The real estate market is shifting — again. After a challenging year marked by high interest rates and inflation, cooling market conditions and changing buyer demographics are reshaping how real estate professionals market their services in 2025. As marketing leaders adjust to new customer behaviors and rising competition, they’re asking tougher questions about where to invest their limited budgets.
Skyrocketing costs across paid-ad platforms have left many agencies in real estate wondering if these channels deliver the best ROI. Other digital marketing strategies, like content marketing and social media, are still effective but require significant investments of time and resources.
No matter the channel, every real estate marketing strategy must focus on one thing: measurable ROI. The only way to achieve this is by building a marketing strategy fueled by data — tracking calls, forms, and website engagement across every channel.
This guide will help you build a leaner, smarter marketing strategy that adapts to the evolving real estate market, keeps you competitive, and makes every marketing dollar count.
Tap into local social media trends
Many businesses use social media to cast a wide net and reach as large an audience as possible. But when it comes to real estate digital marketing, social media provides the opportunity to build deep connections with your localized audience.
Identify which social channels your community enjoys
The first step is to find out where your intended audience is spending most of their time on social media. This can vary greatly depending on the area you service and audience you target, so you’ll need to analyze market trends and potentially survey your local community to find out more.
Certain platforms allow you to interact on a local level without any investment required. The NextDoor platform is a great place to start. Joining and becoming active in local Facebook groups is also a good idea. Try using the Instagram Explore feature or searching local hashtags to learn more about active users in your area.
Build relationships
Once you know where potential property buyers and sellers in your area are spending time online, begin building connections and boosting your brand recognition.
You can only do this if you have already established a consistent brand look and feel. If you don’t have this yet, consider investing some of your marketing spend into this foundational initiative.
From there, you can work with local businesses to grow your brand footprint and begin engaging with your target audience on social media through comments and direct messaging.
Create content that suits your audience
Content marketing is one of the most effective marketing strategies for real estate companies. Focus on finding ways to stand out to your local audience and show them you are an expert and trusted resource for your area.
Craft unique content for your local market
When generating content concepts, research what’s going on in your area and what might appeal to your audience. You can publish blog articles about local attractions in the region or produce quarterly reports about the housing market, for example.
Consider your audience and what they want. If you’re targeting young parents, for example, you could create content around the schools in your local area. If you’re selling property to young adults in a big city, you may instead focus on creating content around local restaurants and conveniences.
Mixing up your content formats
To truly succeed with content marketing, you need to test different types of content to see what resonates most with your audience. Long-form, informative blog posts can help reach customers using Google to do research, while other folks in your target audience may prefer to watch videos showcasing properties and neighborhoods.
Test out various delivery methods as well. Promote your content on social media and repurpose it for email marketing. Track the results of all these campaigns and see what works best for your audience.
Be the local resource your audience relies on
The cornerstone of any good real estate digital marketing plan can be summed up in one word: Trust. Your audience wants to know that you are truly an expert in their neighborhood and that you have their best interest in mind.
Establish expertise
Trust and expertise are inextricably linked. By demonstrating that you are the true experts in your region, potential leads will come to see you as a trusted resource. You can do this by keeping your website up to date and frequently sharing local property news and insights on your blog and social media channels.
Offline, you can attend local events and greet attendees, or partner with various businesses or community initiatives to expand your reach and visibility within your locality.
Share helpful resources
One of the best ways to become known as an expert in your area is to provide your community with valuable resources that they’ll need again and again. These could be property reports that you publish on a regular basis or updates about community happenings.
Your website can also become a place that people return to frequently to explore properties for sale in the area — but for this to work, you must consistently be updating your website.
Offer virtual home tours
Virtual home tours are undoubtedly some of the most powerful lead generation tactics for real estate agents. They’re particularly useful for people who live outside the area but are considering moving or when folks are simply too busy to make it to an in-person showing.
Provide a seamless website experience
If you want to make the most of virtual home tours, you should devote some of your resources to ensuring your website provides a smooth user experience.
Virtual tours should be easy to find on your site, browse through, and share. Be sure to have clear calls to action for customers so they can quickly and easily request more information.
Focus on lead generation and conversion
When using virtual home tours to generate and convert leads, tap into form tracking. This will give you insights into which of your virtual tours are the most compelling for your audience, so you can adjust all your tours to meet the highest standard, maximizing conversions across the board.
Track your marketing campaigns
Before you decide on your real estate marketing strategy, it’s vital that you have everything in place to track your marketing campaigns in detail.
A tool like CallRail can help you get a deep understanding of how effective the channels you use are, whether you’re an independent agent or managing a national real estate enterprise. Here’s how:
Call Tracking
One key metric real estate companies measure is inbound calls. With Call Tracking, agencies can assign different phone numbers to their various marketing campaigns, making it easy to see which strategies are driving inbound leads.
CallRail automatically records and transcribes calls, then analyzes the sales tactics your representatives use to convert callers into clients. This allows you to maximize team performance.
Form Tracking
Many real estate agents also rely on their websites to bring in new leads, and CallRail can help assess which of your digital campaigns are pulling in leads through Form Tracking.
Within a single dashboard, CallRail users can see which forms on their landing pages or virtual tour pages generate the most inquiries, making it easy to optimize conversions throughout the site.
Convert Assist
Following up on every lead is critical — but it’s easy to miss opportunities when your team is stretched thin. CallRail’s Convert Assist uses AI to automatically generate follow-up tasks and email drafts based on call summaries. This means your team can spend less time writing emails and more time closing deals, ensuring no lead slips through the cracks.
Voice Assist
When you're juggling showings, calls get missed. But every missed call could be a missed lead. Voice Assist helps real estate teams stay on top of inbound calls by answering, capturing, and qualifying them 24/7. Whether it’s after hours or during a busy day, this AI assistant handles routine follow-up so you can focus on serious buyers and active listings without losing opportunities.
Measuring campaign success with CallRail
If you want the most comprehensive insights into your real estate agent marketing strategy, CallRail is the tool for you.
CallRail’s tracking software is so easy to set up, it can typically be done in just a few minutes. And as soon as it’s live, it will begin tracking the volume and source of phone calls and forms as they come in, giving your marketing team valuable information about which strategies are working best, and which ones need to be optimized.
The software helps you optimize your campaigns as well, by analyzing call data (including transcripts of actual calls) to find easy to improve your conversion funnel. You’ll easily be able to refine your campaigns for improved performance and ROI.
Ready to find out what insights CallRail can unlock for your real estate agency?
