Inbound Marketing March 4, 2025 6 min read

Creating a Content Strategy Based On Emotional Search Intent (To Get Better Leads)

When it comes to connecting with your audience through your content strategy, few agents know where to start. Most of them put everyone in the same bucket, and assume they all want to know about the latest market information and sales trend data.

And while that might work for a generic audience, it doesn’t work if you’re trying to build a content strategy that truly resonates and connects with your ideal target audience at just the right time for just the right reasons.

That’s where search intent comes in.

Search intent is the understanding, and planning for, the why, when, and how, around how your target audience searches to find your website and your content – and it’s one of the most important parts of writing content that connects and converts.

However, capitalizing on search intent goes beyond just understanding what someone would search for – you also need to understand the why that goes along with their search intent; and the more you can understand their situation the better.

And that’s where emotional search intent can help, which starts by truly understanding your target audience and being able to put yourself in their shoes while they’re searching for something, at the exact time and conditions they’re searching; and if you plan your emotional intent strategy correctly, it can help you attract the exact type of people you want to work with.

For example, if part of your target audience is people that are going through a divorce (which is a great target audience for a number of different reasons), you should start by thinking about what they’d actually be looking for help with.

You might think that someone who is in the early stages of going through a divorce and will eventually need to sell their home will look for a top agent in their area; and while they might do that, there are probably a lot of searches that will come way before that, primarily based on someone looking for the answer to a question at an emotional time – and that’s where the opportunity for emotional search intent comes in.

If your content is positioned to be there for them at the right time, you can get that person to trust you, you brand, and your business, and eventually, connect with you when the time does come to sell their home.

So, if you put yourself in the shoes of someone in the situation above, what are they most likely to have emotional search intent for first?

If it’s real estate related, it will probably be searches like:

Who keeps the home in a divorce?
What to know about selling your house in a divorce?
Do I need one agent or two when selling my house in a divorce?
If selling a home in a divorce, do you contact a lawyer or agent first?

And so on… they’re all likely to be emotional based searches where people are simply looking for answers to real estate related questions before they’re looking for an agent, which is where the opportunity lays.

Timing is key, so being able to write (and optimize) helpful, high-quality content that answers those questions and shows up in those search results at just the right time is a great opportunity earn your audience’s trust, and eventually their business.

Once you know what someone’s emotional search intent is, being able to figure out what content to write, that answers their questions, becomes a lot easier (which is something a lot of agents struggle with).

★ Want to learn more about managing your content strategy? Have a look at these posts:

The other benefit of understanding emotional search intent is that, if done correctly, you’ll actually be able to help people and make a difference in their lives (at often a difficult time), and get a sale in the process.

For example, if someone’s parent recently died, and they’re sitting in front of the computer late one night, trying to figure how to tackle 50 years of personal items and family history, they probably aren’t going to be looking for who’s the best agent in the top 1% of agents in their real estate market.

They’re going to be looking for help, and they’re going to be looking for answers to complicated questions; so you need to be able to put yourself in their situation and figure out what they’d be searching for (and then plan your content strategy around it).

For example, they might be searching for answers to questions like:

How to deal with the family home when your parents are deceased.
How to sell my parent’s home when they are deceased.
What do you do when you need to sell the family home?

And if they find you, and you answer their question, you begin to build trust, which is key in emotional search intent.

But helping people, at a difficult time, through a difficult transaction, can also directly improve your referral business.

For example, someone will likely recommend an agent that helped them sell their home for above asking in a difficult market; but they’ll consistently give rave reviews to agent who did not only did that, but also helped them navigate it a difficult and emotional time time in their life.

And those are some of the best, most authentic types of referrals to get.

★ Want to learn more about writing content that ranks in search results? Have a look at these posts:

By creating content around your target audience’s emotional search intent, and being found in that person’s search at the right time, you’ll begin to build trust with them because you’ve helped them, and when it comes time to choose an agent to sell, if you’ve made a big enough impact, they’re likely to reach out to you first.

Want to improve your content strategy? Download our Content Strategy Guide for Real Estate Agents. It has practical methods on how to plan, implement, market, and audit a successful real estate content strategy that will deliver results as part of your overall inbound marketing strategy.

Author: Andre Bodnar

Founder, Business Development

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