“It’s like water coming at me from a fire hose.”
That’s how a real estate professional that was just getting started described her experience to once regarding her web marketing efforts. We get it; it’s easy to be overwhelmed by the vast number of sites competing for consumer eyeballs. The good news? You can turn the fire hose off!
By combining the kind of content prospects desire with the power of Flexmls® IDX home search, you can capture qualified leads without having to become the expert on all things.
Quality vs. Quantity
The big portals seem to dominate when it comes to generating traffic but winning colossal page views isn’t your goal. Serious buyers and sellers, interested in moving forward with a transaction sooner rather than later, want to tap into your knowledge and expertise. When It comes to the ability for clients to search for listings, IDX creates a more level playing field for you with the ability to display the entire MLS – most importantly – with your contact information associated with the listing results. By powering your site with Flexmls IDX, you also have the edge of providing the only actual “LIVE” data results with listing data that is up-to-the-second fresh.
A Home vs. A House
So you have a site powered with IDX. What can make it the kind of destination that a prospect will use as their go-to resource? The answer is content. Content is where you can set yourself apart. Share your knowledge and experience about all of the things around a home that are important to lifestyle. It’s content that can’t be replaced by an algorithm or artificial intelligence. When creating your content, think personal, think hyperlocal.
Use Your Words
Use your content to tell a story about the neighborhoods you service, sharing the knowledge you have gained by walking the streets, meeting the neighbors, drinking in the coffee shops, and walking your dog in the parks. Or, by having listed and sold several homes in the area. By painting a lifestyle picture, you provide information that is unique to you and your brand. Qualified buyers and sellers will spend much more time on your site.
So what do you write? And do you have to be “a writer”?
No prose is required. People want relatable content. Describe the unique features and events at schools, places of worship, entertainment, shopping, and more. Prospects spend a great deal of time on the web before selecting an agent. Establishing your unique insight in a way that allows your voice and personality to shine will strengthen your position as a true professional that cares about more than just their transaction.
Engaging content will not only keep you top of mind, but it’s also more likely to get bookmarked. You can easily repurpose this information by modifying it and including it in all of your social channels with links back to your website. But be careful to make sure that you do not just copy the same content. Search engines will reduce the rankings of duplicate content.
Another no-no is just doing what everyone else does: creating lists of links to census data, school districts, and the chamber of commerce are the same things you can find in dozens of other places. Stock contents can lead your prospects away from your site and your carefully-created invitations to register a portal account (and in doing so, becoming your lead.) A Flexmls IDX-powered site allows you to capture information that moves right into your Flexmls contact manager, where you can then establish a relationship that you can nurture into a lifelong client.
Track Your Progress & Promote Your Site
Websites are living documents. One of the best things about web marketing is the fact that you can see how your site is performing, where the traffic is coming from, how people are finding it, how long they stay there, and much more. By using an analytic platform, you can make the necessary changes to your site to improve continually.
Always include your site’s address and deep-link to the relevant pages on your website in all of your social media efforts. Also, don’t forget that a little thing like embedding an IDX saved search in your e-mail signature can go a long way toward improving your ability to capture qualified leads.
Go Forth & Capture
Your website is a cornerstone component of an overall marketing effort. With IDX as the great equalizer, you CAN compete where it matters, and capture leads!
Are you ready to compete at any level?
If you’re just getting started, or you want to take your website marketing to the next level with live data connected to the Flexmls platform, you owe it to yourself to have an IDX specialist provide you with a fast, free and personalized demo of the IDX solution best for you. Get started by clicking the button below.
