Shameless Self-Promotion: Getting Noticed Online

Category Archives: Generating Seller Leads

Shameless Self-Promotion: Getting Noticed Online

With almost every real estate agent claiming to be the best and most experienced in their area, choosing one to work with can end up little more than a guessing game for buyers and sellers.

Referral Programs that Actually Work

While it’s not particularly hard to implement a referral program, there are a few ways in which companies from any industry can slip up. So before you send that email, take a minute to ask yourself these questions.

Selling Online Advertising to Vendors

Many agents gloss over the Internet when presenting to prospective sellers or landlords, even though this medium has been the single most important innovation to the way we do business.

Finding Advocates, not Just Customers

Beyond great service, there are a few digital marketing strategies you can employ to get people on board as advocates for your brand.

Are FSBO Sites Taking Over?

Over the last twelve months, we’ve seen a swathe of new for sale by owner (FSBO) property websites come online, from owner-direct.eu in Europe to buymyplace.com.au in Australia. The UK market seems to be particularly flooded with FSBO offerings - hablib.com, tepilo.com, bethemiddleman.com, notestateagents.com, and auctionmove.co.uk are just a few examples.

So what effect are these websites actually having? Are they drawing traffic away from traditional property portals? Are they attracting business from owners keen to bypass real estate agents?

Going Local for Leads

In a recent guest post, Ryan Hinricher said agents need to define their niche market to stand out in the online marketing game. It’s sound advice when you think about it - finding your niche, and owning it, gives you a much greater chance of becoming the agent who stands out when a buyer hones in on a certain suburb.

So, how do you promote yourself online as the expert in your chosen niche?

Looking for Realtors to Test a New Application – ListGlobally

The team at Classified AdVentures (owners of Property Ad Guru) has been working hard on a new product called ListGlobally. This application allows agents to advertise their listings on market leading property portals around the world.

For example, an agent in the US or Australia can up load a listing and have it appear in the international section of such market leading sites as Rightmove in the UK, Enormo, Immobiliare in Italy, and Immobilienscout24 in Germany. Over the coming months ListGlobally will be adding more partners to its distribution list.

Not only is this a great way to promote your listings to an international audience, it is also a great tool to differentiate yourself from your competitors when marketing to potential sellers.

If you would like to be a guinea pig and help us test the application for free, just go to www.listglobally.com and click the link on the home page to register for a free trial. Once we receive your request, we will be in touch via email with your login details.

Google Real Estate – Should Agents Bank On It?

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The news just over a week ago that Google was “entering” the UK/European market has sent the share prices of Rightmove and Seloger into a tailspin. Seloger dropped by 9% while Rightmove has plummeted a whopping 17%. Seloger has since recovered to its pre-news price while Rightmove continues to be significantly down.

So let’s look at what happened, will the property portal landscape change and is this impact on the share prices is justified.

An article by the Financial Times (Dec 2 titled “Google set to enter UK property market”) seems to have set the cat amongst the pigeons. The article stated that Google is in talks with British estate agents and that “experts” say that an entry by them to the market could pose a serious threat to existing property websites. The article didn’t talk about what Google was going to do and Google didn’t comment. So there is really not much to go on. So the only guide we really have as to what Google may do in the UK and Europe is what they have done in Australia.

AgentWorld Moving to iPhone

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AgentWorld, the US website that aims to connect buyers and sellers with agents, says an iPhone application is in the works.

realup.com Expands Email Options

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realup.com has partnered with propertyblast.com to provide enhanced email marketing.

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