I/E Speaks

No one has to tell you that getting qualified leads is essential to any real estate practice. Since you already know that, I won’t go into all the reason that you need leads. What I will do is make suggestions on how to use your site to get qualified leads. 

First a dose of reality. Not everyone who visits your site finds it informative and initiates contact will be converted to a client. Probably not even half, a quarter or an eighth.  That’s the way it is in real estate whether your lead comes from the web or a human referral. However, despite the fact that your percentage of client conversion may seem to be low, consider it from the standpoint of commission earnings. 

If you only get two conversions from 1000 leads a month, a mere .002%, that still equals a very nice commission. Naturally the more leads you get, the more chances you have to convert them to clients.  There are those that will argue quality vs. quantity as far as leads go. Each may have a legitimate argument but the fact remains that being a successful sales agent also means playing the odds.  

This means that you want to get a large quantity of leads and then filter out the quality ones to concentrate on converting.

Converting them to clients will be up to you and your skills, but getting a large quantity to convert will come from your website.  Another consideration is prospective clients who may just have begun to consider buying a home but are not quite ready. People like this, whether they be walk-ins or have made an appointment are usually considered the bane of a realtor’s existence.  They have you drive them around all day, looking at houses all over town then say, “Thanks, we’re just looking”. Now the realtor has wasted the day and despite their best efforts at converting them, these same people may decide to use another realtor when they are finally ready to buy. 

A friend of mine is planning to move to Kentucky in two years and she’s already visiting websites of realtors in that area, looking at houses and trying to learn about the different neighborhoods.  She likes one site so much that she constantly visits it and because of the information listed on it, she’s considering buying land there now that she can build on later instead of waiting two years to move and then purchase a home.

This is one of the beauties of lead generation from the Internet.

People can browse houses online and then come back to you when they are ready without you ever having to leave the office. The trick is to make them come back to you.  Three ways to do this is by the use of email links, freebies, newsletters and information request forms.

The Internet is called the information highway and in order to travel it effectively, you will need to gather some information yourself. The best place to start is at the website that you already have in place. Look at your website from the standpoint of your prospective clients.
    
Another important piece of information is finding out what your competitors are doing. Go onto the web and type in various keywords and phrases that prospective clients may use to find real estate in your area and see whose site pops up. We will delve further into competitor snooping techniques in later blog posts.

Gathering information is only one piece of the puzzle. Your site needs to give information to the viewers and it needs to be the information that they are looking for, not just useless fluff.

There are many ways to make your site more informative and do so in such a way that will cast you as an expert in your field. Two such ways are by posting articles and blogs.

These informative tools contribute to your site and finding sources to post about will be important to your online success. You will need to surf the Internet for e-publications that discuss real estate trends.

This will give you a constant source of fresh topics for both your articles and your blogs. Having a site with fresh and informative information is not only important in establishing a quality site, but it’s important from a search engine perspective.

posted by Kim Hadley

There was a great comment on a post of mine on Active Rain about how a site can work for you in generating leads. It lead me to want to write about my experience as a web designer, working to get my clients sites working for them in that way.

My background is that I’ve been a graphic artist for over 20 years. I come into web design from that perspective, so I’m very interested in sites that have huge visual impact. Am not at all a fan of the templated site, more impressed by a nicely designed site that draws a person in to stay awhile.

Working for the past 9 years with real estate agents, I know just having a visually stunning site is not enough. There has to be content, and substance and value to invite leads.

The internet has been around now for enough time for us all to be wise consumers. Your website is often the first impression a potential client has of you. They don’t get your voice, how you come across, a strong hand shake, they get your index page.

That index page needs to do the talking for you.

The rest of the site needs to engage and inform, as well as give people what they are looking for. If it does all that, you’ve got leads!

The reason I don’t like templated sites, is they don’t do that. They are generic, and in that don’t “speak” to anyone. You need to take a good look at who you are trying to engage, and speak directly to them. Whether you are specializing in high end luxury homes, or first time buyers, your site has to make that person feel like you get them.

You achieve this by good design, and strong content. We work hard with our clients creating a site that is visually strong, has good content, valuable information, and LOTS of call to action. Every market is different, every client base different. So once a site is launched, and getting traffic, we often re-visit, revise, and re-work. That’s an important step in the success as well. You have to always keep your clients in mind, and always work to cater to what they need. You do this in business naturally, your site has to do this for you.

posted by Kim Hadley

Real estate profits are based upon the commissions obtained through the sales of property. Your question now is how you can use your website to help you garner more sales. Increasing sales by use of your website will consist of converting viewers into clients.

Figure out what your percentage of offline prospects, (walk-ins, or those responding to mailers and other offline advertisements), that are converted into clients.  Use this as a baseline for what you hope to expect from your online conversions. Naturally, the two will go hand and hand and the combination will increase conversions in both areas but for now use this percentage as a starting point to focus on. 

If possible, post a phone number on the site that is different than the one that is used in the office, so that you will be better able to track and differentiate your online conversions vs. your offline ones. 

If you have already had a website in place and it has been already been effective in conversions, figure out what that percentage is and determine how much you want to increase it.  You should also examine each section of the site and try to determine which section is most responsible for the site’s success and why that is. Be realistic when setting your goals.

Start small and work your way up. A very important step when detailing your goals is to recognize how much business you can effectively handle. You may be inclined to just shoot for the moon and employ all of the SEO techniques and bring in as many customers that you can.  Real estate is a service oriented business so ask yourself how many people can you service while maintaining your professionalism and providing quality customer service. This is especially true if you are a one man shop or an agent building your own page. 

Reputation is a big part of your business and you’re only as good as your last deal. The last thing you want is to have too many clients to handle effectively which will negatively impact your reputation.  That means all of the work you put into your site was for nothing because instead of being looked at as an expert in your field, you will become known as the agent who can’t get the job done instead of the one who can. 

You need to have a plan to handle the excess and you may want to consider partnering up with another agent and building a joint site or having a trusted associate that you can direct excess clients to. If you take this path, then make sure you have an agreed commission split worked out and do so in writing.  Another reason to start the ball rolling slowly is time management. Consider the life of a real estate agent.

You work irregular hours based upon your client’s availability, spend time seeking listings that will hopefully match what they are looking for and spend time carting the clients too and from those listings.  Having a sudden influx of new clients can severely impact your usual schedule which is erratic at best. You will need to be able to ease into your sudden increase in potential clients so that you can take the time to convert them into actual ones.

posted by Kim Hadley

Imaginations Everything launched a new site this week; www.katiemoss.com.

Kaite came to us wanting a site to show off her landscape garden business. She was looking for something simple, very minimalist, but with high impact visually.  After having an initial discussion, and sending her some pricing and direction ideas, we quickly settled on a flash presentation.

As the project moved forward, we also added our new photo gallery tool,  so we could upload over 60 images she had of her gardens, to use in working with clients when discussing future landscape projects. This gallery has a back end, and katie can continue to easily add images as she goes.

Though katie chose not to, the gallery tool also allows you to have categories, which we’ve added to another site http://www.citadelrenovations.com/gallery.html. Though the gallery tool has some restrictions, you can see it’s pretty easily adaptable to flow with a site’s look and feel.

posted by Kim Hadley

On-page Optimization vs. Off-page Optimization

On-page Optimization refers to the SEO techniques that you use on your web site. This includes updating keywords and phrases and removing those that are no longer viable.

Updating content such as articles, blogs and other important information. If your site details property values and tax assessments in various areas of your region, then regularly updating those values and tax information is a part of SEO.

Offpage Optimization refers to those techniques that are done outside of your web site and some forms of onsite maintenance. These include determining your page ranking in the search engines and checking out what your competitors are doing on their sites.

You will want to view their HTML codes, and determine if using them on your own site will be helpful to you. It would also include removing links to sites that are no longer active and replacing them with ones that are

Finding out how many inbound links they have is also important when sizing them up. Having a lot of quality inbound links can raise their visibility with the search engines and garner them a higher page ranking.

Both onpage optimization and offpage optimization are both important in a successful SEO campaign.

posted by Kim Hadley

Pay Per Click ads, or PPC, are those in which you pay an engine a fee to recognize your ad which is then placed under the sponsored listings section of search results page.

Each time a person clicks on the ad, you pay a fee to that engine. As previously discussed, popular key words are important in the search process.

Advertisers craft their ads using these key words and bid on how much they will pay to the search engine each time the ad is accessed by those searching the web.

Using Pay Per Click ads may seem a whole lot easier than learning and applying the other various SEO techniques. There are a lot of benefits to using PPC ads, including placement at a highly visual area on the search results page.

Another great benefit is that you can also exclude keywords and phrases. For example if your company does not handle apartment or house rentals, you can exclude the keyword “rental” when you submit your ad under “houses”. This will help to further target your specific audience.

On the same token, if your company does handle rentals, you can also use what’s known as broad matching that will allow renters to access your site as well as those looking to buy and sell homes.

While the benefits of PPC can’t be denied, this type of service may not be for you. A big reason for this is because some Internet users accidentally click on the ads.

That means you get to pay for their mistake. Another reason to not use it is because there is no guarantee that they will be converted to a client even if they purposefully click on your ad. Remember that Internet searches are looking to compare web sites.

They can click on your ad and then compare it to a competitor’s and decide to go with them. That means your competitor gets the business and you still get the bill.

If your company’s advertising budget is small, then PPC ads should be considered carefully prior to enlisting their use. It’s not much different than investing in the stock market.

If you can’t afford to lose the money then steer clear of it. There are other low cost SEO techniques that you can take advantage of that will not take a huge bite out of your small budget.

posted by Kim Hadley

With each new option available to us for communicating online, comes the questions, what’s it all about? how to get people to come read/interact/and otherwise make your efforts worthwhile.

There are many great resources and articles out there to help you understand how to promote, market and get your blog traffic, here are a few:

•  Active Rain - A free online community for real estate professionals designed to help them promote and grow their business. The more active you are on Active Rain, the more points you can gather, and the higher up on the list you get. So when people are lookin g for a realtor in a particular area, they will easily find you.
• How to market your blog in 2007 – wonderful article with over 41 tips and strategies to make sure you are getting your blog the attention it deserves.

With a bit of effort and thought, you can easily insure your blog captures more that a little search engine traffic and works to drive traffic to you and your business.

posted by Kim Hadley

You may be thinking to yourself that SEO is going to take a lot of effort to be effective and you are absolutely right. So, why should you even bother? After all, your sales are pretty good and your referrals are more than enough to keep your profits up so why fix what isn’t broken?

Think about it this way; as a real estate professional it’s important for you to keep up with the trends in your field.

This includes real estate laws, housing values, property taxes, popular neighborhoods and knowing the best school districts. All of this information is subject to change at any given time so it’s important for you to remain current. The same way that important factors change in the real estate industry, they are also changing in how society goes about seeking the services that they need.

Before, they may have pulled out the yellow pages but now they sit down at their PCs to search for what they want. Even if you don’t see the need to make sure that your web site is highly visible in search results, you can bet your competition does.

It’s great to have referrals that help you to gain new clients, but those clients still need to be converted. Prior to the internet when a client referred a friend to you, they may have asked for your phone number.

Now they want to know if you have a website and what the address is. We are now living in a tech society and today’s technology negates the need for clients to come and sit in your office for a face to face to discuss their real estate needs.

At some point they may have to but initially, they try to find out what they can on the Internet. They’re busy and want to be able to shop around from the comfort of their own homes. They are also savvier and will use the Internet to compare what you are offering to what your competitors are offering.

If they pull a search and your competitor’s site comes up and yours doesn’t, this gives the appearance that your agency is not technologically up to date.

This may make them wonder how up to date you are in your knowledge of current trends in real estate and lead them to use your competitor instead of you.

Remember what you had to do to get your license? The classes required to learn all there was to know on an intellectual level and then the training that followed to teach you proper sales techniques. Real estate is an ever changing industry.

Between whether it’s a buyer’s market or a sellers market, changes in laws and taxes, you have to keep up with the trends. This is why many states require you to take continuing education classes, so that you will be well informed.

Consider learning about SEO as another needed form of education that will enhance all of your knowledge and help you to become even more of a success.

One of the first steps in SEO is to design your website to target a particular audience, in this case those who are interested in buying or selling real estate in your region. Search Engine Optimization employs three basic concepts, those being text, links and increasing the popularity of your web site, all of which will be discussed in much further detail other blog posts.

1) Text
 
When search engines look to retrieve information, their biggest consideration is the text on the web site. This includes text that is both visible and invisible.

Although your web site may be filled with text, if it is not properly instituted, the engines won’t recognize it so your 10,000 word web site, might as well be virtually blank.

Even if you have a visually stunning site that includes audio, videos and cool graphics, the engines won’t see all of your hard work and instead may skip your site and return with one of your competitor’s sites to display at the top of the search results page.

Text in this sense means more than the letters used when designing your copy. In order for the search engines to see your site, it needs to be in HTML coding.

HTML stands for Hyper Text Markup Language and this is what the search engine spiders see when they crawl around the net, indexing pages.

Using HTML means adding tags to the title and body of your website so that the engines can find it. For example, if the title of your page is Any Realtor in Any State, in HTML the search engines would see, <title>Any Realtor in Any State<title>.

Without those tags, the page title is invisible to the search engines. This is why it’s imperative that you include these tags so that the search engines will recognize the title of your page. The same holds true for the content.

You’re competitor’s site may seem plain compared to yours but if it has utilized the proper type of text, then in the virtual “eyes” of the search engines it is lit up in neon and chosen for the coveted first page of search results.     

2) Links

Links to your web site are another important aspect of SEO. Links increase your exposure to the search engines, leading to them to your web site and also giving them more information about the type of business your web site reflects.

Because of that the inbound links to your site need to be related to real estate. For example, property appraisers who you do business with can add a link to your site on their web page.

Both categories have to do with real estate values and real estate in general. This adds another layer of exposure to your site and more visibility that the search engines will notice.

3) Popularity
    
The popularity of a website is a key focus of SEO. Naturally you want your web site to be a popular tool for your clients. While this is important to please the people who view your web site, it’s more important to please the search engines that bring your site to the attention of the viewer.

Search engines use algorithms to rank pages. Those pages with the highest ranking appear at the top of the search result page, while those with the lowest end up at the back of the line.

The algorithms are based on a number of factors such as links, keywords, page titles and age of the website and its popularity, not necessarily in that order.

Each search engine has its own system of page rankings and the defining algorithms used are top secret. If you are not well versed in SEO, you are virtually just rolling the dice when it comes to getting exposure for your web site.

Taking the time to employ SEO can substantially increase your odds of better exposure, not just to your clients but to the search engines where it really counts.

posted by Kim Hadley