By Mike Parker
RISMEDIA, — I was recently informed that one of our
new online marketing services clients had experienced success
ridiculously quickly. I found it hard to believe that someone could
sell a home to their first lead from their website, and obtain that
lead in their first month of using it, so I wrote the agent/broker and
asked if what I had heard were true.
“I told my assistant that she can’t tell anyone what I have done
with my website. I’ve had three great leads in two days and I’m in a
small boutique market,” our client said. Well, maybe I can’t tell you
who I’m talking about, but I can surely share with you what this broker
did and perhaps you can use that information.
Lightning-quick success is not the norm online
The Internet is huge: about 11
billion active Web pages are out there being indexed every day. It only
stands to reason that any action taken to improve your websites
rankings and placement take time to accomplish. Normally, it’s 4-6
weeks (or even longer in highly completive marketplaces) before you
will notice any substantial improvement in your online marketing
results. However, just as success rarely happens overnight, success
improves as time goes by and in time, online marketing success becomes
something to be maintained, not achieved, because you’ve already
achieved it in 80+% of all cases.
What our client did with her website
First she bought in to what is not always obvious in online marketing:
It is not about bombing people with information they don’t need as much
as it is about tantalizing them to ask you for more information that
they want. Accordingly, the broker stripped her homepage to give
minimal information and her online marketing services company rewrote
it for her to be as powerful as possible in the eyes of Google and the
other search engines. That allowed three major things to occur:
Her properly optimized homepage is on page one of Google, Yahoo and
Bing for what she sells in both her market targets. This has increased
her traffic considerably. In her first few weeks, 76 different people
found her in this niche market on the first page of search engines.
Here’s what one of them who signed in asked for: “Please send me
brochures, school info, community events, a Visitor’s Guide, and maps
for residential properties and condos. Any info you could e-mail would
be great. Prices range from 300-500k.” This was accompanied by the
Internet buyer’s name, phone and e-mail address.
Having attended the “How to follow up an Internet lead” course, our
broker knew what to do: she called the prospect and sent a personalized
(never an auto responder) e-mail confirming that she had received his
inquiry and was complying with his request. She did this within an hour
of receiving the lead.
The rest, as they say, is history!
After a year with a website, just 30 more days to succeeding online
This broker subscribed to her online marketing services on August 13,
2009. Production optimizing her site and rewriting her homepage was
completed on August 21, 2009. She was selling homes online right after
Labor Day. “I’ve had my website for over a year,” she told me. “It’s a
very good platform (Point2) and I’m very happy with how easy it is for
me to maintain. I read about another broker who also had a Point2 site
and who started selling homes to Internet buyers after Compass tweaked
her site, optimized it for her and gave her the training courses. After
talking with that broker, I decided to take the $3,400 gamble and give
CompassSearch a try. I have to tell you, I am so impressed at the
results and I am very glad that I did.”
If you could see this broker’s site, you’d know her listings range
from $280,000 for raw land to $5,575,000 for a top-of-the-line estate,
and anywhere in between; do the math at what the commission on just one
Internet sale might be. It is that return which is the basis for
investing in online marketing services for Realtors: with 87% of all
residential real estate sales starting online, chances are good that
the cost is recovered several times over during the initial year of
subscription.
Don’t tell!
It’s a common thought to keep something that gives you an unfair
advantage to yourself, especially in a very small niche market. Most
agents, however, are up to their ears in competition, and want to know
about anything that can give them that edge. A major problem today is
that “experts” of all sorts are pushing all sorts of technology for all
sorts of reasons and a lot of that “must have” technology is baffling
to regular folks like you and me.
So, whatever you do, don’t tell anyone that succeeding online is a
simple three-step process: Enable your website to be found on the major
search engines under what you sell; Convert 5-15% of all visitors to
leads by signing them in and tantalizing them to ask you for more
information; Follow up immediately and respond as fast as you can with
what they want.
One more thing: don’t tell anyone that 87% of all residential homes
sales today begin on the Internet or that 92% of Internet homebuyers
find the agent they buy a home from through a search engine. NAR’s been
trying to tell folks that for years, but somehow, the message is
getting blocked. Just imagine what agents and brokers would do to
succeed in online marketing if they knew these things. Just imagine the
huge difference in your income stream if you could tap into that 87% of
transactions.
While the identity and location of the broker who is the real source
for this column must remain secret, the facts listed above are no
secret. Success can be yours, regardless of market conditions, in the
place where 87% of all residential real estate transactions occur. The
question is: are you going to try to compete on your own, or are you
going to seek help from professionals? Because without a doubt, you
must become active online.
Whatever you decide, the time to begin is now. You can’t wait to be
fed leads anymore. You need to find a way to make them for yourself and
the place you can do that is online.