Internet is an amazing technology of our time. It works like magic and if you know how to click the mouse in the right manner then you have the potentials to make millions of naira in your real estate career. It is widely acknowledged that real estate includes land and the structures built on the land. We encounter real estate every day in our various living home and offices. People need real estate every day in order to perform their daily routine; some might want to rent out an office space, residential apartment or even want to buy properties for investment sake. As a real estate broker, you are looking for people who might be interested in buying or letting your property, these people are not easy to find because they are scattered all around and one of the proven ways to get this people to your attention is to use the magical internet technology of the World Wide Web.
Through various online real estate marketing strategies, you have the potential to reach over 40,000,000 internet users in Nigeria and facilitate a successful real estate transaction with a significant proportion of them. According to African Undersea 
Cable (2014) it was revealed that number of internet users in Nigeria is at 48.3 Million, Internet penetration in the same region 28.4% of the population. Nigeria has the largest internet population in Africa, 11th in the world. This implies that the Nigerian decision makers/potential real estate buyer/prospective tenants to go online on daily basis either to check their mail, search for information, interact with various social media channels, shop online, chat over Skype or Google Hangout or even network on LinkedIn.
The above justifications are the reason why real estate brokers must maintain good and strategic internet presence, effective use of it will generate real estate leads/prospects. These prospects are already online checking mails, catching fun with social media, searching for information or chatting over Skype/Google Hangout or Networking with people over LinkedIn.
In an effort to ensure that real estate professionals are not left out in this internet platforms, below are the basic procedures to maintain strategic online presence and grow your real estate business on the internet;
Creation & design of a real estate friendly website, this will serve as your online office and window to the world. The website must be search engine friendly i.e. must be visible on Google Search, Ask Search, MSN Search, Yahoo Search etc. Also it must be 
mobile phone friendly because majority of internet users in Nigeria are mobile users. This website will be your online corporate profile. It will contain testimonials of people who have done business with you in the past and overview of what you to. Also a section for people to search for properties of choice must be provided.
Creation of Social Media Channels either in the form of page/group/profile on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google +, YouTube or interactive blogs where you can educate people on real estate and can comment. These channels will be used to educate people on real estate and also to advertise your real estate services to the world and build up followers on your social media channels. 
These channels also have the potential to show up in search engine results of Google Search, Yahoo Search etc. and give you the advantage of brand awareness. The main reason why we maintain channels on social media is due to the fact that Facebook has over 900 million active users, more than 6 times Nigerian population. Over 500 million active twitter accounts with over 180 million tweets every day. LinkedIn is the world largest professional network with over 160 million members. Our prospective buyers/tenants are scattered all over here and we can get them engaged through our channels.
Maintaining presence on various Nigerian Classified Ads and Real Estate Vertical Ads Websites. Please note that you cannot just pick any classified ads website, it depends on the number of daily visitors, regions where people are visiting etc. These classified ads websites & real estate vertical ads websites will be used to advertise your properties with appropriate distribution of contents – texts, Images and videos. Among the popular ones in Nigeria include olx.com.ng, privateproperty.com.ng, findnigeriaproperty.com, lamudi.com.ng, plotsandhouses.com.ng etc. Another important website that people also use for real estate listing is 
nairaland.com, although this is not a classified ads website but an information portal that Nigerians have taken advantage of as real estate listing website. Nigerian real estate hunters mostly agents, property investors, prospective tenants etc. visit this website everyday either to check out property for their client or analyze property market information or mistakenly come to the website or visited by direct real estate consumers
Setting up Email/SMS Marketing Application, in real estate agency/brokerage service, communication is a powerful weapon to close a deal and one of the online proven communication tools to Fast tract deals and market your property. Using email and sms marketing approach require building an email and telephone number database of people in the real estate and related verticals. 
This database will be utilized for sending out scheduled email and sms messages, either in the form of property available for sale or to let. Email & SMS marketing approach is a proven way of getting leads/prospects. Please note that you can create a signup button to capture email and telephone numbers on your website.
Mapping out your property location for search in Google Map. This can be used by your prospective buyer/tenant to view out location of the property on Google map by just inserting the coordinate of the property in Google Search Bar and allow Google to map out the property location for viewing. In this aspect you need to have access to location coordinate 
capture device like GPS – Global Positioning System. Through this device you can capture the points of your property location, integrate it to your website and enable people to view the property location.
Creation of Interactive Virtual Tour Videos of your properties. You can upload these videos online via YouTube or Vimeo and enable people who do not have the time for physical inspection to check the property out on your website or YouTube/Vimeo and if they are interested, they get across to you.
Banner Ads & Google Ads service subscription, as we have seen on various websites that some companies like displaying their ads on websites side bars. Banner ads are small rectangular object on a web page that displays stationery or moving graphics and 
includes a hyperlink to the advertiser’s website. Banner ads are versatile advertising vehicles – their graphic images can help increase awareness, and users can click them to open the advertiser’s website and learn more about the product. Banner ads can serve both informative and persuasive functions. As regard to real estate agency, we can create banner ads of our properties for sale or to let and put them on the side bar of popular websites so as for people to see and facilitate a better transaction.
With all the above online real estate marketing strategies in place, one will be able to generate high number of leads/prospects, create awareness about your real estate services and begin to close deals upon deals.
Now you have clicked the mouse, it is time to make millions of naira in online real estate marketing.
Thanks.
Shadowwalker 