Filed under: Selling Real Estate Online In 6 Steps
The National Do Not Call (DNC) registry is now in Canada, effective September 30th, 2008. If people don’t want to receive unsolicited phone calls from telemarketers or any other business, they simply get themselves added to this list. So if you want to make cold calls to your farm area you will have to see whether each prospect is in the registry before calling. The maximum penalty for violating this law is $1,500 for individuals and $15,000 for corporations. This is even more reason why you need the internet for acquiring prospects.
The same restrictions of the DNC registry have applied to email in Canada since the introduction of PIPEDA in the late nineties. The Personal Information Protection and Electronic Documents Act (PIPEDA) is a Canadian law on data privacy. It governs how businesses collect, use and disclose personal information. PIPEDA requires businesses to obtain a person’s consent before sending them commercial solicitations. However, punishment for violating PIPEDA don’t even amount to a slap on the wrist, and in the 12 years PIPEDA has been around I’ve never heard of anyone getting in any trouble for violating it
The best way of ensuring you have a person’s consent for adding them to your mailing list and being PIPEDA compliant is using what’s known as a double opt-in procedure. What this means is you secure and also verify a person’s permission for adding them to their mailing list. The best way of doing this is having a form on your website where you offer to send people information periodically on real estate information that interests them. People then enter their email address and submit it to the website. They then get an email sent from your website asking them to confirm they actually signed up for your mailing list by clicking a link within the email. Once they click that link they are added to your mailing list. You will then get an email stating that you have a new subscriber along with their information. If you’re specific on exactly what type of information you send out and how often you send it you will get more sign-ups than if you simply promise a newsletter. Also, be sure to include your privacy policy near the opt-in area, telling them you won’t sell, rent or share their information with anyone else. Many people will not give you their email address unless you assure them of this privacy.
Some websites have a single opt-in procedure where a person enters their email address into a form but no confirmation email is sent. Some realtors do this as a way of enticing people to give up their email address in exchange for an article or something else valuable. The problem with this is the vast majority of the email addresses given in these situations are fake. The other problem with single opt-in is you are vulnerable to sabotage. Someone may input email addresses that don’t belong to them or don’t exist. Having confirmation of sign-up via email proves a real person signed up for your mailing list. If your internet provider or anyone else ever accuses you of spamming the subscriber confirmation emails you received prove your mailing list is 100% opt-in.
Unlike CAN-SPAM, the US legislation governing email, PIPEDA does not address what you must do if people no longer want to receive your emails. If people on your list request you unsubscribe them it’s best to do it right away, or before you send your next mailing out at the latest.
If you want to develop prospects in the US, you are not as restricted as with PIPEDA. The law governing commercial email in the US is called the CAN-SPAM act. In the US you don’t need to obtain an individual’s consent to send them commercial solicitations. The only requirements of the CAN-SPAM act are:
- You are sending email from a real email address (spammers usually use false email addresses to cover their tracks)
- Your email’s subject line must accurately describe what you are offering in the email (spammers often try tricking you into reading their emails with misleading subject lines)
- You must provide a physical mailing address for people to send you unsubscribe requests
- You must honor all requests for removal from your mailing list within 10 days
- You must state in your email you are sending a commercial solicitation (have this statement at the very bottom of your email)
My Awesome Power Of Email course helps take your business to the next level by showing realtors best practices for turning email inquiries into sales.
February 1, 2012
Paying For Ad Exposures
As with Facebook ads, Google Adsense ads offer you two ways of paying for your ads: paying per click or paying per 1000 impressions (or CPM). An impression is when your ad appears once on a user’s screen. Google allows you to bid on the amount you’re willing to pay for your ad to be get 1000 impressions IE displayed 1000 times to people. If you’re new to the real estate business and are establishing your brand from scratch, you need lots of exposure, and paying for impressions is a great way of getting lots of it. As with pay per click, the more you’re willing to pay per 1000 impressions, the more often and prominently your ad will get displayed. (more…)
December 2, 2011
If you want to be very careful about where your ads are displayed, you can create a list of sites and your ads will only be displayed on these sites. However, it’s not advisable to do this because you’ll be missing out on a ton of perfectly good sites who could drive qualified prospects to you by having your ads on them. Remember: these ads reach 75% of all internet users in the world. As of 2011 there are over 2 billion people worldwide using the internet. So your ads on the Google network can literally potentially be seen by over 1.5 billion people! (more…)
November 30, 2011
Monitoring Where Your Ads Are Placed
Google doesn’t expect you to operate in the dark regarding exactly what sites your ads are displayed on, especially considering how immense the Google Ad network is. In fact, with your Google Adwords account there is a tool called the Placement Report which will show you the URLs of all the sites your ad has been displayed on to date. After you’ve run your ads for a while you should take a look at this report and visit the sites your ad is being displayed on so you can assess how relevant each site is to buying or selling real estate. Google allows you to block having your ads displayed on any of these sites, so be sure to visit as many as you can and block any that have little or nothing to with buying or selling real estate. Keep an eye peeled for any sites that have been driving traffic but have resulted in little or no conversions (IE signups to your mailing list).
Now your ads may be displayed on a site that gets heavy traffic and (more…)
November 28, 2011
The other advantage of driving people to these “basic info” types of pages is you’ll pay less per click for your ads. Google has ways of discerning where each of the pages your ad appears on is in the typical buyer’s buying cycle and charges per click accordingly. The later the page is in the buying cycle, the more Google will charge per click. The reason for this is with e-commerce type sites where people buy things online, directing someone who is ready to buy to a page where they can buy what they’re looking for is seen by Google as more valuable than sending them to a page with just product information. (more…)
November 25, 2011
So look out for sites that use Google Adsense from any of the following types of local real estate professionals plus a few others:
- residential real estate sales reps
- commercial real estate sales reps
- mortgage brokers
- real estate lawyers
- divorce lawyers
- home inspectors
- home appraisers
- home stagers
- contractors
- real estate developers
- financial advisors
- accountants
(more…)
November 23, 2011
What You Pay For Google Adsense Ads
Google uses what’s called a Smart Pricing model for what you pay per click when your ads are show in the Google Ad network. When someone visits a page with a Google Ad on it, Google looks at the array of possible ads it can display on this page. There are two factors Google uses in deciding what ads to display: (more…)
November 21, 2011
There’s another major reason for piggybacking off sites ranked highly for the most popular real estate searches in your geographic region. When people do generic real estate searches such as “<your city name> real estate” it usually means they’re at or near the beginning of the buying (and possibly selling) process, don’t know what they want yet, and are not yet working with any other real estate sales people. They are usually in research but not yet buying mode. So with your ads offer something that is more specific than “<your city name> real estate”. For instance, if you specialize in Condos in downtown Toronto make some of your ad headlines using more specific keywords as follows to pique their interest:
Toronto Condos
Toronto Condominiums
Toronto Condos For Sale (more…)
November 18, 2011
2 Word Phrases
real estate, occupancy fee, condo fee, estate agent, condo fees, closing costs, condo floorplans, Toronto condo, buying condos
3 Word Phrases
real estate agent, condo floorplans closing,
Piggybacking For Greater Organic SEO
Elsewhere in my blog I’ve talked at length of “piggybacking” to boost your real estate site’s ranking in Google’s normal organic search results. Piggybacking is (more…)
November 16, 2011
Below is a list of 2 word phrases from this page in order of descending popularity:
condominium corporation, real estate, toronto real, common expense, common expenses,
status certificate, condos plus, max condos, reserve fund, condominium unit, common elements, buyers agent, condo maintenance, estate buyers, maintenance fees, toronto condos, toronto Toronto, estate Toronto, tips buying, condos sale, warranty program, unit share, corp brokerage, agent tips, request status, resale condominium, provides protection, ONHWP (Ontario New Home Warranty Plan) provides, major repair
Again, I’ve highlighted only the above phrases directly applicable to condos and condo buying. The highlighted words are the ones that should be among the top candidates for your top 50 keyword phrase lists. (more…)
November 14, 2011
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