With seemingly endless marketing options as well as ever-changing technology, it’s easy to get overwhelmed or be uncertain in terms of how best to advertise your listing. Long gone are the days when a sign in the front yard with brochures and a listing in your local newspaper would be considered an adequate attempt at advertising a listing. Even in today’s competitive market, it’s crucial to demonstrate to your seller that you did everything in your power to find them the right buyer with the best offer as to make sure they’re not left wondering if there would’ve been a better one out there at closing time. Though online advertising is far from an exact science, we’ve found the following to be the most effective when it comes to marketing a listing online:

1. EMAIL MARKETING

Email marketing is by far the cheapest form of online marketing available, and remains one of the most effective. According to the Direct Marketing Association, for every $1 invested in email marketing, the return on investment will be $38. In order to make sure your email campaign is successful, however, it’s important that you’ve done the following:

  • Defined your audience (We’d recommend targeting your sphere of influence, as well as other agents with listings in close proximity to your listings)
  • Created an email template designed to convert and shows your listing in the best light possible
  • Create a property listing website to direct traffic to from the email
  • Included a subject line and description that will appeal to your audience and encourage them to open your email instead of immediately deleting it 
    • CHR’s listing emails have shown to have consistently average 36%
      • According to Constant Contact, the average open rate for emails in the Real Estate industry 19.17%

2. FACEBOOK & INSTAGRAM ADS

Social ads are an excellent way to target an audience outside of your current sphere of influence. Though the audience targeting doesn’t get as granular as other forms of advertising, like with Google Ads for example, you can show ads to people living within a certain radius of your listing, and even to people who have recently spent time on other real estate apps like Zillow or Trulia. 

Additionally, the diversity in terms of the ad formats available on Facebook and Instagram make it a great option for advertising, depending on what your goal is. Property listing videos can gain great exposure using a video ad format, for example. If the goal is to generate leads, a lead gen ad using a Facebook form has shown to be a great way to do so. In fact, we’ve seen a cost per lead as low as $2.00 using a Facebook lead gen ad!

3. YOUTUBE ADS

YouTube is the 2nd most used search engine right behind Google. This presents a great opportunity for you to get in front of this audience using a professional property video that best represents your property listing! Video has become an essential part of the decision making process for buyers, as 70% say they watched property listing videos to aid them in their decision to purchase, according to the NAR website.  

4. GOOGLE DISPLAY

Google Display, or image ads, are an excellent way for you to gain even more exposure for your property listing. You’ve probably seen these ads for other products as you’ve visited different websites or used different mobile apps, but they are essentially image ads that are shown to people as they browse the web that fit into your target audience.

This target audience could be people in your sphere, people that have been to your property listing site before through another channel like email, for example, or a whole new audience of people that fall into a specific category. One example of this would be someone who lives in a specific zip code that, based on their search behavior, has been categorized as someone who Google considers to be someone who could be in the market to purchase a home soon. Out of all of the modes of digital marketing mentioned in this article, we’ve seen Google Display ads be the most effective in terms of driving traffic to our property listing websites. 

5. SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS

Though not technically considered to be “advertising” as there is no cost associated with social posts, it is vital that you post your listing to your social channels, at minimum when your new listing goes active. Because this audience is already familiar with who you are, the trust factor is much higher than advertising to a general audience, and they will be more likely to engage with your post and/or share it with their own sphere. Outside of the property listing, it’s also a great way for you to keep yourself top of mind as they may be considering buying or selling a home themselves in the near future. 


As previously mentioned, online advertising is not an exact science or even a guarantee that your property listing will sell at or above asking price. However, one thing is clear, and that’s that online advertising for Real Estate is here to stay, so it’s best for you to get comfortable and get familiar! To learn more about what CHR has found to be effective in terms of marketing a property online, or to join the CHR team, contact us by submitting your info., or give us a call!