Real Estate Marketers Tip: Internet Influencing International Buyers.
Craigslist - and it’s free.
Do you know what the single biggest online resource is for selling real estate? Craigslist - and it’s free. If you’ve never posted a craigslist ad, even with photos, it takes about 10 minutes to do it. Ten minutes – and it’s free! It’s worth familiarizing your-self with craigslist as well as other social networking sites like Facebook, Linkedin and others. So, when salespeople in your center aren’t busy, this is an important thing they could be doing – building an online ad and online community for free.
When you do an online ad, remember that the work begins when you place it, why?
Because now you have to track and measure which ad, which version, is actually working. Remember, when you run an online ad, you don’t do one version. You could have one in the major newspaper. You could do skyscraper ads. You could do banner ads. Somebody has to be tracking and measuring all of this. That’s the number one reason more money keeps going to traditional advertising. It’s not because it’s more effective – it’s because it’s less work.
Start researching blogs.
I used to think that blogs were something only strange people had so they could write nonsense stuff about their pet cat or star wars obsession all day. Not the case. Some bloggers can be incredibly influential, sometimes more than the regular media. Ask yourself this: is there someone who is blogging about you or your industry? You need to figure out who they are and make them your friend. Take them on a trip or golfing or whatever it takes. It doesn’t matter if they only have 100 readers – be-cause those are targeted leads and, who knows, the blogger’s popularity and credibility could grow over time.
Consider setting up your own blog for each community you create.
Why is this important? Because offering residents a blog means that more people will be writing about your project. And the more people who write about you, the more content your project create; and that content represents more key words that. Google can grab when online people search for your project or a project like yours. It’s an easy, free way to increase your Google ranking.
Remember it’s called the World Wide Web for a reason.
Google is one of the most effective ways to tap into international audiences. For example, in 2012, one-third of all real estate in the US was sold to international buyers. That means if you’re a broker in America and you didn’t do any overseas marketing; you missed out on 33 percent of sales in that country. I’m not suggesting you run ads in any countries right away, but start thinking of ways to reach German, British, Irish and Israeli buyers who may have an interest in buying where you’re selling.
