Katerina Gasset had a great write-up recently about her usage of the RealBird Property Search. She explains a unique way of utilizing the RealBird service to "channel" visitors through effective SEO techniques into home searchers and eventually into pre-qualified leads.
In this tutorial, I will explain a similar, powerful concept using two RealBird products, the RealBird Listing Publisher and the RealBird Property Search Using Craigslist as the source of traffic, the RealBird Listing Publisher property websites as the delivery media and the RealBird Property Search as the destination. We call this technique "traffic channeling". While it may sound like a complicated concept, you will see that it is a surprisingly easy and stunningly powerful lead generation method.
User scenarios
Craigslist is the biggest classified ads site in the US with over 50 million unique visitors a month according to Compete.com More importantly, it is very popular with the home buyer crowd and with people who are looking for rentals. Exactly the demographics you would like to get in front of with your real estate services. Many of you know the importance of posting your listing on Craigslist (a task that is very simple with the RealBird Listing Publisher) but there is a "hidden" opportunity with our new service, that can also help you in capturing a portion of this traffic as potential home buyer business, the technique we refer to as "traffic channeling".
Imagine that you could use the vast traffic of Craigslist not only to 1) market your own property but 2) to gain home buyer business at the same time. This article will explain how to do exactly that using two RealBird products: the RealBird Listing Publisher and the RealBird Property Search
First let's take some typical scenario of the behavior of home buyers.
CASE 1 - Your listing is not a perfect match, visitors bounce back to Craigslist, they are LOST
This is the classic scenario which we supported from the beginning. It's good, it works well, it's proven to generate business for our members, but the new RealBird service creates way more value. In this scenario, if your property is not a perfect match for home buyers, they go back to Craigslist and continue to search there and end up on other agents' ads, which means, they are LOST from your perspective.
CASE 2 - Channel home buyer traffic from searching on Craigslist to use YOUR RealBird Property Search instead
Recent click-throughs from Craigslist to the RealBird Property Search:
The following screen (via web analytics Clicky) shows a few recent click-throughs to the RealBird Propety Search. We do not have end-to-end tracking but a good portion of the click-through homebuyer traffic actually sends inquiries to our members. Way beyond our original expectation. One agent even said, that she has problem to keep up with the flood of inquiries and showing requests received via this new RealBird service, inquiries about not only her own listing but about other, similar local listings as well.
See an example Craigslist post created with RealBird and showing the Property Search traffic channeling banner at the bottom. Note: This post is active at the time of writing this post, but may be expired by the time you are reading it. You can also see the results quickly by creating one with your own listing, as explained below.
See how easy it is with RealBird:
I can't emphasize it enough: Posting your RealBird listings on Craigslist is a must, when considering how easy it is and the opportunity it creates . Once you entered your listing information on RealBird and uploaded the photos, you can generate the Craigslist code with one click.
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Login to or Register with RealBird (less than 1 minute)
- Enter your listing information (2 minutes)
- Upload your photos (3 minutes)
- Click the Craigslist link which opens up a page with the Craigslist code. It automatically includes the "traffic channeling" banner for your RealBird Property Search (less than 1 minute)
- Follow the link to Craigslist, navigate to your location and post an ad in the appropriate category using the RealBird code created in Step 4 ( 3 minutes)
It takes only 10 minutes fun work per listing to take adventage of this uqniue and powerful visibility strategy. In our opinion, this is an opportunity one can not afford to miss.
As always, your feedback is highly appreciated.
-- Zoltan
RealBird.com
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