| Sunday, June 06, 2010 |
| Realtors' Edge - June, 6, 2010 |
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Dear Realtor: Welcome to Realtors' Edge whose purpose is to ascertain that as a professional agent you are well informed about things that can impact your income, your reputation and your career, by providing the best of news and perspectives on key issues that affect the real estate industry. We make you smarter!
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| June 6, 2010 / Volume 2 / Number 19 |
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| I was so excited when my husband went to a search engine optimization (SEO) conference and one of the sessions was about integrated marketing. I thought to myself, “Wow, it’s not just me who thinks this is something that needs to be discussed.” |
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 Integrated marketing means not just looking at one element of your marketing plan and expecting results that are independent from your other marketing components. An integrated marketing mindset means that you are massively mindful of the marketing you are doing across the board to ensure there is cohesiveness in the flow of information, and to best leverage your message for maximum return on investment.
Here are four simple tips to building an integrated marketing plan:
1. Buy domain names (URLS) for any call to action you might want to use in any of your marketing plans. Get Domains like www.FortMillHomeValues.com, www.FortMillShortSales.com or www.FortMillForeclosureList.com to support any advertising you will run to generate leads.
2. Make sure every postcard you use has a specific call to action that will drive lead generation on the Web. For example, a postcard that has a call to action, such as, “Market conditions and home values are changing in this shifting market. Go to www.WasillaStateOfTheMarket.com to get your custom weekly market report.” This will be much more valuable than a simple “just-listed postcard” with no traffic driver.
3. Classified ads. I know—you are dying to ask, “Tricia, isn’t newspaper dead?” The answer is no, especially if you use it as a specific driver in your Web strategy. Imagine having different calls to action that go to specific pages on your website to create interactivity and lead generation. Ask your local newspaper what they charge for a simple 2×1 classified ad. You might be pleasantly surprised how inexpensive this strategy can be.
4. Stealth marketing on Facebook. The ads on the right-hand side of your profile or newsfeed screen are ads you can create and run. This is where you have the opportunity to do stealth marketing and, even better, select specific target markets that reach those people using Facebook. Imagine having an ad that says, “Owe more on your home than you can sell it for? Click here for help.” This, in turn, could take them to a specific site that addresses this problem, such as www.GetShortSaleHelp.com. (P.S. – This applies for Craigslist.com, Google ad words, etc.).
Note: When driving traffic to your website from any marketing channel to a specific form, make sure these leads go into a specific e-mail follow-up drip that supports the message and connects to them.
Tricia Andreassen is the CEO/Founder of Pro Step Marketing, a leader in brand and Web strategy for the real estate industry. As an industry expert, speaker and author, she has over 19 years’ experience in helping Realtors grow their business. For more information, visit www.prostepmarketing.com. Printed by permission of RISMEDIA. June 3, 2010. |
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| There is a great deal of excitement, as well as resistance, within the real estate industry to engage in today’s online communication forums with consumers. |
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 Real estate brokers and agents have historically relied on the telephone, but the younger generation is steering away from that medium as evident in the fact that the average teenager texts 100 times a day. As they age, texting will remain one of their primary ways of communicating. This trend will continue to push technology toward real-time, digital information sharing. As modern-day agents, we must adapt or get left behind.
So what is our role as the modern-day real estate agent?
Going forward, the biggest shift in the real estate profession is that technology is going to change how consumers perceive our role in their home-buying experience. Consumers now do much of their own research and rely on the Internet for their due diligence in searching the right neighborhood, school district, crime statistics, taxes and home comparables. Access to resources like Google Maps, Trulia.com and Zillow.com has changed the game.
However, Realtors will always play a critical role in providing expert knowledge to a buyer or seller’s unique situation. Brokers and agents offer information on ever-changing government regulations, REOs and short sales, they guide individuals through negotiations and financing, and provide insight into submarkets that only they understand through experience. Real estate professionals have a wealth of knowledge that cannot be found online.
The role of a Realtor is not touring hundreds of homes with a handful of clients anymore. Now, agents can service a hundred consumers in a given week. We are transitioning to online “digital agents” who help consumers in their home-buying search journey, which requires a strong online presence of your personal brand.
Building your personal brand as a knowledgeable thought leader will establish, over time, what the world thinks of you and thus how you will generate more business. Otherwise, without a personal brand that people can recognize online, you will not be on the radar for consumers to find.
Social networking tools—Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blogs, as examples—are some of the best means in engaging current and prospective clients, while at the same time establishing your personal brand.
Engaging socially online is the future. Over the course of the next 12-24 months, for example, most real estate websites will transition from static sites with pretty photos into more informative news and blog-type forums that will provide real-time information. The big question is how to leverage this online activity into actual real estate business.
Transparency, authenticity and expert knowledge will most certainly generate more business for you in the long run through word of mouth and relationship building.
This is a monumental shift real estate professionals can expect because it fulfills the wants and needs of today’s technology savvy consumer.
Rich Rector is the Owner and Executive Chairman of Realty Executives International, Inc. / Printed by permission of RISMEDIA. June 5, 2010. |
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| NextRE has long adopted technology and training to continuously improve its customer service and competitive advantages. Our agents benefit from the company’s advanced lead-generation and customer-contact systems, its wide awareness on internet search engines, as well as its 100% agent commission business model. |
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 As the buying public increasingly turns to the internet and other mobile devices to find real estate information, upon affiliation with NextRE agents are immediately given access to today’s most essential marketing tool for growing their business -- a personal IDX / MLS website -- to start building their own brand.
Known as NextAgent, these advanced technology agent websites are first and foremost about the agents themselves and their listed properties. The sites self-populate property listings directly from the agent's MLS, giving consumers unprecedented property information that includes, tours, mapping and even Google street view imaging.
To see examples, click on any of these agents' sites: John Talley; Laurie Matthias and John Fifer.
Once armed with a fully-functioning IDX / MLS marketing portal on the internet, agents are left with the simple task of developing a driver strategy, comprising of different calls to action to send consumer traffic to their website for lead generation and interactivity (for details, see article above, “4 Simple Tips to Building an Integrated Marketing Plan”).
To contact NextRE, please call (877) 994-6398 ext 321, email associate@NextRE.com, or use this form. NextRE is a true solution for keeping money in agents’ pockets instead of the brokers’. |
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NextRE, Inc. - 221 North Broad Street, Middletown, DE 19709 (877) 994-6398 / associate@NextRealEstate.com |
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