Advanced Access Blog

Why do you have a real estate website? Do you like having a place to showcase your listings? Is it easy to send clients there for answers to their questions? These are important uses for a website, but the number one reason you have your website is to generate leads who will ideally become clients. If you want more traffic and more leads, keep reading.

Social Media

Using services like Twitter and Facebook can help you connect with real estate buyers and sellers. Begin interacting with people other than real estate agents on these websites, and see how you can gain contacts who need to talk real estate. Remember, connect with people on a personal level, and they are more likely to remember you when they need a service you provide. A lead is not always “right now”, so build up a community on these sites. Social media can be an excellent way to boost your website traffic; you never know who will contact you.

Question and Answer Sites

Trulia Voices, Zillow Advice, and Yahoo Answers are three great communities to join. This falls under the social media category in a way, but goes beyond “random” interaction. These sites exist for the purpose of users asking and answering questions. Trulia and Zillow are real estate specific, and Yahoo has a sizable real estate section. Answering questions specific to real estate in your area is an effective way to network and get leads relevant to your business.

Lead Generation Forms

Once people arrive at your website, it is important that you give them a reason to stay. You also need to give them a reason to contact you*, and a way to do so. The first step is to create a call to action and ask for contact information. The second step is making sure you have a lead form ready to get that contact information. Using targeted content to get website visitors to complete your contact forms is an effective lead generator. Click here to read the step-by-step process of creating compelling content for your real estate website.

*Next week, I will talk about specific ideas for your lead generation form pages.

Email Campaigns

Keeping your name in front of potential buyers and sellers is the way you keep your “not right now” leads warm until they are ready to do business. I suggest you use email marketing campaigns to keep in contact with your prospects and past clients. Create email campaigns with home owner tips, or create a monthly newsletter with current real estate information. You can use IntelliCards to create your own campaigns, and we have several campaigns already created (if you have IntelliCards Lite, you can upgrade to get these features any time).

Pay For It

Sometimes you just want a “right now” solution. While building up your website and online presence in a more natural way is going to be better for your business in the long-term, there is no shame in paying someone to make it happen now. Many real estate professionals have turned to using Pay-Per-Click services to get placement in the sponsored links sections of Google. This can be an effective element of your marketing strategy. Of course, we suggest you take it a step further and give more value for that click with an IDX listing search and contact form. Advanced Access can do all of this for you, click here for more information on getting leads guaranteed.

The running theme here is participation. Be the change you want to see in your real estate business. If you want more leads from your real estate website, go get ‘em! Participate in your success and it will be more substantial.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, May 6th, 2009 at 1:29 pm and is filed under Marketing, Product Education, Weekly Marketing Tips. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.