Use these ten tactics with tenacity at minimal cost and you'll get more sales. How many of these do you use now? Well, there's no better time to start than now.

1. Get a Superior Web Site; It Will Cost You

Don't simply get the least expensive web site that you can find, but get the best one that you can afford. If you think that your site stinks now, it probably does. Get a better one.

What is the best one? Go read up on what makes a good web site. There are plenty of such articles, archived right here in Agent News. Find them and absorb what they say. Study them. Really! But do not scrimp. A quality web site costing several thousand dollars or more can pay itself out a hundred times over in just a few years.

Note: Most often the better site is the most expensive one, especially if you are buying one from a firm that creates RealtorŪ web sites from a series of templates. You pay more for quality in other things; so why begrudge paying more for something that can actually MAKE you money?

2. Get Educated About Web Marketing.

How? Find RealtorsŪ on the web who have written (or been the subject of) articles on how they are successful at web marketing. Study their web sites. Send them a few questions (a few!) and praise them as you do it so they'll answer. Drive any distance to take a course in realty web marketing. Take an online course in web marketing, such as NAR's e-PRO online course in web marketing. But do something, fast! You'll be out of business in a couple years if you don't start now.

3. Promote Your Web Site On Local Sites

Advertise your site! What? Advertise your advertising? Yes, you need to advertise your web site on other bigger web sites that consumers visit when looking for RealtorsŪ in a given city. These sites include your community web sites that sell web ads and usually have a real estate section. Why?--because people relocating look on the web first at the city they'll be living in. And if you are there and other RealtorsŪ aren't, you'll have first shot.

Advertise, too, in ALL the national MLS search sites. These include Realtor.com, Homeseekers.com, HomeAdvisor.com, iown.com, Cyberhomes.com and others. Your own realty chain's web site with its cowardly list of solely its own listings (not the entire MLS) is not enough presence for you. Consumers catch on fast when a realty chain truncates listings to show only its own.

Other key sites with heavy consumer traffic include RealtyTimes.com, RealEstateABC.com , Relibrary.com, plus a few others. VirtualRelocation.com used to be on my list, but recently their agent-locator section has gone to pot.

In all of these sites, buy at least an enhanced link; do not just get the free link that some offer which gets you buried alphabetically with other RealtorsŪ from your city. Rule of Thumb? Stand out whenever you can, till your money runs out.

4. Promote Your Web Site On all Your Stuff

Put your two web addresses---your e-mail and your URL---on every printed promotional piece that you use. Run ads telling people to visit your web site because of the rich content it offers them. Or because it tells a lot even to locals about the city they live in and its many firms and services. Strive to make YOUR web site the most famous one in town. Be relentless.

It's incredible to me how many RealtorsŪ STILL do not have their web addresses on their business cards. Or on their newspaper ads. This is taboo. Cut it out. Or why not just get rid of your web site. After all, you don't promote it or drive people to it anyway.

5. Carve out an Online “Position” for Yourself

Does your web site have one single thing that would distinguish YOU from other RealtorsŪ? It doesn't? Chances are your site simply has all the SAME stuff as other RealtorsŪ. But that doesn't make sense, does it? So what can you do that brand-x agents cannot do?

Hey, maybe you're an expert in condos. How about ranch or stream property? Lake or beach-front homes? Well then, say that in a big fat headline on the very top of your site.

Get rid of all that stuff about how many awards you've won and how caring and concerned you are. Consumers don't really believe all that gushie stuff, and you probably aren't always so caring and concerned, anyway. You only wrote that because it was too tiresome to come up with some good copy for your webmaster.

So delete all that rot and replace it with something like “You've Found the Cook County Condo and Townhouse Specialist,” or “Your Beach Front Home Specialist Helps You Relocate Here,”or whatever. Just so you stand for something different than all the great unwashed crowd out there.

6. Pick the Brains of Smarter People

Do you admire some top producer in your area? Good, that at least means you know there's an “up” that you can aspire to. But your local top producers, unless they are top producers and stupid, aren't going to tell you much, cause then you'd take business away from them. So go find some top producers 25 miles away and take them out to lunch. They don't really care about you, being remote as you are. But if you pick a four- to five-star restaurant and pay the bill, they will show up like lemmings. (Given the galactic egos of some top producers, (think: narcissistic celebrity) you can be sure that they will also enjoy the self-aggrandizement possibilities of this lunch.)

If they are top e-savvy marketers, so much the better for you. Just show up (on time this time) with a list of marketing questions written down to keep the interview moving so you don't ahhh ... and uhhh ... them to death over the venison Chateau Briand they will inevitably order since they are on your tab. But, what the hey? You're getting two hours worth of expert instruction that you'd pay $200 for---if you could ever find a seminar that good.

7. Get to Know all the Home Service Firms

Quick! How many owners of the following types of firms can you name: Roofing, Siding, fencing, painting, window blinds, carpeting, hardwood floors, landscaping, architecture, wallpaper, cabinetry, house cleaning, plumbing, electrical, storage?

What? You can't name one? Well, guess what kind of people often know ahead of time when someone plans to sell a home--long before that person makes it known in the community? Duh. You're right. And yet you're wrong to not know these home services people who can refer you to several more listings a year.

The easy way to cultivate them? Just drop by their office once in a while and pay some attention to them. Maybe even take them to your local RealtorŪ meetings or mixers and introduce them. That's best cause then you're helping them get exposure. After that, visit their office, say hi, leave a card, but more than that, be sure to spend the time to have at least a coffee or Coke with them so they continue to get a sense of who you are. (Read: come to trust you)

Then, re-visit them every 20th time you drive down their street. Listen, you think that's funny. But it's better than what you're doing with them now, right? Which is zip and that will get you zip referrals. Nobody said real estate was easy! It's about relationship!

8. Do Something Bizarre

Got a RealtorŪ-pal who's a real “life of the party” and ideally is well heeled? Well, what about the two (or even five) of you co-sponsoring something DIFFERENT that will get a lot of media and community attention and yet be appropriate to your professionalism?

The reason you do something DIFFERENT with someone else is because such things are a lotta work. And so sharing the work, especially with someone fun, (who might even pass a flask from time to time), makes tasks lots more tolerable.

Bizarre things to do might include manning a truly novel booth at your next city or downtown annual event (Most cities have at least one). Or at the church annual picnic, your HOA's annual get together, a county fair, whatever. Think up a killer theme and possibly costumes to match---something that will cause consumers to STOP and marvel. But mostly so they will talk with you, ideally about your booth and then about real estate.

I know some RealtorsŪ in a small town with only two grocery stores who alternated their booth—actually two draped banquet tables—outside of one store on one Saturday and the other, the next Saturday. They had shoppers sign up there for free CMAs, they gave out calendars and note pads, had a display showing what people could access from their web sites---and got five listings and four buyers in the first month.

One big help in getting grocery and public approval of their otherwise “bizarre” tactic was the fact that they gave one of the two tables to the local battered wives shelter, with whom they co-oped the appearances. Hint? Promotions that you undertake with a non-profit group are far better received in the community than purely mercenary ones.

9. Get Free Publicity About Your Web Site Services

While most agents offer almost identical services and info from their sites---loan and mortgage calculators, local links, weather, MLS searching, school info, relocation and school info, phone numbers of utilities, etc.---very few agents bother to announce this rich offering in news stories. Why? Because they never thought of it! But now you can. Why not write a news release for your local papers citing all the things your site offers. Perhaps it has a headline like this: “Web Site of Local RealtorŪ, Betty Bigseller, Offers Wealth of Community Information.”

Or, perhaps you get a reporter to do a story on you called, “Use A Mouse To Find Your House: Local "Internet RealtorŪ"Sells Homes Through Award-Winning Web Site. Don't wait for your realty chain to get cookie cutter publicity for you (someday, maybe); go get it yourself.

10. Put Signs On Your Car.

Yes, yes, I know. You are just far too classy an operation to have plebian magnetic signs stuck on your car, right? Bunk. Having them on your car—really nice professionally made ones that hawk your positioning as “Don Schaller: The Mountain Property Specialist,” or “Tom Keusch: The Residential Specialist,” will get you more listings than those you might lose because some snob (or you) thinks you shouldn't have a sign on your car. Listen, sellers WANT you to promote yourself. So show them your car signs during listing presentations. Get off that old thinking and get with it. Some agents even put their URLs on their car nowadays.

There are thousands more sales generating tactics like these for you to undertake. The key? Sit down and think up stuff no one else does. Or, detect the main tactic that each of the top producers in your area uses. Each one may have just one key tactic. But you, one person, having taken time to observe, can begin using all of their proven tactics. What kind of difference would that make in your sales? You might even triple your transactions!!!!

Published: August 10, 2000

Use of this article without permission is a violation of federal copyright laws.

Bill Koelzer is a Web marketing consultant to web-proficient agents nationwide. He is co-author, with Barbara Cox, Ph.D., of the Prentice-Hall books, Internet Marketing in Real Estate and Internet Marketing. Bill is also webmaster of Orange County Real Estate, among the most-awarded known Realtor® sites. Visit his website, Koelzer.com or e-mail him at .