What buyers deem “Very Useful”

Creating a dedicated, one-stop Internet destination for those buyers is one of the best ways to grab their attention and make them truly explore a property. Many homebuyers are simply typing a home’s address into their browser’s URL field or into the search engine’s search box. When a property has an individual website with the property’s address as the URL, search engines typically index that property website as the most relevant search result. This means that creating a single property website is the best way to ensure that homebuyers can easily find online information about a property.

Once those buyers browse the property website and learn everything they need to know about a property, they often call the agent to schedule a private tour. At this point, the agent knows that they’re dealing with highly qualified buyers – buyers who saw the house online, know everything they need to know about it, and actually LIKE the house.

Real estate market reports are extremely interesting – and valuable – to clients and to prospects. They enable clients to get detailed information about recent home sales in their neighborhood.

Since one of your main goals as a real estate professional is to make your website as “sticky” as possible – to make people stay longer on your site and return for future visits, adding market reports and recently sold properties to your agent website makes a lot of sense.

Market reports also have the added benefit of adding depth to your website. The more interactive your real estate site is, the more you fill it with relevant tools and information, the more attractive it becomes to clients and to prospects.

Our real estate sites include built-in market reports (except for non-disclosure states and counties, where this service is not available). Using tax record information and graphs provided by Zillow, your clients can run an instant report showing them all of the recent home sales in their neighborhood.

If this tool is available in your state, do remember to take advantage of it. It is one of the best tools we offer for keeping clients engaged and interested in your real estate website.

The following statistics are provided by the National Association of Realtors (NAR):

• 90% of consumers did online research before they bought their last home.
• 36% of buyers found the home they ended up purchasing on the internet, while only 2% of buyers found their home in the newspaper.
• 63% of Agents marketing budget still goes to offline advertising (newspaper, flyers, etc).
• Consumers’ looked at an average of 12 homes over a period of 12 weeks before purchasing.

Are you staying in touch long enough to capture a relationship with an online lead?

• 89% of consumers said that response time was very important when choosing their agent.
• 56% of consumers expect a response from their agent within 30 minutes.

Online Consumers understand that the internet is an immediate medium. Are you succeeding with your online leads? Do you have a hole in your business model? What is your average response time?

• 88% of Buyers said they would use their agent again or recommend their agent to others (66% said definitely, 22% said probably).
• Only 10% of Buyers used an agent they had used previously.
• 81% of Sellers said they would use their agent again or recommend their agent to others (59% said definitely, 22% said probably).
• Only 24% of Sellers used an agent they had used previously.

The vast majority of consumers — 66% of buyers and 59% of sellers — say they would “definitely” use their real estate agent again or recommend that person to others. Yet only 10 percent of buyers and 24 percent of sellers say they used the same real estate professional that they worked with for their previous transaction. Why is there a disconnect? One reason, undoubtedly, is a lack of consistent communication.

Your day is busy and your time is important.  Make sure that you aren’t letting your clients fall through the cracks.  If you don’t have the time to maintain these high levels of contact, let a drip email system lend a helping hand.  Consumers need constant reminders of who you are, what you do and what does that mean for them.

Make sure you provide the right level of contact.

According to a new Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers, recently released by the National Association of REALTORS®, the Internet has become an essential and indispensable tool in the home search process.

• More than one third of buyers began their search for a home by looking online for properties for sale.
• 90% of home buyers used the Internet as one of the information sources in their home search process.
• The Internet continues to be increasingly popular among all homebuyers, while traditional real estate marketing methods such as print media are declining.
• In 2009, 36 percent of buyers reported that they found their home online, up from 32 percent in 2008.

How Buyers Search for Property
Information Sources used in Home Search

It’s important for real estate professionals to understand that the Internet is not replacing them. On the contrary – according to the NAR study, 89% of buyers who used the Internet, also used a real estate agent. And the vast majority of homebuyers still purchase their home through a real estate agent.

It’s not that the Internet is replacing agents, but agents who want to stay current and on top of their game need to harness the power of the Internet and use it as part of their real estate marketing campaigns.

With all their rich features and professional looking interface, you would think that property websites would be expensive and only suitable for top-performing realtors. But property websites are actually very affordable, and can easily be employed as an online marketing tool by every real estate agent, across all their listings.

A professional-looking property website, filled with unlimited images, text, audio, video and more, costs just $60 for an entire year. There are no monthly fees, no hidden costs of any kind, and the website stays up – and serves as a great testimonial to the agent’s marketing abilities – for a full year. The top-level domain name makes it easy for buyers to find the site, and makes sellers extremely happy, and more likely to recommend their agent to future clients. Since, according to the National Association of REALTORS®, referrals are the top way for people to find a real estate agent, making sellers happy is of course a big priority.

Another major plus is that each Listing Domains single property website includes a custom sign rider for the property, so agents who use single property sites don’t have to order those separately. The combination of the sign rider and the property website works beautifully to market the home. The property’s URL is clearly depicted on the lawn sign rider located at the property itself. Homebuyers can drive by a property they like, then go directly to the URL listed on the rider to find a wealth of information about the home prior to scheduling a private tour. Yard signs remain an important real estate marketing method that complements online marketing. According to the National Association of REALTORS®, 82% percent of sellers in 2009 used a yard sign.

The ROI on single property websites is high not only because agents pay a one-time fee that includes a sign rider. Property websites also pay them dividends in the form of gaining them new clients, who see the sites they’ve created, whether through links on the agent’s main site or through friends and acquaintances, and want the same marketing for their own home. Existing property websites provide valuable long-term positioning for real estate professionals as tech-savvy marketers and demonstrate their marketing capabilities to potential clients.

As real estate professionals, we know how important it is that buyers find your website. Therefore we include a free Domain Rider® sign with each and every Listing Domains single property website order.

The Domain Rider® sign displays the street address domain name of your real estate listing right above, or under your real estate “For Sale” sign, directing potential buyers and open house visitors to visit your website for more info on the property.

This is real estate marketing and branding at its best: the property website promotes the listing, and the Domain Rider® sign on the listing promotes the website!

We offer several color choices and expedited shipping for a nominal fee. Our rider signs measures 24″ or 18″ wide by 6″ high and are made of high-quality, waterproof, 4mm corrugated plastic. The Domain Name is showcased in red for maximum visibility. Along with your Domain Rider® sign, you will receive two nylon ties to easily attach your rider to your “For Sale” sign.

Your custom Domain Rider® sign will be shipped quickly – the following business day. Don’t need a sign rider? Get a $10 shipping & handling rebate instantly!

But our personal recommendation is to definitely use a sign rider. It is a highly useful tool for promoting your single property website.

In recent years, real estate professionals have had to quickly adjust to major shifts in the way the real estate market behaves. A large majority of homebuyers are now using the Internet to search for homes. People EXPECT to find property information online. The easier it is for them to find that information, the more willing they are to consider a property seriously.

Sellers know that the real estate market has become a high-tech market, and that effectively marketing their property must include online marketing. When sellers see that an agent is willing to go above and beyond and create a full website for their property, they are always impressed (of course, they don’t know how easy it actually is to set up a single property website!).

Marketing Real Estate
Methods Real Estate Agent Used to Market Home

Single property website providers such as Listing Domains are now allowing agents to create free demo sites as an excellent way to impress potential customers and secure listings. Demo websites allow agents to create a website for prospects prior to getting the listing. Just like a live property website, the demo website can be filled with unlimited photos and documents and can feature music, a voice over, a video and more. Agents can then email prospects a link to the demo site, or demo the site live at the listing presentation. Once an agent gets the listing, they can purchase the property website.

According to the National Association of REALTORS®, in 2009 the Internet was the third most common way for buyers to find an agent. Since Listing Domains property websites stay live for a full year, even after the property has been sold, they become a great way for real estate professionals to showcase their work for previous clients and to establish themselves as savvy realtors who are experts at all aspects of real estate online marketing. This helps them attract future clients who have seen their work, are impressed by it, and want the same for their own home.

Now you can easily post your listings to your Profile on Facebook!

• Automatically Updates: Whenever you add, remove or update a listing, your Facebook app will automatically update as well.
• Publish to your Wall: Publish your new listings to your wall with a click of the mouse. Your Facebook Friends can publish your listings to their wall as well!
• Links to your Website: Each listing will automatically link back to your Listing Domain or Agent Website for more information about the listing.

This is a FREE App for Listing Domains and Real Estate Sites users!

Virtual tours were all the rage a few years ago, and they still work to some extent, but they are gradually being replaced by individual listing websites.

Property websites are a better marketing tool than virtual tours for several reasons. First off, they contain more information about the property including unlimited photos. Secondly, they are easier to find. Virtual tours are directed at buyers who have already seen the property someplace else (on the agent’s site, for example, or in the MLS listings). Virtual tours don’t generate traffic in their own right.

On the other hand, property websites generate their own direct traffic in several ways:

• People who see the sign rider on the physical property’s lawn, then go online to check it out.
• The seller telling their friends and family to go check out their property at the single property site.
• The agent, the seller and their friends and family posting and reposting a link to the property site on various social networks.
• Organic search engine queries for the property’s physical address, where the property site comes up as the first, most relevant search result.

Where Traffic is Coming From
From a total of 3,477,867 website referrals to Listing Domain Websites

One of the most useful features of individual listing websites is the ability to quickly and easily add listings to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.

Social networking is a new and exciting form of online marketing. It utilizes viral methods of marketing to create a natural buzz around a property. Essentially, social media marketing is a lot like old-fashioned word-of-mouth marketing, but it is done on a much larger scale thanks to the wide reach of the Internet.

For example, if an agent has been active on Facebook and has a couple hundred friends there, they can post each single property website to their Facebook profile to let people know about it. A percentage of these people will like what they see and spread the word, either in person to their friends and family, or online, on their own social networks.

Posting single property sites to Facebook is especially easy for Listing Domains clients, since it can be done automatically via a Facebook app that allows agents to add all of their listings to their profile page. Once they add the listings through the app, their Facebook profile will dynamically update as they add, edit or remove properties from their Listing Domains account.