by As more and more real estate professionals get online, they are quickly realizing that you can’t just sign up for a website, pay $60 a month and then generate leads that turn into commissions. The reality is that a website merely gives you the opportunity to get in front of potential buyers and sellers, but it won’t do it on its own. It’s much like a car gives you the opportunity to drive to work, but you still have to drive it!
A real estate website is a powerful tool. It gives you a platform to communicate with a mass of strangers and allow them to learn more about the cities, neighborhoods, and real estate on their terms. You aren’t controlling how they learn, in fact with search engines; they may enter your website from many different pages and start their discovery of real estate from many different directions.
In order to make your website one that is profitable too, it is essential to market your website to those customers who are eagerly searching for information online. This doesn’t mean a blitz campaign of postcards, magazine ads, or sending out 10,000+ direct mail pieces about your new website. Marketing your real estate website can be very cost effective and productive when you have the right methods.
I invite you to consider the following methods as you are marketing your real estate website.
- What is your customer’s pain? – Think about this one before you do anything. In your local market what is the biggest problem for your customers? Is it finding the neighborhood with the right schools? Is it finding a neighborhood with a big enough lot to build a larger home? Is it finding that first investment property that will put them on the path to passive income freedom? Write down these pains as you can then focus on solving these pains through your website.
- Search engine marketing – Getting to the top of the search engines should be a part of every online marketing plan, but it needs to have focus and as the search engines have gotten more sophisticated it should embrace change. Especially when you are just starting out, try to focus on just 2-5 top keywords in your market that you want to get to the top in. With a small focus like this you will be able to write better content and really meet the needs of your consumers and the search engines at the same time. That focus will require a content plan that involves everything from rich long form content, videos, infographics and even a focused local niche report but when you do that you can have a site that dominates.
- Pay Per click marketing – When you want results quickly have the same focus with your pay per click ads as that of your search engine marketing. Having a small focus will keep your costs down and when you show up organically at the same time you dramatically increase your chances of getting customers to your website. Whether you are managing your account yourself or having an agency do it, keep your ads and ad copy focused on resolving your customer’s pain.
- Technical Details – While you didn’t get into real estate to become an online marketer you will have to understand what is needed for your real estate website when you want to have success online. It is important to have a high-level understanding of key components such as optimum load times, real estate meta tags, XML sitemaps, mobile experience and more to help you engage the right staff to make sure it is completed as necessary.
- Social Networks – Marketing your website through your social network will expose your website to an entirely different group of people. Be careful not to self promote (yes it’s a difficult balance between expert/influencer and self promotion) as your marketing on these networks should focus on giving answers to those pain points. You can provide “status updates” and direct people to key pages on your website which will certainly get the conversation going and help people focus on your website as always having the right answer.
Marketing your real estate website is much more than just “getting exposure”. Whether you implement just 1 method above, all 4, or even some additional techniques, the focus of all of your marketing efforts should be to generate leads for your business.
