Are you puzzled to see some real estate professionals casting spells over prospects and gaining all the property listings? Are you scratching your head, wondering what sorcery they have in play?
You post the same kind of content. You send similar emails. You’ve even thrown a few bucks behind social ads. But somehow, you remain invisible while your competitor down the road seems to be getting all the property listings effortlessly.
Let me lift the curtain for you.
There’s an element of digital ‘black magic’ at play in real estate marketing. And by magic, I don’t mean luck or superstition. I’m talking about the complex mix of algorithms, deliverability rules, optimisation tactics, and tracking pixels that sits silently behind every successful marketing campaign.
Unless you or your brand marketing team understand how to work with these hidden forces, you’ll never truly get the miles out of your advertising efforts or reach your ideal audience.
Let’s take a look at what’s going on behind the scenes.
The invisible hand of SEO in real estate
Let’s start with a classic: search marketing and Google.
You could write the best suburb guide in the country or publish weekly blogs until your fingers cramp, but if you’re not playing by Google’s rules, none of your content will surface when it matters: on the first page of search results.
SEO (search engine optimisation) is like casting a digital spell. It says, “Hey Google, this content is useful and relevant to people interested in property in this area.” But Google’s algorithm is picky. It wants keywords in all the right places, fast-loading pages, a mobile-friendly design, and well-crafted metadata. It wants you to tick ‘all the boxes’ before it’ll show the prospect your information.
Most real estate sales agents, property managers, and buyers’ agents miss this step entirely. They post content with insights about the local real estate market or tips on securing a great property deal but fail to incorporate the right keywords. They also publish property listing pages with URLs that aren’t optimised for search engines.
They skip over the backend technical stuff, thinking it doesn’t matter.
But here’s the truth: Google rewards real estate professionals who make their jobs easier. If your real estate website adheres to Google’s SEO guide, you’ll appear in more search queries and have more home sellers, buyers, landlords and tenants discovering your real estate business.
The mystery of email deliverability
You’ve probably sent out a newsletter before and thought, “That’s weird – barely anyone opened it.” Or maybe you just assumed email doesn’t work anymore.
What if your emails aren’t even making it to the inbox?
Deliverability is a quiet killer of marketing efforts. Many systems and people are at play, from ISPs to corporate IT professionals. These intermediaries decide whether your beautifully written email lands in someone’s inbox, gets sent straight to spam, or is blocked from entering the building. Most real estate agents are unaware that these systems even exist.
Sometimes, it all comes down to something seemingly inconspicuous, such as a word in your subject line or email copy that these systems don’t like. For example, a phrase like “Guaranteed to sell your home” would likely raise a red flag and send your email straight to the spam folder.
Spam filters look for trigger words, validate whether the sender is who they say they are (using SPF and DKIM checks), confirm the sender’s reputation, and list hygiene (number of bounces) ahead of deciding whether your emails get delivered. So avoid using a personal Gmail address, an inactive email domain, or a giant image in your email because these are huge red flags to email filters. Even using a ‘no-reply’ email address or overusing punctuation marks (like !!!) in your subject line can redirect your email into spam folders rather than the inbox.
Even your open rates don’t tell the whole story. You might have a database of 2,000 people, but only 300 see your message because the rest are trapped in junk folders or bounce. According to the 2024 Mailchimp Email Marketing Benchmark Report, the average open rate for real estate emails hovers around 18-21%, while the best-performing industries can hit 25-30%. So, if you’re sitting under that benchmark, your deliverability could be the silent culprit.
It’s frustrating, yes. But once you know how to work with email deliverability best practices, you can start showing up in people’s inboxes more often.
The gatekeepers of social media
Now, let’s talk about the biggest black box of them all, social media algorithms.
Social platforms are designed to serve content they think people will engage with, not what you want people to see.
You might think that having a certain number of followers and posting regularly on your Instagram, Facebook, or LinkedIn pages guarantees that everyone sees your posts. But the truth? If you post organically, only a tiny percentage of your followers (below 1%) will see your message.
- Repetitive, overly promotional posts? The algorithm buries them.
- Long gaps between posting? Your profile or page will get downgraded.
- Low engagement? You’re invisible.
The algorithms constantly shift focus, rewarding content that aligns with their latest preferences. Right now, social platforms favour videos, reels, and stories.
Remember that each social platform competes for popularity, so to stay relevant, it copycats new features from other platforms to stay on trend.
Even paid ads aren’t a quick fix unless you understand retargeting, A/B testing, and audience segmentation. You can’t just boost the message ‘What’s your property worth’ and expect to receive a plethora of appraisals. You need a digital marketing strategy that plays nicely with Meta’s ever-changing rules.
Two digital marketing spells worth mastering
Just when you thought you’d cracked the code, here are two more invisible forces that can either boost your efforts or quietly sabotage them.
1 – Tracking pixels and remarketing
Have you ever noticed how an item you were considering buying follows you around the internet after you check it out that one time? That’s a tracking pixel at work.
Tracking pixels allow you to remind people who’ve visited your real estate website or interacted with a marketing campaign that you are still on hand to help. It’s vital to your marketing funnel, but only if it is set up correctly.
Many real estate businesses either don’t have pixels installed on their website or they’ve set them up incorrectly. If you’re part of a franchise network and your real estate agency or agent web pages are centrally managed, chances are you don’t have the ability to add your own tracking pixel. Hence, you’re not getting any benefit.
Without this tracking in place, you’re missing out on a second (or third) chance to get back in front of people who’ve already shown interest in your services. It’s like letting warm leads walk out the door and never following them up.
2 – Real estate website performance and load speed
Now, let’s talk about your real estate website.
If your site is missing an SSL certificate or is slow to load on mobile, you’re not just annoying users; you’re getting penalised by Google. In fact, your real estate website won’t be shown in mobile searches.
Load speed is an essential factor, especially in ranking your real estate website with a quality score, and so is usability. If your website looks great on a desktop but clunky on a phone, you’re losing opportunities every day.
Think of it as having a stunning property with a dodgy front gate. If they can’t even get in, people won’t stick around for a home inspection.
Marketing requires data and tech fluency
This is where the game has changed.
Modern marketing isn’t about looking polished, sounding clever, or buying ad space like the channels of yesteryear – it’s about understanding performance data and knowing which levers to pull to get real results. You need to track what’s working, understand why it worked, and then do more of it.
You must become familiar with insights dashboards, metrics, A/B testing, heatmaps, and conversion rates. It means analysing a marketing campaign and determining whether it failed because of the timing, the targeting, or the creative.
The best real estate marketers today aren’t just creative; they’re analytical. They are performance analysts as well as digital strategists. You’re operating without direction if you’re not using data to guide your decisions.
Stop flying blind with your marketing
Let’s pause for a moment. If these insights are making your head spin, you’re not alone.
The digital marketing landscape has become incredibly complex. There’s a lot to understand, from setting up email authentication to installing tracking pixels and interpreting analytics. And most of it isn’t something you can learn from a YouTube tutorial or pass off to your receptionist like a simple office task. This isn’t DIY magic – it’s a craft that takes time, training, the right tools to master and ultimately, experience.
Running advertising campaigns isn’t about clicking a boost button. It’s more like driving a heavy goods vehicle. You need advanced skills, serious training, and many hours behind the wheel to avoid crashing your budget.
If you’re not tech-literate, that doesn’t mean you’re out of the game; it just means you need support. Either upskill yourself over time or bring in someone who already knows how to oil every cog in the marketing machine. Marketing today is made up of funnels and automation. Unless you know how to build a marketing machine and have someone with the right qualifications in the driver’s seat, you’ll continue wondering why it works for some people but nothing’s working for you.
Learn marketing magic; don’t fear it
Undoubtedly, today’s real estate marketing can feel like black magic.
Between Google’s algorithms, email deliverability rules, social media gatekeepers, website performance, and tracking codes, it’s easy to feel overwhelmed. But here’s the thing: it’s not magic. It’s just technology you don’t understand. And once you know how it works, you can use it to your advantage.
You don’t need to become a digital wizard overnight. But you do need to acknowledge that what worked 5 years ago isn’t enough anymore. The real estate professionals who strike gold are the ones who embrace marketing tech, lean into the data, and get serious about mastering or outsourcing their marketing machine.
Get a helping hand with your marketing magic
Still feeling mystified by the algorithms? Let’s break the spell and focus on fixing your problems. Book a free 1-hour consultation with me, Melanie Hoole, and I’ll give you personalised recommendations to position you as the local real estate expert.
Written by Melanie Hoole
My team and I specialise in helping real estate and property professionals perfect their personal brand, build a first-class digital profile and implement inbound marketing activities to attract leads. If you are unsure which direction to take with your digital marketing contact me for help.
