Your basic Real Estate website is going to come with some essentials.
Hopefully, that includes an engaging, mobile friendly homepage accompanied by IDX search pages (how a customer looks at homes for sale on your site) and information for home buyers and sellers.
You can transform these fundamentals into a representation of your branding, a welcome resource for your target audiences, and a magnet for leads.
Here's how to go localized and personalized with the 5 pages you must have in your Real Estate marketing plan:
If listings are at the forefront of your business planning, then your website should support your strategy.
Impress potential sellers and capture new business with a customized "Seller's Center." This page should demonstrate your unique value, an overview of your marketing plan, and a lead capture for interested sellers.
Go beyond highlighting your professionalism and experience with examples of the unique marketing services you're proud to provide. Showcase your Matterport tours, professional listing videos, listing alerts, home valuation and free local area market report.
TIP: Transform your listing presentation with a "Tools & Content for Your Clients" tailored to that property and its seller's unique needs.
Don't forget to include a great lead capture opportunity such as a traditional "how much is my home worth" or something creative such as, "make my home a Matterport Tour."
Hyperlocal marketing is one of the best ways to gain traction online. It's often talked about but rarely implemented on agent sites. Demonstrate your local expertise and increase your SEO by creating content that viewers can't find anywhere else. They have to come to you.
We're proud to offer over 20 community pages for our agents to choose from complete with rich photography, professionally written profiles, and videos! Check them out here.
If you're in a competitive market, online or off, these pages will allow you to stand out from the pack. Research the keywords that potential buyers are searching when creating your pages. For example, "homes for sale in Orlando" isn't the easiest to rank for, but "Baldwin Park homes for sale" or just "Baldwin Park" is a better opportunity.
If you're an ERA Grizzard or local agent, I'd be happy to analyze keyword opportunities for your site and any paid search strategies. Contact me here.
Don't forget to mirror your traditional farming strategy and include neighborhood profiles of the areas you're prospecting in. If creating and following an SEO strategy sounds overwhelming, you don't need it. Crazy claim from a Real Estate marketer?
It's OK... if you use your farming area to guide you. Your site will benefit from the content you're creating and improve from your more organic method of content selection.
Take a community page to the next level with video! Film a video where you act as a local guide for the community. This will enhance your branding, give people a sense of your personality, and further strengthen your status as the local expert. Our Marketing Department films these for agents at ERA Grizzard! No strings attached. Watch a quick video to learn more.
Community pages should be supported with home search pages for your target areas. You're looking for easy to use and visually appealing plus awesome lead capture. After that, you want your search pages to reflect your strategy.
Create specific searches pages for niche markets. Start with "Homes for Sale in XYZ area", then neighborhood, and then get even more granular with "lakefront homes in XYZ neighborhood."
These pages will be invaluable when running different ad campaigns on social or through Google Adwords. They're also a great resource for buyers to easily find what it is they are looking for - instantly.
A great landing page is your lead capture blank canvas.
It's probably one of, if not the most important pages on your website. A landing page will display a form that must be filled out before a user can see the next piece of content.
You can get crazy creative with your lead capture here! The key is to make the page compelling and packed with valuable content. If it's not clear what someone is getting by giving you their information, then nobody will fill out the form.
You can advertise the "Secrets to Selling Your Home for Top Dollar in XYZ area" and link to your landing page. A potential seller would then fill out the form on your landing page to get the guide. You could also include a link on your homepage or on your "Seller's Center" page to capture even more leads.
Or you could use a landing page to subscribe people to your newsletter. This feature comes standard with our agent websites. Monthly newsletters that are specific to each of our offices are created by marketing and emailed automatically for our agents. There's no need for an agent to lift a finger! We write the newsletter, format the emails, and send it to their contacts (branded with the agent's info!) automatically for our agents every month!
Your website is not complete without your personal branding and story.
Demonstrate who you are by letting your passion and professionalism shine through on a compelling "About Me" or "Your Story" page. I'd highly recommend that you read our "7 Tips for Agent Branding Guaranteed for Success" post.
It covers in detail the best practices for agent branding and would be incredibly beneficial to look at before crafting such a crucial page on your site.
And don't shy away from video. There's no better way to tell your story then through video. A visitor on your site will be more likely to feel connected to you if they've seen a video of you. Think about it. Would you be more willing to provide information (become a lead yourself!) if you already felt like you knew and liked someone? Absolutely. Celebrities are paid to endorse products for a reason.
Work your way through your site one page at a time and prepare for your online Real Estate marketing and leads to take off!
Not already an ERA Grizzard agent? Learn more about the marketing services we're excited to provide our agents with a quick demo from me! Schedule yours today.