Comments on: Turning Leads into Clients

By: AgentGenius

AgentGenius — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 09:36:05 +0000

#agnow Rob, I moved to Wordpress about 4 months ago. I made a pretty big mistake in changing domain names so my o... http://bit.ly/3mhgA

By: stephanie crawford

stephanie crawford — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 04:08:51 +0000

Rob,
I moved to WordPress about 4 months ago. I made a pretty big mistake in changing domain names so my organic rankings have fallen a bit – but they really weren’t anything to get too excited about in the first place,

Where I’m running into issues lately in Nashville is that a ton of agents in my area seem to have started using PPC all of a sudden. Our big newspaper The Tennessean has recently gotten into the website, print marketing, PPC game and apparently they’ve been pretty successful getting agents to sign-up. The keywords that used to work for me are now far too expensive and the longtails I’m trying for specific neighborhood landing pages just aren’t getting any activity.

I have a PPC budget of $7 a day, I used to see 40-50 registrations a month with 1200 or so unique visitors. Now I’m getting about 20 registrations with 800 visitors.

By: AgentGenius

AgentGenius — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 20:48:10 +0000

#agnow Cindy: Good comments. Nice site as well. I like the call 3x before leaving a message. Had not heard th... http://bit.ly/3mhgA

By: AgentGenius

AgentGenius — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 19:35:39 +0000

#agnow Lot to take in on this discussion. I run pretty basic, one website, one IDX (Wolfnet) and one client follow... http://bit.ly/3mhgA

By: Rob McCance

Rob McCance — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 15:48:08 +0000

Cindy:

Good comments. Nice site as well.

I like the call 3x before leaving a message. Had not heard this one before. So, you leave the message on the 3rd call? How far apart are the calls scheduled?

Also, regarding the newsletter, I assume this is emailed. I personally have not been this aggressive with my registrants, but why not, right? Could you email me an example of your newsletter?

10% conversion is fantastic. I’m seeing more like 1% so I’m looking to make some changes in 2010. I get around 100 registrations a month, but I sense my entire site, content, adwords, etc., is all getting a little stale. I want to move it all to a WordPress site so that it’s content is more easily managed and more dynamic.

Thanks!

Rob

By: Cindy Marchant

Cindy Marchant — Sat, 09 Jan 2010 14:35:36 +0000

Lot to take in on this discussion. I run pretty basic, one website, one IDX (Wolfnet) and one client follow up (Top Producer) which my team uses; I pass all the leads. We get about 45 leads a month which is peanuts compared to Paula (but then, she is the master at SEO). We convert over 10% though so my leads are strong. I require a registration after three free looks and have found it to work the best for me (I’ve done everything from no registration to one to 10 looks). We always call if a phone number is given, three times before we leave a messag. In this generation, the person seems to call us back because they don’t want to miss a call. We also, like Paula we put them on a newsletter that comes once a month and we hear this often, “love the newsletter over the last X months, do you know anything about Y subdivision” and so it starts.

By: John Wake

John Wake — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 06:58:58 +0000

Ben, spectacular use of a blog to communicate with clients! I jerry rigged something similar once on a WP site with a client and it worked well except that I discovered the page showed up in my sitemap! Not acceptable. I used the page like a little transaction manager, I’d list everything I did to market the home and uploaded the docs to the page. I think it impressed the client a lot but it was clumsy and time consuming to use a WP page that way. I like your solution a lot.

Bruce, I can appreciate your tutorial. Here’s mine; http://www.arizonahomescatalog.com.

By: Bruce Lemieux

Bruce Lemieux — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 02:55:30 +0000

Rob – When you talk to DS, see if the give you any direction for adding counties. I would like to see this added as a separate search selection. Once selected, all other values in the area field (zip, neighborhood, city & school) would be constrained by the county selection. For big metro areas, this seems like basic functionality to me.

As far as I can tell, Bloggers are the only ones who know what RSS is. This is an example of how I integrate an RSS page in my site and why I like it – http://mocorealestate.com/new/clarksburg/

I also agree that the user interface is not as intuitive as it should be. Here’s why I think this is the case. They have the full search and the map results on a single page – I don’t think there’s another search with a simpler-looking interface. The *problem* with this design – the user has too know how to build their search by putting multiple values into the ‘ City, Community, Tract, Zip’ field. And, these values are for the entire MLS — which would be OK for a small MLS, but not for large metro areas. Same with the schools – every single elementary, middle and high school for the entire MLS area is available for selection.

By: Atlanta Real Estate

Atlanta Real Estate — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 02:17:30 +0000

Very cool, makes sense and that’s what I thought might go in that area.

If you are expecting any traffic to that site you might want to hurry and get all the “Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet..” off the front page. I always chuckle when I see that on web sites because it tells me that the site was a template, not that there’s anything wrong with that.

My first site was a template site, a free one no less. It’s still up n running, ranking on page one of Google for many low volume search terms: http://www.georgiarealtygrp.com/

Ahhh, that little bugger brings back many a fond memory.

By: Ben Goheen

Ben Goheen — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 02:08:47 +0000

Rob: don’t think I turned off any features, I just prefer a clean looking site without many widgets. Yes I changed my WP theme a couple weeks ago and am working on getting everything setup on the main page. The flu and 3 weekends of weddings hasn’t helped with making changes, but they are coming soon.

I was pleasantly surprised when I found this template with a client login area. I use a plugin that allows me to add special password protected page for each client. When they login, that page has an embedded widget (one of the few that I use) from box.net where I have all their forms. See the screenshot here: http://www.twitpic.com/lg6bp/full