Real estate marketing is going through a golden age thanks to new advertising strategies that directly impact those looking for a home for sale or rent. In recent years, a series of trends based on showing real estate in the most realistic and spectacular possible have come into force. Until now, real estate portals only cared to hang a few beautiful photos of the property in question so that the interested party could get an idea before being able to visit it. But now, the trend is to give a more immersive experience to the interested party to feel what it could be like to live in the house in question.

What is Real Estate Marketing?

These trends are imported mainly from the United States, a country where Real Estate is a deeply innovative sector. In Spain, it has been difficult to get to this point. We have lived through many crises, and the real estate sector has been growing in fits and starts. The crisis that occurred in 2007 left the sector very affected. Many real estates, groups, etc., suffered big falls, and others simply disappeared. It was then that a solution emerged with force to continue promoting and selling housing. At that time, it was a trend, but real estate portals were established as the new storefronts for the sale of flats during those years. We are fully entering the era of online real estate marketing.

Although in the early years, real estate companies were dedicated to having a simple web page where they could display the photographs and files of their homes, and in parallel promote themselves in the large real estate portals (Idealista, Fotocasa, Habitaclia), currently, real estate companies need more.  Marketing strategies for real estate companies are gaining more and more weight. It is not only about being on the portals and let them look for customers. Real estate companies must be proactive and ensure that future clients can reach their websites directly. For that, you have to improve the positioning of the web daily so that the specific target of each real estate company improves.

The key to getting new clients into your real estate in the 21st century is to look for them on the Internet. Or rather that they find you. That’s what online real estate marketing is for. But what you should ask yourself is: How to do real estate marketing? And rather, how to make a good Real Estate Marketing Plan?

The Real Estate Marketing Plan is an instrument that will help us

• Get to know our typical client well.
• Wonder how you look for a flat.
• Know the processes and your needs to find your home.
• Grab the attention of this type of customer.
• Decide the actions that will help you meet your needs in the process.
• Analyze the results of the actions to continue improving the service.

Visual impact trends for real estate marketing

With the Real Estate Marketing Plan proposed, it will have to be executed through a series of actions that achieve, in a given period, a series of conversions: more visits to the web, more subscribers, more visits generated in the flats, etc.

The main marketing actions that any real estate agent should do are:

• Content Marketing: Offer all kinds of content to the user to inform them about the products and educate them to look for a home.
• Video marketing: The king of content is video marketing. It is much easier for someone to watch a video that is forty seconds long than not to read a 1,000-word article.
• Social Networks: You do not exist if you are not on Social Networks. The dissemination of content through these channels is very important. As well as attending to the messages received doubts or complaints that our followers raise with us. 
• Email marketing: one of the most important real estate marketing actions as it is a direct communication channel with our potential clients. 

Roughly, the four marketing actions highlighted in the previous point are the most relevant to achieving the objectives set in your Real Estate Marketing Plan. But in 2021, there are a series of tools of concrete actions that you cannot ignore if you want to impact those who enter your real estate online. They are new real estate sales strategies.

Promotional videos

We have already raised video marketing as a very important leg for online real estate marketing. Promotional videos, in this sense, are those that will serve to show the property for sale.

There are many ways to show a property, but only one impacts and convinces the potential client: the video render. It is not about making a video with a kind of successful animations, but about showing the house on the plane as if it were real and feeling like you were inside it. For this, the expert visualizers of Plus Render use very advanced video programs based on the latest technologies. The results are spectacular; it is so real that it seems that you can touch them.

You can direct these videos and decide what you want to show about the property. The Plus Render production team will always be by your side, advising you and writing down all your points of view. In this sense, the team will work in three phases:

• Storyboard:
  • They listen to your proposals, the story you want to explain with the video render, and what needs to be transmitted.
  • Brainstorm in teams to start the sketches, scene by scene.
  • All of these ideas are shared with you to ensure you are on the right track.
• Video rendering:
  • The interior and also the exterior of the project are captured in detail.
  • A few height shots are recorded by drone or captured with Google Earth.
  • The main areas of interest in the environment are highlighted (transport, shopping areas, parks, etc.).
  • The 3D model is implemented in the video images.
  • All recorded content is rendered using the most advanced rendering techniques.
• Video production:
  • All the planes represented are brought together.
  • Transitions between sequences, subtitles, and corporate logos are incorporated.
  • Music is included and, it is planned, a voiceover.
  • The final post-production touch-ups are done to make it look more real.

The final result will show us the property we want to promote and its closest surroundings in great detail. Those interested who see this video render will be able to get a very clear idea of how it is to live there. These videos are in high demand for real estate companies with high-end products: residential houses, urbanization, towers, etc.

Then there are other types of real estate advertising campaigns through video where it is not so important to see the property but to know its virtues from a more emotional perspective. They are storytelling ads that seek to emotionally involve the recipient to feel that the properties offered by the real estate are ideal for their life plans. For example, an ad where a family with a newborn is seen as arriving at their new home and happily settling in. Direct for those who are just going to be parents and need to look for a bigger home.

3D renders

Any real estate and real estate portal that wants to sell their renovated apartments must make a 3D render (also known as 3D infographics or photorealistic infographics.) In this way, they will represent the result of the final work in a realistic, customized and anticipated way. This computer technique helps speed up the sales process and increase the value-added and the price of the house.

3D renders are ideal for visualizing a home to be renovated. They are a widely used tool in any architecture or urban planning project. It allows you to design and visualize how the spaces would look after this reform. In this way, these hyper-realistic infographics represent a great cost-saving because by making a realistic projection of how the home will be, minimizing the number of changes in each work. And the result for the interested party is impressive: you will be able to see the house in great detail, both in the interior and exterior spaces. In the end, all this results in a cut in the sale times of this type of housing.

The renders also offer the possibility of comparing between before and after. They can include photographs of the state of the current home, and at the same time, you can see the render and further assess the transformation.

The work involved in a render involves designers, architects, and visualizers specialized in 3D image processing. The 3D designer will make this hyper-realistic infographic on the floor plan that will allow you to see the final result of the reform. Or, if it is the case, a project to decorate interior spaces. In addition, each render will be supported by 3D plans of the house. Thus, anyone can understand the interior layout of a home without it being finished.

The process to make a hyper-realistic infographic lasts several days as there are a series of steps to follow:

1. Photograph each room of the property to reform. In this step, prior you will have to decide each view, the location of the camera, and the direction of the light.
2. Measure the spaces if we do not have 2D plans.
3. Model spaces in three dimensions using software specially dedicated to 3D modeling. 
4. Add furniture, urban elements, vegetation, or the necessary details to complete all the details of the house.
5. Apply materials and textures to the 3D model to give it, even more, volume and realism. The materials, stone, glass, etc., are what will be seen in the final result. 
6. Incorporate the space in a real environment, applying natural and realistic light.
7. Begin with the 3D rendering process, generating a photorealistic image of the space in your environment.
8. One of the best real estate sales strategies with the finished render is to include the ‘before the renovation’ photographs and the potential final result.

The time it can take to finish a render and deliver it is five days once all the views, cameras, and lights have been agreed upon. But in Plus Render they make high-quality Renders adapting to any term. 

Precisely in Plus Render, they give the option to contract several rendering products:

• Initial design: an interactive visualization system that allows you to see the proposals in the initial design and ideation phases. The silhouettes are worked on, a solar study is made to determine the gaps and shadows, and everything is presented from a bird’s eye view.
• Render Advanced: the render is performed with a complete 3D modeling, with the precise cameras to capture detailed and high-level images, with the most realistic lighting. It includes other elements of urbanism, vegetation, axonometric plans …
• Render Premium: the most impressive photorealistic infographics in great detail. 5K renders allow any project to be simulated on a real stage in natural lighting conditions, resulting in exceptional graphic quality. Ideal for all types of projects with a high level of complexity: restaurants, shopping centers, offices, luxury real estate … 

In short, thanks to the renders, the real estate portals will be able to show their reforms in their maximum splendor even if they are not ready. Any render offers much more information than any product sheet. A picture tells a thousand words. 

360° Virtual Tours

Interactive technology has also reached the real estate sector, improves the user experience, and consequently facilitates the closing of operations. In this sense, the 360º Virtual Tour allows any real estate business to efficiently promote their properties and save time for the potential client (and the real estate agency itself.)

Those interested in the property can access a virtual representation defined with great detail and with maximum realism possible from the real estate office. The pandemic has accelerated this use of technologies, and today virtual tours are essential to simplifying sales processes. 

Using virtual reality glasses, the interested party will move through the property as if they were in it. The design of this virtual space will be created in the same way as 3D renders, but in a big way and with all the points of view, so that the virtual visit is as realistic as possible. In this way, one can see the finishes of any room in the house in great detail, see how the light affects, see the distribution, etc.

Virtual tours are not only used for renovation works through 3D renders but also to sell finished properties. In this sense, you just have to photograph in detail (we could scan) each room of the property with a 360º camera and then edit them with the appropriate program to create the 360º Virtual Tour. 

The possibility of virtually visiting a home is undoubtedly a differential factor for real estate companies. An immersive experience that brings the customer closer to the final purchase. At Plus Render, they design these virtual projections through which they can walk and see and feel how it would be living in that home in the near future.

Interactive Tour

The interested party can also access the property virtually from home and adapt it to their preference. It is another option that is emerging a lot in real estate marketing. And without virtual glasses. 

Just by clicking on a link or scanning a QR code, the potential customer will be able to view in 360º degrees on their mobile, tablet, or computer what could be their new home. While turning on the mobile, you will be able to discover the different spaces. But the differential point is that we can interact with the property: we can change the materials, finishes, colors, and much more. 

This interactive tour also offers the user the possibility to configure the home to their preference (always according to the options proposed by the real estate agency) and see the final result as it really would be. The interaction and the option that you give the user to design the spaces are of great value. You will feel as if he was the one who designed the home of your dreams.

Online real estate marketing will grow your business

All these online real estate marketing strategies and trends that we have highlighted are vital for any portal, real estate group, or online real estate agency to improve the conversion of its sales objectives. For this, they must allocate part of their budget to hire experts, architects, and interior designers who know how to get the maximum potential out of the home through all these new technological tools.

In this sense, Plus Render is a great ally. They are a team of innovative architects from all over Europe with extensive experience in visualization. The strength of these passionate viewers is their creativity and adaptability to tackle highly complex projects.

In Plus Render, they help real estate companies to improve their real estate marketing in different facets:

• Realization of 3D Renders and 3D plans to achieve a visual impact on real estate websites.
• Recording and realization of 360º Virtual Tours allow the client to live an accurate experience of their future home.
• The creation of all kinds of videos and interactive tours so that they can move through the different houses in the catalog from the mobile phone.
• Design and printing of brochures, dossiers, displays, and all kinds of graphic stationery elements, the basic material for any real estate agency.
• Development of web pages focused on the sale of real estate.

As we said at the beginning of the article, we live in a golden age for real estate marketing, as more and more companies in the sector are determined to be on the client’s side and give them all the facilities and comforts so that their purchase decision is the right one. And this also favors the competition of the sector. We must not stay behind and adopt as soon as possible all these trends that we have talked about. It is not a cost; it is an investment. And without a doubt, this is one of the values of Plus Render: they help real estate companies to grow by offering a quality service and excellence whose results are very visible.