Websites

At the next Real Estate Technology Meetup I will be delivering what I plan to be a fast and lively presentation touching on a wide range of marketing tips for Realtors and I guarantee everyone will walk away with something that will help their marketing.

You will not only learn about dozens of cool tools, tips and techniques to help you in all aspects of your business, but you will also learn how to apply them to increase your business and save time and money.

The focus of the presentation will be on the 4 R?s and the 1 P of Realtor marketing. Prospecting, client Retention, client Referrals, Repeat client business and client Reactivation.

We will cover marketing tips related to branding, print advertising, online advertising, database marketing, social networking, email marketing, blogging, websites and web tools.
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As a marketing guy I get asked by Realtors and business owners about web sites every day. Depending on their technical capabilities and their marketing plan I generally recommend using a template with built-in content management to not only keep costs down, but to control their destiny.

If you are interested in a web site call me, Mike Blaney, at 604-618-5512 in Vancouver or toll free at 800-568-8338. You can also email me at marketingguy@shaw.ca. I can usually have a web site up and running in a few days complete with content for between $ 250 and $ 500 and if you choose the Ubertor option I can offer you up to 4 months at no charge!

I have recommended Ubertor to many clients and created web sites on behalf of many more clients such as Leslie Sutton, Annie Harkins, DiAnn Sleeman a mortgage broker and Clive Benjafield and Steve Mitchell to showcase a few and have always felt comfortable recommending the company because thousands of Realtors and businesses can’t be wrong!

Well it just got a whole lot easier to recommend Ubertor with their announcement today that they are offering a 30 day free trial and they are going to waive their set-up fees.

So if you are a small business and have always wanted a web site you can sign up for their Lite Plan and be operational almost immediately. The total cost is only $ 9.99 per month or I think $ 99.00 per year.

For Realtors you have the choice of their Basic, Premium or Plus plans with the primary difference being the number of active listings and the ability to have an additional agent, ability to customize the pages and the number of pages. You can switch from one plan to another without penalty so it doesn’t matter if you choose the wrong one.

Want to take your website to the next level? On the Ubertor Premium Plan you will have access and control over the Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) that control the look and feel of your website. With a CSS programmer and the Ubertor Premium Plan you can completely
customize your website in the way that you want.

If you have time I would strongly recommend the Ubertor Blog as the latest in Realtor technology is featured there.

If you need something more robust I have also created a sophisticated web site for the Independent Power Producers of BC, inboxFX Communications and Alexis Palkowski - Realtor.

Following are a number of great tips that apply to any website that I have gleaned from a number of sources including the excellent blog at Ubertor, a leading website company that I work with on behalf of my clients:

Content Suggestions for Your Website

1. Get rid of all canned content and take the time to write your own text in its place
2. Write a good biography that talks about you, your education, past employment, places you’ve lived…
3. Include home page content that contains your full name, company name, neighbourhoods you work, phone number, etc
4. Add video about yourself
5. Get testimonials from clients, be sure to include their full names as it adds more credibility to the testimonial
6. Make your cell phone and email address known, have them on every page
7. Add a page to your website for each neighbourhood that you specialize in
8. Add links to products and services that you recommend
9. People love stats, keep your visitors up to date with market stats and conditions
10. Ensure that your full contact info are on your contact page (name, mailing address, phone, company name, fax, etc)
11. Add some photos of you and your clients, family, city…
12. Add neighbourhood videos that depict areas you work in
13. Discuss groups, boards, volunteer activity, meetups, classes that you participate in
14. Write quality content on your buyers and sellers pages to entice your website visitors to give you their contact information
15. Add a privacy policy

Listing Content

1. Add as many photos to your listings as you can
2. Add a feature listing to your home page, be sure to change it every few weeks
3. Add your sold listings to your site
4. Add property searches

Marketing Your Listings

1. Use Craigslist, Trulia, Zillow, Google Base, Kijiji etc to gain exposure to your listing and your website
2. Add a unique domain to promote your listings (its a great way to make the owner feel special - plus you could give the domain to whoever buys the home as a unique gift)

Blog

1. Add a blog: write about you, your business, your expertise, your area, etc
2. Subscribe your blog’s rss feed to feedburner.com
3. Add the feedburner email newsletter option that will email your subscribes your blog posts - for free
4. Get some blog interviews from interesting personalities (makes for good reading and adds more “stickiness” to your website
5. Answer common questions that you are asked right in your blog

Search Engine and SEO

1. Use Google Analytics to track your traffic
2. Update your title tags to be descriptive for each page of your website
3. Register a easy to remember domain name and point it to your website
4. Pay attention your listing description (for example: adding “Good-value” sells for 5% less than average)

Technology

1. Add Meebo to your site so that you can chat with your visitors
2. Use Google Maps to promote your listing
3. Subscribe your website to Google Sitemaps to ensure that Google is up to speed on your website’s activity

Marketing Your Website

1. Add your website URL to your email signature
2. Send out a press release announcing your new website
3. Don’t add banner or link advertising
4. No listings? Add your services to the “real estate services” section of craigslist.org (be sure to hyperlink to your site)
5. Make sure your companies website, your mls and any other site you have a profile on is linking to your website
6. Add a rentals section to your website and let your clients know you will help them rent their place

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