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Below is an excerpt from the new edition of the firsttuesday Career Manual, a best practices guide to help new real estate licensees establish their personal brands and increase their income.

Why Online Marketing is important

Most homebuyers use the internet at some point in their house hunt. To benefit from this online research of consumers on the subject of housing, you need to market your real estate services online to attract potential new customers for yourself and buyers for your offers.

Because of this consumer behavior Perfecting your online presence is fundamental to a successful real estate business. Unlike effective traditional marketing like direct mail and door knocking, online marketing is inexpensive, time efficient, and relatively simple.

As an intermediary, you use online marketing to:

• attract new customers;
• publish your offers; and
• Maintain contact with previous customers.

Obtain Customers

The first step in your online marketing strategy is to make a compelling one Real estate agent website.

In order for your website to be effective, you need to be in all of your Digital and printed marketing Materials. First, choose a URL title that customers can easily find on your print materials and enter it in their browser’s address bar (e.g. WhittierRealEstateAgent.com).

By forwarding ads, listings, and reviews to your professional website, you are in control of how you present yourself online. Your website allows you to concentrate all of your marketing and promotional materials in one place.

On your website, show off all of your:

• Listings (If you have only a few entries, it is better to include entries from other agents in your office);
• Real estate experience and expertise;
• Awards, awards and training received; and
• Contact informationincluding a professional photo.

Realize that the old adage “build it and it will come” doesn’t apply to websites. So what’s the best way to drive traffic to your website?

The easiest way is Buy ads to ask online consumers to visit your web pages. Google AdWords is a tool-for-hire that gives your website a traffic boost through Google searches. So if a person searches for “Whittier Real Estate Agents” (and Google’s keyword terms have your website categorized), your website will appear at the top of the results.

Websites, keywords and SEO

However, your use of Google AdWords forces you to invest time and thought Search engine optimization (SEO), initially and with regular keyword updates. SEO activities are phrases that you use to improve your website’s communication with search engines like Google. It also alerts you to people searching for your service and related information.

To increase the visibility of your website when clients search for a real estate agent like you, add the relevant keywords in the entire copy that you post on your website. What are the right keywords? Think about what your prospect is looking for. You are likely looking for a property – a house or an investment – in a particular neighborhood or area. You should therefore include the names of the neighborhoods and the community that you look after on your homepage. This shouldn’t be every neighborhood within ten miles. Limit neighborhoods or corridors to the handful that you actually practice in on a regular basis – your FARM location.

If you are focused on a particular type of property (foreclosures, rentals, single family homes (SFRs), condos, etc.)

Further, Online reviews are extremely important. Yelp and Google+ can be particularly helpful in this regard. Yelp is a form of Foreign marketing. Buyers and sellers looking for information on a real estate agent rely on reviews from people they don’t know – strangers – to direct them to a good agent. Facebook, on the other hand, is a personal form of Word of mouth marketingwhere someone posts that they are looking for an agent and their friends respond.

Ask your buyers and sellers to rate you online. This is all part of your branding and retention activity. It takes a bit of tact to get it right.

Marketing real estate you listed

Other than your custom website or your agent’s real estate website, what are the best places to go online to market your listings?

There’s no shortage of listing sites, but here are some great places to start:

• Zillow;
• Trulia;
• with;
• ListHub; and of course
• your local Multiple Listing Service (MLS).

Uploading a listing to the MLS usually ensures that it is automatically posted to large aggregators like Zillow. Aggregators extend the reach of your first MLS listing to a wider circle of potential buyers.

You also have to Check how your listing appears on the aggregator’s website. The data may not be translated correctly in transit. If it doesn’t, you’ll need to correct it in order to get the most out of your listed property.

Submitting your listing to a neighboring MLS is also a must. In densely populated areas such as the Inland Empire, the MLS territories overlap. If you’re a member of an MLS, you may be able to post to a nearby MLS without paying additional MLS fees. It can be as easy as asking your local MLS for permission (a questionable drag on marketing) to republish your listing with other MLSs, even though some are less data-obsessed and amenable to consent than others.

Include the correct number of photos with each listing. Offers with only a few photos (or none at all) take longer to pique buyers’ interest. The correct orientation and quality of the photos also affects the speed at which offers are sold.

Finally, just like on your website, make sure to use the right keywords in your listing so that buyers can easily find it in an online search. Think about what words buyers might use when looking for a home, e.g. B. that of the property:

• School district;
• Amenities;
• area; and
• Basic functions.

Keep track of things with previous customers

Agents count previous customers for future business. You should and must encourage it. For some reason, only 12% of home buyers and 22% of sellers surveyed by a national trade association use the same agent to buy or sell their next home.

Even if you filter out first-time home buyers (who make up a third of homebuyers) and those who have moved out of the area or whose brokers have retired, 12% is less than it should be. To make this forgetful behavior more difficult, 63% of home buyers and 70% of sellers said they would recommend their agent – if they could remember who they are.

Given that most home buyers and sellers are happy with their realtors, why do so few turn to their previous realtor for help with their next home sale or purchase?

Well, for starters, customers are unsure for years whether their agent is still practicing or simply forget the agent’s name. The inability to remember a name is also likely to exist when other real estate agents’ marketing strategy dwarfs and obliterates the previous marketing of their previous real estate agent by disrupting the bond they had.

On average, homes in California are sold every 16 to 20 years. As memories fade and sources of entries change, having a regular reminder to previous customers that you remain a viable part of the industry strengthens your referral base for your future years in business when customers upgrade, retire, or need refinancing .

Offering great service is a great start to be remembered. However, once the ink has dried after closing and the moving boxes are unpacked, agents who have a permanent presence in their customers’ lives experience higher recommendation rates. The easiest, most efficient, and cheapest way to do this is through online marketing. For this purpose, always collect email addresses from customers and adult family members and their advisors who are in contact with you.

Multiple social media channels are useful for keeping up with past and potential customers. The connection via social media enables you to effectively reach several former customers at the same time and coordinate them in one step.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM) programs help real estate agents track and organize their customer service goals. CRM works to keep in touch with previous customers and network to create new ones Customer leads – in a word, recommendations. Many CRM systems organize and track Drip emails. These can be posted to your client list on a regular basis and are a great way to keep your name fresh in the minds of previous clients.

Of and prohibitions on messages

A potential disadvantage of frequent online marketing is that you run the risk of appearing less personal, aloof, and unattached than using other forms of communication. Trying to attract as many potential customers as possible to your brand online can make you seem insincere and false (read: untrustworthy).

For that personal touch, connect with individual customers when you have a specific reason for the customer, even if they are just online. Send them an email on their birthday or a social media message on the anniversary of the closing of the house they bought with your help.

CRM software can help you keep track of this data, and customers are more likely to respond positively to a customized message than to a bulk email. The email is about them, not generic or you.

Don’t give up too soon. As with any marketing strategy, it can take months or years for your online efforts to pay off with a steady stream of customers. Write down your online marketing strategy and evaluate it quarterly. Then enter any adjustments if necessary.

Track your progress. Use Google Analytics to track activity on your real estate website to see how your visitors find you. Use this information to customize your self-promotion activities and grow your network.

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