EDITION 03
Read time: under 5 minutes
Welcome back.
Before you jump into this week’s updates, we have an offer for you (no cost, no catch)…
Reply to this email with your website URL and we’ll reply back with 3 reasonable things you can implement to make it more effective.
We’ve optimized well over 20,000 real estate websites at this point, so we’d love to share some of that experience with you.
Ok…let’s get into this week’s info, which we think you’ll find especially helpful.
If you missed our previous editions (there have only been 2 so far), you can check them out here.
Or, if you’re caught up, let’s jump into what we have for you in our 3rd edition.
Scroll down for one actionable tip, one handy tool, and one essential news story that will impact your lead generation efforts.
The Right Way to Think About Keywords If You Want Leads, Not Just Traffic
We’ve been doing real estate Internet marketing long enough to remember when you could stuff some basic keywords in your content, title tags, meta tags, and sitewide links and have a realistic chance of ranking and getting tons of organic search traffic from Google, Yahoo, and Bing.
Those days are long gone.
Although this evolution has been a net positive for the end consumer using search engines, it’s undoubtedly made competing in the organic results nearly impossible for smaller websites trying to earn traffic.
If you’ve made any significant attempt to get your website ranked organically, you know what we’re talking about.
What if we told you that you CAN still compete and that the traffic you can get will be even BETTER than what many high-ranking websites get?
Don’t worry; this is not a SEO pitch. We actually don’t recommend SEO as a primary Internet marketing strategy for most Realtors, but we’ll save that explanation for a future edition.
If you want to earn organic traffic from Google and Bing (don’t ignore them because of their small market share), you need to change how you think about your keyword strategy.
More specifically…
You need to create content and optimize your website around solution-oriented key phrases, not top-of-funnel search queries with high search volume.
People using solution-oriented search queries have higher engagement rates. They are far more likely to convert on your website than someone using a broad, general query like “Los Angeles real estate.”
What are solution-oriented keywords?
Here are some practical examples that you can start using today:
help selling and buying a home at the same time
best Realtor for 1031 exchanges near me
what improvements should I make to my home before selling it?
relocation specialist los angeles to austin
gated communities near the best schools in westlake village
Do you see the difference between these and the usual “[insert city] homes for sale”?
Yes, these queries will have far less traffic than the big, juicy ones that too many Realtors get hung up on.
This is a good thing for a few reasons:
You will never rank #1 (the only organic position that matters) for the big, broad terms. You will probably never rank #1 for the next tier of queries, either. You’ll save time and money by not chasing these.
These solution-oriented key phrases have less competition (for now) so you should see rankings (and traffic) from them much quicker. You’ll see far higher conversion rates from these visitors.
Targeting these phrases will force you to really understand your target audience as you won’t know what content to create without knowing their most common problems that need solutions. Your web lead to client conversion rate will be much higher as you’ll understand and connect with your audience more granularly.
On board?
Good. Here’s what to do next…
Make a list of the top 10-20 problems that your buyers, sellers, renters, and investors come to you with the most
Brainstorm 2-3 content ideas for each problem. These could be blog posts, videos, interviews, or audio recordings of you discussing these problems.
Create a shortlist (no more than 3, preferably just 1) of the solutions you provide that address and solve each problem. Make sure to put these on your “Why Work with Us?” page (see Edition 01).
Distribute (cross-post to different platforms) and promote (run ads) your hard work so your prospects know it exists
Collect feedback from people who come to your website from this content and inquire with you (even if they don’t become clients). Ask what resonated with them and if there was anything they wish that you expanded on or addressed.
This may seem like a lot to do, but if you have to take away one thing, it’s this…
Change your mindset. Stop caring about vanity rankings that you’ll never get. Focus on providing real solutions to the real problems that your prospects are looking for.
Get Powerful Audience Insights to Reach, Connect with, and Convert More Prospects
The secret to more effective online marketing is knowing your target audience down to the most minor details.
Where do they spend time online?
What do they talk about?
Who are they influenced by?
These are important questions to know the answers to if you want to attract and convert more of the clients you love working with.
The problem is this information has not been easy to find, curate, or analyze.
This brings us to our recommended tool for this week.
Tool: SparkToro - Get insightful audience research in seconds
Overview: SparkToro shows you who your audience is, what they talk about, and where to reach them, delivering valuable audience data in seconds.
Helpful Features:
Demographic data: Employment data, skills and interests, gender and age, education, geography, and political leanings.
Text insights: Words, phrases, and hashtags people use publicly online.
Sources of influence: Social accounts, websites, press publications, podcasts, and YouTube channels people engage with.
List and data exports: Create and manage lists within SparkToro and export spreadsheets for team collaboration.
In case you’re thinking…
“Ok, this looks and sounds nice, but how exactly would I use this for my real estate business?”
Like this…
Let’s assume you’re a Los Angeles Realtor who works exclusively with higher-end buyers and sellers. Your market is saturated and competitive and you’re looking for a creative, but effective way to generate new business. Paid ads have become too expensive and SEO is not even an option.
One simple query in SparkToro can give you the following information:
Sample report from SparkToro
This one report gives you some very credible ideas:
Get interviewed on and/or advertise on one of the listed podcasts
Run ads on the listed YouTube Channels
Contact a relevant journalist from one of the listed publications for a story feature
Participate in one of the listed Subreddits
We could keep going as the opportunities are endless.
Go try out SparkToro for yourself, though. At the very least, it will force you to learn more about your ideal customers.
Pew Research Center Report: Americans’ Social Media Use
Continuing on our theme of really understanding your audience, we want to share a recent report from Pew Research Center that offers valuable data for any real estate professional interested in generating leads from social media.
The report breaks down the following:
The most used social media sites by Americans
The age differences in who uses each site/app
Other demographic (race, ethnicity, gender, education) differences across the most used sites
Here are some of our main takeaways that could be helpful to you:
YouTube and Facebook are the only two platforms that majorities of all age groups use.
Americans ages 30 to 49 stand out for using three of the platforms – LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Facebook – at higher rates.
Adults with higher household incomes use X (formerly Twitter) at somewhat higher rates.
A third of U.S. adults (33%) say they use TikTok, up 12 percentage points from 2021 (21%).
Just by cross-referencing what you know about your ideal clients with the data from this report can tell you where - and even when - to get your message in front of these people.
This is one of the reasons why we love online marketing so much…
There is never a shortage of data to help someone make intelligent marketing decisions if they’re willing to spend the time and effort paying attention to the information that is readily available.
What did you think of this week's email?
Thanks for reading.
See you next week.
The Real Estate Marketing Update Team @ imFORZA