I have long advocated for real estate agents and brokers to better utilize their personnel to aid in their internet marketing efforts. I suggest that all companies consider this easy exercise to start the process of improving all real estate websites with brilliant content based upon the needs and questions that consumers will have about their real estate services.
We know that consumers start the process of buying or selling real estate with a quest for information.When they are in this “information seeking” stage of the buying process, they are not prepared to list or buy, but they are prepared to find an agent worthy of their attention. Are they finding your real estate website?
The easiest way to understand why your current site is ineffective is to make a list of all the questions that your customers are asking (before and during contact with your company) and then try to find the answers on your site. If you cannot find them immediately, what are the odds your visitors will find them?
Enlist the help of ALL of your agents and employees, from every department regardless of their job description. Set-up a company contest and request every conceivable question that they have ever been asked while at work. The goal is to compile a list of all the questions that consumers might have when they start the search for the assistance your company could provide.
Depending upon the range of your real estate office, you might end up with a small list of several hundred questions to a giant list of tens of thousands of questions. These questions are a gold mine of opportunity for your company. You then need to establish a content marketing plan that will serve to provide answers to these questions, in a search engine optimized platform, so that consumers with these very same questions will find your real estate website.
The greater the detail that you address and provide answers for on your site, the better likelihood that visitors will find you and like what they find. This early contact with the customer through the answers that you provide will help establish your company as the authority for real estate in your area, which will help you gain more opportunities with consumers online.
By utilizing the personnel that most often interact with consumers and deal with the day to day questions that arise in your business, you will far better prepared to attract those highly prized internet customers. Your real esate website can transform from a mere brochure to an active, high gravity sales vortex that will be the envy of all your competition.
Richard Murphy, Harborview Properties, Portland, Maine (207) 712-4796
Comments(16)