Real Estate Advertising Tips

I just received this newsletter from Trulia and found it very interesting. See http://www.trulia.com/newsletter

This is very valuable information that buyers and sellers should be aware of.  In most areas the foreclosure properties are MUCH lower in price than regular listings.  Seems to me that regular listings are going to still have to be priced much lower to equal out to the foreclosure prices.  Either that or sellers should expect to sit on their properties for months without a sale or take them off the market until the foreclosure stock decreases.

I would be interested in knowing your thoughts as Real Estate professionals.

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Go Smart Solutions, LLC Misty Lackie - CEO http://www.gosmart4u.com LinkedIn: gosmartsolutions Twitter: @gosmart4u Facebook: gosmart

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If so you could be loosing out on important emails without even knowing.  Just think - what if buyers are contacting you about a listing and you never receive that email?  Chances are the buyer won't contact you a second time and probably won't call you.  They will be under the assumption that you don't care and will move on to the next Agent.  Free email providers such as Yahoo, Comcast, AOL and others will block email at their discretion and you won't ever know that the email was blocked.  See http://www.ahfx.net/weblog.php?article=107 for a post about this.  As you can see from reading this post, people have been having these issues with Yahoo since 2006.

Does Yahoo have the right to block your emails?  Yes - it is their servers and they are offering the service for free.  So when I hear people complain about not receiving emails in their Yahoo (or other free) email account, I simply say "You get what you pay for".  I suggest purchasing your own domain name for $9.99 per year from GoDaddy or other domain provider and setup your own email accounts under your own domain.  GoDaddy allows you to register a domain for $9.99 and setup 1 email account on that domain for another $9.99 per year.  That's a total cost of $19.98 per year.  Heck just imagine how much business and $$ you are loosing by staying with a free email provider that may be blocking your important emails.  The way I see it is you can't afford not to do this.  Plus it looks more professional when you send email from your own domain. 

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Go Smart Solutions, LLC Misty Lackie - CEO http://www.gosmart4u.com LinkedIn: gosmartsolutions Twitter: @gosmart4u Facebook: gosmart

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Following are open stats for the last couple of weeks on a few of the top performing flyers created on ClassifiedFlyerAds.com.  The counts are for the top performing flyers combined but should give you an idea on what directories you should be using. 

Note: Flyers created on ClassifiedFlyerAds.com automatically post to most of these directories.  Some directories such as Craigslist do not allow open tracking (against terms) so are not included within these counts.

As you can see natural Google search outweights opens from directories by far.  This means you should be looking into ways to get your listings ranked in search engines for natural searches. Following are a few suggestions on how you can accomplish this.

1. Blog and post your listings to your ActiveRain blog.  When you post your listings to your AR blog make sure and choose the "For Consumers (Posted to Localism)" option and choose "Post to Localism" group.  Google picks up many AR posts and increases your chances of making page in the search engines.
2. Get all of your listings online by creating online flyers or single property sites for them or by creating a unique listing page for each listing on your website.
3. Create online profiles and on your profile pages make sure and add a link to a page that includes all your listings.  A few good places to create a profile are LinkedIn, ClassifiedFlyerAds.com, MyBlogLog, FaceBook and of course ActiveRain
4. Syndicate your listings to top directories

Hope this helps you decide on the best ways and places to market your listings.

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Go Smart Solutions, LLC Misty Lackie - CEO http://www.gosmart4u.com LinkedIn: gosmartsolutions Twitter: @gosmart4u Facebook: gosmart

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Do buyers search the Internet for "Property" or for "Real Estate Agents"?  This question from one of our customers drove me to do a little research on searches and I did come up with some very interesting information.  Following is a chart that displays estimated clicks per day for some popular areas.  This data was accumulated from Googles AdWords traffic estimator so is not 100% accurate but still gives us an idea. The searches are broken down into property specific searches and real estate agent specific searches. 

As you can see the property specific searches are much greater then real estate agent searches.  This tells us that more Internet searches are being done for property then for Agents.  This doesn't mean buyers are not looking for Agents but instead probably looking for property and when they find a property that interests them they will contact the Agent associated with the property.

Look at San Diego and San Francisco "property" searches compared to "real estate agent" searches.  WOW!

Want my suggestions?  ADVERTISE YOUR LISTINGS!  Get your listings on the Internet and make sure your listings have your contact information.  Your chances are greater that more buyers will find you from your listings rather then buyers searching for Agents.  It's fairly simple to create listing ads and have them syndicated to online directories and search engines.  A good listing ad will have your contact information or an easy way for the buyer to contact you for more information.  Many Agents even have their listings on their website.  If each of your listings on your website have their own page I suggest highly optimize each of your listing pages so they can be found on the Internet for searches that relate to your individual listings.

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Go Smart Solutions, LLC Misty Lackie - CEO http://www.gosmart4u.com LinkedIn: gosmartsolutions Twitter: @gosmart4u Facebook: gosmart

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Go Smart Solutions, LLC Misty Lackie - CEO http://www.gosmart4u.com LinkedIn: gosmartsolutions Twitter: @gosmart4u Facebook: gosmart

Real Estate Broker Marketing Multiple Listing Service Marketing Mortgage Broker Marketing IDX Website Alternative