Please feel free to forward these Marketing Tips to friends and family!  If your friends are not subscribers to Advanced Access, they can sign up for our Weekly Marketing Tips RIGHT HERE.  

15 Ways to Get 'Em To Your Site!
By Allen F. Hainge

I hear it all the time at my seminars: "I have a Web site, but I'm not getting traffic. What can I do?" Most often, this comment comes from agents who subscribe to the theory, "Build It And They Will Come!" Wrong!

Your site designer doesn't drive traffic to your site: you do! Having a profitable site (one that makes you $35,000+ per year) takes work, but the results are worth it. As mentioned in my previous article, my CyberStars® are bringing in from $35,000 to over $400,000 a year from their Web sites alone, with 22% of them in the $100,000+ range. Here are 15 things they do to promote their sites and attract visitors.

1. You have to have a good site before you even think about getting business from it. 85% of the agent sites out there aren't good ones: they are shallow "ego" sites with only a few pages that focus only on listings and the agent. You must have good, deep content. Without content, searchers don't find you, and prospects don't have reason to "stick" to your site and, eventually, contact you.

2. Promote your Web site in everything you do! Is your site address on every flyer you create? In your email "signature" (4-5 lines about you, what you do, where you do it, how they can contact you and your site address at the bottom of every email)? On your letterhead? On every piece of print material you create? On your business card? Check now, and if it isn't featured in these places, start correcting this problem…now!

3. Here's a great way to attract visitors, one I learned from my CyberStars®. I call it the "One-Third/Two-Third" rule. The top third of every real estate magazine ad you run should feature your Web site. Include a screen grab of your splash page, the address prominently displayed and a reason for the reader to visit your site. You can come up with many, many reasons: contests (if legal in your site), the virtual tours on your site, the fact that you have every listing on your site, some area information, etc. Trust me: this strategy will bring you in a lot more business than the standard practice of showcasing only homes in the ad!

4. Consider using polls on your Web site, and use advertising to announce them. Polling engines are available at www.pollit.com.

5. If you have virtual tours (hopefully you use VisualTour.com, by far the best virtual tour program out there!), feature your virtual tour on your sign riders. Include the wording, "For A Virtual Tour Visit www.MySite.com." Put this wording in every ad, too, both classified and real estate magazine ads. If you use VisualTour.com, each tour you submit is automatically assigned a number so that site visitors can go right to the tour they're interested in.

6. Link your site to wedding sites, career sites and senior sites whenever possible. The possibilities of sites you can link to are endless.

7. Post photos of homes you've sold to your site on separate pages. Have the buyers invite their friends and relatives to see their new home on your site. 

8. When you list a home, give the sellers 25 customized business cards (created in PageMaker or similar programs) that feature a photo of their home on the back, along with your Web site address and the VisualTour.com tour number. Leave a stack of the cards at the listing for prospects to take, too.

9. Feature your site on your vehicle. Much more profitable than a company sign! Can't tell you how many of my CyberStars® have a VW bug, a Chrysler PT Cruiser or a moving truck (www.OnTheMoveTrucks.com) as their "rolling billboard" and swear by it. Visit their sites…you'll see a bunch!

10. Every promotional item you distribute should feature your site address. Branders.com is an excellent source for promotional items you can have imprinted with your site address.

11. Use postcards that promote your site. Web Cards, www.web-cards.com, offers excellent cards, either large or small, with your site on the front at low prices. You can have the back preprinted or leave it blank. Use them for everything: thank you notes, package labels, "just sold" cards, etc. They really work!

12. Offer local restaurants free listings on your site. Include the restaurant's menu, prices and photos of specialties. In return, the restaurant should allow you to leave business cards or a tent card featuring your service at their restaurant, and you'll think of other places to distribute them.

13. Does your Sphere Of Influence know you have a site? If not, do a mailing to the entire group, giving them a reason to visit.

14. If you have children or grandchildren in youth events (sports, church groups, etc.), attend the event with your digital camera in hand. Take plenty of photos, create a page for them, then let every parent know they're there. If the event is regular (soccer league, etc.), do it every week!

15. Be aware that "Pay-Per-Click" has a very real and growing impact on your search engine ranking, and you need to be developing a strategy (and a budget!) to deal with this relatively new phenomenon. If you haven't already done so, go to www.Overture.com and type in a search. If you type "real estate Raleigh," for example, you'll see that the #1 ranked site as this is written is paying $8.01 to Overture every time someone clicks on her site! Sound absurd? Well, placement on Overture determines your placement on other major search engines, so it's a fact of life, one that top agents have recognized for about 6 months now.

These 15 ideas, not to mention others that you'll think of, will bring traffic to your site. If you have good, deep, consumer-oriented content and 3-4 response forms, you'll soon say that your site is the #1 business tool you have, just like top agents nationwide!

Allen F. Hainge is real estate's #1 "Let's Make Money With Technology" national speaker and author. He is the founder of the Allen F. Hainge CyberStars(r) a group of top agents from the U.S., Canada and Australia who dominate their market using today's technology.

"Jeff, just wanted to let you know that I appreciate all your help over the last six to eight months. I know we have made a lot of changes and gone thru a lot in the way of promotion of my website. But it is finally paying off. I have picked up eight clients in the last few days and one is coming in from Wisconsin on the 17th of May. The site has paid for it's self this year already and I look forward to a record year this year. All I can say is thank you and look forward to many more success stories."

Glenn Peoples

"Just in case I have not told you, Thank you for all the work that you have done for me. I've really appreciated all the updates and your hard work. ... Don't ever leave!"

Marcia Whigham

"The site is looking FANTASTIC!! WE LOVE IT!"

Steve Parisi
Prudential Northwest Properties