain followers.
SEO
Short for search engine optimization, which is the process of affecting a website’s visibility in search through altering and manipulating certain aspects of the site. The progression of online marketing has made it extremely difficult to rank highly in search engines without considering and implementing some SEO practices. There are many factors Google looks at when ranking sites, all weighted differently as part of their always-changing algorithm. Check out this intro to SEO for more information.
SERP
Short for search engine results page, which is the list of webpages you receive after entering a search query on a search engine.
Targeting
The method by which you reach different types of potential customers. Targeting is best performed after you determine your buyer personas and can figure out the best messages to reach them. For example: For past clients, you can set up a drip e-mail campaign that sends them a quarterly newsletter on home improvement and seasonal tips. To target new clients, you can create a promoted post on Facebook that targets people in your specific customer demographic with a link to a helpful eBook.
Tweet
The 140 character messages that are shared on Twitter.
A social network built around 140 character messages that you can post, share, and interact with. Twitter is considered the fastest moving and most casual of the major social networks. It's not unusual for users to interact with people they don't know in real life. Twitter is a great source for real estate and mortgage news, marketing tips, and networking. If you're just joining Twitter, here are the first five things every real estate marketer should do.
URLs
The unique address for a web page. The structure of your URLs can have an effect on your SEO. It’s best to stick to a clear link structure that explains the exact path, using categories instead of numbers and indexes.
Vanity metrics
These are the metrics most closely monitored on social media, but they aren’t always the most important. The success of your social networks is based on engagement, not likes or followers. However, vanity metrics express credibility. If a potential client is an avid social media user, they may lean toward an agent that’s also active online.
Vlog
A blog, in video form. As content marketing becomes more visual, videos will play a bigger role in driving engagement on your site. If you're comfortable talking on camera, a blog is a great way to share your knowledge with your readers in a unique way. If you're not comfortable on camera, start practicing!
Webinar
A seminar on the web. Webinars are virtual seminars you can host or attend, to teach or learn about different topics.