There are mixed feelings in the real estate world for leads that come in off the internet. On one hand, all the statistics show that 80%+ of people start their home search on the internet, so you’ve got a huge market there. On the other, some Realtors® don’t like these leads because they feel they’re “tire-kickers” or are looking too far in the future.

I think internet leads are a great way to ensure ongoing clients for your business, both now and in the future, but they do need to be approached a little differently than your traditional lead.

There are two important steps to take when dealing with internet leads -

1. Make sure you ask lots of good, qualifying questions

Some examples are:

Are you looking for a home or condo?
What price range would you like to stay within?
When are you looking to buy? (very important, so that you’ll know when it’s appropriate to follow up with them)
Have you been to Chicago before? (If they're not local, lets you know whether they’re making the initial trip to get familiar with your area, or will be actively looking for homes)
Are you planning to finance, or pay cash?
Are you working with a Realtor® yet? (If no, another good question to ask is if they’ve submitted their info to other sites and are waiting for a call back. This can give you a better idea of whether they’re shopping around, or are pretty serious buyers)

2. Make sure you put them on a calendar, tickler file, reminder system, etc. to follow up with them soon, even if they aren’t looking for a while yet. This puts you back on their radar if they’ve been talking to other agents by phone. Then you can continue with softer follow-up, like an Item of the Month, newsletter, etc. to stay in front of them. And by all means, follow up with them again around the time they expected to really start looking seriously. Too often, leads are interested, but the Realtor® fails to follow up with them at the time they said they’d be ready.

Internet leads can be time consuming if you let them run you around town with no intention of buying for another year. By using these qualifying questions, and a solid follow-up system, you can be available for them when they’re ready to work with you.

 

I know it’s not quite Thanksgiving yet, but can you tell me what you are thankful for?

Sometimes life gets so busy that we forget, but it’s so important to take a minute to stop and appreciate everything you have.  And I find that after doing so, I’m always revved up and ready to handle anything that comes my way.

Even if you’ve been going through some tough times in your business or personal life, by stopping and appreciating what you do have, you realize where things have been going right in your life. Sometimes just noticing that is all it takes to get out of a funk and move forward.

So, what happened today that you are grateful for?

Why not take a few minutes and make a phone call or write a short note letting the important people in your life know how much you appreciate them?

And naturally, I’m going to put a marketing spin on this as well! By noticing the things that you are grateful for in your life, it becomes easier to replicate them. Is there a client of yours that you are really grateful for having the chance to work with?  Who are they? What are they like? How can you develop a niche based on this ideal client?

Did you partner with/receive help from someone professionally that you are very grateful for? How can you recreate this partnership/help into a mutually beneficial working relationship?

Being grateful gives you the opportunity to be more aware of what you have in your life, and that gives you the opportunity to make changes or improvements! So stop and take a few minutes to really think about everything you are grateful for, and see where it leads you.

 

In the real estate business, our contacts, network and database are the lifeblood of our business. If you use a Blackberry or an iPhone and depend on it to store your contacts, what happens if you lose your phone (or drop it in the pool, or accidentally sit on it, you get the picture) and lose those contacts? There’s a great new service IDriveLite that will back up all your contact data for you onto a secure internet server. Since it does this automatically for you, you can always be secure in the knowledge you’ll never lose your contact list again! Here’s a video that gives you a little more info: So protect yourself now. You’ll kick yourself if you don’t!

Dave Smith over at Real Estate Blog Lab always has great Search Engine Optimization tips (i.e. – how to get found in Google!) that he shares, but I really liked this one:  How to Beat a Local Event in Google

His tip here is one that’s really simple – many popular local events are NOT well optimized for search engine results, even though many people are probably trying to find information on them. By simply following a few of the steps Dave lays out, you could quickly rank as well (or better) than the actual site for a local event in your area. “So what?”, you say?

Imagine if Dave’s site comes up first in the search engine listings for the Tuscon Air Show. Tucson is a big city, and this sounds like a pretty popular event. I’m going to guess that there are lots of people out there looking for information on dates, times, etc. If Dave is result number one, a majority of that traffic is going to come through his site. This can help with name exposure, possible leads, and list building (especially if he has a really good freebie on his site that local people might want). If Dave continues to do this, he could quickly raise his overall search engine rankings from traffic, inbound links and search engine results. This means that he could start coming up higher in the search engine listings for his preferred search terms – things like Tucson Real Estate – just from having some really popular targeted blog posts for local events.

That’s the beauty of his sytem! You’re seen as an expert on local happenings in your community, you gain top-of-mind name exposure, and generate leads, all from a simple post on a local event. So check out his post, and get started on your own local event posts!

 

This week’s Web 2.0 Wrap-up comes off the Oodle blog. You’re probably familiar with CraigsList, an online classified service where you can post your listings. Oodle is very similar. But they’ve added a very cool feature, that allows you to share your new listings (whether they’re homes, or just household items you need to get rid of!) on Facebook, Twitter and MySpace. This is a great way to get additional exposure for new home listings – you never know when a listing might end up being the dream home for someone in your network!

From their site -

Today, Oodle released the first part of our Twitter integration. Now you can post your listing on Oodle and automatically share it with friends on Twitter (as well as your friends on Facebook and MySpace). Listings are tweeted into your Twitter stream where your followers see it immediately.

We are also tweeting all of the listings posted directly into our network onto Oodle’s Twitter account. This will enable users searching on Twitter to have access to hundreds of thousands of fresh, relevant classifieds listings each day. So whether you are looking for a job, rental, house, car — or something else, you will be able to search Twitter using keywords matching your query (e.g. Burlingame Honda Accord) to find relevant, real-time matches.

In both cases, tweets link back to listings tied to online profiles from Oodle, Facebook, MySpace, etc., so you get a better idea of who you are dealing with.

More interesting Twitter-related features coming soon. Stay tuned as classifieds get more social.

I love that last sentence – “Stay tuned as classifieds get more social.” Everything seems to be going social these days, because it’s just such a great way to get additional exposure and extra eyeballs on your listings. And now is the time to take advantage of it, before tools like this become really common and part of the “noise” of social networking. If you develop the reputation and trust from your networking by sharing valuable info regularly, they will continue to interact and connect with you, even when they’re tuning out noise from a lot of the other people that start doing the same thing down the road.

 

This blog post is in response to Bob's challenge (great topic choice, Bob!) to find out what people are doing with their blog content to leverage it and enhance existing client and prospect relationships.

 

I've been blogging for nearly two years now, and have built up a pretty decent size library of real estate marketing related content. But naturally, there's more I can do with it! A few of the ways that I currently utilize the content I've already created are:

1) Every Monday I send an email out to my database with a recap of the previous weeks' blog posts. I know that not everybody remembers to come and visit the blog regularly, and may not have subscribed to the feed, so this is another way to stay top of mind, get helpful marketing tips right to them, and give them a little personal note on what I'm up to. And by using content I've already put on my blog, this weekly "newsletter" is quick and easy to put together.

2) I've done so many posts on Twitter, and how real estate agents can use it in their marketing, that I decided to put the posts together into a short ebook exclusively on Twitter Essentials. It gets this really specific info into the hands of the people that want it, without them having to search through 2 years worth of blog posts to find it. This makes it easier for them to use, without too much more effort on my part to put it together.

I'm thinking of doing something similar on other topics that I've written about frequently. Any topic in particular YOU'D like?

 

A couple weeks ago I told you about a new Wordpress plugin, Local Market Explorer, provided by Zillow. Well, as usual, the Geek Estate Blog has more great info on the plugin. They’ve added functionality from TeachStreet, which allows you to show information on local classes on your sidebar.

Here are the search results for Cooking Classes in Chicago.

Talk about great community information to share on your site and become a complete local resource. Now, some people say that as Realtors, we should only blog about real estate information. While I agree that most of your posts should be related to your real estate market, I think that by sharing relevant, helpful community information, you are staying relevant to your community, which is your market. And this is a great way to increase name recognition, as well as giving you more topics to blog about, which means you’ll be blogging more regularly, and this increases your search engine friendliness.

So check out this new addition, and provide great content for your community readers!

 

Since you did your quarterly, Back to School review last month, now is a great time to look for missed opportunities and areas that are ripe with business building potential.

I came across a post at the Sales Lead Association blog that had some statistics that might be really eye-opening for some people.

It is shocking that from 1979 to 2009 several figures remain constant in business annals…

•More than 50% of qualified leads are never worked by sales
•Less than 50% of a sales persons time is spent selling

Numbers like these really bug me, because past leads and clients are such a great source of recurring business. When I hear agents say that business has slowed down, or that the economy has really affected them, I have to suspect that they’ve been depending on new leads for their business. But one way to really light a fire under your business is to take advantage of that Back to School review we did last week, and look hard for areas where follow-up is underdeveloped (or completely missing).

For example, do you have a way to capture leads on your website/blog? If so, great. But how are you tracking and following up on those leads? Do you know where those people are in the sales process? Some leads take longer to develop than others, so if you’re in the practice of only keeping up with the leads that are close in the sales process to buying, you’re setting yourself up for that constant “feast or famine” in your business. If you are always working on and keeping in touch with leads that are at all points, you’re developing a consistent, dependable business. Even in a rough economy.

Worse, do you fall into the group in the second bullet point – finding yourself super busy but in reality spending less than 50% of your time selling? Hire an assistant, now! Whether it’s an onsite admin assistant, or a virtual assistant, put the steps in place to increase your time spent selling. That’s the only way you’ll grow your business. If you’re spending more than 50% of your time on administrative tasks, you’re taking time away from business building activities. Plus, that admin could probably do those tasks much faster than you could. So get help, and get back out there selling!

So take a good hard look at your current follow-up practices. Do you have systems in place to make sure you’re capturing the information you need, and are following up regularly? Is the majority of your time spent selling – showing homes, marketing current for-sale properties, contacting past leads, generating new ones?

Since you did your quarterly, Back to School review last week, now is a great time to look for missed opportunities and areas that are ripe with business building potential.

I came across a post at the Sales Lead Association blog that had some statistics that might be really eye-opening for some people.

It is shocking that from 1979 to 2009 several figures remain constant in business annals…

•More than 50% of qualified leads are never worked by sales
•Less than 50% of a sales persons time is spent selling

Numbers like these really bug me, because past leads and clients are such a great source of recurring business. When I hear agents say that business has slowed down, or that the economy has really affected them, I have to suspect that they’ve been depending on new leads for their business. But one way to really light a fire under your business is to take advantage of that Back to School review we did last week, and look hard for areas where follow-up is underdeveloped (or completely missing).

For example, do you have a way to capture leads on your website/blog? If so, great. But how are you tracking and following up on those leads? Do you know where those people are in the sales process? Some leads take longer to develop than others, so if you’re in the practice of only keeping up with the leads that are close in the sales process to buying, you’re setting yourself up for that constant “feast or famine” in your business. If you are always working on and keeping in touch with leads that are at all points, you’re developing a consistent, dependable business. Even in a rough economy.

Worse, do you fall into the group in the second bullet point – finding yourself super busy but in reality spending less than 50% of your time selling? Hire an assistant, now! Whether it’s an onsite admin assistant, or a virtual assistant, put the steps in place to increase your time spent selling. That’s the only way you’ll grow your business. If you’re spending more than 50% of your time on administrative tasks, you’re taking time away from business building activities. Plus, that admin could probably do those tasks much faster than you could. So get help, and get back out there selling!

So take a good hard look at your current follow-up practices. Do you have systems in place to make sure you’re capturing the information you need, and are following up regularly? Is the majority of your time spent selling – showing homes, marketing current for-sale properties, contacting past leads, generating new ones?

Holidays are a great time to reconnect with your client base, especially on ones that aren’t traditionally known for gifts. Halloween offers lots of great ways to get your name out, connect with your list and sneak some marketing in. Here are just a few ideas:

• Offer free Halloween bags to neighborhood kids. You can purchase custom imprinted Halloween bags fairly inexpensively, and it’s a great way to keep your name in front of families for several weeks (nobody ever wants to throw the Halloween candy away, even when all that is left is the stuff nobody will eat!)

• Send out Halloween themed cards to your database – cards aren’t expected until much closer to the Christmas holidays, so this will stand out to recipients

• Drop by clients homes or offices with Harvest-themed snacks: pumpkin muffins, banana bread, apple turnovers, etc. Food goes a long way (especially at the office!) and people will remember the gesture

• Hold a contest for “Scariest” or “Most Creative” costume, and host at your office. Or, host at a community location, and offer balloons to all attendee’s that have your name, company name, logo, etc. printed on them. For the small investment of a couple prizes, this could be a great way to generate media attention as well!