Guide to Online Marketing

OK, so you have a website. Now What?? How do you tap into the power of technology to create an effective marketing campaign for your real estate services? How do you drive traffic to your site? What are the best ways to capture e-leads from your site? How do you convert prospects? What online marketing techniques can you employ to help your business grow??

Well now there is a wonderful book out that I have to recommend. It is entitled Real Estate Rainmaker: Guide to Online Marketing by Dan Gooder Richard.

This book is so good, that I wish I could claim authorship. Dan says it pretty much the way it is…and if you follow even 25% of what he suggests, I can’t imagine that your online business would do anything but increase.

He includes information in his book such as “20 new rules of online marketing,” “6 Steps to an effective online marketing plan,” Techniques to capture leads from the web” and much more.

If you can make a commitment to browse…or better yet…to read this book, you and your website will be better for it. Agents that understand their web site, how their visitors interact with it, and then how they in return interact with their visitors is key to online marketing. Some principles remain the same as face-to-face, yet others are dramatically different. If you don’t understand the differences, your online business will suffer.

“Nuff said…get the book…read it…implement some of the ideas, and watch your bottom line grow!

Thousands of Photos

Good photos for web sites can sometimes be difficult to find. GraphicalData provides a lot of photos in many categories…more so than seems apparent at a cursory glance…thousands, in fact. There are many subcategories of differing topics within each category…each with its own grouping of pictures. Some you would probably never use, but there are many others that you would use.

So, if you are constructing a page and find yourself short a photo, check out what’s available. Where are they at??? When in the web page design section, go to the image upload area found by clicking “Images” in the blue, left nav bar. Rather than uploading an image which is what you would usually do here, navigate down to the next section and note the link that says “Click here to browse our catalog.” From here you can visit the many categories of photos.

My only comment here would be that any time you are selecting a photo for your front page, and you are uploading it from whatever the source may be, make sure your photo is relevant, of high quality, appropriate size and the like. Your entry page really sets the stage for a visitor, and that old adage applies here. You only have one chance to make a good, first impression.

Creating Links From Within Your Website

Did you know that you can create a link most anywhere on a given page in your website which will pull up another site? By this I mean from within the body of a page…not from a navigation button that you create on the side nav bar. You can link text or graphics to any http: address merely by using the link option found in your html editor [Note: Now updated and called the Page Layout Tool].

If you want to link a text word or phrase to another website, just highlight the word or phrase, then select the (chain) link tool found in your html editor’s toolbar. It provides a field to paste or type in the http address that you want to link to. Do so, and then save your work and you should then have a link to an external web site.

You can do the same thing with a graphic you have placed on your page (of course, you need to upload it first…and it could be a logo to the site you are going to link to). So, first place the graphic using the image placing tool found in your html editor’s tool bar. Then click on the image and select your link tool; paste or type the http address that you want to link to into the provided field and you have a link from your graphic to another website.

A spin off from the above is as follows: Let’s say you are creating a new page with whatever content and using the html editor. As you develop your script, you realize that it might be nice to have a few of the words here or there link to another article or page in your site. Easy to do! Just pull up the page in your site that you want to link to in your browser…copy the link out of the address window in the top of your browser…go back to the page you are developing…highlight the word(s) you want to link from…select the link tool in your html editor and paste in the link. Poof! You now have a link to another area of your site.

Any of the above means of linking can be beneficial depending upon the intended purpose of your link.

Web Site Statistics - Track and Analyze Your Website Traffic

Maintaining a successful website is an ongoing process, and visitor data is crucial to getting optimum results.

Most web providers offer traffic statistical data to their clients. It can be one of the most important tools in measuring the effectiveness of your website. By taking the time to understand this data, you can begin to understand the motivations and interests of your visitors. GraphicalData provides statistics for your website, and the best part is…at no additional cost.

As you review the data provided in your stat report, there are many things you can review. Are many of your visitors leaving from one particular page? Maybe according to plan or perhaps you should make some changes to keep their interest. Are most of them looking at one particular part of your site? Perhaps you should make it a more featured area. Since this data updates on a regular basis, you are also able to gauge the effectiveness of any changes that you make. These are only a couple of examples, as there are many more useful bits of information available- what search terms your visitors are using to find you, what sites are bringing you the most traffic, etc.

Each website owner should track statistics which can provide insite into the following (to name a few):

* Find out about your visitor behavior - which sections of your site your visitors are viewing and where you lose them.

* Measure marketing efforts. Look at trends in traffic during a particular marketing campaign.

* Optimize your site for search engines. Find out which search engine keywords and search engines visitors are using to find your site. Keep your listings fresh on those search engines. Also, use this information to find where your site is not listed so you can optimize and submit your site to those search engines.

These statistics provide you with valuable information in tracking the patterns of your visitors and measuring your marketing efforts, thus helping you to optimize your website for maximum sales - whether it be in site design or for search engine rankings.

You can find your statistics in the GD admin center for your site under the Website section. Look to the left nav bar and click on BETAstats (this is a temporary name). There you can review stats in real time and visit past months as well.

Update: We are now using Google Analytics for website statistics. Review the latest article here.