Archive for Real Estate Website Tips
I saw an interesting article on RISMedia today. Prudential in Chicago has just announced “a new consumer-friendly online information tool.” Sound familiar?
Pru says that they wanted to provide a brand new type of real estate market information that is updated weekly and replaces outdated services that provide information updated no more than monthly, and that might be updated quarterly or annually.
Giving their clients easy access to real estate market information allows the clients to make the best real estate decisions because they are completely up-to-date on the latest market trends. The reports provided even include interpretation of the statistics to assist clients in absorbing the information. Imagine.
Pru even gave the service a name: the Preferred Market Watch tool, and they say that they’re excited to be taking clients into a new world of information access.
Have you figured it out yet? I mean why there’s a quote around the word “new” in this blog title?
Prudential in Chicago is providing information from Altos Research.
I’m not being critical. I think it’s great that they are aggressively differentiating themselves in the market, and providing the current market information their clients need. And, from a marketing perspective, branding the service and making a splash about it is an excellent approach.
Just remember that you heard it here first! September 24, 2007: Real Estate Marketing Tips 
Free Real Estate Website or Blog Widgets
· CommentsWe’re always looking for content for real estate websites, and if it’s free, that’s even better! There is some interesting free content at ClassifiedFlyerAds.com.
ClassifiedFlyerAds.com
As you may know, the main service provided by this site is – oddly enough – classified flyers that can be put together to advertise your real estate listings. I don’t know anyone who is using that service, but if it works well, it’s a great idea if you want to advertise and syndicate your own listings.
And, the fees are reasonable, also. You can visit their plan comparison page for more information. The fee for maintaining 25 active ads at one time is $11.99 per month. The monthly fee provides access to a number of capabilities:
- 30 photos
- Syndication to top directories and feeds
- A profile page with information about you, contact information, etc.
- Email – you can upload contacts and email a flyer to them
- Tracking reports to monitor traffic stats
- Many different templates and custom template creation
- And, the list goes on.
Capabilities such as creating a video tour and assigning a domain name to the flyer carry an additional fee.
Free Widgets
Now, to the free part. Once you have established an account, you can create a variety of useful website or blog widgets. The widgets include:
- Click to Call Widgets
- Map Widgets to identify your listings on a Google Map
- Local Area Widgets like the one to the right that give your visitors the ability to locate local information in your area. I’m sure the widgets look much better in the flesh.
- Listing Widgets that show all of your listings.
- Email Signature Widgets that can be used in emails.
- Loan Calculator Widgets
If anyone has any feedback about using ClassifiedFlyerAds.com, please leave a comment. Otherwise, you might just want to check them out yourself!
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”.
Another View on Internet Marketing Success
· Comments
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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This guest post was written by Sam Chapman who
markets Austin Real Estate and publishes the Austin Real Estate Blog.
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I was looking through my website stats today and noticed something that I had not seen before. It was the graph of visitor loyalty.
Website Stats: Visitor Loyalty
This basically measures how often people come back to my website. The majority of visitors use the site once and don’t come back. Many of these visitors probably find the site in a search for some long tail terms, those searches not related to real estate.
Finding a website about Austin real estate rather than Hamilton Pool photos, for example, a visitor would probably look at the page I have for that subject, leave and not return.
People who visit the site 2-4 times, and that is a fair number of visitors, may find the site when searching a subject that returns a blog post and they may revisit my blog a couple of times. Of course, these visitors could be looking for real estate in Austin and for whatever reason not come back.
These might be people considering a move, real estate agents in other areas just checking Austin out, real estate agents who are studying my site to get ideas for their sites (yes, they really do this) or people just studying different markets for whatever reason.
The Thing That Caught My Eye
The thing that caught my eye was the number of visitors who spent time on my site 15 to 50 times. When I compared this year to months prior to May, 2007, I noticed a big difference in the frequency of people spending time on my site 15 to 50 times.
Then it hit me. May of 2007 is when I switched from the Austin Board of REALTORS® IDX search to the WolfNet IDX search. The ABoR feature isn’t a great search feature (no offense intended). WolfNet is more feature rich and is more user friendly.
The WolfNet search also allows visitors to save searches to come back to later and also to save listings as favorites. These features provide a stickiness factor that wasn’t on my site before.
The number of people visiting my website more than 15 times after implementing an improved IDX search was up over 5 times compared to before. That is a huge number. The number of leads I have gotten since implementing a better IDX feature and the quality of these leads is also up.
Moral of the Story?
If you are a REALTOR®, you absolutely must have a website. If you are a REALTOR® with a real estate website, you absolutely must have a great IDX search.
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If you’d like to see your guest post (and links to your site) on this blog, contact me today!
