The internet is filled with possibilities but doing too much of everything can literally wear you out. You could be spreading yourself wide but too thin; being thin can bring unwanted results which will be highly discouraging.
I’ve been an internet marketer for a decade and most of my clients belong in the Real Estate industry located in the USA. That being said, I have learned the ropes and understood the things that could help you accelerate yourself as a real estate agent or realtor.
In this blog, I want to share with you what you can add to your marketing agenda.
So is there a formula for real estate internet marketing that rocks? Definitely!
First, let’s talk about the challenges in online real estate marketing.
Online Competition
Online real estate marketing can be extremely competitive. Every realtor or agent wants the keywords you have in Google. They aim to capture your audience’s attention via different social media platforms and they dream of acquiring your amazing contact list through newsletter subscriptions.
To top it off, you have the zillow.com, homes.com, redfin.com and the movoto.com kind of websites that also want the same thing!
Site Content and Accessibility
Updating and improving site content takes a lot of time and thought. Giving your audience what they want requires patience, empathy and copy writing skills.
A continual browser, device and other site compatibility analysis also needs to be performed routinely. If your audience can’t view or understand your site content properly, they will go to another source.
Lead Management
They say that you can learn business in college, but no one teaches students how to make a sale or close a deal. Remembering this, we know that sales and lead management is very unique to each individual. You may have the content, the visibility and the appeal but if your system is not setup correctly to convert these leads, your ROI will start leaking you dry.
Thankfully, these challenges are not unique to you. It applies to all, even to the people at Zillow. Meaning, literally scores of thousands have this problem. Many will give up, many will under-perform and only a few will get to where they want to be.
But there is good news – you can overcome all these challenges.
These challenges will eventually hone your marketing skills and keep you sharp. So let’s start and look at some known knockout marketing ideas you should try using your site, content, SEO, social and lead management.
Before we start, do we have the right frame-of-mind?
The very first advice I give my clients is that they are not in the “real estate” business, or whatever industry they are in. I remind them that on every decision they make, they should remember that they are in the “relationship and communications” industry. It just so happens that they specialize in real estate or whatever industry they are in.
Keeping our visitors’ utmost desires and wishes embedded in the epicenter of our hearts will help us make the right decisions. When we decide to do something, let’s ask these basic questions:
What purpose does it serve to my visitors?
Am I doing what I want to do which is good only for me or am I doing what my customer wants?
Am I influencing the decision too much by being a Realtor or Agent, or am I making this decision as someone who genuinely desires to have the right relationship with my visitors?
Tool #1: Let’s begin with the best tool you have i.e. Your Real Estate Website
Why do you even want a website?
What is its purpose?
“To make me some money!”
“I just want to show everyone that I am the best. My competition has one and is killing it.”
Those answers aren’t really answers. They keep your interests at heart and these answers reveal that you are clearly not in the “relationship” and “communications” industry. Look at the “I” and “my” italicized in those answers. A better answer would be:
To give my customers the best possible information than anyone else.
The information can be recent market activity, community information, or online home search experience.
I want to provide my visitors with the tools they will need to find the best possible and accurate results using the search, save and compare functions in the site
My visitors may want regular updates, advice and so I will blog about these issues they face when deciding to purchase property.
They may want other options to get my content through newsletters and social media.
Let’s look at the first purpose of the site.
To give my customers the best possible information than anyone else.
If you go deep into this sentence, what you’re also saying is that you want to be found by your audience. If not, how can you be of use to them? So getting found is an important part of this equation.
Where can you be found?
You can be on Google, classifieds and niche realtor sites like zillow.com, homes.com, realtor.com, Facebook and other social sites. Offline ways to get found are calling cards, brochures, mail, events and other physical marketing paraphernalia.
What Information do they want?
There are two kinds of visitors you will probably get in a real estate website: Buyers and Sellers of homes.
What do Sellers want?
They want buyers. Period!
Usually if you have good SEO rankings, a solid social presence and a good reputation overall, sellers would be interested in that and make a decision to list with you based on how much people have their “eyeballs” on you.
Logic says if your site has more marketing channels than the other agent, they will go to you.
What do buyers want?
They want their ideal home. Period!
However, “an ideal home” has a lot of primary factors to consider such as price, area of the home, beds, bath, location, maintenance, investment opportunity, mortgage, schools, hospitals, crime rates, neighborhood and agent reputation.
Some food for thought on website making decisions for Real Estate:
SEO Implications due to MLS vs. Listings
In my experience, I have often come across some realtors and agents (let’s call them Agent X) that doesn’t want to show MLS properties in their website or to make the MLS less prominent that may seem like it’s not there at all. They only want to focus on their own 30 listings.
From the agent’s point of view, we know this sounds like a smart decision. Of course he/she wants to make his/her listing sell faster.
But that can be a big mistake especially if you assume the agent is in New York, and he/she is targeting a keyword like “New York Real Estate for Sale.”
During the Google Search, the searcher expresses interest in finding real estate in New York and so types in “New York Real Estate for Sale” in Google. If other sites show every real estate for sale in New York, who do you think would rank? The ones who display all results or those who only focused on the 30+ listings on their site.
If the Google user had typed in “Agent X homes for sale in new York,” then that query is a perfect match for the site. But we all know that branded keywords, such as the one above, do not need much SEO and if you are already that famous, might as well not even do SEO.
Let’s look at the decision to not display the MLS or to overlook this database of information.
There was no display of good intention for the buyer. Choices were limited and thus the visitor cannot make a real decision and will probably go to Zillow and other sites. The agent’s wants were prioritized over the buyers.
However, it is understandable that some business models in real estate have very different or specific niche that will not require too much of the MLS feeds, such as in the luxury real estate industry.
Visitor Experience from Site-Loading to Conversion
This is what all agents want.
They get found at Google, or get a visit from somewhere else.
Visitor finds the content and information they want quickly
They love the site and its possibilities
They inquire for a few homes
They buy a home
And this is actually what is required to achieve the goal:
They get found at Google, or get a visit from somewhere else. – Content and good decision making will get your site ranking and will get referral visits.
Visitor finds the content and information they want quickly. – Site load speeds, search functions, pre-made lists and careful navigation will help you achieve this.
They love the site and its possibilities. – Careful attention and detail given to each page, functions to save/compare, market information and the depth of the site assures they will love the site.
They inquire for a few homes. – More homes to show, the better the chance of getting inquiries. Having an amazing lead-manager, a “reply-back” message, call-back and a closing process takes care of this one.
They buy a home. – Keeping the customer and his/her wishes in mind a 100%, takes care of this.
So is your website truly ready to be found and loved by the people you want to help?
Tool #2: Site Content for Real Estate
The best content creator for a real estate website is really the agent.
I swear, the best person who knows about my internet marketing business is me. I have two amazing writers who work independently but they still need my guidance regularly.
What I am trying to get here is why do the people who have the most amazing experience in their own fields and the one person who can truly make content as well as offer more than superficial value, not want to take part in the content generation and marketing process?
Quality outranks Quantity. Content = Marketing.
Taking a few hours per week and guiding your content writers, developers, SEO and Social team is a must for every business owner. There is no auto-piloting this!
Here are some ideas for Real Estate content based on profiling potential customers with specific interests and needs.
You can group them into categories like
For first time home buyers
For those buying as an investment
For those who want to relocate to your city
For those who want better neighborhoods and amenities
For local buyers
For those interested in apartments
For those interested in High-Rise
For national buyers
For international buyers
Neighborhood tours and blogs
Maintenance tips for homeowners
Upcoming modern home technology
Design trends
For those that have pets
For those who have a large family
For those seeking advice on mortgage, finance and other related buying/selling processes
The list can go on and, as you can probably notice, each category can be broken down to smaller categories. Put yourself into your sub-niche customers and start writing to help them. As you can see, there is a lot of work to be done.
The beauty of generating such content is not just for beefing your blog and SEO. This same content can be revised, revisited and re-invented to fuel your social media. Your blog will soon be a library that will have your audience impressed by your knowledge on the subject.
And being impressive is something that we all want to be.
Tool #3: SEO – Real Estate Search Engine Optimization
Without SEO, you would not be fully utilizing the possibilities of the Internet. People want your services. People type in search phrases daily that is 100% relevant to you and what you provide. Being strong at search marketing can be a game-changer.
In SEO, the goals are to rank in the top 3 organic results for chosen keywords.
In Real Estate, common keywords are the city, communities, areas and properties that you want visibility in. Your website’s landing pages such as the homepage, your community page, area pages which are at the core of your site generally takes care of these.
Your site performance and site content value is all that is necessary to do well. – This is what we call the on-page criteria of SEO. For more rank boosting power, you will have to work outside the main website and get quality referral links from your industry specific sites like Zillow, homes.com and realtor.com – the off-page criteria of SEO.
Here are a few critical On-Page SEO elements to look for:
Crawl of the site
Indexing of the pages
Page Content and Value
In-links value (links coming to the page internally and externally)
Out-links value (links coming out from the page internally and externally)
Non duplicate pages
Optimized pages
Friendly URLs
Off-page Activities for SEO:
Link building (try and get links from your popular industry websites)
Directory Inclusions for better Local SEO.
Content marketing (continual blogging inside and outside of your site)
Outreach Programs (feature and communicate with others relevant to your industry for more possibilities of relationships and communications)
Google Business Listing (Get listed for Local SEO)
Monitor your ranks using either SemRush.com or Ahrefs.com as your rank tracker, so you will not need to check 100 keywords manually.
Your best friends for SEO:
Rank tracker (Semrush or Ahrefs)
Google Keyword Planner (find the right keywords)
Google Analysis (to monitor how visitors are responding to your site, where they came from and how they navigate the site)
Search Console formerly known as Google webmaster (monitor health of the site)
Google alerts (alerts you via email if anyone has published content with your keywords in them)
Siteliner (to check for duplicate content)
MajesticSEO or Ahrefs for viewing linking opportunities
ScreamingFrog (allows you to run your site to view possible faults)
Page Speed Insights by Google (check page load speeds)
Yext (a service to help you tune your Local SEO)
Here are some common faux-pas that often happens in real estate SEO which you can use to your advantage since most configure their site inaccurately.
Here are two quick takeaways for you.
MLS: If configured correctly, this can be a boon. Most real estate website do not have this fixed properly causing errors internally within the site. Cleaning up this process can be of a lot of use. These errors can create penalties by Google.
Content: Most sites still do not take the time needed to make beautiful landing pages with content that has value in and out of the pages. Taking time and thinking of the content creatively will be a certain rank boost. And most do not continually update their blogs and pages regularly.
Tool #4: Social Media Marketing and Management
Social Media is still one of the marketing channels a lot have invested in. It is a refreshing way to connect, a more transparent and amazing way to get to the hearts of your clients. However, time and money can literally bleed you dry, if you:
Do not know which social sites are really worth it
Do not know what to do in those sites
Do not know how it can be of help to your customers
Do not know how it can be of help to you
The demand for social media has been very lucrative for big sites like Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Twitter etc… Why? Because almost everyone checks in a few times daily and this is good news for us all.
Let`s jump straight into which sites you should work at more than others.
Real Estate Social Sites that work well for the time and money invested are:
Facebook
Instagram
Pinterest
Twitter
YouTube
Let`s look at Facebook and stare into this Giant for a while.
Nobody likes being sold to. However, what most agents do is post their listings. Their posts are more about themselves without a whole lot of value to their social connections. Many marketers say they have Facebook figured out but I think they only know a little, and a little knowledge is always dangerous. Have I figured Facebook out? Definitely not, but since we are advocates of making decisions on building relationships and communications, we can surely use Facebook.
Who follows our pages in the first place?
They may be:
Family
Friends
Relatives
Peers
Site visitors
Connections of the above
What would a business want to achieve in Facebook?
Ultimately every business is online for sales. Some directly want to achieve this while others want to achieve this indirectly and work more on branding and similar goals.
The only way to get there is to get more followers and interaction. And the only way to organically get followers and more interaction is by getting your existing followers to either Share, Like or Comment on your posts.
What we ought to post is then dictated by those already following you to share, like or comment. If your goals are to increase followers, why would posting listings be a great idea on Facebook? Even if your followers shared the post, why would this entice the people following your followers to engage with you?
They say the primary competition in Facebook are the posts of the friends, family and relatives of your prospect. The secondary are posts from pages that they have specific interests in such as hunting, basketball, cooking, music etc…
We cannot beat the connection and value of families but surely, we know that there are people who are interested in relevant things like Home Design, Décor, DIY things around the home, Home Repair, Facts and Information about the City and Modern Home Technology. You can also work on other interests that influence your community such as iconic people, amazing places and upcoming events.
This kind of content will help you reach your goals faster.
Splitting your posts on 80% of the content above and 20% that feature what you do will be generally accepted. A single formula will not apply to all. So, you will have to try to continually expand on how you can improve your Facebook interaction and following month after month.
You can similarly use the same approach to the other social media sites. Facebook content will not work the same way for twitter, Instagram and others. But organizing your thoughts together in the same way as we did on Facebook will help you create posts that will work well within those sites.
For these sites, make a list of who is actually following you and what would make them want to interact on your posts, images and other content.
Posts that work within the feed VS. Posts that are link-baited
Generally, people do not like to leave the comfort of their train of thought and prefer to consume content within the feed section.
However, some content cannot fit within the confines of the tiny space and posters sometimes add link to go to the original source of the information usually pages in another site. Link baited content is good for referral traffic to your site, if it actually works. Most link baited content only works if the content is 100% compelling.
Try some link-baited posts. You will notice that they do not perform as well as the other posts. But if you work harder at them, you can get its rewards of the site visit. Also link-bait posts work differently in different sites. Twitter is known to have tweets filled with link-baits.
Tool #5: Prospect and Lead Management
Ultimately what we are trying to do is supply all the information we can for the benefit of our customers in the best professional way possible.
Prospects will end up in your site, social accounts and other content you have published. If they see that what you are offering them has substantial value, they will want to connect and communicate with you.
Customers have become much smarter than ever before. They will not necessarily just go to one realtor site and search for homes. They will go to a few other competitors and even go to the big sites like Zillow.
Since most buyers are on different spectrums in their buying decision, they are usually labelled as cold, warm, hot and very hot and so they will respond differently. Some may just like your Facebook Page, some may sign up for newsletters and others may call or email.
Since you definitely want to be in your customers mind during this decision making process, here are some popular activities and functions that can help you get to where you really want to be.
Newsletters
Newsletter Sign-ins are the first challenge. Having content that talks to your subscribers is a different story. These regular drips can keep you in the back of their minds during the decision process.
Good content ideas for these are:
Updates on the market with personal professional input or interpretation.
Local Community News and Events
Recent blogs
Registration to website
Having tools such as save/compare homes or having exclusive homes that needs registration to access all information and resources can tell you which prospects are doing a lot of work, hence can be labelled as warm leads.
When a prospect signs in, you can track their activities. You can see what blogs they have read, what properties they like and since you do have their email and phone address, you can call someone and help with their search.
Events
Offline or online events works especially well for being more visible.
Offline events involving your properties such as open house or organizing community activities tells your customers how devoted you can be and how real you truly are.
Online events such as Google Live Hangouts allows you to do things such as “I Am a New York High-rise Real Estate Expert, Ask Me Anything?”
Social Posts
Your social media posts will keep people remembering you. The posts may not be about real estate, they maybe about other relevant topics, this helps you be in front of your prospects.
Blogs
Blogging is an essential activity. Not only will you get visits and help your SEO. You can use this content to fuel your social and newsletter posts.
Forums
People have questions, be the first to answer them. Sites like Quora and Reddit have people who need some answers, they may not be real estate questions all the time, they may ask for other relevant questions like crime, schools and communities.
Call
Some will just want to call and talk.
Contact Us Form
Some will prefer to use your site’s Contact Us form.
Inquire about Property Form
Some will inquire for specific properties.
Live Chat Options
If someone is online monitoring the site, live chats help a lot to start a conversation.
Free SMS or CALL
Some sites offer free SMS and CALL to prospects. Having one installed in your site can be of help to those who are on mobile.
Google Map
A Google map of your location gives information on where you are located and how to get there.
Mobile Applications
Mobile apps are amazing since it is stored in the phone. This is a constant reminder about what you do.
After you have got them interested and become a part of their lives in the decision process, when they do express interest, they are called leads and they are channelled into a CRM Client Relationship Manager like Salesforce, infusion soft, ZohoCRM etc…
Once again, we are in the “relationship and communications” industry. When you do send emails, auto-replies or return a call, put their needs above yours and starting a conversation with them. Remember they are probably talking to the competition as well.
Simple things like being nice, cordial, having a sincere and genuine smile can make all the difference!
The post A No-Nonsense Guide for Marketing Real Estate Online – You only need these 5 tools appeared first on Redkite Internet Marketing.