Self-proclaimed Niche Marketing Extraordinaire, Charles Amith, posted about how his house for sale blog (actually just a one page website) was the key to his home selling success. (Thanks Richard). He mentions that typical real estate sales techniques resulted in “waiting and waiting ….with 0 guests.” By changing his marketing, he was able to sell his home in “less than a 1/3 of the average time”.
At first read, I was inclined to nitpick some of the flaws in his initial home selling marketing strategy. But you know what? He probably marketed his home like the majority of REALTORS® and FSBOs do! You know, put in a couple of newspaper ads, have a few open houses, and hope for a bite.
Not so new property marketing strategy
What you need to know is that his “new” marketing strategy is, in fact, old (old in Internet years). Not old as in decrepit, rather, it’s tried and true. If you’re not doing what he did and you’re not generating tons of good buyer leads, you may be doing your listing clients AND your business a huge disservice.
Here are two steps to harness the Internet and ADD to your current marketing strategy.
- Setup a unique property website
- Drive traffic to the site
Yeah, I like making things easy. 
Unique Property Website
You could do like Charles and create a free blogger account or other and get a website that way. Or if you really want to look professional, consider something like an Agency Logic PowerSite. I think the latter is much more effective since it is professional, comprehensive, and can have its own domain name.
One note, however, about using a blogging system… It provides an easy way to establish an RSS feed. This can give you the ability to frequently feed your info to other sites so that you will show up higher in blog search engines. This is just a side note for you to consider. At this point in the game, I doubt many people are looking through blog search engines to find their dream home. But I thought I should mention it.
Update: Charles provides a good argument for the power of RSS in ALL search engines (not just blog search engines).
Drive traffic to your property
There are a number of ways to do this both on and offline. Since we’re talking about Internet marketing of a property listing, I will not go into offline marketing such as newspapers, flyers, etc.
You can do one or both of these strategies. And of course, the more the exposure you can get, the better. Pay-Per-Click (PPC) costs cash, while most classifieds will be free. So here’s your simple check list.
- Post to online classifieds (I like Postlets to post everywhere including Google Base and CraigsList)
- Setup PPC campaigns (Using both Overture and Google AdWords will give excellent property exposure)
Establish Your Internet Strategy
In my personal experience and opinion, and of course it depends on your market, many REALTORS® still do not have an effective Internet marketing strategy for their property listings. By establishing a web-based strategy for your homes, you can easily improve your ability to be the best agent for your clients.
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