Internet - Small Sites

I thought that I would talk a little bit more about the difference between having a subpage for your site and having a mini site (1-3) pages.

Some SEO companies recommend using doorway pages to increase your rank. These are subpages of your site that have very little graphics but a lot of html and links that the search engines can index. Here is a subpage that looks like this www.realestateexpress.com/prelicense/FL/prelicense_info.asp. It is a subpage of the www.realestateexpress.com site. They have a ton of information that is specific to prelicensing in florida. They come up number 34 on a search for "real estate real estate real estate clearwater fl".

The problem with that is that number 34 is not a great place to be AND NO human will ever do a search for "real estate real estate real estate clearwater fl" even though the SEO company will use that as one of their keywords to show you how high they got your ranking.

In my opinion site promotion is best when you have a specific site that is dedicated to one topic and the title, keywords, URL and content all match. The search engines know that you are sincerely trying to provide specific information and the paid search results seem to be a little better also.

A mini site that seems to be ranking very well is "tampa bay 55 plus communities" http://www.active55adult.com/. This is a mini site rich with hyperlinks and text AND a link on the left hand side to "visit our main site". They are doing everything right! And since they come up as #2 they have made the search engines happy also.

Promoting Like It's 1999

So I was working with one of the agents in my office one-on-one to see what we could do to increase her free search placement. Since I hadn't done paid promotions for about 5 years I thought that I would do a quick search to find out how and what to do currently to make the search engines happy.

Well come to find out the exact same things that I was doing in 1999 work today (and are much cheaper than paying hundreds of dollars for SEO - search engine optimization). I will give you my top 5 list of things you can do to make a difference in your placement.

1. Your URL - make sure that your site has a good www.yourname.com. Take a few minutes to pick something that the search engines can understand. In less than three minutes I came up with www.TampaBaysBestRealtor.com, www.TampaBaysAgent.com, and www.AOneAgent.com.

2. Little Sites - having one main site is a good thing, use it for all your marketing BUT make little sites that focus on only one aspect of your business. www.TampaBay55Plus.com could be a 2 page site that had a BUNCH of information about the Tampa Bay area and specifically communities that featured 55+ living on the front page, links to all your other sites and a link to a contact us page that would "feed" into Top Producer. For an example of this kind of site see TampaBayUnder200K.com. These are comparable to "doorway pages" which are a keyword packed page that search engines can index but that are part of your big site. I think you get way more bang for your buck by have several small sites that the engines can index separately - especially since they feel top level sites are better than subpages of your main site.

3. Content - have great keyword rich content that matches your title, keywords and description. Make sure that your links are hyperlinks that describe what you are sending people to - in other words make your link say "On Top Of The World - 55+ Community" instead of "click here".

4. Submit your site to many different search engines. There are two free tools that I can recommend - Site Submission Beta and SEO Studio . They are both a little hard to get set up, but once they are ready to go regular submissions are a breeze.

5. Adwords or Overture - OKAY you got me - they did not have these two paid submission opportunities in 1999! BUT that having been said, paying just a couple of bucks a day can help to jump start your search submissions and hopefully you can pay less and have more "real" results fast!

Be Specific! - Part Deux

So the holidays have slowed the blogging a bit - I will get back in the groove starting TODAY!

My friend Lori Crawford volunteered to be a "specific" guinea pig so here goes (see previous post for starting point). Lori is very social and will probably focus on lead generation and sales activities that involve a lot of talking and networking with other human beings. Also she is a total class act who presents herself very professionally, as well as bringing a broad and varied business background to real estate that will serve her clients very well! She is VERY contentious and will do her very best to make sure that her clients are satisfied with the service that she provides.

Lori has a good start on branding herself with her www.sanddollarsanddreams.com website, and she incorporates the sandollar theme throughout her marketing pieces. She has also included "commitment & loyalty" as the tagline for her logo.

So here is one possible elevator speech...

"Lori brings a strong business background to all of her real estate transactions. She uses her extensive knowledge and experience to provide the best possible service to her clients, utilizing every means necessary to help them buy or sell their dream home. Commitment & loyalty are not just words to Lori - they are the way she works!"

Lori's goal may look like this...

"To build her real estate practice utilizing her personal and professional contacts to facilitate new business. To work with affluent clients who want to buy or sell high end homes in the Trinity area."

So basically Lori's day should start and end with an assessment to see if she had done things to increase the likelihood of meeting her goals. Did she send dinky postcards to her Trinity farm. Did she go to the Country Club for dinner and network with people who will be buying and selling homes in her target area. Has she previewed all the homes in Trinity? She has already joined the Rotary for Trinity - has she invited any of the members out to lunch?

Any of those things increase the likelihood that someone will notice that she is a realtor in the Trinity area and that is what her main goal is for the very near future!

Be Specific!

So this is an over-riding theme here - specificity! It makes marketing, decision making and almost everything else easier. One of my mentors told me to develop an elevator speech - a 30 second description of my business that could be told in the time it takes to ride in an elevator (this is also sometimes called a mission statement). The beauty of having an elevator speech is that you can judge all of your daily tasks against it to see if you are moving forward towards your goals or away from them.

It is very easy to get caught up in the day to day tasks, but if you string too many days together where you did not accomplish anything toward your main focus you can easily get off track.

My 30 second speech is that I bring a creative approach to real estate. This means that I am able to showcase your property in a way that other Realtors are unable to and provide your listing with increased exposure to the market. My tagline is a "New Market A New Approach".

Now it may seem silly to spend your time making taglines and mission statements - but if you don't, what are your main goals for today and what do you talk with your clients about being your strengths when working with them as buyers or sellers?

Tomorrow I will give more real world examples from the people that I know - if you are one of them and would like a 30 second assessment please let me know and I will use you as a test subject!

Real Estate Marketing Pro

Networking - Super Fun Bankers and Accountants

So I crossed the line again this week and went out amongst other humans. My bankers Kelly and Brian invited me to a Tampa Bay Lightning game on Wednesday. We were in a really nice box and there were a bunch of fun people there BUT the best part was that there other marketing junkies there!

My friend Brian P (the banker) and another guest (the accountant) were willing to sit and rap for a while about what makes their business unique and what they could do to generate more clients. We talked about what we were doing to set ourselves apart from other professionals and what we could do that would make us even more successful.

It got me all fired up again to do some out of the box marketing. I have a great feeling that the coming month is going to be key for scooping up market share while other agents are taking the time between Thanksgiving and New Year's off!

Real Estate Marketing Pro

Search Engines - Organic -vs- Paid

So I was preparing for my marketing class today and I noticed that www.cometoclearwater.com was listed on Yahoo at #6 for Clearwater Relocation. How did that happen you ask?

1. I designed the site to attract out of town visitors - it is loaded with information about Clearwater and the surrounding communities
2. There are links that say "Free Relocation Guide" on EVERY Page of the site. What is so unique about that? Most links say "click here".
3. I have spent some money (not a lot) on AdWords to get some traffic to the site in the first place.
   
4. My site description in the metatags is good and compels Yahoo search engine users to click through.
   

There are numerous other reasons that www.cometoclearwater.com has moved up the search engine from its lowly start at 200 millionth. I read all the current theories about how to fool the engines, how to upgrage your site and how pay per click is the future, but this was just plain old 1999 good content, good keywords and time!

It works!

Just a quick note to say that Open Houses do work! Last night (Thursday) I was sitting at an open house where no one had come by 5:45, it was getting dark and I was getting ready to pack up. A couple walked in and said they were surprised that I was having an open house at this time. I said that usually if someone came to an open house at that hour they REALLY wanted to buy a house. They said that they did not want to buy a house but that they needed to put their home on the market - I have a listing appointment with them this morning at 9:30!

Real Estate Marketing Pro

It works!

So I had a great real estate day yesterday! Took another listing, had a buyers appointment, had another couple ask to preview that house also AND had another out of town buyer pre-qualify with my preferred lender (Brian and Kelly at HomeBanc).

How do days like these come about you ask? Well, the first buyer came as referral from an agent in my office. He was out of town and knew that there was a good chance that either my listing partner or I would be in the office and working at real estate. I know that sounds strange, but many agents do not work at real estate as if it is a regular job with regular hours, or they do not come into the office where there is a chance for opportunity. Putting yourself in the money stream helps!

The second buyer came because I was there. Show up, run out when another agent wants to give you a referral, do open houses, attend brokers opens, go to training, just do it!

The listing came because of FSBOs. I like the FSBOs, they are a nice bunch of people who think that they can sell a house. I am having a hard time selling houses and I do a ton of marketing and work at it from 5:30 AM to 9:00 PM most days, so I am sure that they are somewhat frustrated trying to go it alone. It was definitely a drawn out process, I went and looked up when I first talked with my client, May 2nd - first contact, November 13 - listing. This is not a fast process and this lady has received a TON of dinky postcards and other materials from me over that time. When it came time to pick an agent who else was she going to call but me?

Oh - the last buyer came from personal contact - my Father In Law is one of his best friends. I know - talking with humans directly works too!

Newsletters and Lead Generation

Happy Monday! It is lead generation Monday (my favorite day of the week dont-cha know!)

Today I am working on a new project. I have partnered with Joyce and Diana at Somers title to target three neighborhoods with a quarterly neighborhood newsletter. For targets I selected 1.) my farm, 2.) a small subdivision that is close to my home and where I listed/sold a home earlier this year, and 3.) part of a neighborhood where I have 2 current listings. This totals about 300 homes and will provide a nice test market to see if the newsletter will help to generate some leads.

The thing to realize when doing a newsletter is that although you are fascinating to yourself, hardly anyone else wants to read about you! This means your newsletter better have a lot of interesting things that will make people want to read it and not just be a disguised advertisement for yourself.

I am including tips for how to get your home ready to sell, information on Homestead exemption deadlines and eligibility (this is a Florida based homeowner tax exemption for my out of town readers!), and neighborhood sales and currently listing info. I also have a one panel of the six panel flyer dedicated to Somers Title as they are helping to sponsor the newsletter.

Finally, one panel has two of my listings as featured properties. They are targeted to be either move up or move down for the neighborhood I am sending them into. For example - in the $300-$400k neighborhood I listed a $659K car lover's house and a $149K 1/1 Waterview Condo.

If you would like to see a copy of this quarter's newsletter, email me at taradactyl@gmail.com with your name and address and I will send it out right away.

Real Estate Marketing Pro

Customer Service - What NOT to do

Anyways, anyone who is around me a lot hears how much I like VistaPrint. I like the quality of their products, I like the ease of ordering and I tell EVERYONE about it. Yesterday I found out that for some reason one of my orders was delayed (I could never get the customer service person to talk fast enough to tell me the reason) and I requested an expedited order. The customer service person hung up on me. I called back and requested a supervisor and another rep promised one would call me back by COB, no one did.

I will probably not stop using them as generally their printing service is impeccable, BUT their customer service department leaves A LOT to be desired. The person who answered the phone did not understand how to talk to someone like me - I want to get to the point and get a solution. I am not concerned with what went wrong or her evaluation that a week late delivery is FINE. It is NOT fine. Offering to cancel the order is not a good suggestion either as that defeats the ENTIRE purpose of wanting to get the item faster.

My listing partner and I are Robert LeFever groupies. He is an FBO profiler who uses the DISC profile to tell how to talk with your clients the way that THEY are most comfortable with. The rep yesterday missed the boat badly. Staying calm, talking in a low tone, droning on and on about why the order was late only made me mad, although it might have made another customer feel better because they need to know all the facts, or could have helped someone else because she was nice and they like nice people. I constantly have to remind myself to try and communicate with my clients in the way that makes them feel the best, not in the abrupt, get to the point way that I like, but which sometimes makes other people feel like they have been sideswiped by a bus.

How do you interact with your customers? Do they end the conversation with a smile or do they feel like you have missed the boat like the VistaPrint rep?

Real Estate Marketing Pro

Market Like A Maniac!

My market like a maniac class is a week away and I have to say that I am super excited. I used to teach the entry level website class which was nice but pretty basic. I intend this to be VERY specific and very interactive so agents can get right in there and start marketing right away!

With all that marketing buzz going on, I would like to talk about making things beautiful. At our market center they just hung a bulletin board up that agents are able to post their properties on and pay $3 for an 8X11 area. When that board is covered with flyers and agent printouts, I hope that mine will stand out because I intend to spend just a couple of extra minutes to make it look different from all the white pieces of paper up there.

Many times it just takes a couple of extra minutes to make something look great or different or on a different color of paper and IT DOESN'T COST ANYTHING!!!! Setting your work apart with good design is a cheap and easy way to make your marketing stand out!

Real Estate Marketing Pro

Internet Marketing - A Tipping Point

I watch where my website visitors come from very closely, I monitor my AdWords campaigns to make sure I am not spending too little or too much, AND I do this several times a day FOR FUN!

It is exciting to see where your visitors come from because it tells you what you are doing right and where you should spend your money. I get visitors from many different places including my ILS Castles and Estates Listings, my Ezine articles, my other websites, press releases, search engines and paid placements on Google Adwords. Whenever I can think of some way to drive more visitors to my site I do it (like blogging for example!).

Something wonderful has been happening lately though.... More people are coming from other sources than are coming from Google Adwords! Don't get me wrong, I think if you are going to pay for placement that Adwords beat SEO all day long, BUT it is nice to know that the other things are starting to have an effect. It has taken about 6 months of concerted effort, but it was definitely worth it. For about the last month the paid and the other visitors have been about equal, but this week the others have definitely overtaken the paid!

I am keeping my fingers crossed that this trend continues.

Real Estate Marketing Pro

Get out and vote!

Last week I sat down with my handi-dandi voter checklist they send me and decided who I was voting for today. My husband knows how much I like voting and so he recommended that I go camp out at the polling place so that I could be the first one there.

I have loved to vote since I was 20ish and worked on a campaign for "my congressman Tom Ridge" in Meadville Pennsylvania. Over the years I have been more or less militant about it, but throughout I have felt that whether you are voting for my party/representative or against who I would like to see in office, that it is our responsibility to make ourselves heard with our one vote.

Voting is a privilege of being an American citizen. Get out and vote.

Lead Generation Mondays - The Best Day of the Week!

“Whether you think that you can, or that you can't, you are usually right.” Henry Ford

I think that today is the day that I will generate all the good things that will happen to me later this week. I will be sending out thank-you notes from this weekend's open houses, mailing my dinky postcards, sending out brochures and also designing a new neighborhood newsletter that I will be working on with my favorite Title Company (Somers Title - Joyce and Diana are the absolute best!).

I will be ordering new materials for some marketing clients, getting more neat notepads from VistaPrint (ridiculously expensive but discounted to try) and also sitting down with my partner to go over our "Hot Prospects" and todos for the week.

As I sit and sticky-sticky the stamps and labels, I think about all the good things that will come from doing the activities to bring in clients (and advertise my listings at the same time!!!). Even if you hate doing lead generation, do it today like it will bring in business later this week and see if it isn't a little easier and more fun!

Real Estate Marketing Pro

Adwords - Max Out Your Money

I was talking with an agent in the office this week about how to get her adwords cost per click down and thought that you all might like to hear it!

As you know from previous posts www.TampaBayUnder200K.com had a great click through rate. I was getting 2-3 clicks per day at an average cost of $.41/click. BUT I got nothing from that money - no leads at all AND I was mad that I was spending $1/day for no leads. Now I know that other people have much higher budgets and that wasting $1/day is not the end of the world, but it matters to me!

I set out to make a difference in that expense. First I changed the content of the site so that when they came to the site there were lots of good links to my other sites and other listings. Then I started trying to get that cost per click down. You do this by watching the CTR. This tells you how many times your ad is viewed compared to how often it is clicked. The higher that number the less you will pay per click.

You can effect this by making sure your ad says EXACTLY what they will get and that it is a compelling enough to make them click through. Changing just "Affordable Housing" to "Affordable Housing in FL" increased the CTR. Then I made sure that the keywords that made the ad show up were VERY tightly controlled*. If you have wishy-washy keywords like real estate, realtor, new home sales, you will spend a lot of money and have a lot of impressions but not a lot of clicks because they are too broad. Use tampa bay real estate, clearwater realtor, trinity new home sales and other more specific keywords to tighten up that CTR.

Perry Marshall has a great (and FREE!) Google Adwords training course that I can highly recommend!

So how did it come out? Am I spending less for more clicks? I now cap my daily spending for that campaign at $0.50/day, last month I got 70 clicks at an average cost per click of $0.22, my CTR is 0.15% and I spent a total of $15.66!

Real Estate Marketing Pro

*If you email me at taradactyl@gmail.com I will be happy to send you what I am using now. Please remember that you need to modify them to fit your campaign or area.

Motivation - Opportunity Magnet

A shorty today since I have to be out of the house by 6:30 (early even for me!).

My Broker (Nikki Ubaldini) has an affirmation that she has passed onto me like a good virus. I AM an opportunity magnet. With that in mind this week I have had 3+ listing opportunities, at least one buyer opportunity and also some marketing options. I have intiated a campaign that I think will result in a steady stream of fantastic and unique properties to market AND my business partner and I are starting to really get up and running!

Go out there and be an Opportunity Magnet today!

Lead Generation - Do it! ***Update***

So I was leaving a listing appointment last night and I got a call from a FSBO who said he would like me to come and preview his property. Not a listing appointment but definitely the next best thing. AND it this opportunity came from dinky postcards that I sent out on Monday during lead generation - I love when this stuff works!!!!...:) Tara

Articles - Get Published!

So I was talking with my office mate yesterday and she said on her list of 100 things to do before she dies is to be a published author. Well today that dream is easier than ever!

I got the notification today that ezines had accepted another one of my articles. They said that it was worthy of expert status and also said "Your article has also been sent to our exclusive EzineArticles RSS Feed and to our proprietary EzineArticles Email Alert Members." That means that I am getting a BUNCH of exposure for my articles AND my website. I include at the bottom of each "Visit realestatemarketingpro.blogspot.com for free daily real estate marketing ideas. See these tips and tricks in action at www.ComeToClearwater.com" which accomplishes a bunch of cool things:

1. People read my article (79 views)
1. People read and sign up for my blog (Unknown #)
2. People read my article and visit my website (as much as 20% of my traffic some days)
3. There are now more links in the internet universe to both my blog and my main site

I may do some more articles that feature my affordable housing site or my high end site or even my FSBO sites. Whatever I do it will be a great way to get more people coming to my sites, for free!

RealEstateMarketingPro