Why should you focus on digital marketing rather than traditional forms of marketing? The answer is simple Digital marketing provides better returns than traditional advertising methods, better customer retention and enables you to communicate with customers in an environment they feel comfortable in.

Digital marketing combines traditional advertising such as television and radio with online advertising PR, social media and mobile technology. Technology has had an enormous impact on people’s lives and dramatically shifted the way we live and work. This also applies to advertising and marketing.

Research shows a large number of people do not trust advertising and do not believe what companies say about themselves. Traditional advertising is increasingly ignored. In contrast to this Facebook has over 400 million active users and Twitter has over 105 million users. YouTube boasts over 2 billion views per day. Three quarters of adult Internet users utilise social media and time spent on the Internet is up two-thirds from 2009. Many Internet users who may spurn traditional advertising will become a fan of the brand on a social network and it is now commonplace for consumers to begin their research by using social media.

New technology impacts traditional real estate advertising in other ways. While there is a heavy focus on local press advertising to show off properties,this type of publication is decreasingly viewed by young professionals. As more and more news content is accessed through the internet, less local press ads are seen with readers simply skimming the ads.

Traditional advertising that focuses on television, radio, print media and direct mail operates by sending your message out to as large an audience as possible. This is done in the hope that somebody will receive the message at the exact moment they are considering a purchase. Since all your competitors have adopted the same strategy your only option is to shout louder than they are, and as often as you can afford.

Digital marketing techniques do away with this problem as it allows you to communicate with your potential buyers in their own environment. Your presence can be ongoing without being obtrusive, and you can build a relationship with customers before they are considering buying. When the time comes for them to buy you already have a relationship in place.

Since social media has potential to reach more real estate buyers than Google,it allows agents a great opportunity to find potential new customers. As a result it can be tempting to advertise heavily here. This can be off-putting to users and is likely to be viewed negatively. As people can be suspicious of corporations let your happy customers do the talking for you. Allow customers to post unedited content including reviews and responses. Use different social media channels as this will enable you to target different groups and also create buzz. Running social media-based competitions is a great way to enhance brand awareness. Use your social media presence to show the human faces behind your executive team and board of directors.