The reason blogs have so much value is they’re not marketing materials per se. People always want to know the reality of a business’s products or services, and they don’t trust a business’ own say-so about how great they are at what they do for obvious reasons. A blog allows people to peel back the professional image and see you for who you really are. So be yourself whenever you write your blog. Don’t try to live up to what you think people want to see or censor yourself over concerns of what’s professional because people will see through all of that and you’ll come across as phony. Let your personality shine through in your blog. Give people what they want: solid, timely, thorough, easily understood information on the local real estate market. (more…)
Blogging can be an amazing way of building relationships with new prospects, but it isn’t the right promotional tool for every real estate professional. In fact, if your blog is missing some key ingredients, it can actually do more to harm your real estate business than help it. So here are some of the things you need to know about blogging so you can know if it will help your business or not. (more…)
In Wednesday’s article I discussed how interactive teaching far exceeds normal didactic, one-sided education for learning and how you can use webinars as a powerful means of informing and interacting with your prospects and building relationships. Here are some insights on what to look for in a webinar provider and structuring your webinars for maximizing the interaction and rapport building: (more…)
When a real estate professional builds an email database of prospects, the common thing to do is only email them newsletters or new listings. There is no interactivity in this, and so it limits your ability to build relationships with these people. It’s been shown the didactic mode of teaching (IE teacher talks, students listen) so universally prevalent in our schools and marketing in general is far less effective than engaging learners in an interactive fashion. Having a webinar (IE web based seminar) can be a very effective way of informing your prospects by interactively engaging them. By doing this you get to learn more about your prospects needs and wants, helping you better understand them and your target market in general.
Here’s why interactive learning far exceeds didactic learning and why you should use it. (more…)
In the previous article we discussed how you can use your farm area’s ethnicity as a marketing angle. Another great angle is finding out interests common to many people in these neighborhoods and adding content to your website reflecting these interests. When you do this, your web pages with this content will become found in search engines for those interests, so many people who look these interests or hobbies up on the web will find your website, and they may also be looking to buy or sell a home soon. Here are some ideas for doing this: (more…)
Part of being a neighborhood specialist can be understanding and then catering to the particular types of people living there. That could include many things: their personal interests, ethnic background, and so on. Better yet, find out the things you have in common with your people and devote part of your website to it. It’ll be a labor of love!
Catering to particular ethnic groups can be a great way of cultivating a niche market. Here are some ideas for doing this: (more…)
The beauty about pay-per-click (PPC) campaigns is you don’t have to wait to get website traffic as you do with normal, organic search engine optimization (SEO). The search engines like Google and Yahoo offering PPC campaigns let you name exactly what search terms you want to be found under, and you can start getting traffic from those searches right away.
Now it seems paradoxical that the pay-per-click phrases reportedly driving the most qualified traffic are not the ones getting the most searches, but here’s why this happens. When a buyer does a very general search (eg. Toronto real estate), it tells you something about them. It tells you they’re (more…)
Even if you have your website optimized in search engines for your farm areas, you still must make your website and what you can offer buyers compelling enough so they’ll want to keep in contact with you and sign up for your email mailing list. If they don’t sign up, these people are simply cars zooming by on the information super highway. You’ll probably never see them again! So getting them to sign up for your mailing list is critical. It gives you the chance to begin building a relationship with them. Saved property searches offer a great way of getting a lot more sign ups for your mailing list.
Saved Searches
The more your prospects can customize their information requests and receive updates on what they want listing wise and when they want it, the more likely they’ll sign up for your mailing list. eBay is exemplary in this way and it’s probably one of the main reasons they’re the world’s largest e-commerce website. They have a fantastic way of motivating their clients to sign up for email updates: Saved Searches. (more…)
According to NAR, a staggering 70% of real estate professionals don’t think the internet is helpful for their business. The biggest reason for this is most real estate professionals don’t promote their website online. They don’t do it because they don’t know how, don’t want to learn how, and don’t have anyone do it for them. Though millions and millions of people use the internet, it doesn’t mean you can just get a website and expect the prospects to immediately start pouring in. So I want to address the biggest misunderstandings about websites among real estate professionals and how to alleviate them and get them making money for you.
This is the most common complaint I hear about real estate websites:
“I got a real estate website, but I’m not getting many prospects from it”
The first thing I ask real estate professionals who say this is, (more…)
Being found under a search for “Toronto real estate” is not necessarily 100% desirable. It’s a very broad search and so it will bring you a lot of unqualified prospects. The last thing you want is spending a lot of time sifting through piles of unqualified prospects. So it’s better to have your website come up in search results for more particular areas, neighborhoods or the types of real estate you specialize in and want to make yourself known for.
I hope you’re ready to really see and understand what I’m about to say on why this business truly isn’t competitive when you approach it in a particular way. (more…)
