Buyers are typically need to be sold on a neighborhood before they can be sold on house. If you have a great walkable neighborhood, you might want to flaunt your Walk Score™.
Archive for the ‘Marketing’ Category
Walk Score, Real Estate Ratings
FreeBurner
If you’re not using FeedBurner, now is a good time to try it out. FeedBurner is a site that allows you to share your content with others through a central service for distribution. (Okay I tried to make it sound simple, but RSS is sure a lot simpler.)
So why now? FeedBurner has just given more for free. In addition to their standard services of syndication, you can now get their pro level TotalStats and MyBrand. Yes, for free.
In addition to standard subscriber counts, TotalStats will let you know things like:
- The number of times an item was viewed,
- The number of times and item was clicked, and
- The number of subscriber who actually did something with your content (i.e. read it).
MyBrand is a cool little feature that lets you use your own domain name for feeds. This means you can have feeds.yourdomain.com instead of feeds.feedburner.com. If you’re working towards professionalism and stronger branding, you must enable this.
These features aren’t enabled by default. So if you’re already syndicating your blog through FeedBurner, you need to login and check a couple of boxes. The TotalStats
Good [sidebar] Linking Strategies
In blogging, your sidebar is a great place to provide a list of links. Here’s a quick tip: keep it relevant.
Think about it. Are links to every real estate agent or mortgage broker really helpful to your potential clients? Probably not.
You have to give your visitors what they need. Don’t devalue your site with meaningless link exchanges no matter how beneficial the email cover letter was.
Seal of Approval
Give your visitors what they’re looking for. Here are a few kinds of links that are beneficial to your visitors:
- Links to mortgage brokers that you trust and would recommend.
- Links to insurance companies that you trust and would recommend.
- Links to real estate agents in local markets that you don’t service (that you trust and would recommend).
You don’t have to limit your links to this list. You can also do other businesses, official city websites, etc. The point is only add links to websites that “you trust and recommend”. After all, each link is considered your seal of approval.
…And for you Blogger.com’ers! Uh… What’s “Link 1″?
User-Friendly Free Font Finder
Finding the perfect free font for a flyer or newsletter can sometimes be arduous. There are many free fonts sites out there, but usually they’re very difficult to browse. Check out Better Fonts for a nice user-friendly solution.
Better Fonts has built a clean interface that allows you to quickly choose the font you like. It displays legible thumbnails of fonts categorized by name. It also allows you to change the preview text. That way you can see exactly what your headline will look like.
A few other free font sites:
- Abstract Fonts: Their forums are a great place for font identification.
- 1001 Free Fonts
- Identifont: Excellent self-serve font identification/
- Dingbat Depot: Just dingbats.
Rather have desktop font software?
Color for the Uninspired
Even for the creative, visually oriented folk, choosing the right colors can be difficult at times. It may be colors for a new listing flyer or postcard. Or maybe you’re trying to redesign your whole look. Whatever the case, and especially if you’re ever feeling uninspired, try predefined color schemes.
A great concept that is soon to be launched is Daily Color Scheme. Once launched, the website will offer a daily dosage of coordinated color schemes.
I’ve tried their beta and it looks good. As of today there are about 19 schemes released since July 2006. The different schemes aren’t distributed daily yet, but it’s still a valuable resource.
If you want more choices and rather flip through paper, get Color Index. Color Index touts over 1100 color combinations that include formulas for both web (RGB) and print
(CMYK).
Looking for more info on color? Here are a few excellent resources.
- Color Matters: Great info on understanding color theory, emotional effects, symbolism, etc.
- Color Wheel Pro: Although commercial software, their site provides good information on properly coordinating colors.
- Visibone: Color charts galore; If you’re designing for the web be sure to check out their free Color Scheme Lab.
- Color Schemer: I really like this one. It’s a simple yet flexible online color schemer (free).
Globalizing marketing terms
I just returned from sunny Orlando, Florida, home of Disney World. One thing I learned (in addition to how to make my dreams come true) is the importance of globalized real estate terms. As I drove around, I noticed a lot of billboards for “home sites”. I knew exactly what it meant, but we don’t use that term in our area. We say “lots”.
Shoes or Kicks?
For “athletic shoes”, there are regional synonyms such as:
- tennies
- sneakers
- tennis shoes
- kicks
In a global marketplace (i.e. the world-wide web), you need to be aware of which terms are the most effective term to market. Will your target audience search for “kicks” or “running shoes”?
Real Estate Synonyms
Now for real estate… If you sell land that people can build on, which would you advertise?
- Lots
- Land
- Buildable lots
- Home sites
Your answer should be based on three questions:
- What do people search?
- How often do they search it?
- What’s my competition?
Your regional language will probably determine proper usage. However, when you’re dealing with people from out of town (like the freeway near Disney or the Internet) be sure to pick what works. Do some research to find the best terms to market. Don’t assume you know what people are looking for. Get the hard facts. Wordtracker is a good place to start.
And by the way, I don’t think that castle is really for sale. 
SEO for Listing Presentations
I recently found an agent in New Hampshire who proudly boasts (and should) his search engine placement as part of his online listing presentation. And I bet it’s really effective for him. Having a strong search engine presence is an excellent low cost, high ROI way to get new listings out to a large number of qualified people.
If you’re not doing it already, add some concrete search engine rankings to your listing presentation. Not everyone will be interested in them. But if your numbers are impressive, impress them!
More than SEO
Excellent search engine placement is only one kind of Internet-info you could add. You could also include things like:
- Property marketing reports from REALTOR.com,
- Unique visitors to your website, or
- The number of websites a property gets posted to
Sellers are starting to respect good SEO. But if you’re not quite at the top yet, pick other information that strengthens client confidence. They need to know that you will get their home sold the fastest and for the most amount of money.
Google, Yahoo, MSN… MySpace?
If you’re remembering to check your website statistics, where do you get most of your traffic from? Is it Google, Yahoo, MSN? Uh, maybe MySpace?
A recent WebProNews article points out that MySpace drives more traffic than MSN. At least for retail marketers this is good information to know. But how can real estate businesses benefit from such a phenomenon? Can real estate social networking on MySpace work?
Personally? It’s not quite the right fit. Retail and real estate are two totally different markets with different expectations. I see how a niche site like ActiveRain would work, but not MySpace… Even if the twenty to thirty-somethin’ demographics are the same.
So what can I learn from this?
Know where your traffic is coming from, then strengthen your weak areas. Good search engine optimized sites usually have a solid chunk of traffic from Google. But be sure you’re getting traffic from others too.
Search Engine Watch is a good place to set some reference points. Their July 2006 statistics show the percentages of searches each engine received. If you’re statistics lines up with theirs, then great! If not, figure out why not.
Get what you get
These types of reports are not any sort of holy grail. They’re good to get an idea of what to expect. The most important thing is to try to understand why you get what you get. You can then create goals to get where you think you should get. Got it?
It’s Public Now, Broker Agreements Don’t Apply Anymore
Welcome Google Base Data API. And say goodbye to listing control.
Google recently released the data API for Google Base. With it, websites can communicate with Google Base obtaining any information available. I think this is very cool and have already started to play. Listing agents will also love the exposure they can give their clients. However, I know a lot of real estate brokers that won’t be too happy.
You see, there’s a lot that you can do with this new service. Most notably, people will be able to stick everyone elses listings on their own website (provided the data is in Google Base). They won’t even need special IDX access to do it. This is where I think we’re going to see some trouble.
I’ve heard in multiple cases of brokers that are very tight fisted with their listings. They won’t share anything and always check the “don’t include in IDX” box. With Google Base, it really doesn’t matter. If an agent entered a listing in Google Base, it is now fair game to anyone and everyone.
Any guesses on how long before the lawsuits start flying? Or at least complaining?
Getting the best real estate domain
I often receive questions about “good” real estate domain names. Here are a few of the key topics:
- Short domain name or long domain name?
- Company name or descriptive, city keyword-laden names?
- One domain or multiple domains?
I will share my point of view on these domain questions. My goal here is to help you to understand a bit of marketing strategy, business planning, and search engine optimization when it comes to buying domain names.
Domain Information: Getting Started
- Domain name
- A unique name that corresponds to a computer (i.e., web server) on the Internet. Examples are google.com, yahoo.com, and ungos.com.
- Purchasing a domain
- You can purchase a domain through a domain registrar such as GoDaddy.
- Domain costs
- Buy domains for 10 U.S. dollars or less. Anything more is a rip off.
- Web hosting
- Buying a domain doesn’t automatically give you a website. You need to purchase both web space for your website (hosting) and a domain name. Some services will bundle these. Be sure to know what you’re getting.
On to the questions…
Short domain, long domain?
As a rule of thumb, short is better. A short domain name is easier to remember, less likely to be misspelled, and can fit easily into both print and online marketing pieces. Regarding SEO, domain names play a very limited role. The length of a domain name, for search engine optimization, is trivial.
Company name, keyword-laden name?
Both. For people that know your company, you definitely want to have your-company-name-dot-com. Web surfers will assume you have a website and guess your website’s domain. So if you are First Rate Real Estate, try to get both FirstRateRealEstate.com and FirstRate.com.
A keyword-laden domain such as your-city-name.com is even more important. It can be used for marketing your site to buyers and sellers that know your area, but do not know you. City domain names are also more susceptible to viral marketing. This may even include links from your competitors!
And what about SEO? Don’t worry about it. Good content and good inbound links play a more significant role with search engines.
One domain, multiple domains?
One domain is obviously much easier to manage. However, multiple domains can open various marketing opportunities. You can place dot-com newspaper ads for specific townships or subdivisions. You could even have a unique domain for each of your listings. You could then hang the unique website as sign riders.
Note: Be aware of the dangers of duplicate content.
The Best Real Estate Domain
With all that said, there is no perfect domain name. By now many of the really good ones like SeattleRealEstate.com have been taken. Notice that they’re not currently in the top 10 for “seattle real estate” searches. The most important thing is to get started. Buy a domain. Setup your website. Market it like crazy. And while you’re at it, get more!
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