BRER Real Estate Marketing Blog

A question came up the other day, while I was talking to a client, about what should be on the home page of a real estate website.  Here are some things I’ve found to be important.

1.  Attracting Attention - You only have a few seconds to attract someone’s attention to encourage them to stay on your site.

Things that can help:

•  A clear indication of what the site is all about.  The first thing your visitor wants to know is whether they’ve landed on a site that meets their needs.  So, if you’re consulting on Atlanta Real Estate, that should be one of the first things your visitors see. 
• A professional design.  Make sure your design speaks to your customer base.  One agent I talked to recently asked about flashing FREE buttons on a site he’d seen.  We talked about the customer base the agent wanted to attract, and decided that his customer base probably wouldn’t be impressed by flashing FREE buttons.  Put yourself in your prospects shoes and design for them.
• Graphic “buttons” that direct visitors to the key pages of your site.  Key pages are things like an MLS search, community information, market information and any other compelling offers you’ve added to the site that will make it darn near impossible for people not to sign up to get it.  Graphic buttons make staying on your site easy.  Visitors don’t have to read anything, just click and go
• Clear and easy navigation.  My preference is to have one location/menu where a visitor can get to any page on the site.

Things that can hurt:

• Too many choices.  I know you have a lot of information you want to provide.  But, offering too many choices can be a problem.  If a site is too busy, it’s much more difficult for people to figure out what to do next.
• Too few choices.  Your visitors are looking for information.  And, if you think about it a bit, you’ll identify what they want.  Think of the questions clients ask you about your area, regulations, taxes, home prices, etc.

2.  Introducing the visitor to the tools and information on the site.  Think about what you do when you first land on a new website.  You have to orient yourself to how the site is laid out, how you move through the site, and how you can get to the information that is most important to you.

Things that can help:

• The graphic buttons you put at the top of your site help.
• Speaking directly to the various types of visitors who might land on your site helps.  In a perfect world, every visitor would find one of the buttons to meet their needs.  But, there are undoubtedly other pages on the site that may be of assistance, too.  Text links to other pages on the site could be organized by who would find them interesting.  For example, if your niche is geographic, you might have information for buyers, sellers, investors or people relocating.

Things that can hurt:

• Devoting your home page to a marketing message.  When Internet surfers first reach your site, they don’t care about you.  They’re probably not interested in choosing a professional at that point, they’re doing research.  If you can get them to adopt your site as their real estate research headquarters, they very well may become interested in you.  Put a brief marketing message on the home page with a link to your “about” page that contains a full marketing message describing your unique selling proposition.

If you have a real estate marketing or real estate website question, put it in an email!
If I answer it here on the blog, you’ll get a nice incoming link to your website - using good anchor text, too!

Since this is a short week, I decided to skip Whimsical Wednesday.  Especially since nothing amusing has happened to me since last week.  Well, my cat has learned how to open cupboard doors.  So, I did have the experience of calling him the other day when I thought for sure he was in the kitchen, only to have him make a grand entrance by bursting through one of the cupboard doors.  But, I imagine you may be tired of silly cat stories.

I did get a question from Sam Chapman who markets Austin Real Estate, so I thought I’d talk about that instead.

Sam’s question was: What colors are best for a real estate website?

My answer to that question is that I don’t think the color itself is as important as making sure that all the colors coordinate.  I’ve seen successful websites that are yellow, blue, green, taupe - really, a wide variety of colors.

I think the thing that makes a real estate web design look really pulled-together is when you use colors that really work well together.  Figuring out how to do that isn’t really a science - it’s more an art, along with a good knowledge of how to identify HEX colors that are complimentary.

One of your goals should be to have the link colors stand out significantly.  The link colors should contrast well with the background, and with the other letter colors.  When people scan a website, you want the links to pop out at them. 

I’m always amused by those folks who think it’s dignified to have links that aren’t underlined and look like just the other text.  You can tell they’re links when you cursor over them and they change color, perhaps.  But, most people won’t take the time to test out all your copy to figure out which words are actually links.

Sometimes even small changes make a big difference.  I don’t know if you can tell the difference because these samples are so small, but take a look at these two - the Before and After:

In the flesh, the After looks much more professionally done, even though it’s just a standard header from Point2 Agent.

For more information, there are three posts on this blog that you might find useful:

• How to Color Your Website
• What Color is Your Website?
• Colors Can Drive You Crazy

Thanks, Sam!

If you have a real estate marketing or real estate website question, contact me.
If I answer it here on the blog, you’ll get a nice incoming link to your website - using good anchor text, too!

Have you noticed a change in how the Google search box works?  If not, you may soon.  Google has introduced Google Suggest.  I would imagine it has reached all the servers, but it may still be making the rounds.

Google Suggest is something that was created to assist Internet searchers.  As you start to type in a search phrase, Google guesses at what you are looking for and displays a dropdown box with possible alternatives.  Google says that providing “more refined” searches initially will make searching more convenient.

I’m horrified.

I am even more horrified to learn that Yahoo does the same thing.  I don’t often use Yahoo, so I had no idea.

Is This Bad News for Webmasters?

Ah, yes.  The great thing about being ranked in the search engines has always been that a site gets ranked for many search phrases related to the main keyword phrases that were being targeted.  And, I’ll wager that will still happen.

The question is, Will anyone ever type in long-tail phrases if they are presented with the most popular phrases when they first start to type a search??

I  doubt it.  As human beings, we are very prone to take the path of least resistance.  At least Google isn’t as bad as Yahoo.

Here’s How it Works
Read the rest of this entry »

If you’ve been in real estate for a while, you’re undoubtedly aware of the problems there can be when you’re trying to manage a contact database.

Depending on your technology setup, you could have contact information spread out over numerous databases:

1. The database for your website
2. The database for your IDX MLS provider
3. The database for your contact manager

It’s a difficult situation.  I really wish industry providers would get together and come up with standards that would make consolidating information much easier.  After all, look at the Internet!  Lots of people had to agree on lots of issues to make it work. 

The problem is made even worse by the fact that, in my humble opinion anyway, no one vendor has put it all together yet.  Some IDX MLS vendors offer websites, but they aren’t the best.  Some website vendors offer contact databases, but they aren’t the best either, and the list goes on.

So, looks like we’ll just have to put up with the problem of where to store the contact information that should really be centralized to be effective.

One thing I was very happy to see is that Top Produceer has removed the “frame busters” from their forms in Top Producer 8i.  So, if you are a Top Producer user, you can now frame forms into your website.

No consolidation required - anyone who completes a form on your website will go directly into your Top Producer database.

I’m so excited.

If you’ve ever tried to coordinate the colors on your real estate web site, your business cards and letterhead, and your yard signs, you know what I’m talking about.

I’ve been working with a client who has just established his own brokerage.  We designed a logo for him, and we’ll design his brokerage web site to utilize the colors from the logo.  He also needs yard signs, business cards and letterhead.

You’d think doing those tasks should be fairly simple.  But, you’d be wrong.  If you find yourself in the same situation, here’s a brief primer on colors.

Website Colors

When you’re identifying colors on websites, you use six-digit HEX numbers.  For example, 000000 is the HEX equivalent of black.  Each pair of numbers represents combinations of Red, Green and Blue.  The HEX numbers are used in HTML to identify colors.

HEX colors translate well into a color model known as RGB.  Black can be identified in RGB as 0-0-0.  That indicates a lack of any color, of course.  Equipment like monitors and television sets display colors using RGB.  So, it’s fairly easy to display the color you want on a monitor because it uses somewhat the same method to identify the color.

However, you know that sometimes you see different colors on different monitors.  In the same way, you can really mess up your television if you adjust the color settings to be too green or red, and so on.

Printing Colors

A printer who is producing your business cards and letterhead uses another color model, CMYK.  Unfortunately, the conversion from HEX or RGB to CMYK is not very direct.  Therefore, if you like the website color you see on your monitor, you’ll have to work with your printer to choose CMYK colors that are consistent.

Sign Printing

If you’re having signs prepared, unless you’re using cut vinyl, you’ll probably run into yet another color model, Pantone colors.  Pantone colors do not directly translate into any other type of color model.  So, if you want your sign colors to match your website and business cards, you’ll have to work with the sign vendor to pick a color that is consistent.

As you can imagine, coordinating production of all of these real estate marketing materials can drive you crazy.  And, we don’t want to even think about what happens if you want to get some coffee mugs printed.

The important thing to remember is that you want to maintain a consistent “feeling” with your marketing materials.  If the colors are slightly different (and they probably will be), no one will notice but you.

If you saw a McDonald’s sign that used a slightly different shade of yellow, you’d still know it’s McDonald’s.

Are You Lost in the Crowd?

Have you taken a look at your About page on your website lately?  What about your introduction on your marketing material?  When you read about yourself as you are presented to the world, does it sound familiar?  Does it sound like every other agent’s description of themselves, with only the names changed to protect the innocent?

Anytime you write about yourself, you should really be writing about your business.  Many “About” pages are written like a biography, something like this:

• “Joan has been with ABC Realty for four years, and was a member of the Millionaire Club in 2003.  She has been a licensed realtor for ten years.  Joan is a member of the Podunk Association of Realtors and the National Association of Realtors.  With her husband Harold, she has lived in XTown for 15 years and has a son and daughter.  Joan loves people and does her best to help her clients achieve their dreams.”

OK, So What’s Wrong with That? 

Well, for one thing, you’d think a REALTOR® would know how to display that designation.  For another thing, most people think if you are a member of the Millionaire Club that you make a million dollars a year.  That can be pretty intimidating; besides that, it’s an industry award and doesn’t necessarily mean anything to someone who isn’t a real estate professional.  Finally, citing an award you received 5 years ago and never again since doesn’t really help your cause.

The biggest problem is that there is not one benefit identified.  A prospect reading that description might think Joan sounds like a nice person, but they have been provided no compelling reason to work with her.

Get Benefit-Oriented!

Long ago I took a sales course that emphasized three ways people describe things.  I’m not sure if they’re still teaching this approach, but it’s always worked for me.  The idea is that you describe a product (or a real estate consulting practice) in three steps:  Feature, Function, Benefit.

Basically, you work through those three steps until you reach the benefit, and that’s how you sell something.  Here’s an example - let’s say we were selling a 6-slice toaster:

• Feature:  Six toasting areas.
• Function:  Lets you toast a lot of bread at one time.
• Benefit:  No one has to wait for a piece of toast while their eggs are getting cold.

The closest thing to a marketing message in the agent’s bio above is this: Joan loves people and does her best to help her clients achieve their dreams. 

So what do you think?  Is that a feature or function?  It sure isn’t a benefit!

Get a Brand

The purpose of developing a brand for your real estate consulting business is so that you can identify your niche, and come up with a list of benefit statements that you can use on your website and in your marketing material.

If you don’t have a brand, at least take a hard look at your marketing message and make sure it’s full of benefits!

Here we are, taking a look at the results from the Website Poll in the left column of this blog.  As you may recall, a little less than half of the folks who answered the last poll were getting from half to almost all of their business from their real estate website.

The current poll couldn’t be directly mapped to the first one, but I’ve found it interesting to see where people put their emphasis in terms of getting their website to work hard for them.  Here are the results as of today:

Question:  What do you do to make your website a lead-generating resource?

 I noticed that there was one brave soul who indicated that he/she did no work on their website, and another who admitted that it took them a day or two to respond to Internet leads.

So, what do you think?  Where do you stand in terms of giving your website a chance to work for you?  What questions do you have about any of those categories?  Do you know how to set things up so you can respond to all Internet leads in the first hour or so?

Let’s get some information and ideas flowing!

Note:  I’ve had a lot of people say that they read this blog religiously.  Please don’t just read - participate! 

Although there have been some changes made to the Smart Frame, it is still not a reasonable way to post home valuations on anyone’s website.

If there’s any new information out there, please let me know.  I tried creating new Smart Frames after the problem with displaying homes for sale was supposedly fixed, but wasn’t successful in creating something that would be useful for web visitors.

If you visit www.BuildRealEstateResults.com, you’ll  notice that the header includes the phrase Web-Centric Real Estate Marketing.  So, what’s that, you ask?

I did a presentation recently for the local chapter of the National Association of Hispanic Real Estate Professionals (NAHREP), and prepared a Powerpoint presentation for the visuals.

I talked about the things that are critical to real estate professionals now.  First, a brand and USP (Unique Selling Proposition) to differentiate each agent from all the others.  Second, a logo to represent that brand.  And, third, a lead-generating real estate website.

This graphic was used to illustrate the idea of web-centric marketing:

I was rather pleased with myself, so thought I’d share the image.  If you use direct-response marketing in your direct mail and print ads, you’ll drive prospects to your website.  If you do SEO so that your site ranks for effective keywords, you’ll drive prospects to your website.  And, finally, if you use the Internet to promote listings, you’ll drive prospects to your website.

Besides the fact that if you don’t have a real estate website you’re in deep trouble, you can use a website as the central component for just about all of your marketing.

I talk to a lot of agents about identifying a niche market to go after.  Those discussions end in different ways.  Some agents immediately see the value of a niche, others really feel that narrowing their marketing focus will be detrimental.

There are a couple things I try to communicate about defining a niche:

1.  Defining a niche doesn’t mean that you eliminate all other prospects.  If you specialize in working with people who are relocating, that doesn’t mean that you won’t work with local buyers or sellers.  It just means that you don’t market to the local folks.

2.  Most (perhaps all) successful businesses define a niche.  I always tell people that one strength I bring to the table is the ability to apply good marketing principles to the real estate industry.  At times, it makes me sound like a nut, but I keep after it anyway.

Think of any business that comes to your mind and ask yourself if they have a niche.  Let’s take cleaning products, for instance.  Have you ever been unlucky enough to be watching television during the day - maybe during a bout of the flu?  Have you noticed that there are tons of commercials for cleaning products during the day? 

Could that be marketing to a niche?  There are many more women responsible for cleaning the house watching television during the day.  The cleaning product manufacturers know that men and women working outside the home may also use their products, but they don’t market to them.

Do you have a luxury magazine in your city?  We do here in Atlanta.  How many ads do you think there are in that magazine for luxury cars?  How about pickup trucks?  Sure, the pickup manufacturers know that someone with a  lot of money might buy a pickup truck.  But, they don’t market to them.

So, the next time you are thinking about a niche market, keep in mind that every human being on the planet might buy a home from you, but do you want to market to them?