Why Your Online Strategy Is Failing (and What You Should Do About It)

Direct-response copywriter and author Dan Kennedy teaches that in order for your marketing campaign to be a smash-hit success you need to hit on three critical components (otherwise known as the “Results Triangle”).

Those three components are: a Marketing Message, a Media to deliver it, and a Market to receive it and respond to it.

In real estate, in order to effectively generate and close online leads you need three critical components as well:

1. An IDX-powered website
2. Site traffic (paid or earned)
3. An effective follow up sales process

That’s it.

Get these 3 key elements working together and you’ll be closing escrows every month.

But get one of them wrong, like failing to put an effective follow up sales process in place, and you’ll struggle to get a deal into escrow.

So the question to ask yourself is this …

Is your triangle strong on all sides or are you missing a critical component?

An IDX-Powered Website

IDX alone isn’t what’s going to get your website to rank well in search engines. (Read: Why IDX First Is A Bad Strategy).

You need a strong foundation of helpful content to attract and engage potential customers and an IDX system to convert them into subscribers.

Signing up for an email list is nice and all but signing up to get listing updates by email is much more powerful when what you’re trying to do is help someone buy a house.

These days you can build your own lead generating real estate website by investing in a solid hosting account – Web Synthesis and WP Engine to name a few – purchasing a premium theme like the AgentPress Pro theme from StudioPress, and installing an IDX solution for lead capture.

Don’t want to go through the trouble of building your own website? No problem. You can buy a mobile-responsive, IDX enabled website from Placester for as little as $10 per month.

Bottom line: you need a website and an IDX system. And with today’s affordable technology options you have no excuse not to have one.

Site Traffic (Paid & Earned)

SEO is long-term. You can’t expect immediate results.

But investing in a solid content strategy is how this real estate blog went from 2,000 to 18,000 site visitors per month.

Yes, creating high quality content takes time. But it pays off in the long-term.

If you’re in a hurry pay-per-click (PPC) is a great way to generate some quick wins and drive traffic and conversions to a brand new website and it’s a great way to complement your organic content strategy.

Bottom line: Always, always work on creating high quality content that attracts potential buyers and sellers to your site. And if you want to generate some quick IDX registrations to try to get some deals into escrow then it’s a smart move to invest some of your budget in a PPC campaign.

Recommend reading:

• How To Create a Community Landing Page That Converts
• 3 Types of Must-Have Content for Your Real Estate Blog
• Why PPC Should Be A Part of Your Online Marketing Strategy

An Effective Follow-Up Sales Process

Most real estate agents fail to successfully convert online leads into commission dollars for one simple reason: they don’t have a proper follow up sales process in place.

An effective follow up sales process consists of:

1. Fast time-to-first-response. This means calling your lead as soon as they’ve registered or expressed interest.
2. Setting up listing alerts so that they get “hooked” and so that they keep coming back to your website to look at new listings over and over again until they’re ready to buy.
3. Using drip campaigns to nurture and build a relationship over the long-term. Lots of leads won’t be ready to buy the moment that they register. That doesn’t necessarily mean they won’t be ready 60, 90, or 120 days from now.

How Strong Is Your Triangle? 

So the thing I want you to ask yourself today is: how strong is your triangle?

What can you improve today to get better results tomorrow?