Where to start?

[jacquiewpb]

I recently got my real estate lic. I am not new to the industry, I have worked for offices, realtors and title company. My question is I have $10 G ready for marketing, not sure what to spend it on. There is so much out there. I am buidling a website, but not sure how to get it noticed out there in cyber space. Any suggestions? Any good reads? Any good guru's.
Thanks :p

[HHI Golf Guy]

I recently got my real estate lic. I am not new to the industry, I have worked for offices, realtors and title company. My question is I have $10 G ready for marketing, not sure what to spend it on. There is so much out there. I am buidling a website, but not sure how to get it noticed out there in cyber space. Any suggestions? Any good reads? Any good guru's.
Thanks :p

Depending upon your market and number of web competitors $10k for SEO can be chewed up very quick. Even if you have a great web site, it will take 8-14 months for a new domain to achieve any significant search engine rankings.

First you need to determine your goals:

Is your immediate priority to develop your own listings?
The best way to obtain listings - rookie or not - is word of mouth. The best places to start are to let your friends, family, church members, etc. know that you are now in the business of selling homes. Again, depending upon your market, you may want to invest in print media to get exposure for yourself.

Is your goal to make your short-term money off of the MLS?
If so, your first step should be to volunteer to be the on-call or on-duty agent every chance that you get. Many veteran agents absolutely hate to be the ones to handle walk-ins. You may get a lot of "window shoppers" with walk ins, but it will give you a great opportunity to hone your skills.

Even though my business is web design and SEO, I suggest that new agents stay away from investing considerable money in a web site and SEO program unless they have plenty of additional funds to live off of and invest in other marketing mediums for 8-14 months for the site to begin driving quality and quantity web traffic.

So what should a new agent do to establish a web presence? Go to your local high school or community college and hire a design student to develop your web site for a few hundred bucks. It may not have the full functionality that you will eventually need for a real estate web site, but many students put together crisp, eye catching designs.

Spend whatever it takes to incorporate the MLS into your web site. Unless you are a super agent, the MLS is a must.

Now invest the rest of your money in traditional forms of advertising (newspaper, magazines, radio, etc.). Use at least 1/3 of your print ad space to direct people to your new web site. You probably are not allowed to advertise the MLS directly in your print ad, but you can say something like "search and review thousands of area homes" or something like that.

For more information and details you can visit my real estate marketing (http://www.thekosloffgroup.com) and read through the articles that I have provided.

Another option for your web site is pay per click services, but that is a whole different ballgame. PPC can yield great results and ROI - it can also chew up your entire budget in a few months. If you think that you might want to use PPC, read as much as you can about PPC on the net, then ask specific questions on this forum. PPC is not for the timid - it must be closely managed to strategically target potential buyer clients and achieve maximum ROI.

I'm sure the other folks on this board will also give you some ideas that will help you get started.

[STVP]

HHI Golf Guy,

Great advice but I would differ in a few ways on how to spend your marketing budget.

First, I would build a custom five page website (home page, about page, search homes page, buyers/sellers page, and a contact page) How much you spend can vary depending on whom you use. It can vary between $500 for an amateur to $5000 for a seasoned professional.

Either way, you should do basic on page optimization of the pages so that the search engines index you appropriately. I would then set up an overture PPC campaign spending between $50 to $100 per month but choosing terms where you can get position #1 or #2 for less then .50 cents per click.

I would then get the best IDX package offered in your market and integrate it into your website. Lastly, I would set up a blog to comment on the current real estate conditions in your market and make it a weekly event. Not only will this help you down the road but also gives you a chance to show clients your knowledge about the industry. By the way realestateforum.com offers free blogs on a subdomain of realestateforum is you so choose. If you are interested, PM me and I will get the info I need to set up your blog.

This gives you marketing tools and an online brochure to allow people to know who you are, what you do and where you do it.

After all this is done you can have additional funds to spend on offline marketing, but I am not the expert to advice on how to spend that money.

Just my two cents....

[HHI Golf Guy]

HHI Golf Guy,

Great advice but I would differ in a few ways on how to spend your marketing budget.

We're all here to share opinions and experiences!

I don't disagree with what you are saying, but I go back to my one caveat: It all depends upon your market and level of competition.

If you're in a big market like LA it's going to take a huge investment in time and/or money to get to the top of the organic SE's. And with Sanboxes, link building, and all the rest of the things that Yahoo and Google put us through it takes time to get top rankings. New agents need to put food on the table and can't wait a year for a new domain name to get to the top.

If you live in Palookaville you may be able to jump right in to a competitive PPC program. But competitive real estate terms can easily cost $5-$20 per click. I know agents right here on the Island that spend $10k a month in PPC. Why? I think their nuts. But they swear by their ROI.

First, I would build a custom five page website (home page, about page, search homes page, buyers/sellers page, and a contact page)

BTW, I will send you a dollar if you can show me a 5-page web site that ranks well for a competitive KW phrase (900,000+ competing pages and more than 300 queries on that phrase per day). :D

[jacquiewpb]

Thank you for your quick responses. It seems so far that you are both talking about investing most of this money on the internet. What about the old traditional ways? I live in Palm Beach County, Florida area. I understand that internet is the wave of the future and even the wave now but I know it takes time to get your page noticed. What do I do for income in the meantime? I need to be able to spend that $10g and have it generate business so I can keep advertising/marketing. I have means of income to survive I just want to make this run like a well oiled machine. :eek:

[HHI Golf Guy]

Thank you for your quick responses. It seems so far that you are both talking about investing most of this money on the internet. What about the old traditional ways? I live in Palm Beach County, Florida area. I understand that internet is the wave of the future and even the wave now but I know it takes time to get your page noticed. What do I do for income in the meantime? I need to be able to spend that $10g and have it generate business so I can keep advertising/marketing. I have means of income to survive I just want to make this run like a well oiled machine. :eek:

Take a look at my first post once again. I think that you should spend very little on a web site when you first start out unless you also have enough money to use traditional methods.

To get noticed and get your feet wet you should spend as much "up time" as possible in your office and satellite/branch offices. Make friends with agents (even outside of your company) that only want to sell the million dollar homes - they may throw you the "little ones".

Much of what you will need to do depends upon your service area and your competition. What is your service area?

[Chief Tutor]

Sometimes I may not clarify myself very well. I am not saying that you spend all your money on the internet, nor am I saying that you generate all your business via the internet.

What I am saying is that you build a small custom website which has standard on page optimization techniques and the local IDX which the Florida Association of Realtors offers for free to all agents. See this website about Biscayne Florida Real Estate (http://www.miamibiscayneliving.com/index.php?option=content&task=view&id=67&Itemid=124) (This is all for furture)

For now, use the website as a marketing tool. Your online brochure. Drive people to the website, not by big ads but small text ads in the real estate section of the newspaper. " Search homes available for sale @ www.yourdomain.com" Do this in multiple local papers, magazines etc...

Use the PPC not to generate leads but to show people during listing presentations that you are very active on the internet and 85% of buyers begin there search on the internet.

Have your website on all your cards and marketing material. The website in the first few years is a marketing tool for you, not a lead generator.. It shows you are professional..and the blog shows you know what your are talking about....however if you set it up right now, then when you go to turn it into a lead generator, it will take a significantly reduced effort.

Just my two cents....:cool:

[Shimmer]

if you ask me visit www.sitetutor.com
they are goooooddddd :)

[dspotleson]

Thank you for your quick responses. It seems so far that you are both talking about investing most of this money on the internet. What about the old traditional ways? I live in Palm Beach County, Florida area. I understand that internet is the wave of the future and even the wave now but I know it takes time to get your page noticed. What do I do for income in the meantime? I need to be able to spend that $10g and have it generate business so I can keep advertising/marketing. I have means of income to survive I just want to make this run like a well oiled machine. :eek:

I'm actually a Licensed Assistant for a husband and wife team. They have been in the business for many years. In addition to our website which takes a lot of work to generate business from (ours has only been up for two years) we rely mostly on word of mouth at this time. I do a monthly mailing to family and friends. What I would consider if I were you and I am now doing it for myself as a new agent of 2 weeks, build a list of family and friends...dig deep think of people you may not have talked to in years and send out a new agent announcement to them (in state and out of state). Then from there I design and develop our own newsletters and come up with other ideas for monthly mailings to keep our names out there in the world. Some of them I include the business cards with some I don't, it depends on the mailing. An example of one thing we are doing this month, we are offering a Feng Shui class for our clients(which include any family and friends that haven't become clients), no cost to them lunch included...its a great way to market yourself. We actually did a cookie exchange last holiday season it was so much fun. They talked about, they told there friends and we did get business from it. Get your creative juices thinking and just go for it.

[klinckphilip]

find a good leadsite that you can pay per lead. They have already spent the time and money figuring out what it takes. your an agent not a broker or company. If you got a great site up and running to you think you could handle all the leads it produces. pay for what you need. you are in a good position dont ruin it by waisting alot of your money on trial and error. you could buy, even $100 leads that are prepackaged preapproved and ready to go. you could get 10 a week for 2.5 months and have more business than you could shake a stick at as we say in the south

[klinckphilip]

thats 40,000 a year in leads but with that many buyers you would have a to hire some agents to handle the over flow. These are unrealistic numbers but at any rate you get my meaning. You might only need 10 a month.

[Jennifer Allan]

I SOOO agree with dspotleson below. As a new agent, don't waste your money marketing to strangers - $10,000???? Throw some great parties for your friends, take everyone you know to lunch, do a professional-looking newsletter to send out to your SOI... in other words, spend your marketing dollars getting in front of the people who love you and want to help you. THEY will be by far the best source of business for you, especially in your rookie season.

I'm actually rather shy, so in my first year, I knew I'd never be able to aggressively market to strangers. So, I took all my friends to lunch and got a lead and usually a closing from every single lunch. In fact, one "lunch" ended up earning me over $150,000 over the next five years.

As a brand new agent, you don't really have much to "say" to strangers anyway. You probably don't have a special niche and you can't brag about all your successes (yet!).

If you don't have a big SOI, focus your attention there. I actually offer an SOI-building service here in my local market, so I"d be happy to help you brainstorm. There's also a chapter in my book about this (CAUTION, SHAMELESS PLUG AHEAD: Sell with Soul, the New Agent's Guide to an Extraordinary Career in Real Estate-- sellwithsoul.com). I'll send you a pdf of that chapter if you like (or anyone else who'd like one).

Good luck!

Jennifer Allan, GRI

[Patrick Mc]

My experience has been that buying leads from lead aggregators can be very expensive and time consuming. Most to the leads you pay for aren't really leads at all. You have to buy a lot of really bad leads to get one that pays off. The number of good leads you get doesn't usually justify the cost and time committment to following up on these leads. I learned this lesson the hard way myself. :(

By the way, the companies who sell these leads mostly generate them through pay-per-click advertising. Build your own brand and generate the leads yourself.

[Chief Tutor]

I would agree. My only caveat would be that for real estate agents to suceed on the internet, they must, I repeat must be comfortable using the computer, understand how the process works and then and most importantly find a company or companies that are focused on the real estate industry. This includes the company that you choose to build your website and the company you choose to work with in regard to market your website online.

The internet is still in the days of the wild west and the term caveat emptor is very real. There are more scam artists than ethical companies and even the ethical companies tend to offer products. They may have a great product, but unless you have all the pieces in place, it most likely will be a waste of money.

You need to understand each aspect so that you have all the correct pieces to get the user to your website, convert the user to a contact, and then be able to keep in touch with a contact since research tells us that the average internet lead contacts an agent 12-20 weeks before buying or selling a property.

This is comparison to a traditional lead which contacts an agent 3-5 weeks before buying or selling real estate.

Hopefully, This form helps people understand what they need to succeed on the internet. Good Luck to All.

[HHI Golf Guy]

I imagine that conversion levels for lead services are much like PPC. If you have an online merchant store, doing well in PPC means that 1.5%+ of your PPC traffic converts to sales.

But with PPC, SEO, and/or a lead service for your real estate leads you need to treat these site visitors different than a typical merchant store visitor. Since most internet home buyers are not looking to immediately purchase a home, in order to increase your chances of conversion you must database the contact info and implement a drip email system.

A drip email system allows you to keep these prospects from forgetting about you and your web site. BTW, my personal preference is to call email inquiries and the like "prospects" and not leads. To me, leads are buyers where you have made contact with the person and at least preliminarily qualified them as an actual, future home buyer.

As far as drip email systems go, there may be a few decent pre-packaged ones on the market, but I don't think these will lead to as many sales as developing your own drip email content. Why?

Most packaged drip email systems contain stock content about buyers tips, sellers tips, working with a Realtor, etc. This content can be found anywhere.

What potential homebuyers really want to know is what it's like to live and work in your area, the best neighborhoods, the best schools, local school test scores, entertainment, activities, and shopping.

Think of your drip email campaign (and frankly all of your advertising campaigns) as a TV commercial. You need to appeal to a specific target demographic and provide them with a sales pitch that causes them to take action - namely, calling you about real estate in your area.

[Phoenix Real Estate Agent]

I wish I had a forum like this when I got into real estate. I would not have made so many mistakes. My little piece of advise would be Focus Focus Focus. For the first 2 years, it should be the first thing you think about when you get up in the morning and the last thing you think about before you go to bed.....and every minute in between.

After a year, you will have the knowledge. After two years, you will have the client and pipeline.

[Jennifer Allan]

I agree - your first two years, you should be consumed with building your business. This goes against much of the advice you'll read that tells you to treat your business like a "real" business - as in, don't answer the phone after 6pm, don't work 7 days a week, don't drop everything to rush out and show a house... but... if you won't do it, someone else will and they'll be happy to take your prospects off your hands. It's a competitive business out there!

That said, my first few years I was so revved up about my new career that I couldn't have ignored my phone or taken a day off even if I'd wanted to. I LOVED to hear the phone ring or my pager go off. I've found that new agents who are already putting boundaries around their time are more likely to fail because they simply aren't prepared for the realities of self-employment.

It doesn't mean that you'll work 60 hours a week - it just means that you're willing to put your business first... or as close to first as you can. If you can't do that because of other obligations, that's okay! Just know that the people who are working harder than you are may be more successful. You can't have everything and do it all well.

Jennifer

[Patrick Mc]

All very true. There is no secret formula for success in any business. It's about being consistant, persistant, committed, and determined. Don't take your eyes off your plan and your goals.

When you get busy it is easy to forget about prospecting. To ensure that the business keeps coming in don't stop prospecting no matter how busy you are.

Good follow up is also crucial. You worked hard to generate a lead. Don't let them forget about you. It helps to have a good contact management program like Top Producer.