A Guide to Online Real Estate Marketing ...

Being an internet marketing professional who performs Real Estate Marketing services on a daily basis, I felt it necessary to share some ideas that have worked for my clients in the recent past. Real Estate Marketing For those who are looking for a hands-on lesson, I should warn that this is not meant to be a tutorial, rather a set of ideas and strategies that you can implement on your own or by hiring someone. Sure you could survive on just a Facebook page, but if you want to thrive as a Real Estate agent, you should have a website that is dedicated to just you and your properties. With CMSs (content management systems) like WordPress, you could easily get a professional looking real estate website made for you, without investing thousands of dollars. If you are familiar with WordPress, consider buying a real estate theme from themeforest. If you are not familiar with WordPress but would like a great looking site for an affordable cost, find a company that specializes in Custom WordPress Design. Consider including extra tools and resources like mortgage calculators and local real estate information to help your traffic stay longer. They may also be more inclined to browse through your property listings if they find value in other information you provide. Real estate agents are great candidates for Facebook, Twitter and Blogs, as the business itself is very personal and engaging in nature. Try setting up an account on Facebook and/or Twitter, and use it to share relevant articles on mortgages, titles, buying/selling tips, etc. Better yet come up with your own articles and link back to your blog so you gain more traffic. Twitter on the other hand has great search options to find what people are tweeting, and where they are located. You could essentially use twitter to find customers and directly approach them. I found this tweet within my first try:The key to using social media for business is to constantly connect with followers to keep your visitors engaged, and to build a relationship with them. The benefits of knowing other agents and people in your industry are endless. Marketplaces are sites that provide buyers with a list of properties to choose from that match their specifications (price, location, type, etc. On the flip-side they also provide agents with a place to promote their listings, by submitting their property information, images, etc. To name a few that are out there, check out the following:BackpageByOwnerMLSEnormoFrontDoorHotPadsLocal. Real EstateZillowRather than entering these options one-by-one, try using a tool like Postlets that will do multiple list submissions for you at once. Better yet, find a real estate marketing service that will do it all for you. The site should be used to promote your communities and properties and should provide information on property details, layouts, amenities, the builder/developer. Consider using features such as video tours, image galleries, concept sketches, interactive guides, etc. Try leaving price and availability off the site so that it entices people to contact. Since builders and developers mainly have multiple properties with similar specifications and larger returns on each sale than an agent does, you can afford to invest in traffic. You will want to optimize your site for a keyword phrase (or multiple phrases) that fit your property or service (ex. Assuming your site is lead-focused, you can easily turn these visitors into potential buyers. If you are unsure about how to optimize your site for search, consider using a company that offers online real estate marketing service. This option is not always suitable for certain businesses, and I personally would not advocate it for real estate agents. However, land developers and home builders are quite possibly the ideal business-type to use PPC. Another great reason for using PPC is that you can easily track cost and returns to see how well the program is working. However, if you are considering using PPC, I strongly recommend you hire a professional to manage your campaign, unless you really know what you are doing. It is easy to waste away thousands of dollars on AdWords, but with the right help, it can be very successful. When hiring a PPC professional, make sure they offer landing page management as part of their marketing services, as a dedicated web-page is usually more effective at generating leads than a large website full of information. Sure you might come across some better ideas that could be more effective, but all the time you spent researching them, could have gone into building up your online presence. With those three basic techniques at hand, you can make serious dent in your online presence. Tags: real estate marketing, real estate marketing servicesDid you enjoy this article. He studied business for 5 years at the University of Western Ontario, and now owns a small firm that specializes in sales and lead generation. Our topics focus mainly on search marketing, social media, and marketing-focused web design/development. We encourage enthusiastic marketing professionals to share your knowledge for all the readers to read about.