Listen to the CarrotCast Podcast and Subscribe Below!
Anything that’s worth doing is worth sucking at, first. I think that’s a Gary Halbert think that he said. And, you don’t start writing and immediately build an audience. It takes time. I tell everybody, if you won’t write for one then you won’t write for a 1000. Ryan Fletcher
*Warning: This podcast contains explicit language*
Brand storytelling pretty much works for everyone. If done right, it can be one of the most effective pieces of your content marketing strategy. We’re living in a time of competition clutter and brand storytelling is one way to keep your brand from conforming to the herd.
How can you grow your business to make you the only viable option for leads without having to go door to door or make cold calls?
How can you tell a more influential story to cut through the clutter and become a driving force behind that story?
How do you create a credible brand where before leads even reach out, they’re likely to go with you because of what you’ve done in your community?
So many investors and agents fall into the short term marketing “tactics” trap and lose focus on building the foundation for an amazing long-term business.
On this episode of the CarrotCast, Ryan Fletcher, host of the Agent Marketing Syndicate Podcast and author of Defeat Mega Agents, joins us to discuss gaining control of your business and avoiding some of the “tactics” that may lead you down the wrong path.
If you’re looking to rely on Facebook ads, AdWords, Craiglist… then great!
But, thispodcast is for the serious, long-term agent and investor.
Build credibility and community!
Enjoy and be sure to listen to our other CarrotCast episodes at carrotcast.com.
Listen to the Podcast
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It’s easy to get caught up in all of the training and coachings, but you need to take control of your brand by telling a story.
But… how do you accomplish that? How do you create a brand that is so good that leads can’t ignore you? Find out on this episode of the CarrotCast.
Enjoy!
3:00 – What pushed Ryan into real estate and from $8k to $180k within one year. 7:15 – Breaking through the mindset that extended content doesn’t work. 12-page sales letters – people read them because they’re not boring. 10:00 – How Agent Marketing Syndicate helps agents break away from the clutter. HINT: Build relationships 3-5 years before someone is even in the market to sell their house. 13:30 – Creating content that builds relationships through a message and having patience. 15:00 – Why building relationships in the community and outside of real estate are so important for long-term success. 20:10 – How Ryan gets his real estate message out. The HEART is hardcopy mailers then repurposing via social media. 22:15 – Changing the failure mindset and pulling away from the canned real estate agent thinking. Building confidence to put your story on paper. 27:30 – Having a passion for great service: What is the Impact Club and how it brings together communities for the greater good. 34:30 – Creating a process for being in it for the long game. 38:15 – Want to become a better marketer? 41:10 – Making business shifts. The difference it can make in life, with friends, and with family. 47:30 –3 Things you can do to set yourself up so others have a hard time competing against you. 52:20 – Brand Storytelling: 3 Main levels you need to commit to in order to stand out from the crowd.
Are you doing some offline real estate marketing as well as online real estate marketing? We’re talking direct mail, bandit signs, radio, TV, etc. If you are, you need to watch this video because this video’s going to walk you through how to increase the return on investment that you get with your offline marketing, leveraging online marketing.
Why Online Real Estate Marketing Can Boost Your Offline ROI
Now with this topic, one of the biggest things that we always look for to help our high-achieving investors is how do you squeeze more return on investment out of your marketing?
A lot of people come to us just for online real estate marketing help. The problem is they kind of think of that in a capsule or silo. They’re not thinking about, “How does my offline marketing work with my real estate marketing online?
If you do them correctly, they actually work together really well to help you make more money.
New Consumer Path to Opt-in or Purchase
On one side of the equation, you’ve got your offline marketing. Direct mail, bandit signs, TV, radio, referrals, etc. Maybe you’re only doing one of these. Maybe you’re doing none of them.
If you’re investing money there, then you’re putting marketing messages in front of your prospects. Now in today’s day and age what happens is, according to lots of studies and this one, in particular, 85% of people when they have to make a big financial decision, they search online before they actually make that decision.
Picture yourself at Home Depot, or you’re going to buy a car. Almost none of us make decisions like that without whipping out our phone or our computer and searching online to find reviews or ratings, or finding other options and alternatives.
House sellers, house buyers, investment property buyers, everyone does the same thing.
What do we do to make sure that when we introduce those people to our brand through our offline marketing, that we’re then capturing them when they go online?
You can’t do it with a website that doesn’t perform well. If someone’s going to go online, they’re going to research your company after they received your postcard, as an example. They’re going to go online and they’re going to look at your website.
Also, are you building a recognizable brand? Can searchers say, “This is a company name that I can lock into my mind.” Or, “I can lock that person’s face that’s on that website into my mind.”
It’s memorable.
Or, is there a testimonial on your website that really resonated with them. We need to make sure the story we’re telling them online is helping to support and further the sale of your offline marketing.
Optimize Your Real Estate SEO for Certain Keyword Phrases
One other really important thing that you guys should be doing with your online marketing to help your offline marketing better, is even if you’re not using your website on your direct mail pieces or your TV advertisements, people are Googling your company name.
They’re Googling the phone number that’s on there. They’re Googling anything that they can find that’s identifiable on that direct mail piece or offline marketing to then go research your company.
Often times they’ll put the word ‘reviews’ at the end of it, such as ABC Properties reviews.
Make sure your website’s ranked really, really well for that search phrase, and there are some tools inside of InvestorCarrot that can help you do that.
Once someone gets there, are they actually going to convert into a lead? You need to make sure you have a high performing website.
Once someone gets there, you need to make sure you’re then retargeting them. Go to Facebook and go to Google, wherever you want to do your retargeting and get the Facebook pixel. It’s one little piece of code and it’s free to get in the Facebook ads manager.
Put that on your website. With Carrot, it takes about 10 seconds. Just go in our Help section or hit up our support and they’ll help you.
Then, from then on, anyone who visits your website is going to be basically tracked by Facebook. These are people who have visited your website. A list will begin to be built within Facebook and now you can re-market to those people to get them to come back.
What we find is often times a person is not ready to actually engage with you in that first visit. Over half of all of your visitors won’t be ready to engage with you in the first visit, so that means we need to get them back and that’s where your retargeting comes in big time.
Online Real Estate Marketing Plus Offline ROI Conclusion
We have blog posts, we have videos, we have a Facebook course (if you’re a Carrot member) to teach you how to do this in detail.
Hopefully, this whiteboard lays out the strategy that if you have a well-optimized website, it ranks well for your phone number and your company name, and your company name with the word ‘reviews’ after it, you’re building relationship and credibility. And, you’re using retargeting, that’s going to help you get a better return on investment with your offline real estate marketing.
I’m going to leave you with this one question:
How many deals are you leaving on the table because you have a self-optimized online presence with all the money you’re investing in your offline marketing?
If it’s even one deal a year that you’re possibly losing that revenue and leaving it on the table, you need to get a better optimized online presence, you need to get your Facebook retargeting going.
Just check out our services and our plans and check out other content on our Carrot blog.
According to the U.S. Small Business Association, only 56% of small businesses with 50 or fewer employees have a marketing plan. Almost half of smaller businesses are missing out on leads and sales.
Here are four other reasons why a marketing plan is essential for your real estate agent or investor business.
It forces you to think about where you’re going with your real estate business. Creating a common goal to drive towards.
It ensures that you’re aligned with your company values.
It serves as a foundation for your marketing activities. If you build a house, you start with a solid foundation. Same thing with your marketing plan.
Possibly the most important – it gives you a process. Without a process, you won’t have the direction you need and will likely either be going off course or starting to feel confused about your marketing efforts. The process can also act as a measure of your failures and successes.
Sample Real Estate Marketing Plan
At its basic level, a real estate marketing plan answers a series of questions that helps you define your ideal targets and craft your business’s most compelling offers into a cohesive story. It uses good distribution channels to reach your ideal targets.
Here are the questions you need to ask when making a good real estate marketing plan:
What are your goals?
What impact do you want to have on your communities?
Is your market saturated with similar offers, or is it ripe with opportunity?
How tough is your competition?
Who is your ideal target?
What are your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats?
What are your compelling offers?
How will you reach your target audience?
What is your marketing budget?
What keywords are the best opportunities in your market?
First things first: you need to set your goals and objectives.
Clearly, state what you want to accomplish for yourself in your real estate business. If you’re an investor, it could be buying 50 properties this year. As a real estate agent, you might consider closing 100 listings.
Or, in both situations, you could want to get your brand or name out more for recognition. It could be that 50 percent of your target market knows who you are. Set goals that you can quantify to record and track your accomplishments.
Develop a 10,000-foot vision for your business, such as…
Become the top producer in your area
Retire in 10 years
Control particular niches of buyers and sellers
Then quantify that vision with measurable goals. Measurable goals might include:
Obtaining 50 listings in the next year
Close 10 deals in your target market area in 12 months
Earn referrals from 50 percent of your past customers
Purchase 10 single-family rental properties in the next 48 months
What Impact Do You Want to Have in Your Communities?
You want your real estate business to be sustainable and build a good relationship with your community. How you approach and treat your clients has a tremendous impact on how your business is viewed within your market.
Your clients directly affect your business reputation, lead, and deal volume. But it’s not just your direct clients. Anyone that you interact with can be considered an indirect client. Residents, Facebook friends, your website host, employees, contractors, partners, and suppliers.
You must constantly assess your behaviors and their impact on your local community and the broader audience.
Then you can assess and find your niche within. What events to attend and who to build relationships with. Your community approach will also help you create your immediate and long-term business needs.
Is Your Market Saturated with Similar Offers?
You want to build strong relationships with your customer base. As you’re maintaining a high value and positive service for your customers, they’re more likely to spread the word among their peers.
If you’re in a competitive market and find it hard to make your marketing stand about your competition, then be sure to make your service and client experience stand out.
Marketing Strategies for Real Estate: How Tough is Your Competition?
First, you need to identify your competitors. Take into account your potential or future competitors too.
There are a couple of methods you can use to do this.
1. Look at them from a customer’s point of view
If you can look at your competitors from a customer’s point of view, you’ll be able to spot some of their larger strengths and weaknesses.
It’s a fun yet challenging activity to think like a customer. Why would a customer want to use them as a real estate service? Is it because they can offer more and faster payment turnaround time, or do they have top-tier customer service? These could all be strengths for your competition.
Become your ideal client and put yourself in their shoes. Wonder why you would be more likely to deal with them instead of using your company to accomplish their real estate needs.
2. Look at them from their point of view
Next, take a look at their point of view. This can help you understand their strategy, culture, and attitude toward the market. Take a look at what assets they bring to the field and how you would use them if they were yours. Take a look at what you interpret as their weaknesses.
How could you commit to making those weaknesses into your strengths?
Ask and answer these questions before your analysis:
Before you dive into your real estate marketing competitor analysis, be sure you’re asking the right questions. Here are some common questions to get you started:
Who are your competitors?
What types of services are they using?
How much market share do they have?
What have been some of their past strategies?
Are they using the same strategy?
Are they aggressive with their real estate marketing?
How competitive are they in the market?
What are their strengths and weaknesses?
Are they a threat to you? If so, how big of an impact can they have?
Does their marketing strategy affect yours or how you do business?
Who is Your Ideal Target Audience?
Create a simple paragraph profiling your ideal real estate target audience. Create a customer avatar regarding these demographics: sex, age, family, earnings, lifestyle, and geographic location.
Ask yourself questions about your customers, such as:
Are they followers or leaders?
Are they timid or aggressive?
Are they introverts or extroverts?
How often are they likely to move?
Are they traditional and bear more of a connection to the community?
No matter your real estate market, you’ll need to define them in this section narrowly. It is an important step that will guide you as you plan your media and public relations campaigns.
What are your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats?
Performing a SWOT Analysis is a crucial step when creating your real estate marketing strategy.
The term “SWOT Analysis” sounds like a daunting task. But, it can be simple.
It’s broken down into two categories:
Your internal issues: Strengths and weaknesses
Your external issues: Opportunities and threats
This analysis will allow you to see what factors will help you achieve your objectives due to your strengths and opportunities.
It will also highlight what obstacles you must hurdle before achieving your real estate goals due to your weaknesses and/or threats.
Overall, the SWOT analysis assesses your real estate company’s strengths, weaknesses, market opportunities, and potential threats to give you insight into the possible issues that can impact your success.
The number 1 goal of a SWOT analysis aims to determine and assign all important factors that could positively or negatively impact the success of one of the categories, giving you an in-depth view of your real estate business.
Four Categories Of SWOT:
Strengths:
What are the advantages of your real estate business?
What can you do better than your competition?
What exclusive resources can you use that others can’t?
How does your market see your strengths?
What factors into you closing the deal?
What is your company’s Unique Selling Proposition?
When considering your strengths, look at your internal employees and external customers/market.
Weaknesses:
What might you be able to improve on?
What locations and markets should you avoid?
What potential clients within your market might see as your weaknesses?
What factors cause you to lose the deal?
Again, account for your internal and external clients. Do your clients see weaknesses that you haven’t seen? What are your competitors doing better than you right now?
Weaknesses can be a gut check. But stick with it and be as realistic as you can.
Opportunities:
What positive opportunities are available to you?
Are there trends that you need to know?
Some of the positive opportunities you can take advantage of are:
Changes in real estate technology. For example, recording a video testimonial and uploading it to Facebook as soon as you record it.
Changes within the real estate field. Are more real estate agents becoming investors or vice versa?
Changes in the economic status and population profile within your market.
Are there any local events you can help organize or lead within the real estate niche?
Take a look at your strengths and weaknesses as you approach your opportunities. They can provide invaluable information on what you can work harder to improve upon.
Threats:
What obstacles do you need to hurdle in your market?
What are your competitors doing?
Are there any technical issues that are threatening your market position?
Do you have cash-flow problems that you need to address?
Do you have any weaknesses that are threatening your business?
Once you have chosen your real estate business values within the four SWOT categories, you can develop a more strategic plan.
For example, once you’ve identified your weaknesses and potential threats, you can create a plan to eliminate or at the least minimize them while continuing to improve upon strategies that will make you a more robust business.
To create your compelling offers, ask yourself the following questions:
Who do you sell or buy real estate to or from? Be highly specific.
What are the problems that you help them solve?
How do you solve their problems?
Why are you better at solving their problems?
Now create your compelling pitch like this:
How [insert who your ideal client is] can [insert verb] [insert the problem] through [insert solution].
How Will You Reach Your Target Audience?
Getting your audience to engage with your content is essential for connecting with your target market online. The online real estate market is increasingly growing and vying for client attention.
But, even the investor or agent with a small budget can succeed with the right strategies.
Start by narrowing it to a highly targeted audience.
If you offer buyer and seller services, your target currently includes more people in your local market.
For example, focus on only one section of zip codes within your market city. Then expand your area as your finances and business grow.
So, choose a specific area of your market and focus efforts there. Then expand.
A second option will be to focus on the seller or buyer market if you’re a real estate investor. There are specific factors to consider, but marketing towards the seller’s market is most likely the one to go after.
Your marketing costs within major cities will likely be expensive, so media such as Google Ads might be too high unless you can target slightly out of the city.
If you don’t have the budget, take advantage of pricing within the suburban markets.
The other thing you need to do is get your website organized to target your audience. If that requires creating city-specific pages, then you need to do that.
Also, get one of the most overlooked pages, your “About” or company page optimized. Be sure it includes your city or area, how you conduct your business, and your process. Spell out your strengths and why they should choose you over the competition.
What is Your Marketing Budget?
Having a solid marketing budget is integral to being realistic and will help you improve your revenue over time.
You can overspend on marketing costs if you don’t know your budget. Therefore causing an unwanted and bad experience.
Here are a few steps to help you organize your budget and determine where to spend your marketing dollars strategically.
Your first step needs to be organizing your current financial positions. You MUST be specific. If you’re too loose and choose to estimate, it creates an unrealistic budget.
This starts with getting in order your revenue information. You’ll need to know how much revenue your real estate business makes every month. Even though your income varies throughout the year, you must have a number based on reliable revenue (the minimum amount of money you make each month.)
You’ll also need to minus business expenses. Rent, materials, the cost of VA’s, etc.
Any business expense must be subtracted from your revenue before nailing down your marketing budget. Setting a realistic budget is one that focuses on income that exceeds expenses.
After you find your available disposable income, you’ll need to determine what that money will be. Although marketing is a major area to focus on, don’t forget to set aside a budget for unexpected circumstances and growth.
Separate your money based on your goals. You will invest more money in online marketing if your primary goal is attracting leads.
But, if your goal is to hire more VA’s or full-time assistants, you’ll want to put more income into your company’s growth and set aside less for marketing until you’ve been able to close more deals.
2. Determine where you want to allocate your funds
Once you have calculated what is available to spend on marketing, your next step is organizing and prioritizing your money.
There are three main elements to how you spend your marketing dollars:
Budget size
Your past experiences
Reaching the optimum target audience
Start by organizing how to spend the budget based on the amount. If you have a small, more limited marketing budget, you should probably consider Craigslist ads, Facebook ads, local citations, social media posting, and email advertising to attract new clients.
A heavier marketing budget would provide the opportunity to include direct mail, bandit signs, and Google Ads to attract an expanded range of clients.
Apart from any budget limits, don’t forget to consider and implement what strategies have worked for you in the past. You might have noticed postcards helped bring in more clients during a specific time.
Then do that same strategy again, even if you still have more budget for more expensive marketing methods.
Also, don’t overlook the marketing channels that will help you target and reach your optimum audience. For example, Facebook advertising is an effective channel for targeting motivated sellers, but you still need to create the right audiences to filter out potential buyer leads.
Facebook Ads Audience for Real Estate
Create and document very detailed customer avatars. Then, think about which media they’re more likely to consume. That is the spot where you need to be advertising.
If you’re considering testing a new marketing channel, allocate some funds for that test. Start with a small budget since you don’t know how effective the new channel will be.
For example, if you enter the Google Ads marketing channel, start with a small campaign with highly targeted keywords and a budget.
Only allocate more budget after you gain enough data to determine if it’s working for you. If it works, pull more funds into the new marketing channel.
What Real Estate Keywords Are the Best in Your Market?
How do you use real estate keywords? If you are only using them to optimize your website for search rankings, you could be missing out on other ways to gain visibility within your target market.
Get into the mindset to use your keywords in your online and offline marketing.
Here are some platforms where you can utilize your real estate keywords more:
Real estate website optimization (homepage, landing pages)
Real estate social media profile optimization (Twitter, Instagram, Facebook)
Offline marketing (postcards, bandits signs, direct mail)
Using real estate keywords should not be limited to your digital marketing efforts.
Find different ways to plug them into your offline practices as well.
For example, are you sending out flyers or postcards that take advantage of some keywords?
Are you placing bandit signs around your target market with specific messages and a phone number in case they’re sitting in a parking lot and want to write your number down to contact you later?
If you’re using this kind of marketing and not some keywords, it’s time to readjust your strategy.
Keywords hold a lot of power in online marketing but can be effective offline too. Just be careful that you’re not infringing on trademarks. If you question a keyword phrase, check it out first.
This plan assumes that you’ve got a website that has been proven to convert leads.
If you’re trying to scrape together a bunch of tips to save a few bucks on building your website, you’re doing it wrong. It will cost you much more than the monthly membership price to build what we’ve built.
There are a few things you should do first to get that website up and running, and these only take a few minutes:
Get your testimonials on the site because social proof and credibility are essential to conversions.
Make sure the copy on the site reflects your business and is in line with local laws (for example, if you or your team have a real estate license, you’ll need to change the copy to make sure you’re correctly disclosing your license… but you should make that into a benefit since a license gives you more options for sellers than someone operating without one).
Okay, so that last one might be complicated if you’re new to the business… but you need to be making sure you’re aware of the laws around you since being ignorant isn’t an excuse if you’re trying to get out of a five-figure fine for operating without a license (in some states)…
This reminds me that I need to mention we’re not attorneys or financial advisors; all of this stuff is just general advice. You need specific, professional advice on your real estate investment business…
Having a competent lawyer ensures you’re not offering something illegal without knowing it is a good idea.
There are a couple of ways to use these questions…just cut and paste them into a document and start answering them if you’re ready.
Want our help in making your real estate marketing plan?
Frustrated by the slow drip of leads? As a real estate investor, you know time is money. Waiting months for a trickle of potential deals can seriously hinder your growth.
This blog post is key to unlocking leads in just 90 days. We’ll unveil a data-driven real estate marketing plan designed for 2024, helping you attract motivated sellers and generate more deals faster.
Demo Carrot: How many deals are you losing to your competitor’s website?
We all had it at one point, and you’ll probably have it if you don’t have it right now. I will walk through this Carrot whiteboard strategy, a suggested path in your first 90 days with your online marketing strategy in the real estate industry.
Real Estate Marketing Plan: Our Simple 90-Day Lead Generation Strategy For Sellers and Buyers
If you haven’t set up your website yet, the first thing you’ll do is, of course, get one. If you need a website, check us out at carrot.com. If you’re not a Carrot member, you can also check out biggerpockets.com or Facebook forums to see how our clients perform. That’s great! We’ll roll with whatever you have going on now.
The first 90 days are the foundation. So, many people have unreal expectations in their first 90 days of any marketing, but primarily online.
Online marketing takes some time to develop, so if you’re looking at SEO, PPC, or something similar, your first 30 days, especially, are spent getting things going and refining things.
Even if you’re doing PPC, your campaign won’t be optimized in that first month. So, have realistic expectations about your first 90 days. This is your foundation setup, and you will scale up after that.
One of the biggest things is you need to have patience in these first 90 days because if we expect the world to change in 90 days, you expect a flood of leads to start coming in, but you’re not putting a flood of marketing out there; then you’re probably not going to get the results that you expect.
I’m not saying that you can’t get a flood of leads in the first 90 days; you totally can, but you have to put a flood of marketing out there to capture that, and we’ll show you how to do that.
So, one thing I want to ensure that we all do in our marketing and our businesses is to keep your marketing simple initially. You see many different marketing methods and must explore them all at once.
But that isn’t the path you need to follow. We’ll often look at companies and go, “Man, that company is exactly where I want to be,” but they didn’t start there. They slowly stacked things onto their business, and over time, as they found out something worked, they made it good; they made a process. They systemized it and said, “Let’s stack something else on there.”
That’s how a real estate investor goes from doing their first deal to 2,000 deals. It doesn’t happen overnight. It happens by stacking marketing methods and systems, one by one, as they perfect each of them. So have patience and stack your efforts.
Conquer Online Marketing in 90 Days: Start with a High-Converting Website on Carrot.com
Forget chasing trends or endless social media strategies. Here’s a fact: Your website is the foundation of your online marketing success.
That’s why experts recommend launching a high-converting website as the first step in your online marketing journey. But building a website can feel overwhelming. Don’t worry, Carrot is here to help!
Here’s how Carrot makes creating a powerful website fast and easy:
1. Choose Your Winning Template:
Carrot offers a variety of website templates designed specifically for real estate investors, each optimized for mobile responsiveness and high conversion rates. No hosting or coding necessary!
2. Customize Your Brand:
Make your website your own with a user-friendly editor. Add your logo, colors, and images to create a professional and cohesive brand experience.
3. Leverage Built-In Marketing Tools:
Carrot equips you with powerful tools like lead capture forms, call-to-action buttons, content tools, and SEO optimization to attract and convert leads from day one.
4. Focus on What Matters Most:
Carrot websites are designed to prioritize clarity and user experience. This means your visitors can easily find the information they need and take action, maximizing lead generation.
Stop wasting time on online marketing that doesn’t deliver results. Get started with Carrot today and launch a website that converts visitors into leads and fuels your online success.
Ready to dominate your online presence? Head over to Carrot.com and get started on building your high-converting website in minutes!
Personalizing Your Website To Cut Through The Clutter
Within the first 48 hours, you will want to do some basic stuff. Launch your site, tweak your content, personalize your content a little bit, post your story, and fill out your “about” page so people can connect with you.
You want visitors to see a real face or person behind the brand, not a nameless, baseless entity. As we’ve discussed in content, in our CarrotCast podcasts, and in our coaching calls for our customers, it’s a cluttered market. Hence, you stand out by telling your stories and connecting personally.
So, ensure you personalize your content within the first few days of launching your website. You have to reinvent the wheel. If you’re a Carrot customer, take our content and look at one paragraph, read it, see what’s in it, write it in your own words, and then delete ours. So adjust 20, 30, and 40% of that content.
Add Lead Tracking So You Know What’s Working And What’s Not
The next thing you must do is put tracking in place as soon as possible. If you’re a Carrot customer, you already have tracking in place, but if you want to get more advanced, and you want to use your own Google Analytics account, or you want to put your Facebook pixel, I would do that the first couple weeks of getting your website. Or, we can do it for you if you’re a Carrot member.
You’re going to need to start tracking that traffic right away. That way, you can begin to retarget people.
Hone Your Unique Selling Proposition
Next, you must ensure your unique selling proposition is nailed within those first few weeks of your online marketing.
What about you and your company standing out, giving people a reason to work with you?
Find Leads With Facebook Ads – First 30 Days
So we launched the website, got our tracking in place, personalized some content, had our “about” page up there, put a picture of you on there, and swapped out pictures. Hence, they’re local to your area, swapped out some content, so it’s unique to you and your area, and built-in that credibility, testimonials, things like that, and then we start some Facebook Ads.
Start Facebook Ads a week two or three after launching your website.
Facebook is fast, quick, and free. If you do it correctly, you can have leads and traffic coming in that day. Our blog has some great resources and a Facebook Masterclass.
Start by running a couple of ads targeting a motivated seller audience, then scale it up over four to six weeks to where you have a couple of campaigns with 3-5 ads within each.
Launch And Build Up Your Pay-Per-Click – First 30-60 Days
Next, once some Facebook Ads are going, your website is optimized with great content, you’ve personalized it, you’ve built credibility, and you’ve built a great “about” page, then you start to do some Google Ads if you have a budget.
If you have $500 to $3000 monthly and are in specific markets, you can start some small-scale PPC marketing and ramp it up.
Sprinkle Credibility Into Your Real Estate Marketing Plan
In month two, you have some momentum going. You’ve got your website; you can always tweak it later, add more credibility, or add your Better Business Bureau logo later. We always look for progress, not perfection, so get that site out the door in the first two weeks, build some basic credibility there, and then continually refine it from there.
If you’re unsure what to do on your website to build credibility, contact us or check out our content on credibility building.
Time To Work In SEO – 30-90 Days
Shift your focus to SEO and Evergreen Marketing. Pick two to three high-leverage keywords to focus on for your market. We discuss it in some of our resources and start setting that foundation.
Then, if you have a tool to track your rankings, maybe start putting those keywords in there to see how your rankings are going. We have that built into Carrot, but other tools can track your rankings if you’re not a Carrot user.
One of the biggest contributors to SEO is content. Ensure you have a good blog post strategy and plenty of real estate blog post ideas to work from!
Begin To Adjust Your Pay-Per-Clicks
Now, it’s time to adjust your PPC because you can’t set it up, forget it, and not adjust it. So, in month two, you will adjust and refine your PPC campaign. If you have enough traffic, you will also turn on retargeting.
You’ve put your Facebook retargeting pixel on, which we teach you how to do in a blog post on our website. Then, in month two or three, we will start turning on retargeting ads on Facebook, and the same thing happens: we teach you how to do those in those other resources, so check them out. Also, keep your Facebook Ads going.
Finally, to wrap out your foundational first 90 days, you’re going to be tracking and refining your SEO. You’re going to a coach or someone you can go to to ask them for advice on improving your SEO, building some backlinks, and social media signals, and this time, you’re probably going to get some citations.
So, get your website listed on Yelp, Yellow Pages, and all those citations. We suggest starting between 20 and 40 in the first 90 days. We can do it if you’re a Carrot member; check out our marketplace. If you’re not a member, check out our how-to build citations for real estate blog post.
After you refine your PPC, and only at this time, start thinking about a CRM. Way too many people started thinking about a CRM for tracking their leads in month one. If you don’t have any leads coming in, you have no leads to manage in a CRM. It’s like having gas without a car to put it into.
So make sure you’re focusing on getting leads first, and then you get your CRM to manage your leads once you start getting enough lead flow that you can’t manage. If you do it correctly, you scale up.
Wrapping Up Your Real Estate Marketing Plan: First 90 Days
Once again, contact us for those resources if you are a Carrot member. It’s just a quick run-through. We have many other resources, coaching, and guidance to help you crush it, just like we do with thousands of customers. If you’re not a Carrot member, keep returning to our CarrotCasts or free resources to help you grow or join the fold. Join the Carrot community.
We will be learning new, amazing things every week with great experts, great marketers, and our Carrot team to teach you how we do what we do and how you can make a bigger difference!
Local real estate citations are an important local SEO ranking factor and an integral piece for your real estate marketing framework.
Along with other factors such as backlinks, local citations are one of the leading ranking factors for search engines to decide on the relevance of your website for local search results.
Basically, a real estate business that is consistently mentioned on other trusted and relevant websites achieve higher rankings in search results than a business that is never mentioned.
Obviously, ranking high for search results means that more potential leads will find your real estate website, which will have a positive impact on both on and offline traffic, branding, and conversions.
Doing this ONE SIMPLE THING may help push you over the edge and could very well be one of the most effective SEO things you do this spring.
Get an advantage with your Carrot site and learn how to drive quality traffic to your site.
What Are Local Real Estate Citations?
First, don’t confuse citations with links.
Remember,citations are just mentions of your name, address, and phone number. Google will increase your business’s relevance and strength within your specific city or region.
Yes, some of your business listings within the citation sites include a link to your website, but very few contribute to any Page Rank or “link juice”. Basically, you are claiming your digital footprint with Citations.
Moz explains local citations as:
Citations are defined as mentions of your business name and address on other webpages—even if there is no link to your website. An example of a citation might be an online yellow pages directory where your business is listed, but not linked to. Citations can also be found on local chamber of commerce pages, or on a local business association page that includes your business information, even if they are not linking at all to your website.
Citations are a key component of the ranking algorithms in Google and Bing. Other factors being equal, businesses with a greater number of citations will probably rank higher than businesses with fewer citations.
Citations from well-established and well-indexed portals (i.e., Superpages.com) help increase the degree of certainty the search engines have about your business’s contact information and categorization. To paraphrase former Arizona Cardinals’ coach Dennis Green, citations help search engines confirm that businesses “are who we thought they were!”
Google is always looking for websites that are real. Citations are one way to show Google that you’re a legit and real company.
Why Are Local Real Estate Citations So Important For SEO?
So, why are building citations for local SEO so important?
One reason is the vastly growing mobile search factor. According to a study done by Search Engine Land, 78% of local searches on mobile and 61% of local searches on laptops resulted in offline transactions.
Mobile devices (not counting tablets) account for over 56% of our member leads. There will continue to be a steady rise in consumer and company adoption of mobile devices.
It’s not a question anymore if mobile is important for real estate. It’s here and you MUST pay attention to it.
Another reason: Citations Correlate with Search Rankings
Local citations improve your search rankings through ongoing creation of relevant and consistent NAP information (name, address, phone number) across hundreds of websites, also known as citation sources.
The more consistent, relevant and localized your citations are, the more likely your business will be at ranking for people searching for your services and products in your area. Citations are basically another source of credibility that both Google & Bing consider when your business NAP is consistent across the web.
The number one most important thing: Make sure your NAP is 100% correct every time.
DON’T GET IT WRONG
Overall, the biggest contributor is the citation. There is link value within your listings that help strengthen the association of your website with your NAP information.
So, what is NAP?
NAP stands for Name, Address, and Phone Number. It is a crucial piece for any business who is striving to rank well in the local organic search results.
Search engines like Google take your information into account when determining which companies to show for local, geo-targeted, searches.
Again, it’s extremely important that you make sure your NAP is 100% correct. That takes into account, both your NAP on your website as well as any other sites that you have your information on throughout the internet.
It’s a consensus that local SEO experts believe Google, Bing, and all of the other search engines link your NAP information across websites that contain this information as a validation that you are a real and legit business.
The more localized citations you can build up with consistent NAP information, the better your chances are of ranking higher.
You should enter your NAP information into a directory with a strong reputation. This is especially true with real estate specific directories and/or your local directories.
Before You Dive Into Building Your Local Real Estate Citations
Prepare yourself by using this little cheat sheet of the most commonly asked for pieces of information.
Your Name
Company Name – The company’s exact name
Email Address – Your email that will be connected to your business
Address – The company’s exact address
City – The company’s exact city name
State- The state the company resides
Zip – The zip code of the company
Phone Number – The local phone number of the exact business location
Company Website Landing Page – The landing page for the business
Set up a dedicated email address
Don’t use your main email address or your personal one. These business directory websites usually make money by trying to sell advertising services. So you may start to get a lot of “junk” email and some solicitation phone calls. The calls will tail off within a month or two, but the emails can really fill up an inbox. Use the email address to confirm submissions, then let it capture the sales emails so it doesn’t clog your normal inbox.
Top Real Estate Citation Sites
Here are some of the top real estate citation sources. Please note that some of these services require a paid membership.
If you decide to take on citations yourself, it takes about 3-6 hours for the building process.
To get started, go to each citation website and submit your listing.
It varies on how long it’ll take per submission, but plan on 10-15 minutes each. You’ll be required to confirm each submission in the dedicated email account you setup.
Some listing go live fast, others may take weeks, others months. But the majority of them should be live within 2-5 weeks.
In general, SEO Rankings take:
Zero Competition Market: 2-3 Months (if there’s zero competition there’s usually not much opportunity)
Small Competition Market: 6-9 Months
Medium Competition Market: 1 Year
High Competition Market: 2+ years
Typically if you’ve done them right and you’ve completed 40+ on quality sites… you can see a ranking improvement within 2-3 months. That is assuming all other elements on your site are optimized for real estate SEO.
Make Your Own Website Your Best Citation
Make it really easy for Google to identify your website with your citation profile. Most likely the best citation you can start with is your own contact page.
Be sure to have your company name, address, and phone number on there.
Bonus Tip: Add the embed of your Google Places map to help Google further tie your website to that company name and location.
Grab the Google Map “Embed Map” code and paste in into the HTML section of your website. And, this will take about 60 seconds to do it!
Real Estate Citations Frequently Asked Questions
Question #1: How fast will SEO be impacted?
Two to three months is about the time SEO could start showing an impact. Although it might not be dramatic at first. As stated above, there is a chance that highly competitive markets will take longer. Many, many months, if not years.
Question #2: Should I trickle citations out slowly or do them all at once?
Nope – you can do them all at once if you want. There is no evidence that speed of citation claiming will harm your SEO. It is not like backlink building where you can do it wrong.
Question #3: What if I use a tracking phone number for online marketing?
Overall… be sure to use the same phone number for citations that is soon your Contact Page of your website.
You can still have a tracking number in your calls to action and at the top of the site, but it’s suggested that your main company phone number is on the Contact page – therefore matching citations.
Question #4: Should I use a keyword as my business name?
Ideally… NO.
You’ll see some people ranking well with their Yelp or Facebook pages because they used a keyword as their company name.
Unless that is your company name or domain name, don’t do that.
Go with your actual company name or “Doing Business As” (DBA) name.
Question #5: What if I haven’t filed a business name yet?
If you’re serious about this business…
…you need to make that mental commitment of making it real and filing your business with your state.
If you can’t commit to that, it will be difficult to commit to the hard work it will take to succeed as a real estate entrepreneur.
So go out there and file your company name and get that done!
Verifying Your Citations For Real Estate And NAP
Not sure if you correctly submitted your citations? There are online tools that can help you find your listing all of your NAP citations.
Usually, you’ll need to enter some location data into the citation finder tool and you will get back a list of citations pertaining to the entered business and location.
Once you get the data back check the consistency of your NAP.
If there are citation websites that don’t have your correct business name, address and/or phone number then you should start reaching out to these sites or getting site access to update your citation.
Your goal is consistency.
Spelling mistakes or minor inconsistencies in your business name can have an impact on your local search rankings.
If your location is listed as Blvd on one website and as Road on another website, correcting this can have a huge impact.
Local Real Estate Citations Building Can Be a Pain, So Here’s How We Make It Easy…
In simple words, citations are important for your website’s rankings, especially in local SEO. If you want to boost your website’s rankings, focus on citations and don’t worry about the backlinks.
You will have plenty of other places to get backlinks from. Focus on citations from reputable websites with good page rank and domain authority.
Citation building is one of the simplest SEO practices for real estate agents ad investors.
How to do it if you don’t want to do the work: Checkout the Carrot marketplace. We have a real estate citations service that can do it for you.
If you’re a Carrot member (very soon we’ll be offering non-member 3LPD services), we have a whole section on citation building in our 3 Lead Per Day Training (you can buy it here) so we thought we’d share it with you as a great SEO resource to jumpstart your year. You can access the entire 3 Lead Per Day Training and all 50+ detailed videos and checklists for only $99.
Content is not a single player sport. If you’re doing it alone… You’re doing it wrong.Aaron Orendorff
On this CarrotCast, Aaron Orendorff of iconiContent, doses out actionable advice and tools for investors and agents looking to improve their real estate content marketing campaigns in the year ahead.
How do you achieve quick business growth? One of the main ways is giving your audience high-value content.
But, how do you use content marketing correctly? How do you do it to where it actually builds value into your business to bring you the clients you need?
As a real estate investor, how do you create content that cuts through the clutter in your market, so you stand out as the expert?
At Carrot, we write and craft the content that builds credibility and achieves higher rankings in Google. We create evergreen content that will rank well for months or even years.
How would you love to create content today or this week or this month that brings you the leads for months or years to come?
On this episode of the CarrotCast, we’re joined by one of the top SEO, conversion, and content marketers in the U.S., if not the world.
Aaron Orendorff is going to make your life easier by giving you some content marketing ideas for real estate that you can use in your business to create content that breaks you free from the market and places you steps ahead of your competition.
Listen to the Podcast
[podcast-subscribe]
Listen to this CarrotCast with world-renowned content marketer Aaron Orendorff…
4:30 – Aaron’s unconventional journey into content marketing. 7:30 – Why content marketing is so powerful and the importance of getting outside the “bubble” when creating your real estate content strategy. 10:20 – Trevor’s content background, path, and strategy. 12:25 – Aaron’s 3 part process for managing content. 15:05 –How to generate content marketing ideas for real estate. 17:00 – What online resources Aaron, and you can too, uses to write real estate content. 19:25 – Using Buzzsumo to come up with really strong real estate content ideas. 22:15 – Online tools that Carrot uses for topic and keyword research. 23:45 – Where to find quality writers so you can delegate your workload. 26:00 – Aaron’s 4 step process for laying out the structure for a piece of content. 31:25 – Why you need to come up with your own content marketing pillars; such as, video content or skyscraper posts. 34:00 – How to repurpose your content and why it’s such a valuable option. 41:10 – Carrot’s simple repurposing structure. 44:25 – Why it’s important to choose one type of content to produce when you’re first starting out with your real estate content. 46:45 – Aaron dishes out some advice for processes and systems for beginning content creators.
Aaron Orendorff is the Head of Marketing at Recart — an SMS platform helping ecommerce businesses grow through text-message marketing. Previously the Editor in Chief of Shopify Plus, his content has appeared on Forbes, Mashable, Entrepreneur, Business Insider, The New York Times, and more.
Every month, our Carrot members generate tens of thousands of leads. Digging into our data, we find one really cool stat: well over a million of all those leads come from one source: search engine optimization.
Real Estate SEO Bible: The Ultimate SEO Keywords Guide
Are you a real estate investor who feels like you’re hitting a wall with your online visibility? Despite your best efforts, do your search engine rankings not reflect the quality of your investments?
You’re not alone.
Many real estate investors face the challenge of optimizing their online presence effectively to attract potential buyers, sellers, and partners.
Importance of SEO
In today’s digital age, where nearly 90% of homebuyers start their search online, mastering Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is not just advantageous—it’s imperative. SEO empowers real estate investors to enhance their online visibility, attract targeted traffic, and ultimately, convert more leads into profitable transactions. By strategically optimizing your website and content for search engines, you can ensure that your investment opportunities reach the right audience at the right time.
In this blog post, we’ll delve into the critical topic of SEO keywords for real estate investors. We’ll explore common pitfalls that may be sabotaging your search rankings and provide actionable strategies to help you choose the most effective keywords for your niche. Here’s what you can expect to learn:
Understanding SEO and Its Impact on Real Estate Investment: We’ll start by defining SEO and explaining why it’s particularly crucial for real estate investors looking to stand out in a competitive market.
Common SEO Mistakes Real Estate Investors Make: Discover the common pitfalls that could be hindering your SEO efforts, such as keyword stuffing and neglecting local SEO.
Choosing the Right Keywords for Real Estate: Learn how to conduct effective keyword research using powerful tools and techniques to identify the best keywords for your investment properties.
Optimizing Content with Keywords: Explore best practices for integrating keywords naturally into your content to improve search engine rankings and user engagement.
Monitoring and Adjusting Your Keyword Strategy: Understand the importance of ongoing SEO monitoring and how to adapt your keyword strategy based on performance data and market trends.
By the end of this post, you’ll have the knowledge and tools to elevate your SEO strategy and ensure that your real estate investments get the online visibility they deserve. Let’s dive in and transform your search engine rankings for the better.
Understanding SEO and Its Impact on Real Estate Investment
In today’s digital age, SEO is vital for real estate investors seeking to establish a robust online presence. Let’s explore what SEO involves, its critical role in the competitive real estate market, and the primary goals it helps achieve.
Definition of SEO
SEO refers to the practice of optimizing your website and online content to improve its visibility in search engine results pages (SERPs). This optimization involves various strategies and tactics aimed at enhancing organic (non-paid) traffic to your site. By aligning your content with the algorithms that search engines use to rank websites, SEO helps ensure that your real estate investments are discoverable by potential buyers, sellers, and partners searching online.
Relevance to Real Estate
In the fiercely competitive real estate market, where buyers and sellers increasingly rely on the internet to research properties and find agents, SEO is more crucial than ever. Effective SEO strategies can differentiate your real estate listings from competitors’, elevate your brand’s visibility, and attract a steady stream of qualified leads. Whether you’re promoting residential properties, commercial spaces, or investment opportunities, a strong SEO presence can significantly enhance your chances of connecting with the right audience at the right time.
SEO Goals
The primary objectives of SEO for real estate investors encompass several key outcomes:
Visibility: Enhancing your website’s visibility in search results ensures that potential clients and investors can find your listings and services easily when conducting relevant searches.
Lead Generation: By attracting organic traffic through optimized content, SEO helps generate qualified leads interested in buying, selling, or investing in real estate. This targeted traffic increases the likelihood of conversions and transactions.
Brand Authority: Consistent SEO efforts not only improve your search rankings but also establish your brand as a trusted authority in the real estate market. Higher rankings convey credibility and reliability to potential clients, fostering trust and loyalty over time.
In essence, mastering SEO empowers real estate investors to capitalize on market opportunities and achieve sustainable growth in an increasingly competitive industry. As we delve deeper into this topic, we’ll uncover actionable strategies to optimize your SEO efforts and maximize your investment potential online.
Common SEO Mistakes Real Estate Investors Make
Effective SEO for real estate investors requires more than just keywords—it demands strategic planning and adherence to best practices. Here are some common pitfalls to avoid:
1. Keyword Stuffing
Definition: Keyword stuffing refers to the practice of excessively using keywords, often unnaturally, within content in an attempt to manipulate search engine rankings.
Why it Harms Rankings: Search engines like Google prioritize user experience and penalize websites that engage in keyword stuffing. Overusing keywords can make your content appear spammy and detract from its readability and value. This can result in lower rankings or even being flagged as spam, ultimately diminishing your site’s credibility and authority.
2. Irrelevant Keywords
Issue: Targeting irrelevant or overly broad keywords that do not align with your real estate niche or target audience.
Impact: While broad keywords may attract high traffic volumes, they often attract visitors who are not interested in real estate investment specifically. This can lead to high bounce rates and low engagement metrics, signaling to search engines that your content may not be relevant to users’ queries. Focusing on niche-specific keywords ensures that you attract qualified traffic more likely to convert into leads or clients.
3. Ignoring Local SEO
Importance: Local SEO is crucial for real estate investors because property transactions are inherently local. Optimizing for local search terms (e.g., “real estate investments in “) helps you connect with potential buyers or sellers in your target geographic area.
Common Oversights: Neglecting to optimize Google My Business profiles, not including location-specific keywords in content, or failing to obtain local backlinks are common mistakes. These oversights can hinder your visibility in local search results, impacting your ability to attract local clients and investors.
4. Poor Content Quality
Issue: Publishing low-quality or thin content that lacks substance or fails to provide value to readers.
Impact: Search engines prioritize high-quality content that meets users’ needs and expectations. Thin content, stuffed with keywords lacking in depth or relevance, is unlikely to rank well. Investing in comprehensive, informative content that addresses common questions, provides valuable insights, or showcases your expertise can significantly boost your SEO efforts and user engagement.
5. Neglecting Mobile Optimization
Impact: With a growing number of users accessing the internet via mobile devices, mobile optimization is no longer optional—it’s essential for SEO success.
Why it Matters: Websites that are not mobile-friendly experience higher bounce rates and lower engagement metrics from mobile users. This negatively impacts your site’s overall performance in search rankings, as search engines prioritize sites that offer a seamless mobile experience. Implementing responsive design, optimizing page speed, and ensuring mobile-friendly navigation are critical steps to improve your site’s mobile usability and SEO performance.
By understanding and avoiding these common SEO mistakes, real estate investors can enhance their online visibility, attract targeted traffic, and ultimately achieve greater success in their digital marketing endeavors.
Choosing the Right Keywords for Real Estate
Selecting the right keywords is fundamental to successful SEO for real estate investors. Here’s a comprehensive guide on how to choose and utilize keywords effectively to enhance your online presence:
1. Keyword Research Tools
Keyword research forms the foundation of any successful SEO strategy. Tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and SEMrush provide invaluable insights into search volume, competition level, and related keywords. These tools allow real estate investors to identify high-potential keywords that align with their investment offerings and target audience. By leveraging data-driven insights, you can optimize your content to attract qualified traffic interested in real estate opportunities.
Importance: Long-tail keywords consist of longer, more specific phrases that often have lower search volumes but higher conversion rates. For example, instead of targeting “real estate investment,” consider phrases like “affordable real estate investments in [Your City]” or “best commercial properties for sale in [Your Area].” These keywords cater to potential investors who are closer to making a decision, enhancing your chances of conversion.
Benefits: Using long-tail keywords helps you compete more effectively in search engine results, as they are less competitive than broad keywords. They also attract highly targeted traffic that is more likely to convert, thereby maximizing the return on your SEO efforts.
3. Local Keywords
Focus: Real estate transactions are inherently local. Incorporating location-specific keywords (e.g., “luxury homes in [Your City],” “investment properties in [Your Neighborhood]”) is essential for attracting local buyers, sellers, and investors.
Targeted Traffic: Local keywords help you reach a geographically targeted audience interested in real estate opportunities in specific locations. This enhances your relevance in local search results and improves your chances of connecting with qualified leads who are actively seeking properties in your area.
4. Competitor Analysis
Strategy: Analyzing competitors’ keyword strategies provides valuable insights into what works in your niche and identifies opportunities for improvement.
Tools and Methods: Use tools like SEMrush or Ahrefs to analyze competitors’ top-performing keywords, organic search traffic, and backlink profiles. Pay attention to the keywords they are ranking for and their content strategies. Identify gaps where you can differentiate yourself or opportunities to capitalize on similar keywords with better content or targeting.
5. User Intent
Understanding: User intent refers to the reason behind a user’s search query. To effectively optimize for user intent, consider the intent behind keywords you target. Are users looking for property listings, investment advice, market trends, or real estate services?
Incorporation: Tailor your keyword selection and content strategy to align with user intent. For instance, if users are searching for “real estate investment tips,” create content that provides valuable insights and practical advice on investment strategies. By meeting user intent, you increase the likelihood of satisfying user queries and improving engagement metrics, which are crucial for SEO success.
By integrating these strategies into your keyword research process, you can enhance your SEO efforts, increase your online visibility, and attract targeted traffic interested in real estate investments. Remember, optimizing for the right keywords is not a one-time task but an ongoing effort to stay relevant and competitive.
Optimizing Content with Keywords
Optimizing your content with strategic use of keywords is crucial for improving search engine rankings and attracting relevant traffic. Here’s how real estate investors can effectively integrate keywords into their content:
Content Creation Tips
Creating valuable content that resonates with your target audience is the cornerstone of successful SEO. Consider the following tips:
Address Audience Needs: Understand what information potential investors are seeking. Tailor your content to provide insights, market trends, investment strategies, or property listings that align with their interests.
Quality Over Quantity: Focus on creating high-quality, informative content that adds value. Avoid thin content that lacks substance or fails to address user queries comprehensively.
Engage with Visuals: Incorporate engaging visuals such as property photos, infographics, or videos to enhance user experience and encourage longer on-page dwell times.
Keyword Placement Best Practices
Effective keyword placement helps search engines understand the relevance of your content to user queries. Here are some best practices:
Titles and Headers: Include primary keywords naturally in your page titles (H1 tags) and headers (H2, H3 tags) to indicate the main topic of your content.
Meta Descriptions: Write compelling meta descriptions that include relevant keywords. Meta descriptions serve as summaries in search engine results, influencing click-through rates.
Body Text: Integrate keywords naturally throughout your content, ensuring they flow smoothly and enhance readability. Avoid overusing keywords, as this can negatively impact user experience and SEO.
Internal Linking Strategies
Internal linking is a powerful SEO technique that helps distribute link equity across your website and guide users through relevant content. Consider these strategies:
Anchor Text: Use descriptive anchor text that includes relevant keywords when linking to other pages within your site. This helps search engines understand the context of the linked page.
Hierarchy: Establish a hierarchical structure with your internal links to prioritize important pages and guide users through a logical navigation path.
Relevance: Link to related content that provides additional value or context to the topic at hand. This not only enhances user experience but also encourages deeper engagement with your site.
Importance of Regular Updates
Regularly updating your content is vital for maintaining relevance and improving search engine rankings. Here’s why:
Freshness: Search engines prioritize fresh and up-to-date content. Regular updates signal to search engines that your site is active and relevant, potentially boosting your rankings.
Accuracy: Update outdated information, property listings, or market trends to ensure accuracy and reliability for your audience.
SEO Impact: Updating content gives you an opportunity to incorporate new keywords, optimize for current search trends, and improve overall SEO performance over time.
By implementing these strategies, real estate investors can optimize their content effectively with targeted keywords, enhance user experience, and strengthen their SEO efforts. Remember, ongoing monitoring and refinement of your keyword strategy and content are essential to stay competitive.
Monitoring and Adjusting Your Keyword Strategy
Effectively monitoring and adjusting your keyword strategy is essential for maintaining and improving your SEO performance as a real estate investor. Here’s how you can stay ahead:
SEO Analytics Tools
Utilizing reliable SEO analytics tools is critical for tracking the performance of your keyword strategy. Here are key tools to consider:
Google Analytics: Provides detailed insights into website traffic, user behavior, and conversion metrics. Monitor organic search traffic, bounce rates, and keyword performance to gauge the effectiveness of your SEO efforts.
Google Search Console: Offers valuable data on how your site appears in Google search results. Monitor keyword rankings, click-through rates (CTRs), and identify opportunities to improve your search presence.
Carrot’s SEO Tools,SEMrush, or Ahrefs: These tools offer comprehensive keyword analysis, backlink profiles, and competitor insights. Monitor keyword rankings, analyze traffic trends, and identify new keyword opportunities for optimization.
Regular Audits
Conducting regular SEO audits helps identify and rectify issues that may impact your search engine rankings. Key aspects to focus on include:
Technical SEO: Audit for issues such as broken links, site speed, mobile-friendliness, and crawl errors that can affect user experience and search engine indexing.
Content Quality: Assess the quality and relevance of your content. Update outdated information, improve readability, and ensure it aligns with current SEO best practices.
Keyword Performance: Review keyword rankings, CTRs, and traffic trends. Identify underperforming keywords and opportunities to optimize existing content or target new keywords.
Staying Updated
SEO evolves constantly, with search engines updating algorithms and trends shifting in user behavior. Stay informed by:
Following Industry Experts: Keep up with leading SEO blogs, webinars, and industry publications to stay informed about the latest trends and algorithm updates.
Google Updates: Monitor announcements from Google regarding algorithm changes and updates that may impact your SEO strategy.
Continuous Learning: Invest time in ongoing learning and skills development to adapt to new SEO techniques and best practices.
Adapting Strategies
Based on performance data and insights gathered from audits and analytics tools, adapt your keyword strategy by:
Optimizing Underperforming Keywords: Revise content or metadata for keywords that are not ranking well. Experiment with variations or long-tail keywords to improve visibility.
Expanding Keyword Portfolio: Identify new keyword opportunities through competitor analysis or keyword research tools. Develop content targeting emerging trends or specific niche topics.
Refining Content Strategy: Adjust your content strategy based on audience feedback and performance metrics. Focus on creating content that resonates with your target audience and addresses their needs effectively.
Real estate investors can continuously monitor, audit, and adapt your keyword strategy to maintain a competitive edge in search engine rankings, attract qualified traffic, and achieve sustainable growth in the digital marketplace. Remember, SEO is a dynamic process that requires ongoing attention and refinement to maximize results and ROI.
Conclusion
In navigating the complex world of SEO for real estate investors, mastering the art of keyword selection and optimization is paramount. Let’s recap the key insights we’ve explored in this blog post:
Understanding SEO: We began by defining SEO and highlighting its critical role in enhancing online visibility and attracting targeted traffic for real estate investments.
Common SEO Mistakes: We discussed pitfalls such as keyword stuffing, targeting irrelevant keywords, neglecting local SEO, poor content quality, and ignoring mobile optimization—factors that can hinder your SEO success.
Choosing the Right Keywords: We explored strategies for effective keyword research, including using tools like Google Keyword Planner, Ahrefs, and SEMrush, emphasizing the importance of long-tail and local keywords, competitor analysis, and understanding user intent.
Optimizing Content: We provided tips on creating valuable content that integrates keywords naturally, best practices for keyword placement, leveraging internal linking, and the importance of regular content updates.
Monitoring and Adjusting Strategy: Finally, we discussed the importance of using SEO analytics tools, conducting regular audits, staying updated with SEO trends, and adapting your keyword strategy based on performance data.
Actionable Tips
Here are some actionable tips you can implement immediately to enhance your SEO strategy as a real estate investor:
Conduct a Comprehensive SEO Audit: Use tools like Google Search Console and SEMrush/Ahrefs to identify technical issues, keyword performance, and content opportunities.
Optimize for Local SEO: Include location-specific keywords in your content, meta descriptions, and Google My Business profile to attract local clients and investors.
Create High-Quality Content: Focus on producing informative, engaging content that addresses common questions and provides valuable insights into real estate investment opportunities.
Monitor Keyword Performance: Regularly monitor keyword rankings and adjust your content strategy based on performance metrics to improve visibility and engagement.
Call to Action
Ready to elevate your real estate investments through effective SEO strategies? Whether you’re looking to optimize your website, refine your keyword strategy, or enhance your online presence, professional SEO services can make a significant difference.
Join our Carrot Community for more guidance and further resources on maximizing your SEO efforts, and post your own questions.
Remember, mastering SEO requires dedication, continuous learning, and adaptation to stay ahead in the real estate market. Start implementing these strategies today to position yourself for long-term success. Happy optimizing!
This has to STOP… Obviously, you want more traffic and leads, right? We’ve all struggled to increase website traffic, and every lead guru has a big bag of tricks they’re eager for you to try. But… it’s a heck of a lot simpler than that.
All you need to do is fix these 4 common reasons that are often neglected by real estate website owners either because they don’t understand their importance or because they are not sure how to approach them.
Hey guys and girls, Trevor here coming at you with another whiteboard strategy sketch and these are getting really, really fun.
I don’t know how many we have done so far but we have a lot more in store for you guys and keep the questions coming because the way that we come up with these things right here is from questions directly from you guys. Send them to us at support@oncarrot.com, through the comments section below or go to oncarrot.com and check us out.
On this particular video, we’re going to address one of the most common “problem” questions that we get…
“Why am I not getting the real estate leads online that I want or I’m NOT getting any leads?”
Because in order for you guys to get value out of leveraging the web with your marketing, you got to be getting leads in some way whether it’s phone calls, whether it is people submitting forms, whatever it is. Leads have to be had, otherwise, you are not getting the value out of it.
We boiled it down to just four reasons that you are not getting the number of leads you want. As you are going through this particular strategy sketch, make sure that you are identifying which one or ones of these you need to tap on next.
Okay?
If you are not getting leads you want, you need to be doing one of these things better or more.
Why Your Not Getting Real Estate Leads Online Reason #1: Traffic
The first thing you want to look at is your traffic. That’s the most obvious thing, right? Because you can’t get a lead if you are not getting people to land on your website.
How do we get more people to land on your website?
The first thing we’d like to see is that you are getting at least 25 visitors to your website per month and we are saying at a minimum because on average let’s say it’s a motivated house seller website… you might be converting three, five, six, seven, eight percent,10% if you are doing really well, into a lead.
If you are converting at 10%, which is a really high conversion rate in this type of market, you are only going to be getting about two to two and a half leads per month. Now that is not a lot of leads so that is your issue.
If you are getting less than 25 people to your website a month, then that’s probably the first thing you need to focus on.
If you are getting 50, 60, 70, people to your website a month and you are still not getting very many leads, let’s say it’s converting at less than 1%, we are going to move on to the next thing.
Why Your Not Getting Real Estate Leads Online Reason #2: Quality of Traffic
The next thing is the quality of your traffic. First off, if you have traffic coming in and you are getting 20, 30, 40, 50, 60, 100 people to your website a month but you are still not getting very many leads, you are getting less than 5% or less than 3% of them becoming a lead, it could be a quality issue.
You need to ask yourself some questions. It could be, where are these people coming from? Are they coming from good marketing channels? What is the message that you are delivering to them to get them to your website?
Often times we’ll see people using Google pay-per-click or Facebook ads or something and they are getting a lot of traffic from Facebook for motivated house sellers but the problem is, those people are not very targeted. So you don’t want to be driving motivated house sellers from a random Facebook campaign to websites and expect to really have a conversion rate.
The quality of those visitors is going to be lower. The quality of the Craigslist visitors will be probably a little bit lower, the quality of an SEO lead is going to be way higher. If you are not getting very many leads but you have a lot of traffic, see where your traffic is coming from. Is it coming from a high-quality source where they are very targeted and you can help them specifically? What message do they see before they land on your website?
Did your ads say, “Sell your house.”? Then your website now says, “Sell your houses quickly, we buy houses.”. They are just looking for a real estate agent and you are offering a completely different service. Look and see what your ads and your message says.
If you got the traffic nailed, the quality is perfect and that’s nailed, and you got a lot of traffic coming in and you are still not getting the leads you are looking for, what do we look at next? We look at performance next.
If you would like for your website to convert more leads, then this webinar replay might be for you. It is a long call but packed full of valuable information. Give the webinar a view and then download our 16-point real estate investor conversion checklist.
Why Your Not Getting Real Estate Leads Reason #3: Website Performance
We talk a lot about performance here at InvestorCarrot where performance is one of the things we specialize in.
It’s helping your websites perform at a higher level which means convert more of your visitors, more of your quality traffic into a lead. The performance side is your website. Have you gone through some tutorials on this website? Have you gone through our other whiteboard strategy sketches to see how you need to structure your forms? Have you gone through some of our mastermind calls, things like that? Make sure your website is built to be high performing.
If you are a Carrot member already, you got this one nailed. You don’t have to do anything there unless you jerked up the design that we have given you. Make sure you are sticking with the design, then just personalize it with your own content, tweaks, you personalize it with your branding and credibility.
If you are not a Carrot member, make sure you are really focusing on the design of your website so it’s performing at a high level and like I said we have a lot of resources you can check out. Go to oncarrot.com/resources and we have an entire video and an entire checklist on how to create a high performing website.
If you’ve got your high performing website set up, you got quality traffic coming into it, and you’re still not getting enough leads, what we want to do is look into credibility.
Why Your Not Getting Real Estate Leads Online Reason #4: Credibility
You can have the best website in the world that is set up with all the cool things to get someone to convert into a lead, but maybe you haven’t built credibility on the website. Maybe people aren’t believing that you can truly help them.
Maybe you’re not really building that connection with them enough to where they are like, “Man, these people seem like real people and I want to work with them.” You need to nail the credibility.
What do you do to really build great credibility for any business?
It could be business selling microphones or a business selling whatever it is. You need to be building credibility and you do it the same way. You have a really good about page.
We found in our data, the number three most visited page, sometimes the number two most popular page across all of our thousands of InvestorCarrot members websites including our own sales websites is always the about page because people are looking to prove or disprove the preconceptions in their mind on why they should or should not work with you.
If they go to your about page and it’s basic, it’s generic, it doesn’t have anything about you, they aren’t building that connection with you. They are probably going to bounce out of there and possibly go and look at your competitors. The ones that they connect with more, are going to be the ones they choose to work with.
Make sure your about page has a little bit about you. Kind of tells about why you want to help people, your mission, and list maybe some of your team members in there. Don’t be afraid to put your face on the website because your face is going to have to go in front of your client eventually.
Number two is social proof.
Do you have things on your website that show that other people have worked with you before them that you helped that have been in similar situations?
It could be a testimonial, it could be videos, it could be case studies on deals you have worked with, it could be people who you’ve sold properties to who have gotten great returns now and they had a better experience working with you. It could also be the Better Business Bureau badge.
Things like that help to build social proof, reviews on your Facebook channel, things like that. You just want to show other people have worked with you in the past or attest to your character, that you are the type of person that they would want to work with.
The last thing is clear and honest branding.
We found so many websites that nail the about page, nail the social proof, they got the traffic coming in but their logo up top looks like it’s been made in Microsoft Paint in 1998. It’s pixelated. The words are hard to see, and the very first things we often times look at on a website is the upper left of that website which happens to be where logos often times are or at least the top of the website.
So make sure you have very clear honest branding.
I didn’t say you have to have a fancy logo, that’s a completely different thing. Some of the best websites that we have found that generate the most leads, had the simplest logos out there. They didn’t spend a bunch of money on them.
Reasons You’re Not Getting Real Estate Leads Online
If you nail these four things; nail your traffic, the traffic is high quality coming from great sources with a very clear and defined message that matches your website, the website is set up for performance and not just a couple of things but set up everywhere on every single page to perform at a high level, follow what we do and model it.
Don’t copy what we do, but follow and model what we do or if you are a Carrot member that’s already been done for you.
On the credibility side, have a great about page. Look at our about page and see how much you connect with us. We have our core values that we tell about our start-up story, we tell about our team, and you get a chance to connect with us at a better level. It becomes real people then, and it’s easier to work with people than work with a kind of an ominous company.
Get your social proof nailed, get clear on honest branding and if you still don’t have a stream of leads coming in from there, I would highly suggest then you go back up to number one and ramp up your traffic using other methods.
Go out there and get your leads flowing upwards, get your leads flowing in and make them consistent and predictable so your business can grow.
That is why we are all doing this so we can have a consistent, predictable business that really fuels our lifestyle and helps a lot of people.
If you are not on our YouTube channel, but you are on our website, subscribe to our blog or check out the webinar that we have going and you can probably find someone inside or on the website somewhere and see how we can help you grow your leads and leverage the web better.
Our bread and butter was TV and has been for years. My father did TV advertising back in the early 80’s as an Attorney. In a way, he sort of pioneered it in the legal field. His two partners said “hey, I don’t want to do business with you if you’re going to TV advertise” and he said “see you later” and went and found two new partners. – Brad Chandler
Why You Need A Killer Mindset In Your Real Estate Marketing And How Brad Has Thousands Of Reasons To Show For It
Brad Chandler is the CEO of Express Homebuyers, one of the largest home buyers in the entire country. In this episode, we dive into what makes someone who has grown from a one-man show to now buying over 2,100 homes, tick.
What key mindset shifts did Brad have to make early on? And what does Brad say is the most important part of his real estate marketing arsenal?
In this CarrotCast conversation Trevor and Brad tackle:
What makes high-achievers tick.
Differences in mindset between those who quit and those who find a way to figure it out.
Tips to stand out from your competition.
How to create an effective lead follow-up system.
How to create a business that serves you.
Watch the Video Version
2:00 – The structure and focus of Express Homebuyers. From blow pops to 2,000 deals. 5:35 – The three buckets of Express Homebuyers – Fix and Flip, Condo Development, and Rental Portfolio. 7:00 – What it took to start Express Homebuyers and spending seven hard working months to close the first deal. 8:50 – The difference in MINDSET between the people who struggle, but keep going and the people who quit. 11:10 – The driving force behind Brad’s positive MINDSET. 13:45 – Transactional vs. Wealth building wholesaling. 15:20 – Brad’s real estate marketing plan – Heavy on TV advertising. 20:10 – Standing out from the real estate competition, the value of being in front of your brand to build credibility, and the importance of your website’s “About” page. 28:50 – Creating a business that serves you. Not you serving a business. 35:25 – How to build an incredible follow-up system. 40:10 – Implementing the 9 Word Email. 42:20 – Outpacing the competition online. New Facebook targeting option. 46:45 – Focusing on the “one thing” to strive to be better at.
