Single Property Website Blog

I have been using the Agency Logic platform for years now and have built over 100 real estate websites to help market and sell homes. If you area an agent or home owner you really should be using this tool. Readers of this blog will get an additional 5 dollars of a published site. For $45 bucks, you get a real domain name, 12 months of hosting, the websites, the publishing tools, the hit tracking, email flyers, and distribution into manhy of the top portals.  The optional sign rider even have built in text messaging!  If you arent a web 2.0, Twittering, txt messaging, hit tracking type of agent, you will be soon. I’ll help you! Click the orange box on the right and set up your first free site. Win the listing then pay to have it published. You can even call me for marketing advice and how to use these things to win listings and sell homes. 310 699 8428 cell.

The powersite statistics were great! But even better is the new addition of Google analytics. Once used on the site, your clients can be sent weekly reports showing them the traffic the site you built for them is getting.  I can personally say the clients love seeing that their property is getting viewed hundreds of times each week!  Also important for you as an agent is keeping track of your hits so you can better understand you marketing efforts and market trends. Google analytics will show you exactly where your traffic is coming from.

You will need a Google account and singing up is easy. After that go to analyitcs and create a new site to be tracked. A few steps in you  will be given a code that can be inserted back at the Agency Logic Single Property Website.

I recently stopped my personal advertisements in Homes And Land Magazine after 2 years of $300 a pop half page adds. I think I received one call that led to nothing. What I am doing instead is spending money on Google Adwords at almost half the cost of the print adds.

2009 is going to be a very different year in the way Realtors market properties. Most are on more restrictive marketing budgets from the real estate slow down and the stats are showing the the internet is the place to be for selling homes. The future for real estate is all about your positioning on Google and the other real estate portals. Cut your loses now on print media and get with Adwords. The only reason to use print media at this point is to make your clients happy if you can’t convince them that you can sell their house with out it.

How do you address the argument that the community won’t see it? Easy. Farm your post cards out with a domain name and property web site from Agency Logic (discount for readers of the blog!). Get a big sign rider with the domain name on it and add those solar powered lights to show it off. I’ll bet you most neighbors are going to go on line and check out your place…….and maybe even forward the link to someone who wants to live there!

Why? Because as an agent you often need information quickly! Like directions, inspectors, movers, cleaners, etc. Impress you clients by knowing everything (thanks to quick google searches)!

In my book there are only two reasons to hold an open house. First to show the house and secondly to get email addresses! Telephone numbers are nice but face it, most people don’t want you calling to tell them about the market. They’d rather look at emails about what going on with real estate. I’m also finding that people are more inclined to give you an email rather than their phone number.

If you are new to real estate and don’t have listings then you need to find the nicest, most expensive listing your office and ask the listing agent if you can hold open houses. If they do it on Sunday’s ask if you can do it on Saturday’s or midweek. You need to meet people looking for nice homes! Why waste time in a cheap condo when you can hold open a nice estate!

Since you took my advice on getting a laptop, now you need to bring it to your open houses. You will also need to an internet connection either on the homes wireless system or better yet with a wireless card in the computer. More on that later later in Tip #4.

Here’s how I use it.

When someone walks in the door I greet them a soon ask them to sign in and leave information on what they are looking for. If they are hesitant I assure them them you are only going to use it to help them keep an eye on the market and that your “drip” or auto notify email system is the best way to go about it. This leads into asking more about what they are in the market for. If they say they have an agent I go ahead and ask if their agent has them on a program like this. If they don’t I offer it as a tool they can use because there is always the chance that their agent isn’t very “tech” and at least you have your foot in the door if they become dissatisfied with their agent. If they say they are not in the market you need to ask yourself why they are at an open house….it’s because they do want to see what’s going on with real estate……another reason to get an email address. Just remember to get a dialog going, appear to be tech savvy and eager to get them real estate info, and get that email address!

My biggest sale ever of $6,000,0000 was because of an automated email system. I hadn’t heard from a certain client for months then one day they called saying “We really like the house on Main Street that you sent us and we’d like to see it”. Funny part is that I never sent it, the program did! 3 months later is was sold!

The most important tool in the Agency Logic website platform you need to know is the statistics corner. Here you can keep track of how many hits your site is getting from searches being run on the internet.
You can get there by clicking on any property website located in “My Powersites” then hit the Marketing tab on the right followed by PowerSite Statistics. Here you find a bunch of data that can help you understand where your hits are coming from.
Here is one example.
I routinely place an add on Craigslist and in the following week will see anywhere from 1000-5000 hits come to the Power Site from that one source alone. The Power Sites also get distributed to several other real estate portals like Trulia, Zillow, and Google Base and these to will send traffic and hits your way also. You also have you local Multiple Listing Service and all you print adds too.
Here what is even more important than you seeing the hits…….your client seeing the hits! When you use the email function and send your client an update on your marketing efforts, they will see a chart documenting that 1000’s of people have seen the home online! This is your way of keeping them in the loop and gives you an excuse to call and talk about your online marketing efforts.
Here’s another tip. Let’s say that a few months has gone by and you are getting a ton of traffic and no calls. This is the tool that you use to get a price reduction. You need to go in to the appointment ready to show that you are doing a great job marketing the property. You show the website, the hits, the sign rider with the domain name, the text messaging sign from Wham Mobile, the print adds, and the open house log. Then you say “I am doing my part in marketing and we are getting 1000’s of hits and no calls for showings…maybe you are too optimistic in the asking price…I suggest you lower to price.”
Here are my statistics from a beach house for sale in Malibu for the 6 months of 08. Over 100,000 hits and over 6,000 page views!

The laptop computer is rapidly becoming the most important tech tool you can have at your listing presentation. A few years ago the center piece of the presentation was a fancy folder with print outs of your sales, awards, and advertisements. Let’s face it, some of those flyers are getting old looking and may be a big tattered. That is all slowly fading away as the laptop can show all of the above with scans, but more importantly show that you are an expert in online / internet marketing.

The last interview I went on was for a $2,400,000 home with owners that were older but tech savy. I knew I needed to be able to show them how real estate marketing had changed since they purchased a home 35 years earlier. Remember that this was before Multiple Listing Services and the internet, where newspapers and yard signs were all you really had. The first thing I showed them was how there was a 2 percent chance someone would find their home in a newspaper and that their was an 80-90 percent chance that it would be found online. This is where I said I would be focusing my marketing efforts with the main tool being a property website. Right there in middle of the interview I was able to get out the laptop and show them their home already placed in a website and ready to market. Then I was able to show them another listing’s hit statistics (part of the powersite tools) where over the course of 3 months the home had 20,000 hits! I told them that the old seller question of “How many calls are we getting?” was being replaced by ” How many hits are we getting!” They were amazed at how things had changed and I got the listing.

So if you don’t have a laptop go get one. A basic PC will do. I use a 17 inch PowerBook because the screen is huge and shows well. Get a flatbed scanner and scan all your paper presentation material because you can still use it in a slide show or PowerPoint type of program. Get a wireless card so you can be online at the listing presentation. Get your browser open and have it with numerous tabs open. You need to show them the single property website AND have the links to Realtor.com, Google Base, Trulia, Propsmart, and several other real estate portals open showing your listings. The powersites automatically get fed to all these portals which means you’ll be getting hits!

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