The Truth About Real Estate Agents and The Internet 

by Greg Cryns


Don't kid yourself. The person who visits your website does not care a whit if you are the most experienced and knowledgeable real estate person in the universe. She does not care if you have won dozens of sales contests nor if you are your company's salesperson of the century. She does not care if you have twice as much information on your site than your competitors. She doesn't care if you drive a luxury car.

She does care about one thing: can you show her an affordable house of her dreams today and help her buy it? 

This begs the question: how can you grab her attention quickly and efficiently enough to get her to call you on the phone or at least send you an email?

Consumers AND real estate professionals are very web savvy these days. Recent estimates show that over 75 percent of home buyers consult the internet before beginning the buying process.

Having said that, new real estate agents must be alert and aware. There are stumbling blocks and outright dangers out there in cyberland. 

I have been preaching for years that people tend to pay too much for web design and not enough for advertising. When I say "advertising" for the web I mean paying to attract targeted visitors to your business website. These are visitors who are looking for information about real estate.

I don't think there are hard stats about how many people sign up with an agent because they saw his or her website. Based on 

many years promoting all types of websites, my feeling is that most people sell their home through an agent who they already did business with or from a referral from a friend. I think real estate websites are more likely to have people check out the information on a website and leave without making contact with the agent who owns the website.

With this in mind, here are my recommendations for agents getting acquainted with internet promotion:

1. Think about using your own name as your domain name. For instance, I would make sure my domain name was "GregCryns.com" if possible. Selling real estate has a lot to do with branding yourself. Off the web I know of brokers who insist that only the brokerage name be on the For Sale signs. I would not work for a broker who had that policy because I am in business for myself and I want my own name branded.

2. You can put the name of your business on your website even though your domain name is YOUR name. 

3. Try to get your visitors on your email list immediately on arrival. I would employ a popup box on each page of a real estate site because, in my opinion, the site is most valuable if used as an email harvester, not an information provider. Face it, people can now get their MLS listings on almost all agent websites. You will lose some visitors who will not tolerate popups, but I think the results will outweigh that. Think about this. No matter how well your website is designed from an aesthetic point of view, the chances that a visitor will contact you are slim. Are you giving the visitor a good reason to contact you right now?  Don't kid yourself. 

4. Join Active Rain.com. Be alert to developing a network of other real estate agents around the country. If you can establish a close relationship with an agent from another state or even in another area of your own state then you may be able to make some profitable referrals and make more sales by incoming referrals. Frankly, I wish someone had introduced me to a good agent in California before we moved there, though we did luck out and we did find a great agent. Our closing process was about one week due mainly to our agent's diligence.

5. Think of your website as an adjunct to your business rather than a front line for your business. Try to put something very original resource on your site for your community and advertise that fact off-web. Perhaps a contest is in order?

6. Make a video of yourself doing business. Downtown Scottie Brown's video on YouTube.com made a big impression on me. He is a top producer in Malibu. That guy knows how to market himself!

6. Write a lot of articles and put them on your website. Make sure YOU wrote them and try to put your own personality into them as opposed to sounding like an intellectual. Submit some of those articles to Ezinarticles.com so that your website will gain favor with Google and get a higher rank as well as more visitors from longtail key phrases.

7. I can hear you saying, "What are longtail key phrases!?" In short they are keyword phrases that are less often searched and contain more than one or two words. It is an important aspect of website promotion that I will gladly explain to you if you send me an email from my website linked below.

8. Your website can be a valuable tool if you are willing to invest significant money into attracting targeted visitors. You can learn some of the techniques for Search Engine Optimization (SEO) but like most other business activities you would be better off to hire the right person to handle your website improvements and do what you do best: sell real estate. Keep in mind that the design and computer technical folks, though often very good at what they do, may not be tuned into getting and keeping visitors who are ready to buy or sell a house.

9. Ignore all unsolicited emails that ask you to buy their product or service to help you sell real estate. Think about this: if the email is unsolicited they are spamming you! Enough said?

10. Look for good information about what to do with your real estate website. Use a good search engine and look up "

Author Bio:

This article may be used in your newsletter or website if you include this author information. 

Greg Cryns is the owner of Flat Fee Real Estate Guide
http://www.flatfeerealestateguide.com  If you are looking for a flat fee or rebate real estate agent start here.