Real Estate Marketing

Should Your Real Estate Website Be A Reflection Of Your Business Model?

In the real estate industry, one never knows where their next client will come from.

It could be a referral, a friend, an inquiry on an ad, a web lead, a new acquaintance, an up/floor call, a walk-in, a relative… you can’t know – but you are ready and willing to be of service to them in any and all cases.

First-time home buyer? Relocation? Empty-nester? Move-up buyer? Short seller? Investor? Flipper? Luxury seller? Vacation home buyer? – you can’t know – but you are ready and willing to be of service to them in any and all cases.

In town? 5 miles east? 10 miles west? 2 towns over? – you can’t know – but you are ready and willing to be of service to them in any and all cases.

As a real estate agent, typically, you will work with most anyone that is seriously looking for your services. There’s no discrimination, you’re happy to be of service.  You will provide them with the proper answers to all their questions, deftly handling all their concerns, establishing trust and you’ll see the deal through to the end.

You’ll do this because you are competent, smart, experienced,
eager, personable, capable and ready.

Unfortunately the task of creating this impression online is not as easy as being yourself.

One of the biggest hurdles we need to help some of our clients overcome when they are in the planning stages of developing their real estate website is that they want to make their site a clear reflection of their business model, and this is a nearly impossible task.

They know that they can help any potential client regardless of the person’s age, budget, experience, needs, location, scenario, etc.  And, they don’t want to have to compromise this competence in the impression presented by their website.

The challenge might be quickly summed up in the old adage:
If you try to please everyone, you end up pleasing no one.

But there’s more.

Blogging for business in real estate is about building trust that leads to relationships with the audience you reach.
In order to establish that trust, you need to be seen as competent, experienced, and savvy – the perceived expert.

Now consider the amount of content that will need to be created to establish this impression by your full spectrum of potential visitors. First you will need to write exhaustively about every neighborhood that you’re competent to cover.  Then you’ll need to tackle all the common questions, concerns and challenges of every potential buyer/seller you could work with.  I have to stop here because I’m getting anxious just thinking about how much work this would entail.

Once they recognize that they aren’t going to be able to please everyone, and that any attempt to do so will in fact have them impressing no one, we can then work on who we should attract and impress.

Instead of seeing their online presence as an a reflection of their business, it needs to be seen as an extension; a tool to effectively attract business.

So the question we ask is: “If we can help you generate 12 new sales over the next 365 days, and they all had to be from the same sort of client, how would you define them?”

With attracting buyers for example:

What community do they want to live in?
What price range?
What sort of RE experience do they have?
What is their income?
Career?
Family?
Married?
How old are they?
Where are they from?
Political lean?
Religion?
Past-times?

You get the idea.

We want to help our clients narrow the focus of their content and calls-to-action so that they avoid trying to attract and please just anyone. Once this is established, the vision for the website becomes much clearer for them and us.

We are not painting you into a corner, but rather laying out the red carpet for new business, business that you want and expect.

How Should I Showcase The Blog on My Real Estate Website?

Almost all of our clients are real estate bloggers. However, they are not all showcasing their blog articles in the same fashion.

Some put the blog at the forefront of their website’s homepage, while others tuck it back onto a secondary page only accessible by a button on the navigation. Some use sidebar widgets to showcase recent articles, others leave truncated articles on the homepage, just below the fold.

How does one decide how to present blog content to their audience?

What are the pros and cons of showcasing or not showcasing your real estate blog content?

The Front and Center Blog

Placing your real estate blog content on the homepage as the prominent content under the header/navigation is the most aggressive way to showcase your blog.

The blog articles are positioned to be a main impression of your online presence. Whether you choose to blog about market statistics or announce the grand opening of a new ice cream parlor in town, your audience is going to notice. (So are the search engines – but I’ll get to that in a few paragraphs)

If you are a dedicated real estate blogger, and you are using this to your advantage in your marketing strategy then pushing your blog on visitors is a sound approach. But the key to success with this plan of attack is the dedication. If you are not blogging regularly (2-3 times or more a week) then I would consider a different approach.

By putting the blog front and center, you are making a commitment to your audience that you will provide them with relevant and fresh content. Content that is going to bring them closer to doing business with you – because they read and appreciate it. By putting the blog content front and center, you are begging for it to be noticed at the cost of your audience not immediately locating the ubiquitous Search for Homes call-to-action.

If you are unable to keep up a patterned posting pace, the first impression you end up making is a Stale Blog.

A great motivation to maintain a Front and Center blog on your real estate website is the SEO benefit.

The Weight of the Homepage:
Publishing new content onto the homepage not only gets it spidered most frequently and effectively, but it is also giving it more authority. Your homepage is considered the most relevant page on the site (so far as the focus of your site is concerned) and the content that hits this page is going to be given more weight than if it were buried in the secondary.

More Headlines = More SEO
By adding the blog to the homepage you are also showcasing more Heading Tags (H2) there. Headings are given more weight than the rest of the articles’ content.

Truncated vs Full Articles on the Homepage.

If a homepage blog is the answer for you, you’ll need to decide whether or not to showcase full articles or truncated versions, or even a combination of the two.

The full article’s greatest benefit is amount of content on the homepage that will be spidered, but it comes at a cost.

If your articles are lengthy, the display of just a few in a row can result in the ‘toilet paper roll effect’ where it just scrolls and scrolls.

Besides the unkemptness, large amounts of content (including images and multimedia) can stall load-times for your site.

The truncated approach allows for a much tidier appearance* as well as the instant presentation of several articles without the need to scroll too much.

It can be argued that the SEO value is not as strong as the full article showcase, but at some point you need to consider form over function, and I believe this is one of those cases.

After all, the idea is to connect with the visitor and by giving them a broader sense of the range of content you create, you improve your odds of doing so.

*In order to effectively use the truncated approach you need to have this as an option in your design/theme. If you don’t, then you will need to change themes or have one designed to automatically truncate with style.

Pro tip: Place a keyword rich, static, introductory paragraph (or 2) above (or below) the blog articles on the homepage. Include a heading, descriptive text, links to relevant pages and some calls-to-action. Because a regularly updated blog will constantly be changing the content that is on the homepage, this will secure an anchored description for the search engines.

The Blog Headlines Widget in the Sidebar or Footer

A widgetized website allows you to place a Recent Blog Articles list of headlines on your sidebar or footer (should your theme permit). You can choose how many headlines you want to show and exactly where you want this list to appear.

Some bloggers that have a Front & Center blog will also add a recent article widget to their site. This allows for easier navigation to the content as well presenting a permanent list of articles on all pages of their site.

The 2 main reasons to not showcase your blog articles Front & Center are:

1. The frequency of your posting is not something to showcase.
If you are not writing regularly (at least a couple of times a week, faithfully) then you’ll want to put less emphasis on this fact.

2. The organizational strategy of your site is strong calls-to-action, leaving no room for space hogging blog articles.

Putting the Blog Behind a Button

The most inconspicuous way to present your blog on the homepage is behind a header navigation link or call-to-action button.

This works best when the blog is a less relevant element of your site, but not something that you want to bury altogether. Linking to the blog from the homepage ensures that it will be indexed properly.

This can be a great option for those that have blogged a ton in the past, but are burned out and not keeping up with the pace that a Front & Center position demands. Visitors can still enjoy the bank of content without recognizing immediately that you fail to post regularly.

Pro tip: If you are in this position a good trick is to remove the display of the posting date from the articles making it difficult to discover when the posts we published.

Pro tip 2: Under the Blog button list your most popular blog categories in the drop down menu as shown in the example.

If however, you have never been able to keep up any consistent pace of regular blogging and you have just a few dusty old articles, it might be time to remove any exposure to that blog from the homepage.

The Blog Below the Fold

One final option is to place the blog below the fold (or scroll) – meaning it is not a top tier item nor part of the visitors’ first impression.  This strategy allows you to take advantage of having some dynamic content on the homepage without using up real estate reserved for branding and call-to-action.

Typically this approach uses truncated articles as illustrated in the example.

The live examples of the screenshots* presented can be seen here:

TheRealEstateCoconut.com
SantaMariaHomesOnline.com
Hibanism.com
ArbourRealty.com

*Please note that the live example format may no longer match the screenshots in the article.

If you would like to learn more about how to most effectively include a blog on your real estate website, contact us for a free consultation.

FAQ’s for a changing marketing strategy

Over the last few months there has been a lot of talk about how the times are changing when it comes to marketing and connecting with today’s buyers and sellers. Here are some questions that have been brought to me and I thought I would share the answers with you.

• In today’s market, what do you feel is critical when connecting with today’s consumer?You really need to get into their shoes…their mindset. There’s a book out there titled “Stop Acting Like a Seller and Start Thinking Like a Buyer: Improve Sales Effectiveness by Helping Customers Buy.” The book, written by Jerry Acuff, explains to us how we have to prove that we understand the buyer’s needs and how to show a buyer that by working with us they are going to save time.Take for example using an MLS search tool in your website. You can’t just have a single property search generically placed in the home search section of your site. Buyers want to know what is for sale in a specific area (close to their work, their school and at the same time in their price range). The more your website is about them and less about you the better.
• There is a lot of talk about social media and how it can be used as a marketing strategy. What are some ways that social media outlets can be used as a viable marketing strategy?Recently I had a REALTOR® say to me they had heard in a class that websites where a thing of the past and social media would replace web marketing. That is totally misunderstood! A website is an important tool to use in your business for lead generation. At the same time, using social media gives you an opportunity to build your brand and your reputation by building a bridge between connectivity and credibility. This allows people to see you as more than just a Real Estate professional by presenting you as a three-dimensional professional and connecting you to a broader pool of consumers.
• What do you suggest when creating a fan page or discussion board on Facebook.When developing a fan page or a discussion board for Facebook, create one specifically about your market like “Seattle Real Estate Buzz.” This fan page will be where people will want to come to find out about the things happening in their area. The neat thing? You will be the one who is perceived as the expert bringing the informational resources together.PS. I can’t tell you how many agents are using their profile for real estate and don’t include their web address! Don’t forget the basics!
• Can social media help with Search Engine Optimization?Not necessarily. It’s more of a marketing channel to get people to your site after viewing your profile with your website info included. However, if you have a fan page that does get indexed in the search engines; it will allow search engines like Google to find it.
• How important do you feel it is to rank on the search engines?I think it’s a very important piece of a marketing strategy. A recent National Association of REALTORS® study was conducted and only 33% of REALTORS® were implementing a Search Engine Optimization plan in their web marketing! Wow! Imagine going on a listing presentation and explaining to sellers that 67% of Real Estate professionals don’t feel it’s important to be where the consumers are looking for them (like Google).