What will it take to rise above the noise on the internet In 2015?

2014 NAR PROFILE OF HOME BUYERS AND SELLERS

• Told us that Ninety-two percent of buyers use the internet in some way in their home search process and 50 percent of buyers use a mobile website or application in their home search.
• While nearly half of home sellers found their agent through a friend or family member or used an agent they used previously, that leaves the other half to be found through marketing messages through various media channels.

No matter who you are trying reach in 2015, new clients, past clients, sphere of influence, the use of social media, email, and the web are top tools for reaching this audience.

In this digital age, consumers are working diligently to quiet the noise. The amount of “content” being thrown at a consumer on the web from banners, to sponsored ads, to forced commercials before a watched video, to embedded links, to pop up boxes and forced registrations, and so on, most consumers are doing everything they can to make a quick exit rather than a purchase. Everyone wants to skip past the commercial.

In 2015, there are several key strategies to reaching your ideal audience on the internet.

There is one single term that can essentially sum up what we are doing on the web this year that drives consumers on to our websites where we hope to provide a product and service that generates a “lead” and eventual business.

What is Content Marketing?

• Social Media posts
• Shared Links
• Video
• Photo
• Blog Posts
• eBooks
• Whitepapers
• Articles
• Press Releases
• Web Pages
• Drip Email Campaigns
• Digital Newsletters
• It’s all content!

And the consumer you are trying to reach, is working hard to filter out the noise and find only the most releveant content to them.

Content is the present and future of real estate marketing on the web.

And her enlies your challenge. How do you do this? How do you, the real estate agent, working to find your next buyer or seller, rise above the noise?

You must first determine your strategy…..

This is the most important piece of the entire marketing componenent belonging to a real estate business. Before you begin blasting your “would be” client, you must first answer a very key question.

Who IS my would be client?

Think about this in depth. So you are a licensed agent ready to sell real estate in a particular state. You have certain MLS rights that allow you to showcase listings in all sorts of price ranges and areas and styles of homes. By all rights, you can be the average “everything” Realtor®. I ask you though to consider if you want to be that agent.

Do you want to work with:

• Renters?
• First time home buyers?
• Baby Boomers? Empty Nester?
• Luxury?
• Military?
• Investors?
• Buyer and sellers in a Geographic Area? (Farming)

I promise you that your message and your product will be different for each one of these people. If you create a blog post called  “10 Reasons to buy a golf course property in Las Vegas” and broadcast that through the appropriate channels to a “general audience”, it would only land on a few of these consumers and could possibly cause you to lose a social follower or blog subscriber etc. if it alienates that consumer. Your follower in 2015, is quick to unsubscribe. And if your first time home buyer is on your list, and you send out 10 reasons to buy a golf course property, they might just click the “go away” button.

Yet if you segregate your lists carefully, and target your ads strategically,  and build your sites purposefully, you can better reach that consumer with a product and a message that directly relates to them creating a more probable buyer or seller.

That seller that fills out a home evalution request on your website from your targeted Facebook Ad, that lives in a particular neighborhood or zip code is much more likely to respond to a message about that specific neighborhood or zip code than they are about the city statistics in general.

In 2015, your consumer will only react to what’s relative and unique to them. You must find it, and hit it.

Determine your audience first, then the product, and then create the message (content) that appeals to them.

Content Strategies – What do I Create?

Once you have determined WHO you are trying to reach, you must figure out WHAT to reach them with? The best content solves a problem or answers a question. Therefore, the answer is actually quite simple. Listen to your buyers and sellers and what they are asking. The good news is that you, the real estate agent, have very little competion on the web where it comes to quality, unique, problem solving content related specifically to a buyer or seller. Most real estate agents are purchasing or building IDX driven real estate sites.  Most of these sites generate what type of leads? BUYERS!  More of us should be thinking SELLERS. Every question your customer asks you is a perfect topic for you to build content around.

Step one in this process would be to sit down and detail out the home buying and home selling process in your area. You speak real estate, your buyer or seller generally doesn’t. This is especially true for someone that has never bought or sold a home before.

They want to know about:

• Qualifying for a loan or what to expect with buyer qualification when selling
• Different types of loan or down payment options when buying a home
• Sellers may want to know more about Seller Financing or Bridge Loans, or what happens if they have to sell a home before they can buy one
• They both want to know about inspections and negotiations
• They both want to know about escrow or attorneys and earnest money deposits
• They both want to know the what if scenarios such as “house closed, seller didn’t leave” or “buyer walked 1 day before closing – what happens now?” etc.
• They both will look at termonoligy in a real estate glossary of some sort on your web.
• The buyer will want to know about home warranties, and home insurance, and taxes
• The seller will want to know when they get paid, and the buyer will want to know when they get their keys

Here’s an idea to repurpose your content:

1. Create first,  a short video as to what happens in each stage of the home buying or home selling process. You could create your own videos or use a tool such as Fast Forward Storiesor KW Video that have preset videos for you to use.
2. Next, create a blog post or web page explaining the process. Include links to other posts in the process as well.
3. Embed your video in this article.
4. Turn your article (blog post or web page) into a custom drip email campaign using a site such as BombBomb  or Infusionsoft to schedule your automated drip campaign.
5. Add this system to your transaction coordination process and provide WOW service by sending them an explanation of what’s going on during each phase or the process.Can you imagine the WOW you receive when your customer has an offer accepted and then receives this email with a video saying “Congratulations, your offer has been accepted, here’s what happens next”orCongratulations, your house is now in escrow. Here’s what you can expect to happen during and after the buyer inspections.

Create your Content LOCALLY

The more local your content is, the more relative it will be to your customer. Sellers are especially driven to choose a real estate agent who specializes in a particular neighborhood. Many times the seller will do a search online such as “Homes near Palo Verde High School in Summerlin” to get an idea of their home value by researching other homes in that area. Imagine if when that seller did any search for the school zone, or neighborhood, or gated community, and so on. Imagine if each time they did this search online, your name came up top on the search engines. You just became the expert in that community and as long as you are offering seller services and home values clearly on your website, you are very likely to have a new seller listing.

How do you become this local expert?

By creating a continuous stream of information about

• Neighborhoods
• Schools
• Local Businesses
• Special Events
• Things to do during the holidays
• Seasonal Activities
• And anything else related to the area that might appeal to a resident or potential new resident.

Set up a Google Alert for your area so that anytime something specific shows up about the area, it can give you an idea for local content.  Post things about summer camps, and things to do for free or on a budget, best places to eat and so on.

Listing Marketing (Beat the Portals)

Rank Higher than the real estate portals for your own listing addresses. No secrets, just some extra effort. You have the opportunity to keep many of the website visitors you are losing to sites like Zillow and Trulia and Realtor dot.com by doing some extra steps online when you take anew listing. This may not put you in #1 position, but it will move you up the page one rankings. People have stopped calling when they are in front of your listing. They are typing in the address on their mobile devices. And when the search engines show the results, most real estate agents are not even showing up on page one of Google for their own listings. Don’t be like every other Realtor® that simply puts their listings in the MLS and allows them to syndicate to the other channels. Syndication is fine, but by doing a few extra things, you can show up on page one multiple times and sometimes in a top position gaining extra traffic and leads and then CLOSINGS from this business. If you have an administrative assistant, this will be a simple addition for them.

Get the full instructions here: http://loriballen.com/get-leads-back-manually-market-listings/

Search Strategies – What is Google Looking for in 2015?

Google has one purpose, and it’s not to punish you. Google wants to remain the search engine of choice. It can do this only by creating a quality consumer experience. Google knows that the more times it delivers a relative search result to the searcher, the more likely that consumer is to return to the search engine. Although Googles algorith can be quite complex, It has some very basic guidelines for how it measures a quality user experience.  You can view these statistics on Google Analytics for your website or through various other tools such as Clicky.com. Clicky.com uses it’s own measure for bounce rates though, so you’ll need actual Google reporting to measure those for accuracy.

LowBounceRates – When a consumer clicks on your website and takes no action and leaves, it’s a bounce. Google believes that if the user does not click anywhere or fill out a form, or comment, or visit a new page, then they did not find the page useful.

Fast Page Load – A page on your site should load in a few seconds. Anything longer, and you risk losing the visitor and Google rankings. If your pages or slow, it could be a variety of issues including hosting, plugins, high resolutions images etc.

User Actions – The more times a visitor takes an action on your site (page views, clicks, image views etc.), the more Google believes that search result was relative to the consumer which can bring your page up in the SERP’s (Search Engine Results Pages)

Page Views  – This takes work. The more pages you can get a consumer to view, the more Google believs the site was relative to them.

Time on Site – The longer the visitor stays on your page, the more likely it is that they are finding your site to be quality. Google rewards accordingly.

Mobile Responsive – In 2015, your site has to be mobile responsive. Be careful also to check on embedded forms and videos to be sure they are responsive. Youtube videos are not responsive on their own. You will need to install wrappers with coding or WordPress plugins to make your videos responsive.

Quality, Original, Unique, Longform Content – Google believes longform content is probably more valuable than short form content. Although a 300 word blog post can still be indexed if it is content build around non competitive topics and keywords, the average page one Google ranking web page has 2000 + words.

Social Strategies – How to Create Fans and Followers and Keep Them!

Create a Local Facebook Group

• Title it something the locals will recoginize such as:
  “Living Loud and Proud in Las Vegas”
  “Summerlin Residents – We ARE Summerlin”
  “Living in Macdonald Ranch”
• Add a banner and some about information explaining non solicitation rules, yet inviting all members to contribute. Ask them to share on businesses they like, play dates, special events around the area and so on. Encourage them to ask questions and have their neighbors answer about the area. Include your real estate information and license requirements in the about section.
• Whenever someone asks about real estate, you get to be the expert! The more information you can share about the area, the more valuable YOU and your CONTENT and then your SERVICES become.
• Gain more group members by running a paid ad from your business page. Target the ad to only people that live in that zip code or area.

—->>>>> BONUS!! Social Signals can drive Search Engine Rankings. Google is listening for brand searches and social is tying in more brand awareness than ever. If you can get a blog post to go viral, the traffic to that post can send a huge boost to your rankings for that post. 

Promote your Content on Facebook Business Page Ads

Here are the steps to promoting your content on Facebook that will result in post engagment and click throughs to your site from consumers that actually might want to buy or sell with you.

• Create a blog post or video that would directly target a specific demographic. Example: (How To Sell Your Las Vegas Luxury Home in 30 days)
• Make sure your content is packed with unique, creative tips that are non generic, specific to your area, and are expert tips. This should not be a post they can get anywhere else or be “generic”. You have to think outside the box and really have it hit home as if you created it for that seller.  Go beyond staging tips.
• Include an offer in your post that would entice someone to register. If you have a 2000 + word blog post, a PRINT THIS button will generate a lot of leads. If your post is good enough to save or put on the fridge, or pass on to a friend or family member, they will register to download a PDF version.
• Create an Appealing Title! Consider a tool such as the Headline Checker by CoSchedule.

   

• Create a post with a link to your blog post. This could be a link, or a post with added link, or an image with description and link. You may test and measure how these each work for you. I suggest you use the Google URL builder or Bit.ly to create a custom URL for tracking to see how your ad is doing.
• Choose specific demographics in the ad settings that would select consumers most likely to respond to your link. They would be things like:
  • Home Ownership or Rents
  • Income range
  • Home Value
  • Languages
  • Ages (or generation such as baby boomers)
  • Parents or certain age children
  • Grandparents
  • People that work for a certain company
  • People with particular interests
  • etc.
• Measure your ad and adjust images, headlines etc. to improve your click through rate. If you are getting clicks through to your site, and no leads, then you may be missing the right offer on your blog post. If you are not getting click throughs, your audience may be too small, or you may need to change your ad.

Want more?

Check out The Ballen Method, an online training system for local businesses to create a massive web presence.