A Beginner’s Guide to Snapchat For Real Estate Agents And Brokers

Using social media platforms is a key way to promote your real estate business and generate new leads. In fact, 63% of Realtors use social media to promote listings to their target audience and generate interest in their services.

While often overlooked, Snapchat is a great social media network for real estate agents and brokers to advertise their businesses and build a credible brand.

There are over 106 million Snapchat users in the U.S. alone, giving you a massive audience to target with your content. 

The average age group on Snapchat is 18 to 24 years old, meaning these users are likely looking for their first home. If this is your niche, Snapchat is a goldmine of potential leads.

In this article, we’ll explain how Snapchat works and how real estate brokers and agents can leverage this platform to get more leads.

What Is Snapchat and How Does It Work?

Snapchat is a multimedia messaging social media platform that allows real estate brokers and agents to share photos, videos, and messages that disappear once viewed. 

Here’s a breakdown of how Snapchat operates and its key features that a broker or real estate agent could leverage:

1. Snaps: These are the core of Snapchat—photos and videos you can send directly to others or add to your story. You can customize Snaps by using filters, lenses, stickers, text, and drawings. When you send a snap, it can be viewed for up to 10 seconds before it disappears.

2. Stories: These are collections of snaps that are visible to your friends on Snapchat or the public for 24 hours. This feature allows you to create a narrative or series of updates that viewers can watch in sequence. Stories are a powerful tool for your marketing strategy, as you can use them to showcase properties, share market updates, or provide behind-the-scenes content.

3. Discover: Snapchat’s Discover section is where users can find your content. It includes news, entertainment, and other professional content. Businesses like yours can create sponsored content or ads that appear in the Discover section to reach a broader audience.

4. Snap Map: This feature lets users see where their Snapchat friends are on a map if they’ve opted in to share their location. Real estate professionals can use this feature to highlight property locations and open houses.

5. Chat: This allows users to send instant messages, including videos and images, directly to other users. You can set chats to disappear after viewing or save them within the conversation. This is a convenient way for agents and brokers to communicate with potential clients.

Why You Should Use Snapchat Marketing to Promote Your Real Estate Business

A group of real estate agents is using Snapchat to sell homes worth over $6 million using an account called Snaplistings.

When one of the real estate agents visited a friend’s beautiful apartment in New York, she decided to broadcast the visit on Snapchat. This led to an inundation of messages asking who the real estate broker was and how they could rent similar properties.

Four real estate agents then founded the Snaplistings account to show followers apartments for sale and rent in New York. Anyone looking for an apartment to rent can send the account messages to arrange viewings.

Due to Snapchat’s younger audience, most of Snaplistings leads come from lower-priced rentals and apartment listings. However, they also leverage their audience of interested real estate followers to showcase listings with massive price tags.

Aside from selling homes, Snapchat also allows you to:

✅ Build a personal brand.

✅ Build trust and credibility with your audience.

✅ Target a younger audience that you may not reach elsewhere.

✅ Showcase properties in a way that isn’t possible on other platforms.

✅ Drive authentic engagement, allowing you to connect with potential clients on a more human level.

5 Tips for Real Estate Marketing Success with Snapchat

Now that you know why this social network is so powerful for those in the real estate industry, here are our top tips for getting Snapchat right:

1. Showcase listings with storytelling

You can use Snapchat stores to create a narrative around your listings. Rather than just showing images or videos, tell a story about the property. You can highlight:

👉 Unique features.

👉 The neighborhood.

👉 What makes the property special.

This approach can make your listings more engaging and interactive.

2. Use behind-the-scenes content

Share behind-the-scenes content to build trust with potential clients by showing transparency. 

For example, you could share snaps that show:

👉 What happens during a home staging.

👉 The process of getting a property ready for a showing.

👉 A day in the life of a real estate agent.

This content humanizes your personal brand and makes followers feel more connected to you.

In addition to showcasing properties, Snaplistings uses Snapchat to share behind-the-scenes snaps of real estate agents getting properties ready for listing:

Real estate CIO Jason Frazier shares behind-the-scenes snaps of his visit to a mortgage broker’s office:

3. Share exclusive sneak peeks

You can use Snapchat to give your followers a first look at new listings before they hit the market. This creates a sense of exclusivity and urgency, encouraging followers to stay engaged and check your updates regularly.

Real estate broker Sonia E. Figueroa uses Snapchat to share sneak peeks of her brokerage’s listings:

4. Use geofilters for open houses

You can create custom geofilters for your open houses. These are location-based overlays that users can apply to their snaps when they are in a specific geographical area. They can use these filters to enhance Snaps with custom graphics, text, and images related to your open house.

Geofilters are only available to users within a defined geographic area, like your open house. When a user takes a snap in the designated location, they can swipe to see and apply the available Geofilters.

As a real estate agent or broker, you can customize your geofilters to include branding, logos, and other relevant elements to your open house. This could include the property’s address or your brokerage’s website link.

Geofilters can be set to appear during a specific time frame, making them ideal for time-sensitive marketing activities like open houses or property launches.

These are a fun way to increase awareness and encourage visitors to share their experiences with their own audience. 

Here’s an example of marketing expert Gary Vaynerchuk using location-specific Geofilters:

5. Highlight local attractions

You can use your Snapchat account to showcase local amenities and attractions near the properties you’re selling. You could highlight:

👉 Parks.

👉 Schools.

👉 Restaurants.

👉 Other points of interest.

This gives potential buyers a better sense of the property’s surroundings and neighborhood, which can be especially appealing to out-of-town buyers.

Broker Sue Benson uses her Snapchat account to promote and highlight interesting local attractions in Naples:

Realtor and broker Marianne Bornhoft also uses Snapchat to showcase downtown Seattle’s best features:

Use Paperless Pipeline to Manage Your New Deals

Once you get your Snapchat marketing right, new deals are sure to come rolling in. However, things could quickly fall through the cracks if you don’t manage these transactions effectively, and deals may even fall through. 

You need robust transaction management software to manage your transactions from start to close, ensuring your deals close successfully every time.

Paperless Pipeline is the fastest and most affordable transaction management software, designed to ensure brokers, agents, and transaction coordinators can keep each deal running smoothly.

Visit our website to learn more and get a free 14-day Paperless Pipeline trial. We’re excited to show you just how smooth and streamlined the transaction management process can be.

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