The Successful Realtor Part 1

Surfing the Wave of the Future

The Internet has changed many things - not least of all, the home buying process. It wasn’t so long ago that realtors shouldered the majority of responsibility in identifying properties for clients to view.Today’s homebuyers, however, tend to favour a more active role in the process
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In fact, a whopping 71% of homebuyers used the Internet to search for a new home in the first quarter of 2009. Of these, 90% also employed the services of a real estate agent.

From a marketing standpoint, this means only one thing - the Internet cannot be ignored as THE medium to talk to prospects. If you do not have a kick butt website, you are losing money.

If you are not web savvy, you need to become so quickly. But don’t worry - it’s not as intimidating as it sounds. Besides, the efforts you put in will more than pay for themselves.

So … where to begin? First, it’s imperative you understand how your website is performing for you. At the very least, you need to determine how many unique visitors you get to your site (not the number of “hits” since one person may visit several times), which pages they enter from, and from which page they leave your site. Software is available to help you track these stats. You also need to decide how you’re going to collect visitors’ contact information while they’re in your site.

As for the content itself, your website cannot be just about your listings. To really capture readers’ attention and create a favourable impression, it needs to provide information that appeals to your visitors. Even more importantly, it must allow you to gather your visitors’ contact information.

Take a look at the most successful direct marketing sites, and you’ll find they share one thing in common – the main focus of each site is getting the visitor’s email address. Once the marketer has this information, visitors can be sent many follow-up emails to convert them to clients.

You can easily design your website to serve the same function by adding an autoresponder to your site. Once you’ve added the autoresponder, offer visitors a free report on a topic of great interest to homebuyers in your area. All visitors have to do is provide their email address and the autoresponder will do the rest, recording their email address and sending the promised report, in addition to any future messages you select. Try adding this one simple automated system to your site and you’re sure to see immediate results.

Tip: Sending a series of messages with very helpful content will set you up as an expert in the minds of buyers and sellers in your area. The more these people read your messages, the more inclined they will be to work with you. Remember - the sale is almost never made in the first meeting so keep your name in the minds of potential clients!