This little gem was making the rounds earlier this week:

Where to begin…

The business of real estate technology has gone through monumental shifts since we started our company in 2005. But one thing has remained constant: the way to generate prospects on the internet is to provide value in the form of unique content. No buzzwords. No glittering generalities about “studies” with no sources. Just hard work, over time.

Essentially what the guy above is saying is his firm provides a website that tracks behavior and presents content: 3BR homes on the lake, uptown condos, etc. Not exactly rocket science. And here’s the thing – you press one button and you can get that stuff on any real estate site.

Our message isn’t overly exciting or fun. It’s like when Warren Buffet explains that the way to build wealth is to buy stock in good companies and hold it for 30 years. People yawn and look for the guy offering the tip on the hot penny stock.

Not to toot our own horn, but we’ve been developing real estate tech for almost 15 years. Our founder is not only a “tech guy” but has a real estate broker license in 2 states. During our time in business, we’ve seen it all, but the core message we deliver to clients has not changed. To repeat: the way to generate prospects on the internet is to provide value in the form of unique content.

So, before you run to your broker to tell him/her you’re quitting to join a firm that will give you “free” technology, take a step back and read between the lines. And please, email us and ask for a sanity check. If something’s truly worthwhile, we’ll tell you! We promise. There’s a lot of great stuff out there now, but sadly a lot more “clunkers” masquerading as fancy sports cars.

Lead generation is vital to your business, but once you generate leads, are you doing a good job converting them?

When a prospective buyer sends an inquiry via your website, if you’re not responding quickly (preferably within 15 minutes) to that inquiry, your chance of converting that lead suffers.

One of the most common problems we see with firms (or teams of agents) is a lack of accountability with lead responses.  Leads will get assigned and there’s no telling which agents are responding quickly (if at all).

With this in mind, we were thrilled to stumble on some really cool new technology: LeadRobin.  This product automates lead distribution and allows you to monitor agent performance.

LeadRobin allows you to set up rules for lead distribution, such as “Dilworth subdivision, price over $300k” and then set up lists of agents to receive those leads.  A lead is distributed to “Agent A” and if that agent doesn’t answer the lead within a given time frame (say, 15 minutes), the lead goes to “Agent B,” and so on.

LeadRobin lets you monitor your agents to see who is failing to answer leads & who is the fastest responder.

This is an indispensable tool in today’s market, when buyers demand FAST responses.  Even 1 missed lead could cost you thousands of dollars.  LeadRobin starts at $50/month, which is a small price to pay to ensure that no leads are missed.

Over the past decade, we’ve worked with hundreds of agents and seen a whole lot of different tactics to get Internet leads.  Since “how do I get leads?” is the most popular question we hear from clients, we’ll lay everything on the table for you.

There are 2 distinct ways to get Internet leads and we will go over the pros & cons.

As a general rule, developing your own content & getting organic traffic is the best long-term strategy.  It’s a LOT cheaper over the long run, and the quality of the leads are significantly better.  We asked a current client of ours to describe her experience buying leads and here’s what she said:

Trulia/Zillow was a huge waste of money for me.  I did a 6-month campaign and spent about $1500 and literally the only leads I got were for rentals or for homes that sold 2 years ago.  What you’re buying with Trulia/Zillow is placement on their property pages so that if a buyer finds the house, your name shows up in the top 3.  But for whatever reason, I didn’t get a single lead on a real house for sale in 6 months.

Realtor.com was a little better — they scrub their leads so that you’re getting a real email address & phone number and they guarantee a certain number of leads per month.  But it’s pricey and most of the leads I got were for houses under $100k.

Writing good, quality content (and lots of it) on your own website is definitely harder work, and quite frankly a lot of agents would PREFER to throw hundreds of dollars a month at Trulia/Zillow with the hope that they’ll get a decent lead or two.  But without any doubt, our most successful clients are the ones who put the time/effort into building their own Internet presence, with good local content.

So what do I do?

Believe it or not, about 85% of what you need to do is pretty much common sense.  Start a website.  Have an IDX/property search that captures leads.  Write blog posts with good LOCAL content at least 2 or 3 times per week.  Then use Facebook / Twitter to drive traffic to those blog posts.  Rinse, repeat!

There are certain techniques that can help raise your rankings but in general, it’s all about content.  CONTENT, CONTENT, CONTENT!

We’ve said it again & again.  There is no secret or magic bullet to getting Internet leads.  It requires hard work & patience, and the agents who put in the time/effort to attract traffic are the ones who get the leads.

We always like to share good ideas, and this article is full of them!  It includes 10 “no-nonsense” ways you can improve your search engine rankings.  It’s full of good info, but 1 paragraph stood out:

With Google recently making moves to punish “over-optimized” sites, you have to recognize that fact that a site built just to rank runs the risk of being penalized and losing all of its traffic.

Many tech consultants will focus purely on “tricks” to get you ranked for the short term, when the reality is that the path to long-term success is GOOD, ORIGINAL CONTENT that readers find useful.

Search engine optimization is a lot like weight loss.  Yes, there are crash-diets that can take weight off.  But study after study has shown that the only way to take weight off & keep it off is permanent lifestyle change.  But most weight loss companies aren’t going to tell you “eat a little less, move around a little more.” It’s the same concept.

So, get blogging!