BRER Real Estate Marketing Blog

There have been other posts on this blog about focusing your real estate web site on a specific niche.  The typical response to that is, “But, I’ll be losing out on all the prospects who don’t fit in that niche.”

Getting past that issue will help you increase your real estate marketing effectiveness on the Internet.

Bernise Ross wrote a great 3-part series on Inman News about specializing in a niche market for your online marketing.  She quoted many of the concepts used by Michael Russer, the undisputed king of real estate marketing on the Internet.

Some of the key points in the series of articles include:

• Research a prospective niche to make sure there is enough activity to support your business.  She cites a couple of good examples of how that works.
• Make sure your website is immediately recognizable to your selected niche prospects.  Don’t be shy.  Make sure the design of your site generates a reaction in your target prospect of “This is the site I need!”
• Drive targeted traffic to your site.  Bernice describes what we call Web-Centric Real Estate Marketing, for example, integrating your direct mail pieces with specific offers on your website.
• Make your site interactive.  Bernice also identifies some great ways to get people involved.  For example, if you have a geographic niche, invite people to visit the site to rate local restaurants.

Keep in mind that people who visit your site will determine whether they’ll adopt your site as their real estate research headquarters.  Getting a healthy percentage of visitors in a niche to do that will get far better results than taking a shotgun approach and targeting only the “undecideds”.

If you’re familiar with time management concepts, you’ve probably heard of “time blocks” or setting aside specific times for specific activities.  It has been proven to work to make people more productive.

In fact, you need to work on a task uninterrupted for 45 minutes in order to make headway.  Any less than that amount of uninterrupted time, and you will continue to take one step forward and two steps back (I used to teach time management in another life :-). 

Setting aside time to do specific tasks can make you more productive.  But, incorporating that concept with the results of the MIT Lead Response Management Study can also increase your sales!

The MIT study was focused on answering one central question.  Simply stated, it was:  When should you call web-generated leads for maximum results?

Non-Time Block Results from the MIT Study

While this article is about using time blocks, there are some very important results that should be reviewed before diving into that topic.

When it comes to responding to leads from your website, time is critical.  The MIT study found that:

• The odds of reaching a lead via telephone decrease by over 10 times in the first hour
• After 20 hours, every call you make actually hurts your ability to make contact.

Therefore, the most important thing you can do to convert real estate website leads is contact them immediately after you receive notification.  And, that has implications for connecting your website to your cell phone via text messaging, and a whole host of other issues.  For now, suffice it to say that you need to contact Internet leads quickly.  And, you might as well save your time if you’re past the 20 hour mark.

Time Blocking Opportunities

Where do you follow up with leads?  If you’re trying to contact them at work: When do you follow up with leads or prospects?  Do you set aside a certain block of time in your schedule?  Do you do it when you can grab 5 minutes - maybe while you’re grabbing some lunch?

If you’re not blocking time for that important task, you’re undoubtedly losing business.

The MIT study came up with some interesting results that can help you determine when you should be blocking time for lead follow-up.  Here’s what they found:

• Wednesdays and Thursdays are the best days to call since you’ll be most likely end up actually talking to a lead or prospect.  Thursday turned out to be almost 50% better than the worst day, which was Tuesday.
• 8-9am and 4-5pm are the best times to call to make contact with a lead and to qualify a lead.  The worst time to call is - you guessed it - 11am-2pm, or right around lunch.

The Summary

So, what do all these great statistics mean to you?

• Set up a system so that you are notified as soon as someone contacts you from your website.
• Call leads as quickly as humanly possible after they’ve made contact - within the first hour is the goal.
• Don’t spend a lot of time trying to reach a lead if you’re calling 20 hours or more after they contacted you.
• Set aside a block of time on Wednesdays and Thursdays to follow up with prospects between the hours of 8-9am and 4-5pm.

Time blocking - such a simple concept - who knew?

Well, first there was Gustav, and then there was Ike.  Here in the Atlanta area, we missed most of it.  Got some rain, which we needed, and there was some local damage due to the strong storms.  But, in general, we were lucky.  In terms of the storms, anyway.

But, if you’ve been reading the news, you know that the Houston area was hard hit, and the refineries there are still trying to get up to full speed.  And, where does Atlanta get its gas?  You guessed it.

State of Georgia officials don’t have a firm estimate of when things will get back to normal, but it might be sometime next week.  Officials are urging people to stay calm and not deplete the supplies that are remaining.  Like that was going to work!!

One local station owner got a delivery of 3,000 gallons last Saturday.  By Sunday morning it was all gone.  Way to go folks - staying really calm, that is.

This is getting crazy.  There’s a question on Yahoo answers that asks:

• Is the Atlanta gas shortage a pre-marshall law test to see how people will deal with shortages?
• What????

Well, if it is, we’ve failed.  There are long lines at gas stations to buy overpriced gas.  In the city, there are traffic jams around stations that have gas.  The president of a company that delivers fuel to stations said that “We’re not out of fuel. There is enough fuel in the system to keep it going. There’s not enough fuel for people to start topping off their tanks, hoarding fuel, filling up every day and unnecessary road trips.”

So, what are we doing?  Topping off tanks, hoarding fuel and filling up every day.  It’s just like the empty grocery shelves right before a big storm.  That has always given me a chuckle here in the Atlanta area.  A “big snow storm” might leave snow on the ground for a day, maybe two.

How many loaves of bread or gallons of milk can one family consume in a couple days?

I’m luckier than most, because I use my car very little.  I did try to find some gas today.  The four stations I visited had none.

So, I guess I’ll have to go foraging again tomorrow.  Maybe I’ll save gas and call ahead!

Mike Parker, my partner in crime, or at least SEO, has just published an article based on an interview with a mutual client.  Gary Nagle shares his experiences with having a website for several years without much success, and the things he did to turn that situation around. 

At this point, more than 80% of Gary’s business comes from his website - and many of his clients are relocating.  In fact, there are a few clients he never met until the closing, but he finds that he can establish satisfying relationships via telephone and email.

Learn more about Gary’s experience as an Internet REALTOR®  - something that has even given him more free time!

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We all know that walking is good for us, but now you can promote your city’s walkability on your real estate website or blog.  And, if you market in an area that is laid out well for walking to various locations, you can give your visitors an idea of what’s in the area.

In fact, if you visit this page on WalkScore.com, you’ll be able to get the script you need to put a WalkScore map on your real estate website or blog.  Here’s an example from a Walker’s Paradise in Seattle, Washington.

It’s a pretty handy tool.  And, if you’re in a good area for walking, the map would be especially interesting to people who want to move to a new part of town, or those who are relocating.

There are links back to the WalkScore site, but the WalkScore folks have made the map even more attractive to add to your site because the links open in a new window - that means you won’t lose your visitors because it will be easy for them to find your site still open in one of their browser windows.

There are also instructions on the page referenced earlier for customizing the map.  But, if you’d rather not figure out how, the basic map you see above looks pretty good!

Enjoy!

I took a friend to the doctor to get cataract surgery.  Twice in the last month or so, actually.  I thought she was pretty young to have cataracts, but I discovered that it’s not just an old-person’s disease.

I don’t know what cataract surgery consists of, and I don’t really want to know.  The reason this topic made the Whimsical Wednesday lineup relates to what happens after the surgery.

Cataract surgery is done on an out-patient basis.  It takes longer sitting around in the waiting room than it does to do the surgery.  However, the physicians do use some type of anesthesia before and during the procedure.  I don’t think it’s the same type of anesthesia they use for removing an appendix, for instance, because the patient “wakes up” quite quickly after the operation.

I put “wakes up” in quotes because my friend seemed to be in a place somewhere in between being normal and being totally anesthetized.  After our second trip, I finally came up with a theory about how this particular anesthesia works. 

My theory is that the drugs wipe out short-term memory about every 15-20 minutes.  You can only imagine what it’s like being with someone who “wakes up” again about every 15 minutes.  It’s better than a comedy club.

The first time, she was amazed by someone who was coming out of surgery as she was going in who was snoring.  She told me that story multiple times on the way back to her house.  The second time, she was chuckling over someone who wouldn’t wake up and the trouble the nurses had getting him to come to. 

I counted the second time.  She told me that story 5 times on the way home.  Each time, with the enthusiasm of someone who had just remembered a funny story.

She wanted to call her husband right after we left the doctor’s office to tell him she was OK.  About a half-hour later, she “remembered” that she wanted to call her husband.  I said “Well, we did call him, but we can do it again if you’d like”.  After a few minutes of deep thought, she asked “Did I talk to him?” 

The first time she wanted a McDonald’s hamburger after her long fast since the night before.  That would make sense, except that she hates McDonald’s hamburgers.  The second time, she was craving real food.  I wasn’t excited about steering her into a restaurant, but it was off-peak hours, so I decided to give it a try.

After a couple minutes of sitting at a table, she decided that she’d just like to take some food to go.  While I was arranging for a carry-out, she wandered over to the bakery counter in the restaurant.  I tried to talk her out of it, but she ended up ordering 3 deserts, then I had to go pay for the carry out.  By the time we got back to her house, I discovered she’d actually purchased five deserts.

Opening the box after finishing a sandwich, she declared that “we should just eat all of these”.  I convinced her that eating 2.5 deserts at that point wouldn’t be the best idea.

Afterward, I put drops in her eyes, and tucked her into bed.  She slept late into the evening.

My friend apologized for needing to ask me to take her to the second appointment. . . . but I told her I wouldn’t miss it for the world. 

If you’re not familiar with Altos Research, you should remedy that situation today.  Altos Research provides detailed, real-time real estate market statistics to consumers and real estate professionals.

As consumers get more sophisticated, and differentiating yourself in the marketplace gets more difficult, providing market statistics, and knowing how to interpret them, is an excellent tool.

I didn’t know until recently that you can use one of Altos Research’s charts for free.  Altos doesn’t provide information for every market area across the US, but if they’re in your market, you’ve got a golden opportunity.

A sample of the free chart is shown at the right.  This one is for San Jose, California.  It shows the median home price in San Jose over the last 12 months, and it is updated regularly.

Looks like San Jose prices have taken a beating.  But, as you know, the only way to make informed decisions is to have valid information on which to base those decisions.

If you’re interested, you can check if Altos provides data for your market area and get a free real estate market price chart for your market area. 

You can also get more information about Altos Research’s complete real estate market statistics for real estate professionals.

Note:  In case you’re wondering, I don’t have a business connection with any of the vendors I mention on this blog, except that I do partner with Point2 Agent and Blackwater/Compass to provide client services.  If that changes, I’ll let you know.  In this case, except for thinking Scott Sambucci is a pretty great guy, I have no relationship with Altos Research.

This guest post was written by Larry Easto who is a
best-selling business writer, and publisher of Real Estate Marketing Link

What Good Are Regular Marketing Reports?

At one very frustrating stop in my career path,  I had to to prepare weekly activity reports. I was required to record and report details of everyone I spoke to. At the time, I thought it was simply something that the director demanded to control her people.

With the benefit of 20/20 hindsight, I now understand that the reports were intended to track sales and marketing activities. I now appreciate the importance of tracking the results of all marketing activities.

The Benefits of Tracking Marketing Activities

Unfortunately many agents do not track their results. It’s something that they never quite get around to doing.  By tracking results you can expect two significant benefits:

1. You will learn which marketing activities yield the best results and also which ones need to be improved or even terminated. I’m not sure why sales people continue to devote resources to marketing activities that fail to produce what they seek. Maybe they don’t track their results so they don’t really know which activities are effective and which ones are ineffective.
2. By tracking results, you shift your focus from continuing to chase the next deal to developing and maintaining systems that can generate the next 200 deals. In other words, tracking results enables you to run a business that, if properly managed, will generate a sustainable income.

The Bottom Line

Good business management includes tracking and then analyzing your results. This analysis will help you identify effective marketing activities so that you can continue to do these things and do them better.  The analysis will also help identify ineffective activities so you can either improve them or stop doing them.

From the perspective of overall business and marketing management, tracking results make so much sense. If only that director had explained the importance of tracking results, working with her might have been less frustrating.

If you’d like to see your guest post (and links to your site) on this blog, contact me today!

Well, I finally got around to adding a new poll to the left-side column. 

We’ve had some interesting results on a couple of real estate website issues.  If you want to look at past results, visit the Poll Archives page.

This poll picks up on the topic of a couple of posts last week:  IDX MLS searches on real estate websites.

Take a minute to answer the poll - there are only 3 questions.  And, it will add your contribution to the knowledge base on this blog.

Your answers may make another person think about something differently, or try something new!

Thanks!

I doubt I should write a post about politics, but I just can’t help myself.  I think this is going to be an important vote.  I have strong opinions about it, but I won’t talk about that.

What I do find extremely interesting about this presidential campaign is how much of it seems to be focused on the kind of people who are running rather than the views of those people.

On the Democratic side, a woman almost won the nomination.  But, when she lost, many of her supporters said they’d vote Republican in retaliation.  What kind of sense does that make?

Then, at the convention, Senator Clinton did an outstanding job of speaking directly to those among her supporters who threatened to jump ship.  She actually felt she had to make the point that if people supported her, they supported the views of the Democratic party, and therefore should support Senator Obama.

Are we that stupid that we couldn’t figure that out on our own?  Guess so.

And, from what I hear, there are many people who are fanatically for or against the Democratic ticket because the nominee is African-American.  Well, at least that’s what everyone calls him, although he’s actually a mulatto.

The definition of mulatto is: a term used to describe a person with one white parent and one black parent, or a person whose ancestry is a mixture of black and white.  I would imagine that definition applies to quite a few of us.

Then, the Democrats initially seemed to be running against John McCain.  Now, it seems that they’re running against a war hero and a woman.  And, since I went to the grocery last night, I now know that the tabloids have already come up with alien-lands-in-Alaska-type stories about Governor Palin.

I am glad I had the luck to be born in the U.S.  But, our political process seems to get crazier every four years, and it drives me nuts.

Speaking of nuts, I think we should nominate a squirrel for President.  I’m sure there are way more squirrels than there are people in this country, so I figure a squirrel would be a shoo-in.