"Agents don't need a website."
That was the assertion I read this week in a national agent Facebook group.
"90% of consumers searches take them right to Zillow, Trulia, Realtor.com or some other portal, so what's the point of having a site??" (just like most stuff on the Internet, the factual accuracy of the comment might be a bit lacking).
"You can't compete with the 800 lb gorillas of real estate search".
"We sell HOUSES, we're not webmasters".
"I work off of referrals". (okay, maybe YOU don't need a website!!).
Admittedly, creating and maintaining a website can be a real pain in the lower region. We've had an iHouse template site for years and that site hasn't been our main focus for years. It's another digital breadcrumb and provides us a bit of visibility, but it's not our rainmaker. So how do we get home buyers and sellers to knock on our door?
Thanks to this community I've had a Wordpress site with IDX for some years. Initially a would-be site designer on the site set up a site to add to his portfolio. Over time I recognized I'd went down the wrong path with theme and design, but fortunately I'd learned enough here and had enough tech savvy Rain friends that I could gut and rebuild my site. Then a bit later our IDX provider offered a significant upgrade in capabilities, but at the cost of most of the IDX pages I'd made. More work, but new pages created. Yeah, it was a lot of work, especially for a dual career guy like this engineer/agent, but I knew it needed to be done, so I got it done.
Now having a website is ongoing work. I'm perpetually behind in what I'd like to do, what I need to do, etc. There's always something new coming up...can anyone say GDPR? (useful guide at the link).
So why do I bother? I'm not going to beat the gorillas for "Cincinnati homes for sale". I can look through pages and pages of Google results and all I'll see is gorillas of various forms. Portals. Brokerages national and local. A consumer would have to REALLY be patient to keep hitting NEXT over and over to finally find me.
So why bother? It's about targeting. Depending on what you're trying to accomplish the naysayers could be right. You want to be Joe Generic agent, you're going to get buried in a digital wasteland. But if you can find a way to set yourself apart, there's a good living to be made. The bulk of my business comes from our website/blog/IDX pages. As I've said before, it's all kind of intertwined, so it's often difficult to determine EXACTLY what made someone pick up the phone or send an email with a "help me" request, but the reason is not in doubt.
For the most part it's because I've published more information about Cincinnati patio homes than any other site or agent. A searches for "Cincinnati patio homes" or "Cincinnati patio homes for sale" might return Z as the first organic spot, but guess what? It's a false positive. The result is for homes with patios :) After them, there's us, with content that patio home buyers are searching for, and if that matching content gives them what they need, one of two things are going to happen:
1. They'll take that knowledge back to their agent who doesn't know jack about patio homes and they'll buy without us.
2. They'll reach out to us for help.
Now option 2 doesn't mean I'm going to have more clients than I'll know what to do with. What some of those callers want can't be had (you want a patio home in Mason that's new construction for under $250,000...and I want the winning Powerball ticket,...we've each got the same odds of success).
But others, and more than enough to make the effort worthwhile, do turn into clients.
And that's why I have a website.
For some, it won't make sense. Too much money (and you can spend boatloads on a site), too much effort to fill it with original content, etc.
But your odds of success are amplified significantly if you can identify a worthwhile niche and use your website as a means of broadcasting your real estate business. Sure, it'll still take time and effort to develop that presence, but it CAN pay off, literally.
Until next Tuesday, just Ask An Ambassador if you need help!
Bill of Liz and Bill aka BLiz
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