Part 2...Internet Marketing and Today's Real Estate Agent: Your website
Even in this era of social networking, blogging, and mobile web, your agent website remains a vital marketing tool. According to a recent National Association of Realtors survey, close to 90% of home shoppers use the Internet in the home-buying process. When they look for a home on line, they may see homes on a particular agent's website after entering search terms like "homes for sale" or "real estate," coupled with the city or neighborhood, and picking one of the search results. They may look on a site like Zillow or Trulia, see a home they like, and click through to the agent's website. Given this consumer behavior, a smart agent continually updates his website to make sure it is user-friendly for visitors and full of useful information. This, of course, is assuming you have a website; as we mentioned in Part One of our series, some agents still think that the old ways of self marketing still work.
Just because potential buyers rely on the Internet for home research does not mean that sales are completed on line. A very few may be, but most buyers want to see what they're buying. A picture (or even a virtual tour full of them) but may be worth a thousand words or two, but carefully staged photos cannot show the neighborhood, how worn the carpeting really is, or how small the bathroom is. No matter how good the website is, you as the agent, offer helpful information that adds depth to what people find on line. You are the one with most accurate neighborhood comparative statistics, so you are the one who provides the accurate home valuation to sellers to determine a competitive price and to buyers to determine a fair bid. You are the one who counsels the clients, negotiates the deal, and generates the paperwork that closes the sale. Your website (or the Internet) will not put you out of business.
Your website is actually an electronic business card that shows you, your team, your properties, and your specialties in living color. People see it; they call you. This means your site needs to look great. It should have a lot of information and a lot of pictures to capture your audience the first time around and keep them coming back to see what's new. (Actually, your site should have a way to capture information so that even if people don't log back in, you are able to include them in email campaigns to bring them back to the site and back to you!)
It is long past the time when you can get by with a site that looks homemade and unprofessional. Your site does not have to be a million dollar project done by an advertising agency. There are a variety of nice template sites on the market that range from being free to costing a couple thousand dollars. With a more costly website program, you get more flexibility in design and more features. For a minimal investment, you can get a site that is easy to use and where you can personalize the text so it reflects your message and showcases your neighborhood in a clear and graphically appealing manner and contains the features you need: auto listing update, blog, listing pages, and content pages. (Other bells and whistles are nice; these are the essentials.) Your site sells you, not just your franchise; this why you may want to go beyond having a Re/Max or Keller-Williams or Coldwell Banker site and have a site of your own.
Once you have your site, you need to promote it to bring traffic to it. If you are an agent in Baltimore, MD, you hope that clients will find you because your name comes up on the first page of Google when buyers type in "Baltimore MD real estate" or "Baltimore homes for sale." Until that happens, you want to make sure you promote your website anywhere and everywhere. Put it on your business cards and all your advertising materials - your brochures, listing flyers, postcard, email signature, print and online ads, giveaways. If your website name is easily accessible, prospects will type it in their browser bar - and there you are!
Looking for a reasonable website package? The Prescott Group offers great looking basic sites starting at $195, including the services of a virtual assistant who will get your site started. Upgraded packages that include customized headers, Flash presentations, and other personalized features are also available.
The Prescott Group, by the way, has a new website of our own! Check out our virtual assistance website and our services today!
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