Wednesday, 23 May 2012

The Do's and Dont's of Online Real Estate Marketing

By Judy Miller


The likelihood of you ever selling a property is very low if you don't move your real estate marketing business online. Most prospective buyers start their house hunting online these days. If you can get in early and catch their attention before anyone else does, your opportunity to sell them a house opens up quite dramatically.

Online marketing is more than just a website with a static listing of one photograph, a brief description and asking price. Real estate marketing has experienced such an outstanding evolution that with a single click you can get virtual tours of homes on the market, value and mortgage calculators, and online appraisals.

Still, there are some drawbacks to all this, and one of them is that your enthusiasm may lead you to overload your website with every tool developed so far, thus being in danger of mystifying your buyers. If you want to enjoy a successful online real estate marketing try to observe some simple rules:

What You Should Do:

Do hire a professional website designer to design and develop your website. They know how to make a site look professional, as well as how to design a site that is easy to navigate so that visitors can find what they are looking for.

You must use photographs, and lots of them. Prospective buyers want to see as much of the house as possible before going to the trouble of travelling to see it face-to-face. Make sure the photographs are good quality, close-ups rather than wide, far away shots, and the right resolution for web use.

You must take care that your website is SEO-friendly. You are in a highly competitive market, so you need to make sure that when buyers search for real estate online, your website is one that they find regularly.

You must use email marketing, since it is low-cost, easy to activate and a most convenient means of bringing new properties to your clients' attention. Buyers and sellers will call and ask for information, and you should seize the opportunity and ask for their email addresses, extending thus further your buyers network.

What You Should Not Do:

Don't clutter your website. If you have a skilled designer on your payroll, they will know how to compress as much information as possible so that visitors will have an easy time finding it.

You must not think that low-quality photographs are permissible just because it's a website. A great number of buyers will want to see high-quality photos when clicking on thumbnails.

You must not let excitement into listing each and every property you have on file. You want your website to load easily and given that more houses usually means more photos, this would be an impossibility without top-notch hosting. You can always send an email with info about similar properties, when a buyer asks for details on a certain property.

You must not disregard online video real estate marketing. A virtual tour of the property for sale means that your client can visit and revisit the property in question without even leaving his desk, which makes it a heavyweight asset to your site and business.

Don't think that your website is the only real estate marketing you need to do. Combining marketing strategies will help you get a hold of more buyers and scout out more properties and that's the whole purpose of marketing to begin with.

The internet has changed how the world finds information, and real estate marketing has moved online with huge success. Web 2.0 opens up even more opportunities for savvy Realtors, and social media should be used as a networking tool to extend your reach and drive traffic to your website. Online real estate marketing has entered the 21st century, so maybe you should keep up with the program.




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