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”.