Agents often tell me they get few leads from their web-related marketing. I say to them, "Show me your online marketing plan. We'll see what you can do better."

Most answer something like, "Plan? What plan? I don't have an online plan."

At that, I'm always reminded of the Humphrey Bogart movie, Treasure of the Sierra Nevada, where the outlaw (actor Alfonso Bedoya) says his famous lines, "Badges? I don't have to show you any."

You may not need a badge, but you do need an online marketing plan. Making one can gain you leads that bring extra sales. You begin by knowing your audience.

1. Defining your audience: Are they people who live in your town, the next town? Out of state? From up North? Are they rich? Do they own horses? How old are they? Do they have children in school? Retired? First time buyers? Buyers of second homes? Vacation homes? Income property?

For your 2007 plan, you actually have to sit down and write out the demographics of your audience. Because that is what determines HOW and WHERE you will talk to them online. Once you have profiled your average audience (and your several secondary audiences as well), you are well on your way to knowing where to advertise to them.

You will better know what pictures to show them on your site, what properties to emphasize on your site and how sophisticated your language should be in web-based headlines, text, e-mail messages and more. For your 2007 plan, write down every characteristic that you can think of that defines both your primary and secondary audiences.

2. Positioning Yourself: Once you know who your audience is, you need to package yourself so that you prove appealing to them. Yes, you are a product here. And just like a product you need to give yourself a pretty online package and do all you can to become a well-known and trusted brand name. Positioning has to do with the position that people place you in when they think about you compared to other agents. No one ever thinks that Hershey's is a kind of potato, do they? No, because Hershey's has spent billions making itself stand for something in consumers' minds.

But don't burn your bridges either. A simple, but prominent statement, "Besides specializing in (whatever) I handle ALL types of realty transactions," lets visitors know you can "do most everything," too.

For your 2007 plan, write out how you'd describe your skills, services, features and benefits offered if you really were a consumer product on a grocer's shelf. What color would your package be? That may help you decide your overall web site color.

3. Use Realism in Positioning Yourself: If you are a relatively new agent on a 50/50 split with your broker, living in a small apartment, and don't regularly attend the high society events of your town, you may have difficulty positioning yourself as the "Luxury Home Agent." People who buy those kinds of homes will buy them from the agents who are at the social events.

However, if you grew up with horses and know everything equestrian you might successfully position yourself as "The Horse Property Agent." Or maybe you grew up on a lake or the oceanfront and still live there. You might well package yourself as "The Beach Property Agent." While you're at it, why not create your very own slogan or tag line to match your positioning?

Next, you have to begin publicizing your new image to consumers. Especially on your website. For your 2007 plan, write down all the reasons you can think of that a consumer can gain by contacting you instead of some other agent.

4. Words and Images Position You Online: Your website says a lot about you. If yours looks pretty much like that of dozens of other agents in your area, you are not trying hard enough to position yourself against other agents in consumers' minds.

The easiest way to fix your site so it positions you properly is to change its headline and subheads. Why? Because the headline (What? You don't have one?) and subheads are generally the first things that appear to consumers as your site loads onto their screen. If the consumer is looking for view lots and your site has a headline that screams, "If You Want View Property, This is the Place to Be," you can bet that your target audience seeking view property is going to strongly consider you for buying or selling their home.

Subheads can position you on your site to appeal to your secondary target audiences. Maybe you're the "View Property" agent, but you are also very skilled in selling beach and lake properties, too. If so, you need a subhead below the headline saying that you are. Often "bullets" are used on sites to itemize features you want secondary audiences to know about you. Lines of smaller text should be used to "flesh out" headlines and subheads, giving any needed details such as names of specific neighborhoods or developments you handle. Remember always that your home page is simply a portal to the rest of your site.

Images are less important than headlines, subheads and text. But they should be just as relevant.

For your 2007 plan, write out your new headline, subheads and several supporting blocks of text. If you don't do it, who will? Start now.

5. Plan your Marketing: Do this both offline AND online. Let's assume that you are a wise agent and always plan your farming mailings, etc. not one at a time, but for at least an entire six months' period. What can you do with each mailing that will drive consumers to your website? Is there any point even telling them that you have a site if it contains exactly what every other agent's site contains? Of course not -- because part of good positioning is being different from other agents.

"But wait!" you say, "Are you telling me that every time I do a new mailing I will have to add something newly interesting to my site?" You got it. At least every month you should add some content that is new, exciting, immensely useful or valuable and free for your visitors. And then tell consumers in your mailings and other monthly promotions what you've added so they will visit your site. After a while, they get used to you doing this. It becomes habitual to visit your site each month to get something useful, even if it is what flowers to plant during that month.

If you regularly add new content, and with it, draw more and more people to your site, guess which Realtor® consumers may consider when they're ready to buy or sell property? For your 2007 plan, write down the types of new content you'll be adding to your site every three to four weeks.

6. Use positioning-oriented "signatures." At the end of all realty-related e-mail messages, include an automatic signature that gives not only your contact information, but also has links to your website, particularly a link to whatever new content you've recently added (see #5 above), and a positioning statement or "tag line" about yourself. Big firms use these. ("Have it Your Way," "You Cared Enough To Send the Very Best") And so should you. For your 2007 plan, write several different signatures so that you can alternate them depending on your audience.

7. Set up an e-mail list of past clients: You spend a fortune snail mailing them stuff all year long. This year, why not e-mail them incredibly interesting "factoids" and links to data that you know, from having worked with them before, that they'll like? How do you get their e-mail addresses? Just ask them to provide it on a postage-paid bounce-back postcard that you slip into the next mailing you send to them. Then, far short of SPAMMING, send them an e-mail ONLY when you have something worthwhile, depending on their interests.

Many agents who do this have a "canned" letter that they send to each recipient above more custom-tailored comments added for a "personal" touch. Periodically ask for referrals. Above all, encourage recipients to e-mail you back. Because if you can set up and maintain a continuing online relationship with them, you have positioned yourself well indeed in their minds. Your 2007 plan should cover e-mail farming in detail.

8. Make Your e-mails "Viral": Ever get one of those e-mails that looks like it had been sent to a thousand people before you? A viral email is one that is so inherently arresting or interesting that people want to forward it to others and do. Just like a real biological virus, a viral e-mail message replicates itself with no further effort on your part.

Be sure that you actually give people a strong nudge in the e-mail to forward the message to others. "Click on FORWARD to send this message to others." Or, "FORWARD these food recipe links to friends."

Viral marketing is not scary or hard. It's actually just a rehash of "Word of Mouth" on steroids. And we all know that word-of-mouth advertising is the very best kind. In your 2007 promotional plan, be sure to actually compose the first six viral messages that you will be sending out.

9. Assemble your Plan: Take all the elements you created above and lay them out on a big table. Study them. Then, take a walk and think about your audience and how your positioning, or lack of it, impacts them in relation to other agents in your city or area. Then, come back from your walk and fit all your upcoming online promotional activities into an annual calendar. Time frame it. Give every action a date to be ready and a date to execute that particular action. That way you will not forget to do several things and eventually get yourself so far behind in 2007 that by April you just throw your hands up in the air and forget the whole thing.

10. Make a real commitment: Make this year different because you actually do plan out the rest of your profession and career, rather than simply react to circumstances which is what most of us do and get nowhere most of our lives. Gandhi said, "In a gentle way you can shake the world." in your quest to do just that.

Planning is the key to making our lives turn out how we want them to. Planning puts us in control instead of simply reacting to circumstances, which is how dumb animals run their lives. They are merely stimulus-response survival mechanisms. We are not, And we are not because we can plan.

Maybe bad guys in Westerns who act like animals "don't need no steenking badges," but we sort of do in our careers. Thus, let our imaginary badges officially deputize us to begin planning, in year 2007, the rest of our professional careers.

Published: January 3, 2007

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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 .