Tomorrow’s Successful Agents Will Be
Web-Proficient Agents
Most top-selling agents
still rely on traditional, time-proven forms of promoting
themselves—mailings to neighborhood “farms,” print ads, cold calls,
door hangers, etc. They devote little time or budget to Internet
promotion, except perhaps to purchase a page on Realtor.com or to get a
“template” Web site and put its address and that of their e-mail on
their business cards.
In a handful of years,
however, very few agents will fall into the top-producer category unless
they have learned effective marketing on the World Wide Web. Web marketing
will soon be an absolute necessity.
According to The
Industry Standard magazine (http://www.thestandard.com), in 1994, only
35 percent of public schools were connected to the Internet. In 1998, that
figure jumped to 89 percent, with individual classroom connections
shooting up from 3 percent to 51 percent during the same period.26
Very soon all schools and classrooms will be connected.
So what? The “so
what” is that individuals entering real estate professions now and in
years to come see the Internet as an obvious marketing medium. They’ll
use the online tools to their best advantage ... and where will you be?
Hopefully, you’ll have already mastered the arts of online marketing and
established yourself as the top online real estate professional in your
area.
The Internet is
transforming the relationship between consumers and agents, including the
process of selecting an agent. Out-of-area buyers have access to far more
information about agents than ever before, and they are now more likely to
consider the quality and helpfulness of information provided on an
agent’s Web site in their decisions.
Could the tidal wave
growth of the Internet as a marketing tool actually threaten the continued
sales results of successful agents? Most certainly it does—not just for
top producers and not just from new and computer-comfortable agents.
Unless agents act swiftly to continue being the primary contact on the
Internet for property buyers and sellers, loan, title, escrow and other
firms will gladly fill the gap. With huge Web sites and millions to spend
on promotion, they will eagerly become a consumer’s first contact in a
realty transaction, perhaps even charging agents a fee to gain a customer
or hiring agents as employees or subcontractors to handle the more
sensitive face-to-face aspects of certain sales.
Can Non-Web-Savvy Agents Survive By Learning
This “New Stuff”?
Will tomorrow’s top
producers be those who have embraced Web technology and are already “out
there” waiting for the property buyers and sellers who are demanding
ever-faster advice and transactions? Will tomorrow’s top producers be
the real estate professionals with significant “presence” on the Web,
those who have “positioned” themselves as Web-wise agents, those who
dominate real estate Web marketing for their immediate marketing area?
Of course. What’s the
solution for the non-Web-initiated? Learn. Learn, learn, learn. Also, be
prepared to allocate an increasing, though highly cost-effective, amount
of your promotional or advertising budget toward positioning yourself and
getting “found” on the Web—becoming recognized and remembered when
it comes time for that homebuyer or homeseller to “get serious.”
Starting in early 1998,
huge numbers of agents purchased and/or created a Web page or site and
established e-mail accounts. But having is definitely not the same as
using effectively, and the sad situation is that most of those agents only
have! Countless times in
seminars we’ve heard agents say, “Well, I paid for one, but I’ve
never seen it” or “Yes, I have e-mail, but I don’t know my address
and I can’t check it.” You can be better at Web marketing than most of
those other agents who market in your area—and right now it won’t take
a lot of doing. The short story: If you’re going to spend the time and
money to market yourself on the Web, you might as well use a little of
that time to learn how to do it right.
Can you do it? Of course
you can do it. In Internet marketing, once you know a few basics, the rest
comes quickly. If you apply good marketing principles that you already
know, you’re half way there. Reading this book is a good start. Use the
checklists and plans in this book to establish and build your effective
Internet marketing presence; then follow the e-mail communications models
and strategies to become a top Web marketing real estate professional.
Do
it now.
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