You can spend plenty of money and time gaining presence for yourself on the web. But the best place is in sites specific to your own geographic marketing region.

Why? Because when people plan a move, they know their relocation city long before they hunt for a home or RealtorŪ there. So you want to have web "presence" in sites providing consumers information about your local region.

To make your web advertising more effective, you must think like an online consumer. Consider how you'd react if you worked for Boeing in Seattle and your boss tells you that you're being transferred to San Clemente in South Orange County, California to be president of a recently acquired subsidiary firm.

How soon would you be on the web checking out San Clemente and all the nearby cities to learn about the local schools, cultural activities, golf, civic and social clubs, etc? When you did, you'd soon learn that within 10 miles of San Clemente are other cities in which you could live, too—Dana Point, Laguna Niguel and San Juan Capistrano. You'd find that though similar in size, each of the four cities has its own very distinct character and history as revealed on the many web sites there providing community information.

You might think, "Hmmm, maybe I should also look at a county-wide site, in case they, too, have city pages. And you'd find that major cable companies, among other firms, have county sites. You drill down in them, and find that there is considerable additional information on the four cities that you're exploring.

As you continue studying each city, you become aware that several RealtorŪ sites keep popping up within these community pages. You know that you want a local RealtorŪ to represent you, as the buyer, when you visit the area in person to find a home, so you click on one of the RealtorŪ links.

When the RealtorŪ's site appears, you're thrilled to see that it offers links to each of the cities you're considering. Best, each city has all the information that you, as a relocating buyer, would like to see about that city. The information is exactly what you sought and not just some tourist information on "what to do, where to dine, stay, etc." You need data that a relocating home buyer needs. And there it is, compressed onto a single page for each city. You think, "Wow! This RealtorŪ has already served me well. I had better bookmark her site."

Later, when showing your spouse the cities, you call up the bookmark for that helpful RealtorŪ. Her home page headline and an interior "How To" page say she'll help you find homes in her area even before you arrive in person. So you fill out her e-mail form called "What Are Your Needs" and describe your desired home.

She e-mails you back a half-hour later giving you the MLS numbers of five home matches she's already found. And, she even attaches to her message a file (from the MLS) containing the actual photos and descriptions of the five homes. (What service!) You find that two of the homes look perfect and you tell her so. She answers that she'll go out now and take digital camera images of the two homes, inside and out.

In the meantime, she invites you to click on her home page link called "Search for Homes" which takes you to her own password-protected version of the major MLS search engine, such as Homeseekers.com. You go, from a home page link, to Citynet.homeseekers.com, enter her password, (OC SFERRDEB) and look at scores of additional homes in the four cities - just to be sure.

An hour later, you get another e-mail from her. The attachment shows a dozen digitized views of the two homes that you liked, inside and out.

One of them blows your mind---it's your dream house personified! You e-mail the RealtorŪ back and tell her you'll fly down Saturday to see it. You do, you love the home even more, make an offer and it's accepted. You just bought a home the new high-tech way - using the web and a web-savvy RealtorŪ to save time and wasted trips. But the only way you noticed her above many other RealtorsŪ was because you kept finding her everywhere! Her links and banners and tile ads seemed pervasive in local community and county web sites (along with appearing high up on search engine summary pages.)

What does this scenario teach us? That in order to gain any share of sales from buyers (95+% of your online leads) you need to be where they go to study communities, homes and agents. Of course that means that your web site must contain excellent community information specifically designed to appeal mostly to home buyers.

Don King, RE/MAX of Rancho Bernardo, San Diego, says, "When people move to this area, they have no idea what our various sub-communities are like. So, besides extensive links to San Diego metro information, I also give them virtual tours of six North County inland communities so they can contrast and compare. Visitors tell me they really appreciate this service."

Thus, in online marketing, your first choices are free and paid, links and banners, in local-community and county web sites. However, some RealtorsŪ feel that this approach may be subordinate to simply further improving your web site's content.

Tim Muetterties, Tim Muetterties Realty, Arnold, CA (the Sierras), says, "I would rather spend time and money on making my site the best it can be and then promoting it and my company through other [traditional] advertising, rather than pay for local banner ads, etc. I get quite a few people asking me to link them to my site. As long as their site is beneficial to my site and my clients, I will offer to exchange free links with them."

After local sites, the next best place to be is where consumers routinely look for homes. These are the major MLS search sites, such as Realtor.com, Homeseekers.com, HomeAdvisor.com, Homescout.com, Listinglink.com, Cyberhomes.com, Homes.com and several others.

Special note. Did you know that when pages showing your home listings appear in some major MLS search sites including Realtor.com, your own name and contact information is displayed only if you have bought a web site or a link from that site? If you haven't, your listing shows only the name and contact information of your broker's office, not you.

Conversely, other MLS sites such as Homeseekers.com and HomeAdvisor.com automatically display the listing agent's name and contact info on each listing, even if no extra money was paid. This is a boon for listing agents.

Additionally, in virtually all MLS search sites, you are not included for your city in their "Find a RealtorŪ" function unless you have paid them for an enhancement. In other words, if a buyer is searching for homes in a major MLS search site and suddenly decides to contact a RealtorŪ to represent him, instead of working solely with the listing agent/office shown, you won't be found unless you have paid to be there. Yet, since MLS sites are where most consumers go to look at homes for sale in your city, it's almost essential that you do be there. A quandary, indeed.

Most MLS search sites could do a far better job in the way they display RealtorsŪ. For example, "Find A RealtorŪ" lists are usually alphabetically displayed. So if your name begins much after "E" you are not likely to come up on the first page shown for a medium-sized city. RealtorŪ Zelda Zilch would be foolish to pay to be among the long list of agents because who would ever drill down to her? So, before buying presence in MLS sites, seek one that rotates pages of RealtorŪ displays according to alphabet, as does Realtor.com. Only these give each agent equal exposure. If enough of us demand a better "agent-finder" function in MLS search sites, we may get it. Meanwhile, if you want to be a dominant RealtorŪ for your city, you'll buy enhancements in as many MLS search sites as you can afford.

You can also get free or very inexpensive links (eg. $50 a year for five cities in RealtyTimes.com) to your site in many other places consumers look, by-city, for realty information and agents. A link in Real Estate Library (Relibrary.com) costs $60/year. Hurry and you can get top by-city position for free at the new RealEstateABC.com. Keep in mind that these sites can give you exposure if and only if they have traffic from consumers. Realty Times, for example, receives over 250,000 unique visitors a month.

Go to http://www.mmgco.com and enter your site's URL into the legendary "Web Step Top 100," a free index of the best free places to list your web site. You should enter your URL anywhere a free link to your site is offered. Why? Because many search engines now rate sites partly on their "popularity," on how many Internet pages point to a given URL. Learn more, and check out your own site's popularity.

How do you meld online promotion with your traditional advertising? Bob Taylor, Harnsberger Real Estate, Los Angeles, says, "First, you put your two web addresses, (e-mail and web site), on everything bearing your phone number. Consider doing farm mailings, ads, door hangers, etc. that invite homeowners to your site, but tell them why it's worthwhile to visit. At holidays, tell them to visit and create free e-mailed greeting cards at your site from a link to Blue Mountain. Fire Ants a problem in your area? Offer eradication and life-saving information. Your link? Go to this site. You get the idea. Select web site content that people want! Then use traditional media to tell them what you're offering--ideally, something unique."

If you market in a small town like Allen Hemphill does, Hidden Meadows Realty in Hidden Meadows, (near Mt. Palomar, San Diego County) you may have a greater advantage than metro RealtorsŪ. With fewer competitors, you can make your site the best local repository for community information. Hemphill says, "It's scary to move to a new community. Any site there that can ease the trauma of buying or selling a home, moving a family and getting accustomed to a new community is a useful site."

Hemphill gets many residents to visit his site by periodically publishing "profiles with photos of local residents. Doing so gets the featured resident and friends to visit my site." Hemphill uses "URL Riders" on his yard signs, e-mails a timely newsletter and buys local newspaper inserts to create awareness of his site's ever-changing offerings.

George and Jeanette Hutchinson, are with Fred Sands/Brown RealtorsŪ, Westlake Village. George says, "Technology and the web reinvents itself so fast that we need to be thinking not only about our current strategies, but constantly look at new ideas in advance. It is exciting to see all of the individual RealtorsŪ suddenly appear on the web; signaling acceptance by our members that technology is important to their business. RealtorsŪ using templated, look-alike pages will, however, have to start thinking about how they can distinguish themselves from the pack. Meanwhile, forward thinkers are finding niches and methods to create competitive advantage."

How do you blend traditional with online promotion? An effective web marketer gains a dominant online position geographically. He packs his site with local content in a format valuable to home buyers, and secondarily to sellers. Then he promotes his web site in his community through a combination of print and online, free and purchased, ads, links and banners. Of 15 web-savvy agents polled for this article, virtually all say that their percentage of money spent on traditional versus web media will shift from 60%/40% now, to 40%/60% by June, 2001- only two years away. (How much are you spending right now for online marketing?)

In the California Association of REALTORSŪ CAR's 1999 Membership Study, 53% of RealtorsŪ polled said that the Internet will produce more business "for the technologically advanced RealtorsŪ" and 44% believed that "technology will separate agents based on technological abilities."

When asked, "What will happen to those RealtorsŪ who just don't "get it" about the impact the Internet will have on their profession/industry in the next few years?" most RealtorsŪ polled for this article responded as did Tim Muetterties: "I suspect they will be forced into other professions because they refuse to use the computer and take advantage of the opportunities that the Internet offers."

Allen Hemphill simply says, "They call it retirement."

Does that scare you? Never fear. Even if you got started today, you'd still be at the threshold of Internet marketing for real estate professionals.

Published: November 19, 1999

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Editor's Note: This article reflects the opinions of Debbie Ferrari only and not necessarily the views of this or any other publication, organization or Website owner.