The days of building a web site and effectively marketing it to a broad metropolitan area merely by riding the internet growth wave are long gone. There’s too much competition: too many Realtors, brokers, and others already online, vying for the same traffic and leads.

In 1998, search engines were proud to claim they were indexing 100 million web pages. Now their indexes contain more than 1.5 billion pages, and they're still growing.

If you have deep pockets and a masterful marketing plan, then yes, I think you can succeed with a web site that targets a large metro area. You’ll need to employ both online and offline promotions, not to mention building a site with leading edge information along with sophisticated systems to deliver this information to your visitors

But the average Realtor will typically not be willing to spend the 4 or even 5 figure sum necessary each month to run and market such a web site. You’ll be competing with every brokerage in the area, not to mention local and regional newspapers, independent web site operators targeting the same market, and even, potentially, your own local board and MLS.

When Realtors farm, they always focus. Focus is a key tenet of farming, as it is with all effective marketing. How many individual Realtors successfully farm an entire metropolitan area, or even attempt to? Farming is done on a very local basis.

While there are no neighborhoods on the web, the same people who live in the area you would otherwise farm are also online. Target then instead.

For example, the county of Dallas, Texas has a reported population of almost 2 million people. The city of Dallas has 1 million. Yet many individual Realtors are still attempting to build and market a web site that targets not only the entire Dallas area, but also the not inconsiderable surrounding areas of Fort Worth and Plano.

Mesquite, a suburb of Dallas, has a population of about 100,000. Farmers Branch has a fourth of that. Flower Mound has about 15,000. Highland Park has 9000. Cockrell Hill has a “mere” 3000. But I know there are Realtors vigorously farming this area, and successfully.

I suggest that you should focus your web site on the actual town or even neighborhood that you would otherwise farm. This is a practical and potentially lucrative goal for a Realtor; whereas building a web site that targets the entire metropolitan area is a considerable challenge.

People relocating to the greater Dallas area might very well start their search with Dallas. But statistics in the recent C.A. R. study show that, “Internet buyers spent an average of 5.8 weeks contemplating their home purchase before contacting a Realtor.” In those 5.8 weeks they will have focused their research on the town or towns in which they actually want to live. If most of your activity is focused in Flower Mound, and you build a site about Dallas, you are missing the boat, and most of your potential prospects.

Here are some tips: Make the material on your web site only secondarily about the metro area. Focus the information on the towns or neighborhoods where you want to do most of your business.

For example, if you work Colleyville, which is on the outskirts of the greater Dallas area, talk about Colleyville! Mention Dallas only in the context of Colleyville. People can get information on Dallas in a 1000 places. How many sites talk about Colleyville?

Fill your site with information specific to Colleyville: Neighborhoods, local employers, the current real estate market, schools and colleges, unique zoning and tax laws, developments and gated communities, the best local restaurants, and so on. You will set yourself up as the Colleyville expert. There are probably a thousand Realtors trying to be the online Dallas expert. Let them fight it out. But how many are laying claim to Colleyville? You can be that agent.

If you managed to get online during the heyday of the web, and implemented flawlessly and effectively, you could pull off a dallashomes.com, just as Yahoo! was started by a couple of college kids. You had first mover advantage and the momentum carried you. But things are different now. There are a lot more people on the Web.

Published: April 3, 2002

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

Lawrence Schoeffler is Vice President and General Manager of the Advanced Access and Best Image Marketing Group, a division of Dominion Enterprises, and the founder of NUMBER1EXPERT. Advanced Access is the industry leader in website design, hosting and marketing, with 30,000 real estate agent clients, exclusive endorsements by over 10 State Realtor Associations and growing, and the Preferred Provider for over 40% of the National Association of Realtors' members. See their award-winning websites and marketing solutions. NUMBER1EXPERT is the industry's premium Internet marketing service -- offered exclusively by Best Image to Top Selling Agents. Agents must earn NUMBER1EXPERT credentials to gain access to this suite of acclaimed marketing solutions including enhanced, priority, featured, special and/or members-only advertising across the web. Find out more about NUMBER1EXPERTS - some of the top agents in America - with free Profiles of Internet Masters videos and webinars. Email Lawrence at .