They assume that the real opportunity on the Internet is to tap into the huge number of people on the planet and attract those who will be moving to their area; so, they design a site to attract these far-off buyers. Their sites contain volumes of information about the area. They provide potential newcomers with a crash course in the pros and cons of each local community.
When their sites go live, they expect that people will instantly beat a path to their door. When that does not happen, they start playing the “search engine lottery,” working to come up in the search engine’s “Top 10” whenever somebody types in anything even remotely close to indicating that they are thinking about moving to the area. But in the end, most agents end up frustrated with the Internet. They have spent some money and a ton of time, and the web site they thought was going to make them rich, now looks like every other agent’s site.
Missing Targets
What they all seem to miss is that the real opportunity on the Internet is targeting a small local market area. The secret is to realize that a well-designed local web site is the ultimate tool to building an ongoing relationship with sellers that can give an agent a lock on controlling the listing base. Once you realize that the Internet is the ultimate farming tool for taking listings in your local marketplace, you can finally turn the promise of the Internet into real cash.
A Logical Perspective
First, let’s start with the basic reality of real estate. Do most buyers come from the local market or from people relocating from far away? NAR and every other group point out that the vast majority (80%-90%) of home buyers come from the local market area. So what is better, to target your web site to the 80 percent who comprise your local market, or target the 20 percent who comprise your relocation market? That alone should tell you where the real opportunity is.
Let’s say that you decided that you still wanted to target the 10%-20% of relocation buyers. As an individual agent, ask yourself, “Do I have a realistic chance of competing for that business on the Internet?” Realize that every major franchise and large real estate company web site is targeting the same relocation buyers that you are. Thirty to 40 percent of those buyers have to work with a particular relocation company because their company has a relocation contract set up with some company. Then realize that the buyers left over have to find you on the Internet, and there is no guarantee that you can ever get listed in the “Top 10” on a consistent basis. My advice: give up the fantasy that buyers from across the fruited plain are going sit down at a computer, find your site and e-mail you asking you to help them find a home. The real opportunity in creating a web site is to get sellers in your local marketplace to list with you.
Think Locally
First, you think like a seller as to what you would want to find online. When we asked consumers what they wanted online, they told us, over and over again, that they wanted to go online and easily find all the listings in their local area, as well as everything that had sold during the past year and what those homes had sold for. They also wanted to be able to find out information about anything that was important to their local market. In talking with hundreds of consumers, we never once heard that they wanted to be able to find out information about homes in other areas of the country.
Success by Design
By now you’re probably asking how to create a web site that appeals to this smaller focus. There are two parts to a successful web site; first, the design of the web site, and second, how the agent promotes it. Let’s start with the design. Your entry or home page must have a graphically rich design that projects the same look and feel as the rest of your marketing pieces so that the people who receive your direct mail or see your advertising instantly feel at home when they go to your site. Your home page must quickly give the reader directions on where to go. For the first-time viewers, you want to guide them to a personal biography about who you are as a person and your basic philosophy of real estate. The goal is to build a relationship with people so that they feel comfortable with you.
For people who come back to your site on a regular basis, you want to make it easy to get the information that they care about. You need to have buttons for your listings page and your community calendar, which will be the two things that will bring your local clients back to your site on a regular basis. We have found that consumers love to quickly get an overview of the real estate market. The best way to do this is to have a page that shows an overview of every current listing in your farm and all the “Solds” from the past 12 months.
Using the IDX standards for your board, you may have to manually input some of the listings onto your site, but now your site becomes a quick and easy reference for all the real estate information in your area. To see an example of what I am talking about, go to demoagent.com and click on the “listings” button on the left side. Note how you can quickly get a feel for what is going on in the market. Your local sellers will be checking out your site on a regular basis before they start interviewing agents. In the process, you are becoming the one they think of most.
You should also have a community calendar of events that contains local activities that your marketplace cares about. The key is to be very local in its focus so that the consumer finds it useful and valuable. The problem with most community calendars is that they are too general and cover events that the average consumer does not really care about.
Next, you want to have some information about the area. The key to remember is that you are really trying to appeal to sellers, and sellers want to see how well you promote their local neighborhood. So present your specific local area with passion and excitement. Don’t broaden the area you promote because the seller wants you to be focused on the area their house is in.
Give Yourself A Promotion
Once these basic elements have made your site interactive and professional looking, the next step is to promote your site to your local market place. Start by using your name as your domain. Yourname.com is the ultimate in personal promotion and is easy for people to remember, and every time they type in your address, they are thinking of you. Then promote your site constantly: it should be in every ad, every piece of direct mail, on every sign, flyer and business card that you use in your local market place.
