How a Top Agent Continues to Make the Shift to Selling More Houses Online

By Mike Parker Print Article

RISMEDIA, April 3, 2009-Kay Baker is a top-producing agent with Coldwell Banker Sea Coast Realty, one of the top producing brokerages in Wilmington, North Carolina. The Wilmington office of Sea Coast contains about 130 agents; the office is one of eight the firm operates, with about 300 licensed agents altogether. In addition to being in the top 20 with Coldwell Banker in Gross Commission Income and Closed Units, they’ve been a Chairman’s Circle member for the past nine years. Sea Coast closed about as many units as their two nearest competitors, combined.

Baker has been an agent for 30 years and has been active online since 1998, when she put up her first website. Her goal this year is to sell $25 million and close 110-115 transactions. Clearly, she is a top performer and the embodiment of a successful career in real estate. She sees the marketplace recovering: “We were luckier than some, in that we did not get caught up in subprime loans like many other parts of the country did,” Baker explained, “therefore we don’t have the large number of foreclosures that other cities have experienced. It’s a buyer’s market here, but our market is showing great signs of recovery and I do think that as the year progresses, we will see recovery.”

Moving toward online selling by design

“I produced a new website in 2008 and I wanted to make it the number one resource for Wilmington real estate,” Baker told us. “I realized that if that were to happen, I needed to get my personal website on page one of Google (and other search engines). The corporate Seacoast Realty site is on page one of Google, as are all of my major competitors broker sites. Now, my personal site is on page one (www.cbbaker.com) of Google, too. By putting my personal site up there, I own my private lead source equal to that of an entire competitor’s brokerage, but I don’t have to share the leads with anyone but my team. Lately, people have been finding me on the Web after typing in phrases having to do with Wilmington real estate, but not containing those words, something known as ‘long-tail search.’

Long-tail search is a powerful benefit and it brought a $2+ million dollar buyer in, she says.

“My online marketing subscription live reports show me every phrase that I am found on by real searchers for properties on any page one of any search engine, and that’s a large part of where I believe my success is coming from. For example, I have been found by people searching for homes on the following phrases:

 

 

I have been found on a total of 500 such different phrases by over 6,777 Internet shoppers in the past months. I’ve even been found on this actual search phrase five different people typed in: “new Hanover County property tax rate.” If its real estate-related, I am found on it. I subscribed for the phrase, ‘Wilmington NC Real Estate’ in organic search, and I get that, plus 499 other search keyword phrases that cover every possible permutation of that phrase, all included in the subscription at no additional cost.

Even better, there is no way I could have predicted that I would be found on some of those phrases, so I could never have optimized my site for them. Just one of those additional search phrases got me found by a buyer in an exclusive area that we didn’t optimize for who is in escrow on a multi-million dollar property.

There is no way he would have found me without my online marketing subscription. To me, this is a complete surprise and a complete free benefit of my online marketing game plan that my CSR at Compass and I prepared.

The suitcase and the handle

“We prefer to use conceptual explanations to technical ones as we feel there is no need to dazzle anyone with ‘technical talk.’ We want folks to understand what happens when they subscribe to CompassSearch, so we keep it simple and use easily understood explanations to let our clients know what our product does, more than how it does it,” explained Mike Glenn, IT chief for Compass/Blackwater.

“In order to visualize how this can work for you, think of your website as a suitcase and the key phrases you choose to aim for as the handle of that suitcase. The ‘handle’ of that suitcase is attached to the process of moving up the search engines with a virtual ‘hook.’ That ‘handle’ is the lead phrase ‘Wilmington NC Real Estate’ in this example. As the phrase makes progress because of our process, the suitcase, which contains your complete website and all of its content, is pulled up with it. As your site moves higher, it is found more often, effectively telling the search engine robots that your site is the ‘go to’ site for your targets. As the engines put you on the first page results, they note how many times people click on to your site when it is offered.

As that happens more often, your site is deemed to be more important. The robots start associating your site with more of the content in your html code and in your site’s pages. Within 3-4 months, you are being found on all the phrases in your keywords tag and for many others contained in your site-we track the 500 most popular phrases for you. Synergy happens and the robots make the leap that anything searched for dealing with real estate in your target area should be sent to you (that’s how Baker gets found under “new Hanover County property tax rate” for example).”

The payoff

“It’s not just getting to page one that makes online marketing happen,” Baker explained, “but you can’t succeed online until you do get to the search engines-for all sorts of phrases, not just the one you want to get there for. Once that happens, our sales process really begins. We started to succeed online when we used our top quality methods combined with the top quality technology. We now get about 60-75% of our leads and at least a sale a month from our website.”

Baker continued, “and now that we are solidly on page one of Google for all of our chosen searches, we expect more leads and more sales. It only takes one $100,000 sale to completely cover the subscription’s cost for a year. That minimum of one sale is guaranteed with the subscription. We have covered our cost of subscribing many times over. Compass does exactly what I hired them to do: help me sell houses online. I leave all that high technology to them, as you might expect, but their marketing help is also a very valuable part of our success, which is also included and is something I didn’t expect.”

If you plan to remain a real estate professional you must make the shift to selling homes online. With 87% of residential real estate sales happening online, every agent who wants to be in business knows they must land some of that Internet business. To put it in perspective, if 100 people are looking for homes in your town today, do you want to miss out on 87 of them? The way it is now, 87 of those buyers are going to other agents in your neighborhood-many of them your direct competition, unless you are on the top pages of Google.

Baker realized some time ago that if the real estate business were moving to the Internet, she needed to do so as well. She took action and now the hardest part of her work is done: she is there, on page one of Google, where people searching will find her for years to come. Taking decisive action when called for is part of the reason why Baker is successful and a top agent in her market with the top company in her market. Baker has succeeded in making the transition that all agents and brokers must inevitably make to succeeding at selling homes online. “There’s quite a bit that goes in to succeeding online,” Baker told me in closing, “but trying to succeed online is a waste of energy if shoppers looking for homes can’t find you in the major search results. It’s all about prospects: I can work as hard as I know how, but unless I have someone to sell; I am just another good salesperson with no prospects. CompassSearch brings me prospects and they have helped make me into an Internet Realtor. I couldn’t have done it without them.”

Mike Parker specializes in online marketing services for Realtors® and real estate professionals. Obtain a free copy of his booklet that shows you what Kay Baker has that you don’t have: “REAL SEO Explained” by writing to realseo@compassinternetsystems.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.

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Friday, November 20, 2009