I like to read the other posts on Active Rain sometimes. One caught my eye earlier today. It was a post by ActiveRainer Caroline Pigott. Her short article on Authenticity and Trust are hot topics of discussion right now. Caroline just didn't include enough information on her post to shed a lot more light on a disturbing trend we are now seeing in the fight for landing new customers. The lack of Trust.
Lots of websites make lots of claims. Many of them are misleading. Many say the same thing.
People are getting so much information from too many websites that all make the same claims. When this turns to excess information overload, how are next time homebuyers going to understand what you have to offer and how can you improve the chances of you getting a lead when your website looks exactly the same as 15,000 other websites?
Case in Point
It used to be that you could get a lot of clicks to your website simply because you're page one #1. We used to believe in that for a while. Our site, Voyager360.com has been page one #1 on Google now for seven years in a row. And for that matter, we're also page one #2.
If we're #1 on Google for selling virtual tour cameras, why is it that some of you here on ActiveRain never heard of us?
The same question can be said if you are a seasoned real estate agent Rockstar. Let's assume you're one of the top dogs in Minneapolis Minnesota.
But on-line, nobody ever heard of you. You're a real nobody.
In Minneapolis, you have radio and TV and billboard advertising. But if I'm moving from Santa Fe, NM to Minneapolis, Minnesota in 3 months, and I find you on Google and I click on the link and come to your website... what is it going to take for you to get me to register on your website so I can get homes from your local MLS automatically sent to my mailbox?
TRUST.
I have to trust you know what the hell you're talking about. I have to believe that you have a real handle on making my move to Minneapolis a smooth and bump free ride. And the problem is, you have to do this without talking to me and I have to GET that message inside of 7 to 10 seconds.
But how can you show that you're trust worthy? Ever agent says the same thing online. "Buy from me because I'm a lifetime resident and I know the area." You can drop in all the cryptic acronyms next to your name. ePro. ABR. CRS. GRI. Studies have shown these are not factors in choosing you over another agent in your area.
When customers go looking for homes and they find your website with the same, me-too template website that 15,000 other agents have right now... Does this help build trust? I have found out that many of the me-too real estate agent websites are not landing the customers they once did anymore.
One of my customers just today told me their $9,000 website they paid for at Real Estate Webmasters is not what they want and they told me to bull doze it. Quite ironically, this $9,000 website doesn't look much different than a $249 template you'd buy from AgentImage.com.
Does it have to cost $9,000 to build trust? No, it actually costs about $400 a year to build trust.
In addition to coaching lots of brokers who really need our help in retooling their business for Facebook, Linkedin.com and Twitter customers... we had to first eat our own dog food and then teach agents and brokers how to do what we did to keep our cash registering going Ka-ching every day.
Below are the 3 steps you can take right now to dramatically improve the quantity and quality of leads coming to your website.
Step One: Get rid of the me-too looking website. Show the world that you can spend a few marketing dollars and build a website that looks a bit more original.
Step Two: Register with the local BBB and get yourself online and get the TrustLink attached to your site.
Step Three: Privacy Policy. So many people are getting their Identity stolen and they do not want to get bombarded with email from banks, moving companies, mortgage outfits, or the local landscapers. Customers WANT to know BEFORE they sign up with your site WHAT and WHERE their personal information goes. Sign up with TrustE.com. When you create a good privacy policy, you get to sport that cool looking TrustE link on the bottom of your website like we have it on the bottom of ours. Click here and scroll down to the bottom of our webpage and SEE the BBB link and click on that. See the nice testimonials we have there?
Now click on the TrustE link and see our Privacy policy.
Since we have added these links to our website 90 days ago, we have been consistently closing on $15,000 sales or more every week. We're so booked up with client work now, that we cannot take on any new clients until mid December.
It's a nice problem to have.
For several of our customers, we are doing the same thing for agents and broker websites by building Trust into their websites and showing visitors this. So far, it's working out pretty darn good. In 90 days I will let you all see an official "ka-ching report," and how it helped grow new revenues for a handful of brokers and agents on these new ideas.
Please email me if you want a copy of this research.
-- Bart
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