Probably the most common question we get from real estate clients is: my website’s marketing is not working for me in terms of leads. I am getting leads but they are bogus or I contact them and they never call or email me back. Should I cancel my service?

Get out of your real estate agent shoes and into the shoes of a buyer or seller prospect. You are thinking of a real estate transaction sometime in the future and want to do some preliminary research.

You might be six months to even a couple of years away from buying or selling, but you really want to get an idea of what’s ahead in this very large financial transaction. So you go to the web, where you always find all the information you want on just about every product that you buy. It’s a fairly large city, and your search on “yourtown real estate” turns up a huge number of web sites. As you check them out, some require sign-up to look at listings and some do not. At this stage, you’re not really ready to divulge your identity just to get some basic information, so you try a few “no registration” listing searches on different sites.

One or more sites seem to stand out with a lot of free and detailed information about real estate in the area. Over a few months you get closer to buying or listing, and then you want to get more detailed information in your research. One site offers statistics and other detailed reports via email registration. This site has been one you’ve visited over the last months and found quite helpful, so you sign up for a few reports. You get what you expected and it’s helpful. Over the next month or so you get a few emails with more detailed information and links to helpful resources.

Whose client is this going to be?

When working with a lead generation program for big-ticket items like cars, houses, jewelry, etc. some high-end clients will question the value of their leads. Some express frustration that those who submit their forms are not ready to do business right away, and a few even pull the plug on things, completely prematurely. How can you tell if a luxury or high-dollar item lead is dead?

We can safely say that unless the person on your drip campaign opts out, you shouldn’t stop contacting them for at least six months, and you should make sure to send out at least 30 attempts at communication over that time span. Why be so aggressive? Because people who buy high-priced items are much more likely to be careful and perform a lot of research before buying. That’s a fact, so you need to be more consultative while they are in their research mode. Offer them plenty of attractive, specific offers, but also provide them with tons of free information in the form of helpful articles on the industry, a newsletter, updates on the industry, webinars, etc.

If you can prove to them that you are not just interested in a short-term sale, and can deliver to them over the long haul timely information that helps them make the best overall decision, you will win over a lucrative segment of less-impulsive shoppers. So give them a little long-term hand-holding, won’t you?

We can help you set up your lead generation campaigns from start to finish if you’re too busy to handle these time-consuming, yet crucial search marketing tactics; please contact us for a free initial consultation.

MLS Access Itself No Longer Compels Prospective Buyers To Register

I’ve got a question for you. Why on earth would anyone looking to buy a home ever fill out a form without getting some value demonstrated to them first? With so many realtors and brokers still relying on archaic landing pages that only offer the promise of access to the local MLS, it’s no wonder they are seeing fewer and fewer legitimate leads coming in through their pay-per-click (PPC) and natural campaigns.

We work with a lot of real estate agents, and can tell you with certainty that the home search trends are changing. What generated a lot of inquiries six months ago no longer applies; you simply must offer something above just access to the MLS to impress visitors enough to compel them to fill out a minimal form. So we’re not just talking about MLS access. No matter what area of the country you are in, you will benefit greatly from a thorough analysis of the services you can offer and therefore entice your prospects with. We’re happy to provide you with our suggestions as to some additional functionality, services, and offers you can add to your site to really knock their socks off.

1. Email daily listings updates. Using professional design templates that reinforce your branding every step of the way, set up drip campaigns that send out your latest listings as they hit the market. Visitors can easily opt into these emails with a simple form.

2. Tips & articles. Covering the entire home buying and selling processes, offer hip, timely, and area-specific tips and articles as a package. Place them in an area of your site that requires registration to access.

3. Free home appraisals. This makes a great call to action on your landing page which can be used to initiate a referral (if they are out of the area you serve) or sale on your part. Simply provide a form that asks for enough information and package it attractively as part of your complete service.

4. Free loan pre-approval. This helps get the whole process going for home buyers. If you can integrate your MLS data to feed them properties in their price range immediately after they register, that works best. We recommend adding your choice lenders to your blog community.

5. Remodeling tools and resources. There are a lot of people looking for a fixer-upper. Or they may want a specific type of counter. Regardless, if you can refer them to some great professionals in your area, that works best. We recommend adding local remodelers to your blog community.

6. Calculators. People love to crunch numbers as they are looking. Just don’t make the mistake of letting your calculator take them away from the listings they were looking at; use a popup window or javascript app to run the calculator, or even build it into the side of the HTML design template so that everything they need is right there. You could have a dropdown for the different kind of calculators you offer, and then have it process the numbers for whatever specific task they want it for on the page.

7. Local home market reports. If you can offer fully customizable market snapshots for your area of expertise, then that’s a great way to show that you provide cutting-edge real estate tools. These reports work on an opt-in basis much like daily listings updates, and return value to prospects while reinforcing your branding continually. Definitely work this into your calls to action.

8. Team up with a moving company. Find a great local moving company and get them involved in your blog community. This is that extra step you can take to show that you cover all the bases. It also shouldn’t be hard to work out some type of referral program with them that you can advertise. For example, many realtors will pay for moving expenses with the close of a house because the mover will give them a large discount for the referral. It never hurts to make a few calls and connections with this.

9. Involve local schools. Find out all the information you can about your local school districts. Get a couple members of local parent boards to join your blog community. Of course, you’ll want to make sure they’re happy with the schools before you allow them to participate, but having them there will add additional value to your blog as a complete resource on the area.

10. Local real estate blog. Here’s the kingpin, which we saved for close to the end because you need everything to work in concert to form a comprehensive resource that will be of value to your prospects. Don’t set a blog up because it’s the trendy thing to do, do it because it’s the easiest way to get a bunch of professionals together to collaborate and reinforce your marketing. Add the following local professionals to your team: real estate lawyer, all the agents in your office, a mortgage expert, an escrow specialist, trusted community members (including those from parent-teacher boards), and anyone else who would add some local personality into your blog.

11. Foreclosures information. This is becoming a boom market, so any information you can pass along regarding how forclosures work in your area would be great to advertise; especially if you can create a forclosure resources section on your site that contains articles that require registration to access.

12. Socially responsible real estate. Many agents are trying gimmicky marketing strategies, but this one actually is gaining some traction in left-leaning communities. If you can say you’ll donate a percentage of your commission to the area’s favorite local charities, then that’s something you may benefit from. Just don’t make it the main angle of your marketing.

Bonus Call to Action: Maps of active listings. It cracks us up how many real estate websites still don’t use maps to show where their featured listings are located. It’s not that hard to set up, and you’ll be able to advertise that you can easily print out maps to all of your local listings. And yes, people are so lazy that they might bounce when they see you don’t have maps.

With a whopping-huge touchscreen, and the capability to browse websites (and use their applications) easily, the time to take real estate lead follow-up to the next level has arrived with Apple’s iPhone. What we can create now are iPhone lead management solutions that run on Safari on a phone and look really nice. Never before has the technology been in place to efficiently tote around such an intuitive online device. Now the challenge lies in delivering applications that can make full use of the possibilities of the iPhone using the upcoming Safari API. Here’s an overview of where we’re taking things.

Imagine you’re on the road with a potential client. They are inspecting the kitchen counters on a home they’re interested in when your iPhone buzzes. It is a lead from one of your marketing programs! When a new lead rings in from a landing page, email, or instant chat session, you analyze the lead and quickly select from a number of fast responses; subscribe them to a customized daily listings search email, invite them to a nearby open house, send them helpful home-buying tips, schedule a free consultation, chat back with them, send them a personalized email, or possibly just call them right on the spot. No matter where you are, you will now be able to efficiently & appropriately reply to all inquiries that arrive.

If you’re looking for a team that can deliver on the promise of this new technology, look no further; our custom solutions will integrate the iPhone to do exactly what it is meant to do for real estate, make your life easier as a realtor.

When Your Widget Leads Don’t Pan Out

So you’re in the big business of fine widgets. Fine, pricey widgets! And you’ve spent a great deal of time and resources towards your comprehensive online marketing campaigns to make sure that your brand of widgets receives a steady source of traffic from the search engines. And because you did such a killer job, those leads are starting to come in at a steady pace. Congratulations! …but wait. A lot of them have fake phone numbers. Most of them don’t tell you close to exactly what kind of widget they want to buy. And most of them that you write to or call are unreceptive to your pitches. This is going downhill really fast, isn’t it?

Understanding The Widget Buyer

If this has happened to you, before you start panicking, stop, take a deep breath, and consider for a moment the art of persistence. Before I start explaining the benefits of constantly staying in touch with your high-dollar clientele, let’s quickly venture into their mindset for a little reality dose. So you’re looking for this really expensive widget that has all these awesome widget features like turbo charge, and extra strength, and so forth. You’re probably not 100% sure as to what model of widget you want to buy, and certainly not sure as to who you want to buy it from. I mean, that’s why you pulled up Google in the first place. To do some diligent research on your future purchase so that you don’t make a mistake.

Notice that in that paragraph I make no reference to wanting to make a hasty purchase? Probably the most important thing to consider when pitching your potential customers with your pricey wares is that when they contact you they are probably just looking around right now. Casing the joint. Not to rob you, but to find out if your site is for real. See how it compares to others. Taking their time. I realize that’s at odds with your priority, which is getting them to commit as quickly as possible. Well, unfortunately the large majority of sales that you’re probably missing out on are ones that you’re scaring away by being too aggressive and unhelpful. Aggressive in that you’re pushing for a sale right off the bat. Unhelpful in that you’re only sending aggressive marketing materials to your prospects. What you need, my friend, is a sermon on persistence.

How To Gain The Trust Of Your Widget Market

Staying in constant contact with your leads is the best strategy for large-ticket items, yet so many make the mistake of abandoning the leads that don’t yield immediate returns. Labeling them as “not serious.” Well, that’s true, they aren’t serious. Yet. And especially not about doing business with someone who’s only interested in selling them something right now. Here’s where your best marketing friend steps in; email drip marketing. With email drip marketing, you can stay in touch with your leads in a way that is friendly, helpful, and ultimately drives more potential clients your way instead of away from you as fast as possible.

Email Drip Marketing 101

Setting up the drip email marketing system doesn’t have to be difficult. There are three basic steps to it: establishing categories to fit your leads into, drafting relevant and helpful content for each category, and then implementing it using drip email software.

Step One: Settling On Demographic Categories For Your Leads

When setting up your categories, think of the different demographics that could be attracted to your products. Then think of the different widget lines you offer. Set up a group for each demographic and product line. For example, if you have three different main demographics that would be interested in your 2 highly profitable widget lines, then you’d need to set up 6 categories overall. You will use these categories for the next two stages.

Step Two: Drafting Great Original Content To Blast Out To Your Leads

The next step is to draft content that you can send out to these different categories of leads over the next several weeks, months, possibly even years. The strategy you employ will obviously vary depending on your widget industry, but the most important thing is to send your potential clients information that is valuable to them in a way other than just to help them make a purchasing decision. You want to come at them sideways, and then work in a subtle pitch at the end of each message. For example, if you’re in the market of high speed widgets, you could send an article about all the fun nearby places you can go cruising around in a high speed widget. Make the information very personal, use humor, include pictures, even links to audio and video files. At the very end, include a brief paragraph with a link to your site, or better yet, seamlessly include a link to your site in the copy itself without making any sales pitch. That’s just one way you can contact your category of leads though; use newsletters, a series of articles about the widget buying process, send out a page of helpful links about widgets (that include plenty of non-commercial sites, and of course yours). The possibilities are endless, but take the time to plot out a series of emails for each category of leads you have. Have at least a dozen of them to start, and also an introductory email. Once you’ve done that, then you’ll be ready to actually set up the campaign!

Step Three: Setting Up The Drip Marketing Campaign Itself

To set up the campaign, first you’ll need to choose a drip email solution provider from this list:

IContact
Constant Contact
Vertical Response
Bronto

Each one will have its own unique learning curve, features, perks, and potential drawbacks. I will give you the lowdown on these in a future post. Once you’ve settled on one, they all have the same concept: creating groups of contacts to blast out messages to over a period of time. You determine when and what gets sent out to each category of lead by setting up a group for each, and then scheduling those leads to receive the messages you drafted specifically for them. As for exactly how often to contact your leads, that will vary from industry to industry, but don’t let them go for a week without a new message from you. And don’t stop sending them email until they request to be removed from your list.

Getting The Right Leads For Your Drip System

Oh, and one final thing: definitely don’t just buy an email list from some guy in an alley and expect it to work. All drip email providers are vary aware of spammers, and the potential cost it could to do them if they get cracked down upon by the major ISPs for blasting out spam on your behalf. So if you start sending out spam, and send it to a bunch of people who aren’t looking for it, then you’ll surely be blacklisted from that drip provider. The way you get around that is by generating the leads yourself, and fortunately that’s not difficult to do with a little seo content, inbound linking, and a good ppc campaign with landing pages.

Conclusion

So that’s the way you turn your impatient energy into something productive that will yield you more conversions on those big ticket item leads you feel ‘stuck’ with. For a thorough consultation on your business and what the best drip marketing strategy would be for its specific need, please feel free to contact BigSERP.Com.