Back to Real Estate Marketing Basics

I have been babbling about social networks and abstract marketing ideas for the past month, and it is time to get back to my real estate marketing roots. For the next few posts, I will be talking less about the use on flickr, youtube, and other Mashups and focus more on the basics of marketing that every real estate agent can use; tools such as real estate flyers, real estate signage, realty advertising, and the basics of marketing your small business.

This holiday season has been great because I have had some time to catch up on my reading. I got caught up on reading Ardell’s SeachingSeattle as well as The Real Estate Tomato and Sellsius all of whom are prolific real estate writers (I think Jim is on the same technology kick as I was with his recent posts about new comment bookmarking.)

After catching up with the commentary of my peers, I spent a great deal of time reviewing the most recent articles in Marketing Profs and found some great advice that I would like to share. The specific article is entitled Ten Key Questions for Your Web Copy and it details a number of questions that you should keep in mind when developing your online presence. Click the title to read the full article, but if you don’t have time, here are the items that the article discusses:

1. Is your homepage empathetic to your visitors?

2. Is your site organized on your customer's terms?

3. Are your offers easily accessible?

4. Is your content distributed properly?
Use testimonials and reports across all of the pages of your real estate website instead of having a single dedicated page.

5. Do you offer print-friendly pages?

6. Is your contact information complete and easy to find?
I can’t tell you how important this one is. Many realtors buy websites that have contact forms as part of the offering. However, when you visit their website, there is no telephone number, not address, and the only way that you can get hold of the agent is filling out a form and sending it into the web abyss. Please make sure that your phone number and contact information is on your home page and make it as easy as possible for your clients to contact you.

8. Does your homepage have a place for timely announcements or news?
Can anybody say Blog?

9. Do you have a retention device?
We all know the value of real estate newsletters and auto-responders. Use them continually.

10. Do you regularly check your Web stats?
I would have finished at nine, but the point on the article is well stated.

More marketing commentary to come…. Viva Real Estate!