Australian real estate agencies have always relied on local knowledge and strong relationships to buy and sell properties. While those qualities still matter, most of them now have access to far more information about buyers, sellers and market activity than ever before.
Indeed, data from website visits, search trends, enquiry records and advertising results can all provide great insight into what people want and when they may be ready to act. Therefore, by using this information well, agencies can spend their marketing budgets more carefully. In doing so, they can also reach suitable prospects and create campaigns that reflect conditions in their local market.
Let’s take a look at how data-driven marketing is reshaping real estate sales in Australia.
What Is Data-Driven Marketing in Real Estate?
Essentially, data-driven marketing means using evidence from customer behaviour and campaign results to guide future marketing choices. For a real estate agency, that evidence might include the:
- Suburbs people search for
- Properties attracting the most online views
- Emails receiving the most clicks
- Advertising channels producing enquiries
- Features buyers mention when contacting an agent
- Types of homeowners requesting appraisals
The great thing about this type of information is that it can support an agent’s judgement with evidence. An experienced agent, for instance, may already sense that demand for family homes is increasing in a suburb. However, checking search activity, enquiry numbers and inspection attendance can confirm whether their impression reflects the general behaviour of buyers.
Why Is Property Marketing Becoming More Data-Driven?
Every month, millions of property searches take place online in Australia. Between them, realestate.com.au and Domain handle approximately 12 million and 9 million each, (according to both companies).
Typically, buyers compare suburbs, inspect listings, research recent sales and calculate borrowing costs before speaking with an agent. Sellers also tend to research local prices and agencies before requesting an appraisal from them.
This online activity generates useful signals that agencies can study to learn which topics, locations, and property types attract attention. For example, a business may discover that its suburb guides attract many first-home buyers, while its paid advertising largely targets investors. That mismatch could go some way towards explaining why advertising costs are high, but enquiry numbers remain low. Effectively, such data allows the agency to spot the gap and then adjust its campaign as required.
Given that agencies are competing for visibility across search engines, property portals, social networks and email inboxes, competition is another factor to consider. Not least because relying on the same generic message for every audience is unlikely to produce strong results.
How Does Search Data Help Agents Reach Buyers and Sellers?
At its core, search data helps to reveal the language Australians use when looking for property information. For instance, some people search for homes in a specific suburb, while others may ask about rental yields, school zones, auction results or the cost of selling.
Real estate businesses can use these patterns to create website content that readers will find useful. This could include publishing:
- Suburb profiles for buyers
- Recent-sales pages for homeowners
- Market updates for investors
By doing this, they can ensure that each page on their site addresses a distinct need with “value,” rather than simply repeating a sales pitch.
In this respect, working with specialists such as Prosperity Media’s real estate SEO services can be beneficial. Doing so may help property businesses identify valuable search terms and improve their website structure. Both of which can enable them to compete more effectively for visibility in selected markets.
Which Types of Data Are Most Useful to Real Estate Agencies?
There is lots of data available to real estate agents. Therefore, the key is to know what is useful and what is not. Typically, the most valuable pieces of information are connected to a goal, such as attracting appraisal requests, increasing inspection bookings or finding qualified buyers.
Website and Search Data
Your website analytics can show a range of metrics, including which pages on your site attract visitors and the source from which they came. Crucially, it can also reveal what they did while on your site. As a result, an agency might find, for instance, that a guide to selling an apartment generates more appraisal enquiries than its general sales page.
Additionally, search information can reveal changes in local interests. Subsequently, rising search interest for a particular suburb or property feature may give an agency ideas for future articles, listings, and advertising campaigns.
CRM and Enquiry Data
A customer relationship management system records conversations, enquiries and follow-ups. If it is kept up to date, it can show which prospects are interested in certain suburbs, price ranges, or property types.
This information allows agents to send relevant information to their target audience. This will ensure that a buyer seeking a two-bedroom unit in a city does not receive a weekly email about large rural properties in The Bush. Essentially, the more relevant the information you send them, the less likely it is to be ignored.
Local Property Market Data
Recent residential and commercial property sales, listing periods, auction clearance rates, and stock levels can provide excellent context for agents. Helping them to explain whether local demand is strengthening, slowing or shifting towards a particular type of home.
However, all market figures should be dated and carefully explained. That’s because a result from one weekend or a small group of sales may not represent an entire suburb.
Advertising and Social Media Data
Both advertising and social media data can be potential goldmines of information. Advertising platforms, for instance, measure impressions, clicks, enquiries and cost per lead, while social channels show which posts attract comments, saves and shares.
Between them, these figures help agencies to identify what interests their audience. Specifically, they can tell them that a short property video may generate strong engagement, but an expensive polished graphic may produce little response. Testing both formats gives the agency evidence for its next campaign.
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