Real Estate - Advice Needed - Help Please!

Here's one thing to look at...

"Real Estate" is not a niche. "Selling starter homes to young families in a specific neighborhood" is a niche. "Listing and selling homes with 7-figure price tags" is a niche.

What can your friend offer that's unique? What would make him the best fit for a particular sub-market? There's no indication of where you are geographically, so I'll use my neck of the woods as an example.

Thanks to the late real estate boom/bubble in Florida, real estate agents are thicker than sunscreen on a beach-bound redhead. Unless you can differentiate yourself, you're just another shiner in the school scrambling for crumbs.

Paging through the local RE magazines, I see several ways agents that are hanging in there through the down market are using to carve out their own piece of the market...

Some are targeting upscale properties.

Some are targeting foreclosures.

Some go for specific types of properties, like waterfront or golf course properties.

Some focus on retirees or soon-to-be retirees, others on young families looking for a first home.

Some specialize in finding financing for hard-to-finance buyers.

Some differentiate by offering foreign language capability, particularly German and Russian.

The bottom line is, your friend has to have something noteworthy to offer to a segment of the local market - both buyers and sellers. Which means he should be thinking about a niche he can dominate, just like one would online.

Once he has that sub-niche, he can work toward thoroughly understanding it, which will mean, he'll know how to communicate with them. Once you two have that down pat, you'll know what to put on a website...

More info needed for an good reply:

"I don't have a problem driving traffic to the website"
What does that mean? How are you driving traffic? Is it targeted traffic?

John McCabe (above) gives good advice.

I don't want to burst your bubble, but getting buyers from websites is a very tough nut to crack.

I advise to try to get their email address through an auto repsonder. You could put together a nice eBook (even using PLR) to offer to the site visitors. Something like "How to save a lot of money when you buy your next home" - something like that.

Build quality backlink and seo optimised thanks

I've been in the real estate market for nearly 20 years. I've bought it, sold it, insured it, remodeled it, and searched it in the county. Your friend's problem is not with his website...it is simply the market. A easy-to-navigate website with a search feature for both his listings and the wider MLS is necessary.

John McCabe gave excellent advice in that your friend will need to decide exactly what subniche he wants to dominate. Foreclosures, REO's, HUD homes...those are three markets that will continue to be strong in the next few years.

If his target market is looking for property, why wouldn't a website listing his properties help his business?

I would say, yes create a website that attractively displays available properties and include an offer on the site that would specifically appeal to the target market.

Squeeze pages could be set up elsewhere, but if they are on the main site, I think it would just annoy website visitors.

I honestly don't think people will contact you as an agent for themselves via the website unless you give them a very good reason to do so.

What might that reason be?

Lower commissions?
Rebates?
Real testimonials from satisfied customers
Good reviews on Google Local Search and Yelp
Personal referrals

To me, most real estate sites look the same. I would try to do something different. Much less info on the home page may help.

Ok, so I was a mortgage broker for about 3 years so I do have some experience, I've seen moved on.

I wasn't a Realtor directly, but having worked with them I can tell you that information is a key, even more in other industries.

The site needs to include more then simply an IDX feed of current listings. If they take some time to write up a short intro to each neighborhood, school and condo complex in the area (yes most buyers do know basically where they'd like to live these days) your Realtor gets a huge nod as being a neighborhood expert.

Thanks for all the input. Great food for thought. I appreciate all the help!

-=Chris

You might want to include content on short sales. I am an x-short sale negotiator and if you need help in this area I would be glad to give you some of my tips!

Here's another vote for John's excellent advice.

I also second the suggestion of activerain. I'm not currently in the market to buy or sell real estate, but there are some of the realtor blogs that are so informative and entertaining that I like to read them anyway. Especially the ones that say things like, "we thought this was hyped up so we steered our clients away... now the short sales make this a good opportunity if you can hold on for a few years."

If I did enter the market, I would first go to those agents. I feel I know something about their personalities and expertise. They have helped me understand the ups and downs of the economic news and different areas of town.

Another good source for you might be city-data.com. I've seen some local agents give a wealth of information in the forums. Some update their blogs with charts about numbers and prices of homes sold monthly, and explain what the trends mean. These agents would also be on my short list to contact as soon as I enter the market.

Good luck from another Chris.

good content blog, backlinks and optimized seo.

Hey Chris...

Real estate lead generation - like any other marketing lead generation - isn't so much about how your friend can GET more leads, but should be about how he can position himself to be seen (by more people in his target market) as a resource who can help his customers or prospects GET what THEY need.

I've been an investor for many years, even created a membership site and coaching program to teach investing (before the markets crashed and the laws changed - making that industry very cautious for teachers to pursue, imo), and what I have learned over those many years is this:

Realtors are generally more concerned with the rules of being a realtor and their commissions, than the value they bring to their clients.

Or...

They are only interested in their clients for the value the client brings to them.

To me, and speaking from experience, 99.97% of them have it all wrong - shame on them.

If your friend is one of those rare individuals who can position herself as a solution for visitors and potential clients and can convey that message on a well crafted blog or squeeze page with a valuable free ethical bribe of some sort - oh, and she can deliver - leads will come in and business will follow.

If she is worth her salt, referals will then follow the success of her marketing.

Unfortunately, you also need to be very, very careful if this person is a licensed agent because many states govern what can even be put on a page or IF an incentive can even be used or lead generation pages can be crafted.

If he (or she) is working for an agency - the rules get even tighter about what can and can't be done marketing wise.

No offense to any GOOD Realtors(tm) here who read this - but if your crowd got any more anal about "Rules" you'd be preaching it from a podium on Sunday mornings and telling other license holders to "fear the fire and brimstone punishment for even thinking creative!"

Anyway... what I've helped clients do in the past is to position themselves as a SOLUTION to the most pressing questions buyers have or sellers want answered.

Put together a list of the top 10 questions Sellers (in your friends target market) have and answer them in a report... give it away with all kinds of great "hints" written into the report that subtly point sellers to your friend as a listing solution that is NOT like the rest (i.e. she actually MARKETS your property and WORKS leads to help you sell your house, lol)....

How 'bout a list of the top 10 questions potential Buyers might have?

Does your friend have a clue about Shortsales? That market is loosening up and becoming more open to Realtors who get it... but, be very careful about the language any giveaway uses marketing to pre-foreclosure folks who have questions or need solutions - the legal climate is NOT friendly right now (thanks also to the Realtors(tm) and Lenders (i.e. Banks) and the anti-investing climate they've created.

Kinda hurting themselves now - all those years spent trying to get that 23% of the market buying and selling done outside of their licensed institutions.

It puts a big smile on my face everytime I watch how they've handcuffed themselves for providing solutions that would work in this economic climate and help our whold economy recover a bit better also, if they'd have just left things well enough alone.

Anyway... I digress.

Focus on the target market... give something of value away... throw a few local FREE events to attract potential clients (and DON'T talk about herself or her business - talk about solutions and questions her audience might have - they'll look to her as a possible solution naturally if she does it right)... put up some basic lead generation pages.... do some LOCAL SEO and site optimizing... put up a blog that she posts valuable info on at least 3 times a week that is locally optimized and offers her honest views and opinions FOR VISITORS, not FOR HERSELF...

And, other good marketing practices you already know (like, heavens forbid I actually said it - a Facebook Fanpage for her Realtor services and advice **gasp**)...

This would all be a good start.

Once she gets some momentum going, referrals are the heart of all good Realtor's(tm) businesses... all three of them anyway. (just kidding... uhm... really!)

Steve

Lead generation is easy. Use what people are looking for and is on top of their minds......Foreclosures!

Create a simple squeeze page for free lists of foreclosures in certain price ranges.

That's it. Simple. Easy. It works.