I went the tech seminar at KW reunion. There was basically a panel of agents that have good results from their online marketing. I can’t believe I sat through the entire seminar and did not hear one comment about blogging. Unbelievable!!!

A lot of talk about google adwords, and drip campaigns, and immediate follow-up.

1. Google adwords…If you have a template website that you have from your broker, or really any other type of template website, DO NOT USE GOOGLE ADWORDS. You are wasting your money.
IF you want to get leads off the internet, make sure you have lead capture on your site, and items that catch attention. Offer e-books on investing, buying fixers, etc…

2. One of the panelists talked about how she had a link on her site that allowed people to call her??????
Are you paying for this? If I’m not mistaken, she made it sound like a button that would open a window and you could then add your phone number which will get texted to the agents phone. The agent then has to call the person back.

This reminds me on when I was trying to set my 90 year old grandmother with an email account. I explained all the benefits how she can communicate with us at anytime, and we can send her messages…she then said, “If I want to talk to you, I will pick up the phone” I was dumbfounded. What a concept. I had no comeback. She was right. Just Think if I did set her up? She probably would have sent some hacker her bank account number because she would have received a Paypal spoof email. I was going to set her up with a Myspace account, but decided to pass.

So instead of putting a link to add a phone number to call them back, why not just put your phone number???
Again, I hope your not paying for that. Don’t get me wrong I think IVR is a must, but this sounded like a bad product. She did not know the company she was using.

3. Remember, your website is not an end, it is a beginning. You now have to market your website. So many people talk about Top-producer, for follow-up and drip email (which we do not use BTW). Do not focus on Your CRM, focus on getting leads. I think a lot of agents want to be ready for the thousands of leads they are going to get from the internet even before they have 1 website. My advice, use outlook, set up a manual system, then focus on the marketing you will need to do for your website.

4. Don’t put adwords on your real estate site if you want leads. If you want to monetize your site, that’s fine, but you cannot get leads, and monetize. I really mean you can but why? One of the panelist talked about he had had adwords on his stealth site because for him, it made money and took money from their competitors. This is true, he made about 50 cents when that person clicked on the adwords, and the other agent paid about $2.00 for the click, but you just sent someone to another agents site???? was that lead worth the 50 cents you got?

based on a typical commission, $5,000. At 50 cents each, you would send 10,000 potential clients to other websites. How many people out of that 10,000 might have used you to buy or sell a home?

Bottom line, don’t pass leads to other sites… Very bad advice!

At the end, it was time for question and answer, so I asked the question, “Do any of you blog?”. They all did. One had 3 blogs. The other said he loved blogging, because its free, and you can blog about stuff that you don’t normally talk about. This means good keywords…So why did none of them talk about during the seminar?

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