I normally don't reblog but I feel this post should be spread around as much as possible. It's a great post that is really on target. Bill Gassett who is a very Internet and marketing savvy Real Estate Agent wrote it.
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Bill Gassett Metrowest Massachusetts Real Estate Specializing in marketing homes & Real Estate in Metrowest Massachusetts. Based in Hopkinton, MA 01748 Have been one of the top 5 RE/MAX Teams in MA for the last 9 years. |
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Knowing how to market your services online can be very powerful. In the Real Estate field it can certainly be the difference maker in whether or not a client chooses to hire you or NOT! Anyone who is in the Real Estate field knows that Realtors are a dime a dozen.
Unfortunately, there are very low barriers to entry for becoming a licensed Real Estate agent. When the market was booming every Tom, Dick, Harry and Mary wanted a license into the promised land of easy money. They came in droves hoping for that rags to riches story.
THEN THINGS CHANGED....The 3 P's of Real Estate no longer worked. Put a sign in the yard, put it in MLS, and pray. This marketing strategy used to work for many agents when the Real Estate market was booming.
Real Estate was Easy Street. Multiple offers and home values rising by the month. There was much less marketing skill involved in the business. Commission checks were easy to come by.
Heck you could price a home improperly and a few months later it wouldn't matter because the market would have caught up to your mistake. An inexperienced Realtors blunders could suddenly turn genius. Those were the days.
The Real Estate market today is much different. Terms such as recession, short sales, mortgage meltdown, foreclosure, and stock market crash are all common terms we deal with on a daily basis. There are no lines forming at the door to the division of Real Estate licensure anymore.
In fact the Real Estate business is going through a consolidation at the moment. Many of the agents who didn't realize that you need to invest a serious amount of time and energy in actually working your tail off are getting out just as fast as they entered.
There is also another set of agents that just don't know what you need to do in order to be successful in a challenging market. Up until a few years ago, a Realtor that entered the business in the last ten years had not seen a down Real Estate market. Times have changed and so should your thought process about picking a good Realtor.
If you were looking for skill sets of the best Realtors it would be those that know how to price homes accurately and those that have a strong grasp of online marketing.
The Internet has grown by leaps and bounds. Survey after survey says that over 84% of all buyers find their home from an online search!
If your considering selling your home would you not want to be with the Realtor who provides a dominate online presence for their clients? The agent that is not going to tell you what you want to hear in order to get the listing?
I have mentioned this on many occasions so I may be preaching to the choir but using Google as an interview tool can be very important.
Here are two tips...Google the agents name you are considering and also ask them for an address of a home they are marketing.
You should Google both of them. If the agent knows anything about Social marketing there should be pages and pages of results for their name! You should be able to quickly get the picture as to whether or not this agent is Internet savvy.
When you Google an address of a home they are marketing, you will be able to see all the sites that the home is being marketed on. Think about this for a moment...if you Google a homes address and don't come with anything you have found a Realtor that follows the 3 P's of marketing. Run for the hills Amigos this is not what you want!!
Besides Real Estate, one of my passions is SEO (search engine optimization). When a client hires me to sell their home it will be found everywhere online.
My clients home becomes front and center for those buyers looking to make a move.
A good Real Estate professional understands the importance of implementing a social media strategy into their marketing plan.
The goal is to provide the greatest exposure to my Real Estate listings, while also generating worth while hyper-local, geo targeted content that can be found through the search engines.
So how is this accomplished? Well 1st let me tell you it now takes days to get the marketing set up for clients home I am representing! I am not going to go into great detail, as I do not want my competitors trying to duplicate my efforts but will give you a small glimpse.
The 1st thing that is done is getting the listing into my website that covers Real Estate sales in Metrowest Massachusetts. This website is highly indexed by Google and will usually come up on the 1st page for anything related to Real Estate in the towns I cover.
This is important because if the site can not be found what good is it? My knowledge of search engine optimization has allowed me to have a top ranked Real Estate site. One of the amazing parts of my site is the ability to syndicate the listing to some of the most heavily traveled Real Estate sites at the click of a button. The graphic above shows the power of what I am talking about. Some of the best sites include Zillow, Trulia, Cyberhomes, Google, and Yahoo.
The next thing I do is create a blog post of the listing. There will be pictures, descriptions, links and possibly an imbeded video tour. Again, my Active Rain blog is highly indexed in Google (what you are reading). It comes up all over the place for any kind of local Real Estate search. I also have two other blogs that widen the net for even more visability at Bill Gassett's Trulia Blog and Metrowest Real Estate Blog.
One of the most important consideration for any Real Estate marketing campaign is the use of a video presentation. I will use the Real Estate Shows and have a video slide show sent to Realtor.com, MLS (multiple listing service) and also YouTube! Here is a sample of a home I just sold at 152 Stagecoach Road Holliston Mass using the Real Estate Shows.
This is just scratching the surface of what I provide my seller clients. The fact that my sites come up all over
local Real Estate searches has brought a fair amount of business my way. In fact this week I will be closing on a Short sale and I never even met the seller!
He happened to read an article I wrote about short sales and also found my Real Estate website while doing a local search. He interviewed me over the phone. He had been transfered out of the area and was renting his home. The tenants moved out and he needed to sell it or he would have ended up in foreclosure.
Fortunately for me I get leads like this all the time. Lately I have even been getting calls for advice from people located in other parts of the country about the possibility of doing a short sale. This happens because they read my articles which come up in the search engines.
Foreclosure Avoiding it Through a Short Sale or Loan Modification
Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure and Short Sales
Sometimes they can be helped and other times it is too late as foreclosure has reached their door step. The point is the internet is a powerful sales tool for those that use it. Having a Realtor with a social marketing strategy in your corner is a smart move!
Caution...Realtor above that could not spell commission might not be your best bet.
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About the Author: The above information on social marketing, blogging, short sales and the seller I never
met was provided by Bill Gassett, a Nationally recognized leader in his field. Bill can be reached via email at billgassett@remaxexec.com or by phone at 508-435-5356.
Have a home to sell in Metrowest Mass? I have a passion for Real Estate and love to share my marketing expertise!
For Metrowest Massachusetts Real Estate and homes see Metrowest Mass Real Estate. Want to have MLS access to beat other buyers to your dream home? Sign up with no obligation at my MLS Property Finder Site.
I service the following towns in Metrowest Massachusetts: Hopkinton, Milford, Upton, Southboro, Westboro, Ashland, Holliston, Mendon, Hopedale, Medway, Grafton, Northbridge, Uxbridge, Franklin, Douglas, and Framingham MA.
Click here to view Bill Gassett's Real Estate profile.
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Building lasting relationships by helping people move in and out of Metrowest Massachusetts for the last 23 years.
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