Online Marketing: Relocation Still Booms—Online, That Is!

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By Mike Parker

RISMEDIA, June 18, 2008-Sherry Armstrong is a RE/MAX agent serving Daytona Beach, Florida (www.SherryArmstrong.com). You may have heard that things were particularly harsh in Florida, and for many agents and brokers, they were and still are in certain sections. Yet, Armstrong reports that she wrote two offers last weekend and is working with seven buyers this week. Last year, she reports, she had 15 buyers from outside the area. Other agents in her office are asking her what she’s done that is causing so many buyers to track her down.

parker_mike1.jpg“What she’s done” can be illustrated best by going to any search engine and typing in “Relocation specialist Daytona Beach.” No matter which of the seven major search engines you choose, they choose Sherry Armstrong and put her front and center on page one of their results. Google, Yahoo, MSN, ASK, AOL, Alta Vista and Lycos all have Armstrong as the relocation specialist for Daytona Beach. Seven major search engines simply validate what Armstrong’s clients already know: while so many other agents are struggling, she gets results for her clients.

Using Technology to Her Advantage

Armstrong has been a real estate agent for 22 years. She had her first website about 12 years ago-it was a custom site that she had to hire someone to maintain as it wasn’t ‘user-friendly.’ She has a page on the RE/MAX company site and three sites of her own. However, she says, “95% of my leads come from my website SEO subscription. The ‘WebReporterTool’ that comes with my SEO subscription spells out where each visitor and lead comes from; it allows me to see if someone from a foreign country is looking at my site, what pages they are looking at, for how long, and much more. I can see if they were referred from another site and I can even see who is visiting my site at this very moment. I even get a text message on my cell phone when someone signs in requesting information. My site traffic is up and I am doing fine in a very rough market.”

Quality Not Quantity

Sherry Armstrong is like the vast majority of successful agents: while you might not see her picking up trophies, she manages to make a good living every year from the business. That’s why her experience with online marketing is likely to resonate more with you if you are not a superstar. Far from being a high visibility person, Armstrong fits the image of the successful agent; low-key, unassuming and reluctant to toot her own horn. Nevertheless, in the past 12 months, Armstrong has made 15 relocation sales from her Internet marketing efforts to people relocating.

While not the stuff of legend, how many of us would welcome a chance to make 15 additional sales brought to us from our website in the next 12 months? To further reinforce the point that you do not need to be Bill Gates to benefit from the Internet, consider this: since January 1 of this year, Armstrong has had 2,016 unique visitors to her site-that’s 400 a month-and she is doing well. This shows once more that it is more about conversions than sheer numbers. Please note the little box on her site that invites visitors to sign up for her newsletter. Without such a device (called ‘soft lead capture’) you’ll never get the leads from your site that you should be getting. In that past 12 months during which 15 relocators found her, Armstrong had but 2,900 unique visitors and 11,500 page views, total. You do not need huge numbers to succeed on line, just targeted visitors who are looking for what you sell. Are you optimized for people relocating to your area?

The Relocation Business Is Still Good and Better Online

This column has chronicled the relocation successes of Priscilla Allen of San Antonio, Debbie Copeland of Weatherford, Texas, Dana Manning of Portland and many others. They have three things in common: 1) they are all optimizing their sites to be found by people relocating to their area; 2) Coincidentally, they are all RE/MAX agents or brokers; 3) They are all doing all right despite the past year funk that has hit real estate. We all know that RE/MAX has not cornered the market on relocation success, so perhaps we ought to concentrate on item #1 above: optimizing your site for relocation.

You see, the reason relocation is so much more effective online is simple: people all over the world looking to move go to a common source, the Internet, and enter something like relocation specialist Daytona Beach into a search engine when considering a move or in the very early phases of a move. Unlike magazines or newspapers, once you are indexed by the search engines as a relocation specialist, you stay there (proper maintenance assumed) and people looking always can find you. Magazines and newspapers go stale quickly-if you aren’t in that issue, you miss the opportunity. With 83% of residential home purchases involving the Internet today, and with an astounding 74% of Internet buyers finding their agent with a search engine, relocation is made for the Internet real estate agent. The Internet real estate agent gets those buyers first. As Sherry puts it: “Florida is largely a relocation area. While our sellers are largely local, our buyers are as likely to come from England, Canada, Germany-I’ve even had buyers from Thailand-as down the street. How else would they have found me if not for my position on the Internet?”

Benefits to Being an Internet Real Estate Agent When You Go to Listing Calls

“I recently went out on a listing appointment where I was able to show the prospect my Internet positioning and the traffic to my site,” Armstrong said. “Minutes later, they asked for the paperwork to sign. It becomes a lot easier when you have the real online documentation to show a seller what you can offer them in the way of validated activity online. Most buyers today know that online is where the action is and when you show them that you are well positioned there, they love it, because they know that strong Internet presence translates into quicker selling time for them.”

You Cannot Establish Yourself Online Overnight

However, you can be found by the end of summer and Fall seasonal buyers if you begin your organic online strategy today. Just as recovery does not happen overnight, neither does establishing an Internet presence. Generally, in about six weeks you will begin to see placement and progress and within 90 days you will be solidly on the move. The longer you keep at it, the more powerful you become. Like all good things, hard work and time are required to make your site user and search engine friendly. The time to start is now.

Armstrong’s Closing Thoughts

“The Internet has provided a source of buyers that many agents in my marketplace are wishing that they had. I’ve had agents in my office and from other companies come to me with questions about the Internet and asking for my help with Internet marketing. While business is better now because sellers are more realistic in their pricing, some agents I speak to tell me they are going to wait ‘until things get better’ to implement an online marketing plan. I try to provide honest and straightforward answers to their questions, but I also feel that until agents stop ‘waiting for things to get better’ and postponing important things like online marketing with that faulty logic, things will not likely get much better for them. I don’t ‘sugar-coat’ it. I believe in under promising and over delivering in my life and in my practice and until people realize that they are hurting themselves by ignoring Internet marketing, they will be performing at a lower level than if they were not. I know that I would be hurting without the Internet to help me, and that is as simple a reason for becoming an Internet real estate agent as I can give. Instead of delaying, try going proactive.”

It is important for you to know that the Internet is not a panacea. (It is also important for you to realize that your participation is necessary for you to succeed online; you are still the most important ingredient in your success.) Rather it is an essential part of every agent’s business. If you haven’t made it part of yours, now’s the time to do so. Maybe next year at this time you will have sold a few homes to people relocating that you otherwise never could have reached. That is the goal of Internet Marketing for Realtors® and real estate professionals: to be an adjunct to a strong agent’s practice; an additional source of leads and sales that you cannot reach now.

Finally, if you have a client relocating to the Daytona Beach area of Florida, Sherry Armstrong will help you take good care of them. She’s a solid and consistent performer who shoots straight. Because she is successful in her online marketing, you know she’ll be there for many years. Thanks to Armstrong for talking with us.

About the Author: Mike Parker : Mike Parker is a principal at the Blackwater Consulting Group, Inc., and specializes in online marketing for business professionals. You can reach him by e-mail at mparker@theblackwatercg.com. To ask for a free copy of his booklet “SEO Secrets for Real Estate Professionals” by writing to realestate@theblackwatercg.com. It will be sent to you free and no one will call you. To request a free review of your website to determine if it can be found by Internet buyers and if it is search engine friendly, click here and it will be evaluated free.

RISMedia welcomes your questions and comments. Send your e-mail to: realestatemagazinefeedback@rismedia.com.

For more articles by Mike Parker, see:

Online Marketing: After 33 Years, Technology Starts to Make Money for Industry Veteran
Online Marketing – 10 Things to Know about SEO
Online Marketing – How Agents Can Use SEO to Save Their Business


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