If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

A few months ago, a year ago actually, I finished up my Realtor Internet Marketing Book and put it up for sale. Now times are changing of course but I as I was looking a couple of days ago I realized that the book that I had all but forgotten is still very relevant, so I have decided to start to give it away to the subscribers of my newsletter.

I have spent the last couple of days making some changes to the book, updating some info and now I believe that it is all complete. If you would like a copy of the book all you need to do is visit the Realtor Marketing book website at www.realtormarketingbook.com.

Have you forgotten what was in the book? I was reminded as well and now that I have looked more closely I realize that I should have probably broken it up in more pieces at the outset, Here are the Realtor Marketing Book chapters

Finding your target market online - You need to focus even more online to find your market then you do offline

Search engine Optimization - Get more people to your site by making sure that the search engines, including Google, know what you page is about

Blogs - Blogs, if done right, are a great way to get people to know your and get more visitors

Websites - It is time to get your website to work for you instead of just look good.

Social Networking - Social Networking is a new and exciting way of getting the word out about your site.

Autoresponders - If someone is interested in buying or selling, then you want to build the know, like, and trust that will keep them with you. That is what an autoresponder can do for you.

Promotion - There are some great ways to promote your internet presence. Lots of people want you to spend lots of money but there are many inexpensive or even FREE ways to promote yourself online.

Newsletters - Do you have a newsletter? Do you wonder why you would need an online newsletter.

Everything that I wrote I wrote from the angle of an internet marketer instead of just from my Realtor background so although you will recognize some of the terminology a lot of it may be a a bit foreign to you…this is of course fine.

Go to the Realtor Internet Marketing Book website and get the book now.

Just surfing around this morning and I found a good post by Chris Brogan about how Realtors should incorporate social media into their marketing strategy.

Now some of the points that Chris makes may seem to be a bit futuristic for some, things like videotaping and uploading your listing walkthroughs, but be very aware that others may already be doing this in your market.

The most important thing to do is be aware of what Chris Brogan and others in the social media space are talking about. As the internet has become more social you can follow someone like Chris and he will mention other great minds in social marketing which will really help out your marketing efforts in the years to come

Have you heard of Twitter? Twitter is the most exciting new Web 2.0 type of communications that we have out there today.

The way that Twitter works and what it is for is that you have a blank slate of an account. You do searches through Twitter for people or subjects and when you find people that are interesting then you can go and “follow” these people. As you follow others they will follow you back so that every time that you sent a “tweet” (a comment, a small text message) then the people following you will see the message and on the other side you will get to see all the people in your list of people that you follow.

So how can you use this as a Realtor?

You can lean from other people in the Real Estate industry
You can become the go to Realtor in your marketplace
You can build relationships with other Realtors

It is difficult with Twitter to really hone in on your market but is of course possible. Do a search on Twitter for your city and just start adding these people from your town or city.

So what are you going to write in your comments?

First of all do not try to market to people. The best thing to do is to make sure that you are always helping others. The real problem for us marketers online is that it is really irritating to others that we try to sell to. People think of Twitter nad Web 2.0 sites as a place where there is no marketing and so any heavy handed marketing would be seen as offensive to others.

What you really want to do is add value to people and they will naturally ask questions about real estate to you.

Try Twitter by joining Twitter and creating a username right now and after you have added yourself to Twitter then start to follow me at http://www.twitter.com/billnad

See you on Twitter.

Have you heard of Twitter? Twitter is the most exciting new Web 2.0 type of communications that we have out there today.

The way that Twitter works and what it is for is that you have a blank slate of an account. You do searches through Twitter for people or subjects and when you find people that are interesting then you can go and “follow” these people. As you follow others they will follow you back so that every time that you sent a “tweet” (a comment, a small text message) then the people following you will see the message and on the other side you will get to see all the people in your list of people that you follow.

So how can you use this as a Realtor?

You can lean from other people in the Real Estate industry
You can become the go to Realtor in your marketplace
You can build relationships with other Realtors

It is difficult with Twitter to really hone in on your market but is of course possible. Do a search on Twitter for your city and just start adding these people from your town or city.

So what are you going to write in your comments?

First of all do not try to market to people. The best thing to do is to make sure that you are always helping others. The real problem for us marketers online is that it is really irritating to others that we try to sell to. People think of Twitter nad Web 2.0 sites as a place where there is no marketing and so any heavy handed marketing would be seen as offensive to others.

What you really want to do is add value to people and they will naturally ask questions about real estate to you.

Try Twitter by joining Twitter and creating a username right now and after you have added yourself to Twitter then start to follow me at http://www.twitter.com/billnad

See you on Twitter.

Google AdWords for Realtors is a real crap shoot it seems with people paying anywhere from $1 per click to $5 per click. But what if I was to tell you that you may be throwing away most of that money and that ther is a better way.

To lower your cost per click you just need to look at the following variables:

Your ad - Make sure that oyu ad is relevent to your customers. The more often that your ad is clicked the more that Google will trust your ad

Your keywords- Everyone wants to rank for Realtor and real estate but there are many more keywords that are much better to rank for with less competition and lower cost.

Your landing page - Making sure that you landing page that you are sending your traffic to is realted to your keyword is critical. The more relevant that it is the better.

When looking at these three variables you can see that making the most of your ad being seen with the right keyword and clicking through giving a relevant page is a lot of work. I would bet that you can cut that $3 - $5 keyword down to 20 - 30 cents per click.

There is one more thing that can help you a lot besides the above three variables and that is the ad groups. If you are writing an ad directed at First Time Buyers then the ad is going to look a lot different than the ad you have going to First Time Buyers or Real Estate Investors so do not bother trying to mix and match instead set up a few ad groups.

Once you have three or four different ad groups then write the Google AdWords ad and then give it keywords and a good landing page, different landing pages for each keyword if possible or necessary and then move on to the next ad group.

There is no shortage to optimizing that you can do with your Google Adwords using the Ad Groups, ads, keywords and landing page quality.

As a computer nerd and marketing guy I love to see a pile of stats that I can analyze and mine the information. When I do any pay per click advertising I can look at my analytics stats and see how well my individual pages are converting.

One of the things that drives me crazy is marketing in ways that are hard to track. One of the most popular methods of doing advertising in real estate is using classified ads. Classifieds are a tough way to track and the only way that anyone seems to track the effectiveness of classified advertising is by the number of calls that they get after they put an ad in the paper. I remember when people would say things like “That was agreat ad I got three calls on it”

Well times change and tracking should also change and get better. I was just tracking a new real estate site that is not getting any Google traffic. I watched and monitored two kinds of advertising. I had Google Analytics set up to track all visits to the site and had the following types of traffic going to the site.

1. Classified ads running that were advertising the site and a phone number to call if the person wanted to.
2. Google Adwords that were costing about 23 cents per visitor.

In the tracking over the last few weeks I noticed that the classified ads were bringing over about 3-5 visitors a day for a $75 per week adspend and the Google Adwords were bringing in about double the people for about a 11-12 dollar per week adspend.

Here is the breakdown per visitor for the classified ad at best $75 divided by a total of 30 visitors for a total of $2.50 per visitor from the newspaper versus 23 cents per visitor over the Google AdWords.

There are of course other factors that we can look at between the newspaper advertising and the Google Adwords including the fact that some people may phone the number instead of visiting the website.

In the end tracking for newspaper classified ads for Realtors sucks because it is not as smooth and can not be changed as easily for split tested as queickly as web advertising is. If you are looking to test how well a page will convert then doing a quick test with Google AdWords or some other pay per click is a lot better use of time or money then almost any other form of testing. Give up the newspaper and find leads on the web instead.

Real estate marketing is about communicating with people and staying on top of the industry. You need to communicate with your past clients, locate new clients, and generate leads through multiple methodologies. When you aren’t there in person, your advertisements must speak for you. It is critical that realtors adopt highly effective print advertising campaigns with newspaper inserts and full-color flyers in order to cast a wider net and secure present and future business.

The key to becoming a successful realtor is your ability to market yourself and your properties. You need to maintain a first-rate image if you want to attract the best clients and generate more income.

You will need to research your market(s), develop a strategy based on your competitors and market needs, and put together an advertising campaign that truly makes you the best option for your potential clients. Choosing proven flyer design techniques and a knowledgeable printer can help you achieve your goals with each campaign …and you may even learn a little in the process! So let’s get to the good stuff - below you will find helpful real estate flyer design and printing tips!

Follow these 7 simple tips to make your real estate flyers more effective:

1. Print in full-color on glossy paper - never print low quality materials

2. Design the flyer around the images and properties - not the price!

3. For each property create a positive headline - differentiate each property

4. Use a subheading that only highlights the homes best features (the history, # of rooms, etc)

5. Pictures speak a thousand words - minimize the text, reduce the “boring” factor

6. Pick 2 fonts and stick with them - one for headlines, one for information

7. Always use ultra-high quality images on your flyers (300 dpi)

Once you’ve designed the perfect real estate flyer follow these 7 printing tips:

1. Print in full color 4/4 - this means full color on both sides of the paper

2. Print with a “bleed” - a bleed means that the images extend all the way to the edge of the page

3. Print on 60# or 80# gloss paper - use 100# gloss paper for upscale areas (ie: Gold Coast, etc)

4. Choose an online print resource center that understands print advertising

5. Ship your flyers direct to your local newspaper for insertion to save time and money

6. Choose a printer with an experienced and friendly staff that will review your file before printing.

Chris Barr is an experienced marketing professional and graduate of Christopher Newport University. He specializes in print advertising, business development, web business strategic positioning, and technical writing. For the lowest prices on printed flyers, newspaper inserts, brochures, menus, and postcards please visit http://www.taradel.com

Kathleen over at the “Build Real Estate Results” blog has a post today about some great things to think about when getting  incoming links to your real estate blog or website

More Ways to Get Good Incoming Links

One of the real overlooked keys that she mentions in this article is to get links to many pages on your site. One of the things that we need to be aware of is that Google and other search engines rank pages and not sites. Your home page may be very powerful and rank well but those inner pages of your site contain most if not all of the content that is going to help people make the decision to work with you. Make sure that other sites have a reason to link to your content on your inner pages.

One of the common ways that Realtors will get links on the internet is by reciprocal linking. This means that you see another site and you both decide to add a link to each other, this is a little like blogrolls on some blogs that you see today. The idea behind reciprocal linking is that when you add a link to your site and another site links back to you that google will like you both better as you have another link pointing to your own site.

That is not quite right though.

The reason that Google likes incoming links to your site is that gives your site authority status, people should trust your site because others trust you enough to add a link to your page. If you give a link to another site Google looks at this as you giving authority to another site so they would cancel out. But this is still not quite right because if this was the case then you should never link to another site and then everyone linking back to you will give you a number one ranking in Google but this is not actually the case because Google does still like links, if you give out none then Google will not really trust you.

So now this idea of linking to and from other sites comes down to trust. There are very complex algorithyms at the Googleplex where the Googlers try to make sure the results at the top of the search engine are the best results. To do this there are a lot of factors that Google looks at. The best thing for you to do though is to not try to trick the system with reciprocal or other links but instead to look at the content that your readers would be most interested in and giving that to them. At the same time make sure that you are using the social networking sites like Digg, Reddit, stumbleupon, Activerain and others to make sure that your site is at least getting noticed and if your content is good enough then you deserve anyway to be an authority, which is what you were trying to be in the first place.

This article will discuss three key points on your market strategy. To look at your market strategy, you will first want to define your market. You cannot make any credible decisions until you have defined the market you are going after along with the submarkets and your acquisition strategy.

The first key points when looking for a market and what to buy is that it must be a good deal. This is easier said than done. There been many companies and individuals who have bought overpriced deals in the past based upon the faith that the property would appreciate. You want your deal to be good enough that you can hold onto the property through a down cycle and still make money. Set yourself up so that in case some kind of disaster happens you are able to hold onto the property and still make money.

A good example is the current market. There has been a downturn within real estate residentially over the last three years but this does not necessarily correspond to the commercial side as well. There have been 10 to 12 years when everything has been going ip but ultimately when it comes on economics, everything is cyclical. At some point there’s going to be down cycle.

The second key to your market strategy is to not put all of your eggs in one basket. Because real estate goes through cycles, you want to have some reserves in place so that if a down cycle does take place, you have an opportunity to take advantage of some of the deals which will occur. The down cycle is almost always one of the best ways to find new good deals due to how many sellers are on the market at that time.

The third key when looking at market strategy is to know what your exit strategy will be. It is very important to know what to look for in buying a property but half the battle is knowing how to sell a property as well. If you buy a property for cheap and sell it for cheap, have you made as much money as you can? Have set guidelines in place for the type of return you would like. Knowing your exit strategy and what the market will allow will allow you to maximize your return. If you are not aware of the market and what is selling, you are cheating yourself out of money that you could have made. You have to work hard to turn around the deal so why not work on getting the most of your hard work that is possible?

You should have both a short-term and long-term view of your market strategy. Figure out what you need to do in the short term to make money but also have a long-term plan in place which you are continually building upon. Your short-term plan should build upon your long-term plan.

Hopefully this article on market strategy has given you some insight into what you need to do to create a good market strategy. A good strategy will help you avoid many mistakes and provide you with more opportunities as you’ll know what you want to look for.

David Lindahl, also known as the “Apartment King” has been successfully investing in single family homes and apartments for the last 10 years. David regularly shares his secrets and experience on the same stage as Tony Robbins, Robert Kiyosaki, and Donald Trump! If you would like a free copy of the Special Report: 27 Ways to Buy a Multi-Family Property with No Money Down, please go to http://www.davespecialoffer.com/