Creating Your 2011 Real Estate Internet Marketing Plan

Statistically, something like 94% of all residential real estate sales begin online. If you have been neglecting your real estate internet marketing plan, perhaps it’s time to start planning your strategy to compete online this year.

Real Estate internet marketing doesn’t have to be daunting, even if you aren’t very tech-savvy. To be successful, you need three primary components:

1. A Real Estate Lead Generating Website – This is the heart of your internet marketing strategy. Simply put, a lead-generating website is one that is designed to get people to contact you. Often, that means giving away content (a free report, newsletter subscription, or access to members-only content) in exchange for your visitor’s contact information. If you don’t get this right, the rest of your online marketing efforts will be wasted.
   
   
2. A Marketing Strategy – Just because you build your website doesn’t mean people will come. How will you get people to your website? Common methods include pay-per-click advertising, social media marketing on Facebook and Twitter, or advertising your website in your offline ads and postcard mailings. Whatever you choose, pick one thing and stick with it until you get it working, or you may find yourself overwhelmed with lots of work for little payoff. Once you get your strategy to work, feel free to add other marketing strategies.
   
   
3. A Follow Up Strategy – Now that you are getting people to your website and collecting their contact information, the next step is follow up. What information can you send them to follow up? Assume it will take several contacts with a prospect before they are ready to talk with you about buying or selling a home. What information will they need to be convinced that you are the best agent to help them?
   
   

As with most marketing, internet marketing is a numbers game. The more traffic you drive to your website, the more you will convert to leads, and the more business you will eventually close.

However, a good internet marketing strategy involves creating a system, not a series of isolated marketing events. Everything you do should work together. If one of the above-mentioned components is broken, your system won’t work.

You may get a lot of traffic, but if your website doesn’t get prospects to give you their contact information, your efforts are wasted. Or your website may generate many leads, but if you don’t follow up repeatedly with prospects, those leads will become cold.