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Not all real estate agencies are equal!

Each real estate has its own working method and its own marketing strategy. Those who work in the field know that this is true. Some companies are good, some others are not that good. Some of them are experienced, some others inexperienced. Some of them deal with their clients in a professional way, some others are amateurs.

Usually, when the owner wants to sell his property, he gets in touch with the nearest real estate agent or with a friend of his who works in the real estate agency. Most of the times he doesn’t take a rational decision or thinks a lot about it, thus an unqualified agency might be commercializing his property. This happens is because owners consider all the real estate agencies equal.

When dealing with real estate agencies, clients tend to generalize. They can either have a negative idea of that sort of companies, due to an unpleasant experience, or a positive idea, which may take them to believe that all real estate agencies work well.

Fortunately, this problem has a solution. A real estate agent should focus and put all his marketing efforts on differentiation and positioning. It is crucial that clients understand that there are different companies and that making the right choice may save them time, money and troubles.

You must show your clients that your company is different from the rest.

Why don’t you create an owners guide?

Share the values, the results and the sales statistics of your company. Show your clients everything they may consider relevant and more convenient for both. Providing a good experience and follow-up from first contact is as important as buying or selling a property.

10 SEO free tips for your real estate agency

If you want your website to be on the top results of the search engines, you need to do some work focused on your website. This is especially important for those websites that weren’t created according to the SEO (Search Engine Optimization) criteria. If that is your case, and if you want to get your real estate agency’s website indexed by Google, you should take the following advices:

1. Encourage your co-workers to post real estate information on their personal Facebook, Twitter or Blog profiles;

2. Select one or more co-workers to post information on the company’s Facebook;

3. Allow your co-workers to take part in fairs and congresses and to share the knowledge they acquired using Slideshare documents, pictures or videos;

4. Post advertising content of your company (brochures, newsletters, etc.) on your Facebook fan page;

5. Post articles that can help you to get new contacts on your company’s Facebook page;

6. Encourage your co-workers to use professional social media such as LinkedIn, so that their profiles get indexed by the search engines;

7. Encourage your company’s co-workers to play an active role in dedicated real estate forums and blogs and to disclose the connection between them and your company;

8. Support and be part of associations and ask them to exchange links to create link-building (InCi, APEMIP, etc.);

9. Identify the most important real estate blogs and online means and try to establish partnerships with them – by means of interviews/specialized articles – and advertise your properties in reference real estate portals;

10. Analyze your website’s performance and results continuously and try to figure out the browsing improvements that can be done to get more contact requests from your visitors. Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools are two good solutions that will help you doing that analysis!

If you want secure and instant results you can always choose one of our websites which were created according to the SEO criteria.

How to increase the number of leads using my real estate website?

Nowadays, it is common knowledge that every real estate agency needs a website. What some may not know is that some features can make the most beautiful design or the best marketing plan useless.

Contact forms and online support are crucial features to any website. Any form that asks visitors for their names, email addresses, phone numbers or addresses will play a fundamental role in the number of leads a website can generate.

Why isn’t anyone filling in the form?
Your website may have an excellent design and be appealing at first sight. However, if the form takes 10 minutes to fill, who is going to lose all that time? Any form that takes more than 2 minutes to complete is too demanding for most users.

Simplicity is the key!
The purpose of a form is to get enough data so that the lead is both useful and valid. From then on, the relationship with the potential client can be developed via telephone and later in person. It is important for you to know which fields are essential and which ones are not. Visitors want to fill in the minimum possible information. If there is another website requiring less information, the visitor will choose that.

Live Chat is an instant message tool that allows the company to be immediately in touch with the visitor and quickly give information.

Try these two lead boosters and see it for yourself!

Real Estate CRM: How important is the human factor?

As the business market has been evolving together with technology, companies need a technological management system able to organize information, monitor the business deal processes and manage clients. This happens because the focus is now on the human factor instead of being on the supply of data for the sales force.

The new marketing practices which are focused on the client and on his satisfaction have been assuming an important role and are, for many companies, real “triggers” to achieve positive results in financial terms. The adage that “a happy client is the best marketing there is” can be understood as the genuine recommendations a client makes to other persons.

And how important is mouth-to-mouth communication?
People are much more receptive to recommendations and opinions coming from their friends/acquaintances, than from the advertising and communication campaigns made by a company. Personally given information coming from someone within the potential client’s circle of trust increases credibility and boosts the purchasing transactions.

And how do I manage my clients?
The Customer Relationship Management is known as CRM. This client focused system allows you to manage a set of information that makes it possible to create specific offers of products/services for specific customers. As a consequence, and at the same time, these offers give clients a reason to buy again and aim to increase the loyalty of their clients.
In other words, CRM means being able to identify the preferences of your clients, understand their needs and find out the best ways to answer their requests. By permanently monitoring your clients, you will learn to deal with them and the link between clients and the real estate agency will be reinforced.

That said, the CRM may not be seen as an achieved goal. In other words, a well implemented CRM works as a mean to several ends:
- Create a preference for your real estate agency;
- Drive customers to do business with you;
- Increase the retention rate and your client’s loyalty;
- Improve your financial performance;

However, adopting a strategy set on CRM does not mean that you are going to be closer to the client. The key is learning to manage and explore the CRM. Looking at it as a changeable piece, the direction and the results should constantly be evaluated. You know, better than anyone else, that the real estate market changes, the perception of value changes, the type of client changes and the needs and preferences vary.

To optimize your relationship strategies with your clients you should start using the CRM in the best possible way, in all the departments of your real estate agency.

Everyone must work with a single purpose: the client.

I don’t have any photos of the property. What should I do?

You don’t have any photos of the property, yet?
Don’t put the property online until you have them.

Why?
There is so much information online that you only have a few seconds to catch the clients’ attention. If they are searching for properties online and your property doesn’t have any picture/photo, there is nothing for them to see. Clients will end up skipping to the next property and will probably never go back because they will prefer the properties that have already got photos.

What to do?
Good quality photos, showing both the property and its details, keep clients interested and may even lead them to request a visit. On the other hand, if a client visits a property and becomes interested in it and later on goes online to check it again and sees poor quality photos, he might easily go back in the decision to buy and/or rent it.

Be careful!
When you place a property in the market, you are competing against several other agents. If your competitor’s properties have appealing and bright photos and yours don’t, clients will not choose yours. It will also be more difficult for you to close deals because your properties are not highlighted.