Archive for Real Estate Marketing Tips
Do You Think Your Visitors Always Understand How to Use Your MLS Search?
If you have a full-featured MLS search (learn more about choosing an MLS search), you know how valuable it is for a visitor to establish their own account on that search. You know how much time a visitor can save by saving their favorite searches and listings. You know that saving favorite homes can help a visitor compare and contrast different homes for sale. But, do your visitors know? Do they know how to set up an account or login once they have one?
MLS searches vary in their user-friendliness. Some searches do a great job of explaining the advantages of establishing an account, and encourage visitors to do that. Some make it easy to register. Others. . . not so much. But, you have an excellent opportunity to promote your MLS search through your blog.
Kill Two Birds with One Stone
It’s always gratifying when you can find an opportunity to help Internet visitors and improve your SEO at the same time. Are you using your blog to promote the tools on your website like your MLS search? If not, you’re missing one of those opportunities. Here’s some ideas on how to do both.
Write a post titled something like “Who Doesn’t Want A Quick Way to Find Atlanta Homes for Sale?” Good start, huh? You’ve already got a title that uses one of your keyword phrases. In the post, explain how your MLS search works. Describe the advantages of and mechanics for establishing an account. Assure the reader that you won’t take advantage of them by driving them crazy after they sign up.
In the post, you can logically include a link to your MLS search page on your website. Naturally, you’d use good “anchor text” in that link. That means, rather than writing “click here for more information”, you’d write something like “search Atlanta homes for sale”. Using that keyword phrase in your link to your MLS page will provide a strong backlink to your main site.
Have you set up pre-defined searches for communities in your area? If not, you really should! You could then use the same principles to encourage readers to visit a community page on your website that includes a pre-defined search for a popular community in your area.
And, if you have other tools or compelling propositions that visitors would find useful, there’s no doubt you can find ways to write informative and useful posts to help people identify those things they’d really like to take advantage of – if they knew where to find them!
This guest post was written by Kevin Kaiser of Military Homes Realty,
connecting military home buyers and sellers.
Why You Need to Distribute Your Listings On Niche Sites
All real estate agents want people to see their listings. The more views you can get, the easier chance there is that they get sold. But still there are real estate agents who don’t worry about putting their listing on other sites.
What I can’t figure out is why? Is it to protect them from being taken by someone else? Seems a little ridiculous, doesn’t it?
The marketing and social media point of view is simple and straightforward:
- Get your listings to as large an audience as possible, while staying specific enough to your niche.
Looking to tap into markets for condos or foreclosure purchases? How about rentals or military homebuyers?
You don’t want to waste a lot of time or money spreading your listing to sites that have little chance of leading to conversions. But landing a few key niche realty sites could really increase the number of times your properties are viewed.
If you are in a hot region for military homebuyers, hunt down some military sites and put your listings on those.
Do you work with rentals a lot? Try listing your property with Rent.com or find a local site such as RentList.net in Atlanta. What about condos? There are some great sites out there for these as well. The key is to find local sites since people search local terms a lot more often than perceived from the outside.
Putting your listings on the MLS is a big plus as well since tons of different websites syndicate these listings, helping you get in front of a large national audience. After that, the key is to supplement an MLS listing by listing on targeted niche websites that will get your properties in front highly targeted buyers.
Paying $30 to get the listing on that San Diego homes for sale website will turn out to be a good investment!
I talk to a lot of REALTORS®, and just about all of them have a problem marketing themselves. Most of the people I talk to know they’re good at what they do. They just don’t know how to explain that to others without thinking that they’re being rude and boastful.
The reason that you’ll hate yourself later if you don’t market yourself now is because you’re running a business. You can’t be competitive in the marketplace if you don’t find a way to market yourself without feeling bad about it.
Think about it. Would you buy a Coke if their ads said that they tried really hard? Would you buy Geico insurance if it weren’t for that cute little gecko telling you how great the company is? What if their only claim to fame was that they wanted to be your insurance company for life? Would you really care about what they wanted? And, I could go on, but I think you get the idea. So, how can you get out of this corner?
Clarify What You Are Selling
The first thing you need to be very clear about is what you’re selling. You aren’t selling houses. As a REALTOR®, you’ve got all the same inventory as everyone else. So, that’s not a point of differentiation.
You’re not selling yourself. No one is going to take you home, pay your bills, raise your kids or plan for your retirement. So, what’s left?
You’re selling the service you provide. When you’re in real estate, you’re providing real estate consulting services. You’re working with a buyer or seller to guide them through the process, anticipate and head off problems and make sure that they have a successful transaction. Those are professional services of the real estate variety.
Figure Out What Differentiates You in the Marketplace
If you’re selling real estate services, it’s much easier to market yourself. Mainly because you’re not marketing yourself. You’re selling what you can do for buyers and sellers.
From that perspective, you don’t have to convince people of how wonderful you are. You can back away from all the industry awards you’ve won, or talking to people about how smart you are or how hard you work. You can focus on the benefits buyers and sellers will receive when they work with you.
You’ll find the task of marketing yourself gets a lot easier when you focus on marketing your business and the benefits of the services you provide. There’s a tool you should check out: the We We Calculator. That calculator tests copy for customer focus. You can run the calculator on a web page or just text and ad copy.
When your marketing copy is focused on what you can do for your customer, you’re definitely on the right track!
How to Make the Most of the Tax Credit
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Time is running out for the Real Estate Tax Credit! April 30, 2010 is the deadline to have your buyers under contract!!
Are You Making the Most of the Real Estate Tax Credit?
Most of the agents I work with are focusing on motivating first time homebuyers to use the up to $8000 Tax Credit. But, there are other uses for it that could help you get buyers motivated. This is the time to think creatively to make the most of the motivating power of the tax credit.
Who Could Take Advantage of the Real Estate Tax Credit?
Buyers Who are Downsizing - If a buyer has lived in one home for five consecutive years out of the last eight, they are eligible for a tax credit of up to $6500 if they are looking at homes that cost up to $800,000. And, there is no provision stating that the new home must cost more than the home being sold or vacated. Any of your potential buyers who are downsizing could well meet that criteria.
Buyers Who Want to Keep Their Existing Home - The buyer’s existing home doesn’t have to be sold - it can be sold or vacated. Who might fit into this category? Perhaps a retiree who wants to buy a retirement property to move into in a warmer climate, but who wants to maintain their original home for trips back to their hometown.
How about a buyer who is being transferred, but who anticipates returning to their home town? This buyer may choose to keep their original home and rent it in anticipation of moving back in. As long as they plan to live in their new home for at least three years, they could qualify for the $6500 tax credit.
Buyers Who Have Been Transferred Often - You might run into a buyer who has been moving around on a series of relatively short assignments, and has chosen not to purchase in each city they’ve resided in. This buyer may not be a first time buyer, but if they haven’t owned a home in the past three years, they could qualify for the $8000 tax credit.
Any Buyer Who Meets the Income and Home Price Criteria - Actually, any buyer who has lived in one home for five consecutive years out of the last eight could quality for the tax credit. Here’s what that means:
- If your buyer is single making up to $125,000 or married with a combined income of $225,000 AND
- If your buyer is looking at homes that cost up to $800,000 AND
- If your buyer has owned and lived in one home for five consecutive years out of the last eight THEN
- They’re probably going to qualify for the $6500 tax credit
How many of your buyers meet this criteria? How many of them are you talking to about the tax credit?
Think about it. You may have a very potent tool to get buyers motivated and you’re just not using it.
Here’s NAR’s breakdown of the Qualifications for the Real Estate Tax Credit for further information.
NOTE: Thanks to Betty Byrnes who markets Kokomo Homes for Sale for pointing out something that was not clear in this post. In order for a home to qualify, it must be up to $800,000. However, the tax credit for existing home owners is up to $6500 and for those buyers who qualify as “first time home buyers”, the credit is up to $8000. Thanks again, Betty!
Also, I’ve decided to stop calling this the $8000 Tax Credit. I think calling it the Real Estate Tax Credit will help everyone focus on the expanded definition!
Do Your Charitable Works Need a Jumpstart?
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If You’ve Become Very Involved in Your Community,
Congratulations!
How to Improve Your Outreach . . .
In case you’re not aware of it, NAR has a program called Volunteering Works designed to support REALTORS® who want to do more than they could on their own. Five applicants will be selected to participate in the program that will match them with a mentor and provide grant money to expand their efforts.
According to NAR, “Recipients will be selected based on their dedication to the community through volunteer work and the potential for their charitable work to be expanded with the help of an expert mentor.”
If this sounds interesting, check out the announcement from NAR.
