marketing » Technology Tools for Real Estate

Whether it’s on your own website or on a web page created by your broker, what you say about yourself in your online profile matters. Or more specifically, the words you use to describe yourself really matter.

In general, nouns and verbs are better to use than adjectives and adverbs.

Verbs are the action words in your profile. Select words that hone in on your skill as a real estate professional and indicate your ability to add value and get the job done even in a tough economy. Consult a thesaurus or visit a website like this one to get good ideas for verbs:

Closed more than $2 million in volume in 2010.
Enabled more than a dozen families to avoid foreclose by helping them find buyers despite the financial downturn.

Adverbs describe how you do what you do. Words like skillfully and effectively are adverbs, and though we often see them on résumés, they weaken the overall profile. It’s much better to choose a strong, accurate verb than to overload your profile with adverbs. In other words, it’s better to say “I enabled a dozen families to avoid foreclosure…,” than to say, “I helped a dozen families sell their homes quickly….” The phrase with the strong verbs sounds more powerful.

Also be wary of including overused words and cliché phrases: motivated, results-oriented, and problem-solver are among the overused words LinkedIn finds in the profiles on its website. Instead of these, choose instead words that are fresh and unique, words that help you stand out from the pack.

You’ve probably seen them, those square barcode-like symbols that are popping up on buildings, on marketing material, and even on people’s business cards. They’re called QR codes (short for Quick Response) and they make it easy for anyone to encode a great deal of information in a small amount of space.

You create QR codes using a QR code generator easily found on the web. At Zebra Crossing for example, you’ll find a free open-source one that lets you imbed a URL, contact information, GEO location, text, or a calendar event into your code. In order for prospects to read the information embedded in the code, they’ll need a web-enabled mobile phone and an app for reading QR codes. QR code readers are easy to find; they’re available in the app stores of all the major phone platforms. Once the QR reader is installed, a prospect simply snaps a picture of the code and their phone “translates” it for them. If the code contains a URL, the web-enabled phone takes them to that website. If the code contains text, that text appears on their screen for them to read.

QR codes have been popular overseas for some time, especially in Japan. They’re only beginning to gain popularity in the U.S. and there’s a growing buzz about them in the real estate industry. They can be faster and easier for busy people to use than copying and pasting a URL, and they have an added “curiosity factor” since passersby can’t know what the coded message says unless they take some action. For these reasons QR codes have great marketing potential and many possible real estate uses. Here are some ways you might use them:

Use a QR code on the outside of a building to provide prospects with a digital property prospectus—text they can read on their phone that describes pricing, floorplans, listing broker information and more.
Post a video tour or a slide show of the property to the web then use a QR code to let prospects see what the property looks like on the inside even though they’re standing outside.
Use a QR code on a sign outside the property to alert prospects to an upcoming open house. Create a buzz in advance by posting QR codes around the neighborhood.
Buyer not interested in this property? No problem. Use the QR code to direct him or her to other properties nearby that are also for sale.
Add them to your Facebook page or the sidebar of your blog to let readers know about new properties or special events.

The possibilities are endless. What else can you think of?

If you want to get the most from your online marketing, make sure your landing page is topnotch. Don’t know what a landing page is? It’s easy to find out by looking at actual examples.

Conduct a search for anything on Google. The ads you see along the side of the page are placed there by businesses using Google AdWords. Click on any ad and the page you’re directed to is the landing page for that ad.

Ideally, the landing page should hone in on the business’ marketing message and encourage visitors to take the next step. But many marketing novices make the mistake of using the company’s Home page or About Us page as their landing page.

Why is that a mistake? Well, consider this: If you were showing homes to first-time buyers, you would never just unlock a home, drop them off, and tell them you’ll be back to get them later. The same is true for prospects who are interested enough to click on one of your ads. You don’t want to just plop them down at the entrance to your website. Something about your ad got their attention. You’ve got to help them find what they’re looking for.

The landing page lets you guide your prospects to the right place and then encourages them to take some action. To be most effective, it needs to be written and designed with these things in mind:

Your landing page should address whatever the ad promised. Make sure the title of the page and copy on the page are speaking to what the ad was about. For example, if the ad promised information on foreclosures, the landing page shouldn’t be about you and how long you’ve been in the business. It should be about foreclosures, about how they can get information on foreclosures, and about how your information on foreclosures will be superior to anything else they can find on the Internet.
Your landing page should have a goal. Do you want visitors to give you their e-mail address and phone number? Do you want them to register online to view properties? Decide in advance what you want from them and what they’ll get in return.
Your landing page should spell out the next step. Tell your visitors what you want them to do and make it easy for them to do it. The page should load fast and the form you want them to fill out or the action you want the to take should be quick and painless.
Your landing page should explain the benefits of what you’re offering. Why should visitors give you their contact information or sign up in your property-search portal? What exactly will they get? How will they benefit? There has to be something in it for them, and the copy on the landing page has to spell it out. The copy should also encourage them to do it now.
Your landing page should be easy to read with key information upfront. Internet surfers have many choices. If visitors can’t find what they’re looking for by skimming the page, they’re likely to move on.

An effective Internet ad campaign is not just about choosing keywords and placing ads. You’ll only generate prospects if the “back end” of your campaign—your landing page—is well thought out and well designed.

Prospecting is arguably the most important thing you do in a given day or week. Without some sort of prospecting, you can’t attract or hold onto clients and without clients, nothing else you’re doing in your professional life really matters. Prospecting is essential for your success and that’s especially true in a sluggish economy.

But what activities offer the best return and how much time should you spend doing them? Is social networking as effective as more traditional kinds of marketing? Can socialnetworking completely replace traditional marketing? Is an hour spent online engaged in social networking equivalent to, say, an hour spent doing volunteer work in the community in terms of the contacts you’ll make and the business those contacts will generate? How do you know?

A recent article in the New York Times Magazine highlights the growing number of people who use computer software and, increasingly, mobile phone applications, to track their activities. People are logging everything from their dieting and weight-loss activities to their moods, their health issues and even their sleep habits. Online and mobile productivity tools make it easy to track how you spend your time and how much social networking or marketing you’re engaged in.

If you’re already checking in throughout the day and noting where you are or what we’re doing on Twitter and Foursquare, it’s easy to add an application like BubbleTimer to the mix. BubbleTimer lets you log what you’ve been doing at 15 minutes intervals all day long. At the end of the day, you can have a clear picture of how you’ve spent your time and within a few weeks you’ll be able to spot your personal trends.

Compare the number of clients who found you online with, say, the number of hours you devoted to socialnetworking over a given period of time. Or consider the ways that the Internet and its never-ending stream of information cause you to waste time. What could you be doing instead?

Successful business owners monitor their activities and continually hone their marketing strategies and you should, too.

Because content is king, every blogger has to figure out what he or she will write about that will grow the blog’s readership and keep people coming back for more. In essence, they have to find a niche. That’s especially true for real estate professionals who need to attract a large group of followers to their blogs or Facebook pages.

One Chicago Realtor® has solved that problem nicely by making data her major focus. Fran Bailey’s Chicago Area Metro Real Estate blog regularly features easy-to-understand, visually-appealing graphs that help her readers understand the Chicago real estate market.

Offering data is a great way to pull readers in because so many homeowners want to know what their home is worth now, or how long it might take to sell it in this market, or whether prices have come down enough that they can finally afford a home in XYZ community.

Data can also be an easy blog post if you don’t like to write; charts and graphs often speak for themselves so you don’t need a lot of other copy. In addition, there’s no shortage of material; information about the real estate market is everywhere. You just need to be good at grabbing small bits of it and putting it in an interesting format.

Fran’s posts often feature a particular neighborhood in the city or just one suburb. Sometimes they’re about only one type of property. In a recent post, for example, she presented data on the price distribution of 4-bedroom homes in just one suburb. Fran does post articles about other things, but her frequent use of data gives her blog a predictability that readers can depend on.

So, what’s your niche?