It includes your website and SEO, listing portals, social media, video, email, paid ads and online reviews. Its job is to make sure buyers and sellers find you, trust you and get in touch.
Most home searches start online, and sellers look agents up before they call. Your digital presence is often the first impression, long before a handshake.
The main channels and what each does best
- Website and SEO: your own base, ranking for local searches like "\[city\] homes for sale" or "\[neighborhood\] real estate agent."
- Listing portals: where buyers browse, and where your photos and video matter most.
- Social media: reach and familiarity, with short video doing most of the work.
- Video: listing tours, reels, market updates and agent intros that build trust faster than text.
- Email: the most direct line to your sphere and past clients.
- Paid ads: Meta, Google and YouTube campaigns for listings, open houses and seller leads. Housing ads must follow fair housing rules, and on Meta they run under a Special Ad Category with restricted targeting.
- Reviews: Google and Zillow reviews heavily influence who gets the call.
How to prioritize if you're starting out: get your Google Business Profile and website basics right, commit to video for every listing, build an email list from your sphere, then add paid ads once you know what converts. Digital advertising benchmarks vary a lot by market and change often, so your own numbers matter most.
Track cost per lead, the rate at which leads turn into appointments, and where your closed deals actually came from. Trends shaping it right now include AI-generated content, vertical video, AI search tools that summarize local information and stricter rules on altered listing images.