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Syndicating Real Estate Online Using Content Marketing
By Adam Gower Ph.D.
Content. It’s the buzzword of the decade so far and it applies as much to real estate syndication as it does to any other industry. Content is your key to making things happen when raising capital for your projects. Whether you’re seeking new investors, looking for leads, or just trying to nurture your existing network for increased investment, you need content to get you there.
Where to Start with Content Marketing
Content marketing can get complicated quickly. If you’re just starting out here’s a simplified rundown about where you can start, even if you’ve never done it before:
1. List your real estate niche’s top 10 problems
Every sector of the real estate industry has its own unique set of problems. Seek out the 10 biggest problems in your niche and list them out. You probably know some of them already, and you can find the rest through interacting with others or researching current issues online. Whether it’s reading other people’s content or talking with them in person, you can narrow down your list to find 10 big problems.
2. Build a content strategy
Now that you’ve found your top 10 issues in your real estate specialty, develop content that addresses those pain points. You don’t always have to offer a direct, simple solution, especially since not all pain points will have those, but you do need to talk about them openly and informatively.
The content you make needs to be the best content available. Don’t just settle for something that mimics what others have already written or gives the shallow, obvious perspective. Be thorough, realistic, informative, and engaging. If you don’t have time to do it yourself, outsource it to someone you can trust. If you don’t have the knowledge yourself, seek insight from an expert.
3. Distribute your content
Content is posted centrally on your website. From there, you work through social media and other methods to spread it as far and wide as possible. Use social media, email marketing, SEO, direct messenger, targeted advertisements, and any other method available.
The goal with distribution is to start the conversation and gain trust. Content marketing starts a relationship between you and everybody who engages with your content. Without trust and an established relationship, you’ll never be able to move onto the next step, which is conversion.
4. Nurture conversions
This is the step where a lot of people fail. Unfortunately, failing to convert means your leads and relationships with prospects mean very little. Leads and prospects who don’t invest with you, even over the course of a long relationship, are bad leads. They could just be bad leads because the investor journey you are offering them isn’t strong enough for them to convert and either gets to the ‘ask’ too quickly, takes too long, or, face it, maybe you need to find better deals or offer better terms.
Leading someone through your conversion funnel means eventually leading them to something that requires a paywall to get to the other side. It could be a seminar, an event, that leads prospects towards becoming an investor in a new syndicated deal you’re sponsoring. But you can’t go straight to the conversion step before you’ve developed a relationship.
Related article: How to Attract Investors by Writing Articles and Blogs
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Tips for Content Creation
What makes good content? This is something of a debate with no easy solution. In the real estate industry and marketplace, your prospective investor are constantly changing what they want, appreciate, and expect, particularly as the real estate market proceeds through its natural cycle and as different sectors become the flavor of the month. Serve your own niche, speak to your own expertise, and don’t pay too much attention to what others are doing with their vastly different value propositions and investment strategies.
As much as content can vary between sponsors, regions, and asset classes, there are a few things that ring true everywhere. Here are a few tips for making better content.
Short and Sweet
It’s good to have a few anchor content pieces that are long, highly informative, and thorough enough to cover every aspect of the topic. But, most of your day-to-day content that surrounds those anchor pieces should be short and easily digestible.
People that are interested in what you have to say or who want to learn more about the topic will likely move on to the large content anchors as they go. They’re not as likely to start there, unless they’re researching the topic and find you through organic search or ads. However, leading people to your content by creating a series of other pieces of content that surround the main topics can increase your engagement while also giving you enough content to post consistently.
Create Video Content
Today, video content is what the social media sites want to show and what people want to see. There’s still a place for written content. However, videos are great for drawing people in and getting them interested in what you have to say. Many people just respond better to video content and will give their attention to it for longer. Even if it’s a video podcast or webinar, professionally taken video or video you shot on your smart phone, video content is compelling.
Leverage Value Exchanges
Don’t underestimate the power of value exchanges for increasing your authority in the industry. Look for experts that want to make guest posts, which essentially means you’re giving them a platform to voice their message while also promoting your own site. Guest posts are a win-win situation, because all you have to do is moderate the content to make sure it suits your target investors and meets your high standards. They’re responsible for creating it, while you simply promote it and bring in more views.
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Content is a large part of online and social media marketing. In the world of real estate, standing out from the crowd can take some effort, but it’s worth the time you invest to do it well. If you’re going to start working on finding more leads and investors online (as you should be), start off on the right foot and make sure your content is up to standard from the beginning.
If you have only just started in real estate development, have completed no deals, have no email list, but know you want the freedom and wealth being a real estate developer brings, then I suggest your first step is to start evaluating deals so you can recognize a good one when you see it.
Here’s where you should start. You’ll learn everything you need to know – the different types of real estate, different development strategies, how real estate cycles influence the market, and all about due diligence.
If you want to find deals and raise money for them so you can start your real estate development business, then learning how to conduct due diligence so you can pitch your deals better to investors is a great place to start.
If you’ve already purchased one or more real estate project and are seeing more opportunities than you can finance, then now is the time to start building your investor network so you can finance all your next deals quicker.
You’ve already got some momentum; now start finding and educating prospects about what you’re doing so you can build an email list of people to pitch to when you’re ready to raise money for your next deal.
This is what we build for private clients all the time – it’s called the Investor Acquisition System and you can access the entire program right here so you can find prospects, and convert them into being deep pocketed, repeat investors in your deals.
If you are a seasoned pro with multi-cycle experience, a substantial portfolio, a decent deal pipeline, and find yourself spending too much time raising equity capital because you’re still doing it in-person, then it’s time you put technology to work for you.
The wonderful thing about doing this is that you’re not going to be doing anything different than you’re already doing and, guess what, you’ll never have to sit through investor meetings again.
Sounds crazy I know, but I lay the whole thing out for you in this white board workshop where I personally show you exactly what it takes for you to transform your equity raising into a fully automated, capital raising machine so you can find new investors while increasing commitments from your existing network.
