Web 411
With so many “Real Estate Web Design” sites out there, finding the right company to entrust your future is enough to make anyone head for the hills. What you should be looking for in a web marketing firm is a collaborative partnership. To be successful in choosing a marketing partner you need to fully understand your needs. It is sometimes best for us to take a few steps back and break things down on a real basic level. Let’s start with some important questions you should be asking yourself if you are someone who is just getting into the real estate game or if you are an established professional.
1. Do you have a website? 2. What is your marketing plan to drive traffic to your site? 3. What is your Brand? 4. How will you track your ROI (Return on Investment)?
These are four very general questions, but the answers to each of them plays an essential part in understanding what’s required to succeed in 2009 and beyond. As 2009 is a difficult year for many in the real estate business it is more important than ever to carefully plan your marketing budget.
Question 1: Do you have a real estate website?
Let’s start with the obvious. If you don’t have a website, get one[MO1] . Not today, not tomorrow, but NOW. You have to be online to have visibility. Over 90% of home purchases start on the web and that number will continue to climb every year. This means that if your real estate website isn’t appearing in the search results, you are closing your doors to a majority of your potential new clients. Even if you can only get a basic site, that’s at least a start. So look into your options, see what other beginners are starting out with (the search results themselves can be a great resource in determining how your competition is representing themselves). Look for web design companies that cater to your specific needs and offer results. Remember that a good website can be your best tool to quickly generate new business.
Question 2: What is your marketing plan to drive traffic to your site?
It is important to keep this in mind: having a website, no matter how cool it is, doesn’t mean people are going to find it. Plan to spend the majority of your real estate advertising dollars with a SEO company [MO2] to ensure that your site ranks near the top of your area (approx. $100/Mo). Additionally, you must continue to promote your site in all of your advertisments.
Demystifing SEO
What is SEO? It is the long-term practice of making your website more attractive to search engines and visitors. This is accomplished through adding content, making your website easier and more rewarding to use, and clearly labeling the site with METATAGS and TITLE data so that the search engines fully understand everything your site contains. If you do this correctly, the search engines, over time, will typically reward you by increasing the natural sometimes called organic rankings of your site in their results. But don’t be deceived; it’s not like SEO is free. Unless you are a true professional search marketer, it is better to hire someone to add unique content and optimize your pages, as well as to plan your overall SEO strategy.
Question 3: What is your Brand?
You work very hard to create and maintain a personal brand, what you do and how you do it are unique to you. The challenge is to define and build upon the brand desired. Branding oneself is not only used to gain attention, but to demonstrate to the target audience that you can provide a solution to your clients’ real estate problems. A consistent message allows you to remain in the client’s mind and to be present when their real estate need arises.
Question 4: How will you track your ROI?
Regardless of how you drive traffic to your real estate site, keep track of your ROI. Take a look at what is working and what isn’t with your site. Use a free analytics solution like Google Analytics if you can. As the months go by you will be able to get a gauge on which pages of the site people are spending the most time on, what pages people are leaving from (and you should improve upon), as well as the geographic locations your visitors view your site from
By: Criag, AgentExcel, VP of Marketing
This information was very helpful. I will put it to good use.