Mar
17
Have you ever wondered why similar, competing shops tend to gather around each other on the high street or at shopping centres? The fact is that people like choice and will prefer to go wherever they can find it, and this is what pushes up the prices of top commercial real estate property.
But how does this apply to your real estate agency’s online marketing?
Your website may seem to be an isolated presence - you type in www.yourrealestatedomain.com and it shows up in all its splendid glory, alone and unchallenged. But the picture is so very different the moment a potential client runs a Google search and you (hopefully) show up next to several other real estate websites, many of which are trying to woo your very same client.
No matter how high in the search rankings your website is, your prospects are going to be looking at your competitors’ websites too. Once you accept this fact, you can use it to your advantage.
Become part of the online real estate community
The idea here is not the old maxim of ‘keep your friends close and your enemies closer,’ but rather to form strategic alliances with other estate agencies so that you work together to help each other’s businesses prosper through the tough times, to the detriment of those other estate agents who choose to brave the storm alone.
Blogging about other estate agents does send traffic away from your website, but it also makes your own website so much more valuable as a resource that people will want to bookmark or subscribe to. Blogs like Off Plan Property Exchange have their own property listings but, because they blog about and link to other developments too, they are able to attract a much bigger audience and regular readership whom to advertise to.
Likewise, posting comments on the blogs of other estate agents in reply to what they are saying will of course help them and the discussion they are trying to create, but it also helps you by getting you noticed and raises awareness about your own estate agency and website.
What goes around comes around, and your linking to other websites will ultimately mean that other websites will link back to you, so it’s a win-win situation. This sort of alliance can be implicit - you do your thing and hope others notice - or else you can directly initiate communication with other real estate marketers through your comments or via e-mail etc. and discuss ways of working together.
Team up with other estate agencies and offer more to your clients
The Internet also makes it very easy for you to work directly with other real estate agencies and match each other’s clients with each other’s property listings on a commission basis - even to the extent of listing other agents’ properties on your website.
Your clients will most probably find the other agents anyway on the Google high street, so in such a case you win by getting your share of the commission, you win by being the one who helped the client find the property in the first place, and you win by turning your website into an even greater source of properties that people will want to come back to. What’s more, you also win when other estate agencies return the favour and send business your way.
Once again, this gives your agency so much more power compared to those who insist on going it alone because, by teaming up with other real estate agencies, you offer a much better service to your clients. Sellers sell their properties faster because you have access to more buyers, and buyers realise that you are serious about finding them the right property and that you have the commitment and connections necessary to achieve that. This can only be good for your business!
In the light of all this, it seems like madness to go it alone with brute force online marketing and be limited by whatever budget you can afford to pump into your real estate advertising. Rather than spending all your money and energy trying to jump above your competitors and be seen, you could be much better off climbing on each other’s shoulders and leaving the stubborn go-it-aloners to fight for the low-hanging fruit while you enjoy the lofty rich pickings waiting to be had.
Online Marketing
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