Real Estate Investment 101: How to Get The Most Out of Your Website
In this day and age, having a good, solid web presence is important for businesses of all stripes. How do you as a real estate investor ensure that your website is actually helping and not hurting your business?
For one, websites are only as good as the purpose they serve, that is, you can have a great looking and functional website but if it doesn’t serve the needs of your business and your customers, it might as well be useless.
As a real estate investor, what’s the primary purpose behind your website, and how does it fit your overall business model? Chances are, the objective is generating leads. The means behind that objective is marketing. Marketing gets your phone ringing and the more times your phone rings, the higher your chances are that you’ll come across a deal. You need a way to consistently keep your phone ringing.
There are two forms of lead generation: outbound and inbound. Outbound leads happen when you actively seek them out through door-to-door tactics, as it were, such as email marketing. Inbound leads are a little more effortless on your end, in that leads come to you through a constant source such as your website. In those cases, the leads seek you out rather than the other way around.
Now, some investors keen on giving advice will suggest that websites facilitate inbound leads, and that’s why you should focus on having a good site for your business. That’s halfway true, but we’re here to tell you that the best websites should facilitate both inbound and outbound leads. In other words, a good website will be functional enough and maintain your web presence to the extent that inbound leads come to you, but it should also set you up to win in your outbound marketing efforts.
Design and functionality
On the front end, your website should be clean, visually appealing, and naturally lead visitors to engage while directing them to where they need to go. There’s no need to worry about too many bells and whistles, but anything you do have should be in good working order and ensure smooth operation. On the back end, in terms of functionality, load times should be quick and seamless while navigation should be understandable and simple.
Content
A website that’s not populated with good content isn’t really a website at all. You’ll want to make sure you have images, videos, and easily navigable ways to find your properties that are for sale. You’ll also want to ensure visitors know what you do and how to find you! Have contact information. Make sure they can see videos and images of renovations and newly listed homes.
Blogs
Speaking of content, blogs are a huge part of that. They’re your way of getting your audience to understand how you go about your business as it pertains to the real estate market, and they just might learn something while they’re at it! Blogs are a way for you to have a continuous stream of content that’s optimized for the keywords most often searched by people in your field. By staying relevant and keeping up to speed with frequently searched terms, you pull a larger audience to your site.
Contact
In this day and age, there’s simply no excuse to not have a detailed contact form on your website, complete with a Google map. There are numerous plugins allowing you to display a map with your address, not to mention email contact forms and even call buttons for mobile users. Let people know how they can find you! It sounds simple, but it makes a difference. Make it easy for leads to come in, and ensure that your inbox and phone are full of opportunities.
Social Media
A good social media presence is absolutely crucial, but it does you no good unless you have a coherent strategy for going about it that factors in your business objective and utilizes your website as a central hub. If your website is your hub (where you control the environment and present the actions your audience needs to take), then social media and the wider web in general constitute the spokes. Integrating your website with social links help facilitate that connection, along with embedded social content into your site. The reverse is true as well, in that your social media strategy should hinge upon getting people to your site. The simplest example is with blogs: not only should you post your blogs to various social platforms, you should make it easy for others to do so as well.
Email Lists/Squeeze Pages
Email marketing is an extremely effective but often underused tool, and you should be using it. More to the point, your website should feature ways for people to subscribe to your email list, and this is an example of using your website to set yourself up to win in your outbound marketing efforts, of which email lists are one example. Easily accessible sidebar forms so users can subscribe to updates and newsletters ensure that you can contact them easily all at the same time to keep them in the loop. A squeeze page, or a page dedicated to a list subscription form, is a good idea because you can advertise that on the wider web.
A Final Word
If you’re wondering when the right time is to build a website, the answer is now. The longer your page is up, the more easily it will turn up in search engine results. The more it turns up in search engine results, the more traffic it gets. In turn, the more traffic it gets, the higher it places in search results, and the cycle continues. By maintaining a robust social media presence and populating your website regularly with content, you facilitate this process even more quickly. Even if all you can manage right now is a very simple, bare-bones website, go ahead and get it up. You can always edit and adjust it later as you grow.
The simple fact is that a website with these minimum features is absolutely necessary for the modern real estate investor. As your web presence grows through website traffic, social media followers and engagement, and email list subscriptions, the more leads will come your way. For more perspectives on real estate investment, check back with us each week as we post new blogs and be sure to sign up for our Priority Access List for advance listings and market advice. You can also keep up with us on Facebook and Twitter!
– Get It Right Solutions