Marketing Real Estate - Making You Findable
Marketing-Real-Estate.com
Understanding how well consumers can see your web page is vital to conversion.
If they don’t see your opt-in form, or the link for your listings, or the free buyers guide you’re providing then you’re pretty much dead int he water when it comes to generating leads.
So do I have a tool for you! Yep, it’s free and I even made a nifty video for you to watch!
Oh the drama!
With social media being the rage today, and a full gaggle of people preaching about how they can help you, you have to ask yourself what do I do?
Well what a great question, and I’m not going to answer it for you. I will give you some thoughts on twitter which you may find interesting.
So the story starts with:
An interesting thing happened to me on my way to the net today! I was doing some reading on the ole Twitter, and ran across a message about Fauxlowers? What is a Fauxlower? Well let me tell you.
It’s a fake follower, someone who follows you just to have you follow back, they have no interest in what you say. Doesn’t that just get your goose! Yeah ok, anyway.
So a number was tossed around something like 62.5% of all twitter followers are Fauxlowers. Which lead into a huge discussion about engagement. Now when I mean huge discussion, it was really me talking to myself, because I work at home with my cat, who really does not care about engagement.
Anyway, if a large percentage of your followers are only following you so you follow them and no one really cares about what you are saying, then have you accomplished anything or are you actually speaking to yourself and your cat. The answer is, sort of and not really.
Take a look at this really technical graph.
What you are seeing here is a representation of engagement. The only thing that matters in any marketing effort, especially from social media.
As the number of followers increase the percentage of people who respond decreases. So if you have 10 followers maybe 1 person responds, 10%, but if you have 1000 followers then maybe 10 respond, only 1%.
So are you better to have a smaller group with a higher level of engagement, Fauxlowers.com says probably, but I say NO. You still want as many followers as you can get. I’m going to clarify that, you want as many targeted followers as you can get. If you’re a Realtor in Miami, you want as many people looking for and living in Miami, as an example.
For two reasons:
1. More followers means more Social Proof that you are worth following and have something interesting to say.
2. More followers still means more engagment. 1% of 1000 is more than 10% of 10.
However, you still need to make an effort to interact, and as your followers grow it becomes a lot more difficult to be personal. Which is where Twitter Lists comes into play.
What’s the moral here, probably don’t talk to your cat as much. But if you want more great info about this subject go to Fauxlowers.com and subscribe to the newsletter, they have some great back issues and some good info on what happening in social media.
I deal with a fair number of companies being in the business that I am in.(which is web marketing, shameless plug)
Most are small businesses that deal within a specific local area. So even though there are opportunities with SEO, we often also look at the other forms of marketing they use to reach and communicate to both current and prospective clients.
I call it mining. Because, not every person is looking for your service, you need to dig for your client and treat them like gold.
Most small local companies, use the newspaper, radio, maybe television. Some do Direct mail, some do newsletters, some of have a website.
But when I ask them do you have a database of your clients email addresses. I often get blank stares. They’ll spend thousands on all sorts of media, but forget to send and extremely cost effective email newsletter out to their current customers and prospects who have given their permission to receive information.
I understand the problem, there’s a technical barrier here. How to send them out? Am I spamming? What do I write about?
All really good questions, but lets review how any business grows.
1. Sell more products to more people.
2. Increase the amount you sell to the people you already do business with.
3. Increases the transaction value of each sale.
That’s pretty much it.
When you create an email newsletter, or postage newsletter, you’re looking at improving step two. Which is one of the most cost efficient methods to increasing your business. These people already do business with you, they already like you, they already trust you. They are loyal to you and the last thing you want to do is ignore them.
So here’s what you do, start asking for email addresses, in person, on your website, on the phone. Ask Everywhere and build your list.
Use something like Constant Contact or Aweber, both are easy to use, keep you CanSpam compliant and won’t cost an arm or a leg to use.
Then here’s the format I want you to use when mailing.
1. Short message from you.
2. Relevant Article.
3. Item of value, something like a coupon for a restaurant. Make a deal with a local company to include them in your newsletter.
4. Create Offer with a Call to action. Something complimentary to one of your key products or a new product release with a request to call you or go to your website for more info.
That’s it. BOOM, newsletter done. Don’t worry about fancy, worry about implementation, you can make it fancy as you go.
Now get out there and grow!
Not getting any leads from your site? Maybe you’re getting a ton of leads but they don’t convert into buyers?
We’ll cover those problems in this episode! So stayed tuned and grab a seat!
You can find the rest of the series here: Building a Real Estate Web Presence
Don’t forget your comment and questions.
P.S. Would you like your website reviewed for tips on improving conversion and traffic? Just send a request or comment.
Today we get to review an Australian site, waaaayy down under!
Bridget the Owner/Founder was gracious enough to let us review her site for the learning of all. Please take the time to visit and peruse it! I just wanted to say peruse.
You’ll see how she can improve some of her SEO factors and perhaps capture a few more leads from her site.
Enjoy!
We have two videos for you today. Well it started out as one video and quickly turned into two.
We’re continuing the series on Building an Web Presence. This episode focusing on Social Media, Facebook, Twitter etc. So grab a snack, maybe a fresh cup of coffee and let’s do some learn’in!
Part 1
Part 2
You can find the other videos for this series at – Building a Real Estate Web Presence.
In this installment of Building a Web Presence we look at Listing Syndication. Although we don’t cover all your options available, we discuss the importance of syndication and how to get started.
Don’t forget to leave your comments! Especially if you know of a good syndication service others might value.
You can view Part 1 – Building a Real Estate Web Presence – Part 1
You can view Part 2 – Building a Real Estate Web Presence – Part 2
Here’s 4 things that you must constantly work on improving.
I promise your that if you can work towards these four goals you’ll be doing more deals, building a better community and creating a bigger and better name for yourself.
1. Always Pay Attention to your Headlines. Because if you don’t neither will your users. A poor post headline will results in less people reading it your blog. Keep it short and simple, but full of benefits to your users.
2. Put your best stuff at the top and make it visual. Your users want what they want and the want it fast. They don’t want to scroll, they don’t want to hunt or click or submit. So put what they want up front and in their face. Then make it visual use faces, pictures, video and images. Words are boring! As you read this post. 
3. Ask yourself, if this for me or my users? Because if you have a form you hope people will fill out and submit, but it offer no value to your users, well, goodluck. It’s about providing value, no value, no loyalty.
4. Rinse and Repeat. That’s right make your improvement, then start over and start fixing again. Your competition is getting better right now. So you better be getting better too. It’s not about where you start, it’s where you’re going and where you end up. Start small, make small changes and keep improving.
Google provides all sorts of tools to help you discover more about the habits of your possible customers.
Here’s a really good example, it’s called the Google Wonder Wheel, and it’s magic when it comes to finding long tail search terms for your local market. So come on everyone, let’s ride the wheel!