Real Estate Marketing, Search Engine Optimization and
Lead Generation for real estate agents and brokers
by Vern Clinton
Ninety percent or more of real estate brokers and agents have found that their competitors are doing much better at generating leads from their website than they, themselves. They want to improve their results, but don't see a clear path to do that.
This article does show a clear path to making your website a more effective and more competitive Marketing and Lead Generation aid to your business.
There are three main elements a successful Marketing and Lead Generation Program on the Internet must have.
- Your Website's Design
- Is it attractive and easy to navigate?
- Does it have lots of information buyers and sellers are looking for?
- Current MLS listings.
- Easy signup for automatic email updates to listings.
- Easy ways to get additonal information on properties of interest.
- A personalized 'Property Organizer' that keeps track of their research. (and that brings them back to your site over and over)
- Specific information about schools, recreation, law enforcement and community services in each area you service.
- Up to date information on financing.
- Is it well maintained so that your visitor doesn't encounter dead ends while navigating the site?
- Does it motivate visitors to contact you with well designed "calls to action"?
- Bringing visitors to your web site
- Are you attracting visitors (potential prospects) to your sitethrough traditional advertising?
- Are you reaching visitors through Search Engine Positioning?
- Are you competing for visitors through "Pay per Click" search engine ads?
- Following up with the lead prospects who contact you
- Do you telephone them immediately if a number is provided so that you make contact before they contact your competition?
- Do you immediately put them on a well designed email 'trickle' program so that they are systematically reminded that the best resource available to them is your website?
- If you use direct mail, do you have a package ready to send as soon as you have a mailing address?
For the purposes of this article I'll assume that you have a Silk Shorts, Inc web site so that all of the criteria listed in #1 above are met and, I'll assume that you know what to do with a lead from your site when they contact you for information as listed in #3 above. That leaves...
Bringing Visitors to Your Web Site
- Traditional Advertising, print, direct mail,
telephone, signage, radio, television
Think of your web site as a salesperson who is "on floor time" 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, who can speak effectively to 100 or more people per day and never lose her enthusiasm. In all of your traditional advertising and lead generation wouldn't you strongly emphasize and push the idea of calling any time of day with any question about real estate?
Your first and most lucrative use of your site is to sell it to your targeted prospective market and your sphere of influence emphasizing how much it can help them in their research into buying a homes or other property. In other words: teach them that everything they need to know can be found on your site any time of the day or night from anywhere in the world. (More... Do's and Don'ts, Losing Prospects, Names That Work)
- Search Engine Positioning (SEO, Search Engine
Optimization)
SEO is concerned with getting your website well indexed for your best search phrases on the "Free" search engines. "Well indexed" generally means that if a prospect searches for a specific phrase your site will show in the first 10 to 20 positions. Since there may be many thousands of websites competing for that position it is understandable that this is no easy proposition.
Still, since most real estate website owners are interested in SEO there are thousands of would-be experts claiming to be able to achieve that goal. Probably a week doesn't go by when someone isn't offering to get your site to the very first page on all the major search engines for a couple of hundred dollars or so. Give me a break!
That doesn't mean that SEO can't be a valuable source of prospects for you, but it does mean that it requires expertise and time. Translation you pay for what you get.
Don't spend your advertising dollars on Search Engine Positioning (SEO) unless you have a clear idea of what you will get for your money and what it will be worth to you. You will get a lot of hype from most salespeople trying for your dollars.
So SEO can be a part of your marketing plan, but it's long range and not cheap.
More on SEO...
- Pay per Click
Instant gratification. Of the three methods I'm discussing PPC is the only one that can produce a reliable stream of targeted traffic to your site within a couple of days and at a reasonable cost--if it's done right. And, what is "right"?
The trick with PPC is to do it in a way that's cost effective. With expertise and time it can be done cost effectively, however, without that and without an efficient web site it's very easy to spend a great deal of money with almost nothing to show for it.
So, in a nutshell, what Real Estate Internet Marketing Plan is for you? Let me summarize what I suggest.
- Don't waste your money on driving traffic to your site until you have a killer site like a Silk Shorts, Inc. site. (Ahem...)
- Spend some time to figure out what each prospect is worth and what portion of your cost of sale should go into your total monthly advertising budget.
- Analyze your past experience with various traditional advertising media and decide how much of your budget should go to each of those and how much you are willing to invest in your website marketing.
- Start slow and easy and build on successes. Start with PPC.
- Take a portion of your budget to be used to work on your site's SEO. This is a long range project and it can't be counted on for quick results as you can with PPC. Remember that search engines do NOT tell anyone how they rank sites and they do, in fact, CHANGE their criteria regularly because they don't want to be "figured out". They want relevant well designed sites and if that is not what you have, you can forget about any long term web site position for any useful search phrase.
- Above all, don't try to do it yourself. Do what you do best-- talk to prospects. Find someone else to run the nitty gritty of your program. You're too expensive to hire to do that work. It may not be easy to find the right person so don't be in too much of a hurry. You don't necessarily "get what you pay for" so approach the problem like you would when you hire an assistant to help you conduct your everyday business of sales and follow up.
- And, oh yes, one more thing.... Make darn sure that when those Internet leads come in that you treat them like GOLD. They're among the best leads you'll ever see. They'll cost you a lot and you should work them to make them worth that cost.