We all know the key to more real estate sales is living in a place where everyone knows your name and immediately thinks of you when they hear “real estate.” The term for this sort of name recognition is “top of mind awareness.” The burning question, of course, is how to achieve top of mind awareness. In the past, you did it using the traditional forms of media: newspaper, radio, and television. Those forms of advertising still have their place but as more and more people go online to house hunt, a well-rounded marketing plan must give increasing weight to online promotion.

Of course every serious real estate agent must have a web site. That’s been the trend for years and now it’s virtually a requirement. But aside from building a great web site and putting it on the web, how can you market yourself online? You need to build an online real estate community and there are three easy ways to do this: through email, chat, and a forum.

Email.

If you’re not already sending out a regular email-based newsletter, you need to do that. Provide a link on your web site where people can sign up for the newsletter. We send one out every two weeks and have over a four thousand subscribers comprising past, current, and hopefully future clients. It doesn’t cost anything other than time to put together this newsletter, which reaches over 4,000 potential clients twice a month.

Another email-based service we provide is our Preferred Customer Property Screening. We have our buyer-clients give us their criteria for a new home and every time a new home comes on the market, we send them an email. This is an automated service that emails the client and the buyer’s representative at the same time. It’s been wildly popular with our computer-savvy buyers.

If you think about it, you’ll find dozens of reasons to stay in contact with your client base by email. It’s easy, it’s free. It’s almost the perfect marketing machine. You must be careful not to overdo it however. Most people now receive so much email that if you annoy them by sending things too frequently, they will delete your mail without reading it. And never send out email to people who haven’t specifically requested that you put them on the mailing list. That’s bad netiquette.

Chat room.

Setting up a chat room on your web site is very easy to do. There are several free services that can help you with this, like icq.com or talkcity.com. Once your system is set up, you can schedule regular online chats and advertise them by email, on your web site, and/or through the traditional marketing methods. You can either advertise a specific chat topic or just chat about real estate in general. I like to invite guest hosts such as real estate attorneys, builders, and home inspectors to chat with us about a specific topic each week. You can also invite people to stop by your chat room anytime, whether you’re hosting a moderated chat or not. You’d be surprised at how many people show up.

Forum.

Some people prefer getting their questions answered on a forum rather than in a live chat. A forum is simply a place where people can go online to ask or answer questions. Like the chat room, a forum is easy to set up on your web site. Delphi.com is an example of a free forum service. As the forum host, all you have to do is check the forum on a regular basis and answer any questions that have been posted. A lot of times you’ll find that another reader has already answered the question for you. If your forum is a little slow at first, have your friends and family members post questions, which you can then answer. Activity spurs more activity. Don’t forget to advertise your forum on your web site, in your email newsletter, and if you have the advertising dollars to spare, in the traditional media as well.

Using these three methods of building an online real estate community and effectively marketing it, you’ll soon achieve top of mind awareness and set yourself up as the real estate expert in your area.

Published: July 28, 2000

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Jerry Fowler, Real Estate Broker, CRS, CBR - The Results Team REALTORS®, Columbia, SC 29210. Email: mail@jerryfowler.com or visit my web site: http://www.jerryfowler.com - We get results that "Move You".