How to Creating Useful Links from Your Site

 

How to Creating Useful Links from Your Site

Provide visitors with links to other sites similar to yours or a meta-index of

links that would be of interest to your target market. 

If you are

a real estate professional who caters to vacation home buyers, you might de-

velop a list and links to all the attractions, golf courses, and events in your area.

If your target market is rental property buyers, you might have a list and links

to all the universities and post-secondary schools in your area.

Do not put outbound links on your home page. Place them down a level or

two after the visitors have seen all the information you want them to see before

you provide the links away from your site.

Links can be incorporated in two ways. The first is where clicking the link

loads the new page in the same browser window. (It replaces the content of

your page with the content of the linked page.) The second and preferred method

is to have the link open a new browser window. (Your page stays where it is and

the content from the linked page opens up in the new browser window.) This is

preferred because once visitors are finished with the new page, they can close

the new browser window and your page is still there in the “old” browser

window. Try exchanging links with others so you receive a link from their site

to your site. As long as the links are of value to your visitors, people will come

back to use your resource.

You might consider asking visitors if they are interested in being notified

when you update your list of links or just make updates to your site in general.

By offering this, if they choose to do so, you have the opportunity to send

people an e-mail message and remind them about your site while presenting

them with new information about what might be going on with your site.

Providing a Featured Listing or Tip of the Day/Week to

Encourage Repeat Visits

Have a section that offers cool tips that relate to your real estate business, your

services, your listings, or your target market. These tips can be from one sen-

tence to one paragraph long. In the example shown in Figure 3.3, Mary Lou

Bennett of RE/MAX provides a real estate tip-of-the-week article. You can be

guaranteed that buyers and sellers will return to this site on a regular basis to

read the newest article.

If visitors find your advice helpful, they will return repeatedly to see what

interesting piece of information you have displayed that day. Ask your visitors

if they would be interested in receiving the tip via e-mail or if they would like to

be notified when the tip has been updated so they can then visit your Web site.

Encourage people to send the tip to a friend. You can also encourage others to

use your tip on their Web site as long as they provide a link back to your site as

the source. You can go a step further and syndicate your content, putting it on

appropriate sites to be accessed and available by anyone looking for content for

their newsletter, e-zines, or Web sites. You can also make it available to other

sites by way of an RSS feed. 

Permission marketing is an extremely important aspect of Internet marketing

for the real estate industry. While legislation imposes restrictions on what you

can and cannot send via e-mail, permission marketing can be a valuable asset to

any marketing campaign if it is used in the right way. This chapter provides

details on what permission marketing is and how it can be incorporated into

your real estate Web site. Chapter 14 on private mail list marketing provides all

the details on how it is sent, how to grow your database, and how to make sure

your permission-based e-mail is not treated as spam.

Permission Marketing Explained

Permission marketing boils down to asking your target market and Web site

visitors for their permission to send them information on a regular basis. Many

real estate businesses compete for the attention of their target market on a daily

basis, but it is very difficult to break through all of the advertising clutter the

market is already receiving.

Permission marketing, if done properly, enables you to build strong, long-last-

ing, loyal relationships with prospects and past customers without even picking up

the phone. Every communication reinforces your brand and keeps you “first in

mind” with everyone who receives your communication. You become the de facto

expert in your real estate niche with the recipients of your communication.

The key to a successful permission marketing campaign is to get your

target market to willingly volunteer to participate. In order to get your target

market do this, whatever it is you are proposing must be of value to them.

Remember, before your target market agrees to participate in your permis-

sion marketing campaign, they will stop and ask themselves “What’s in it for

me?” If they see no benefit in participating, then they will not participate—

it’s that simple.

Chapter 3 discusses many ways to encourage repeat visits to your Web site.

Repeat-traffic generators provide great opportunities for permission market-

ing. A few examples include:

• “We update our Open House Listings every Thursday! Click here to

join our e-club to be notified as soon as we update.”

• “Click here to join our e-club and receive our biweekly newsletter filled

with coupons, mortgage rate information, and real estate tips.”

• “Join our e-club to receive member-only special reports and updates on

Tucson price trends, Just Solds, mortgage rates, Open Houses, and other

hot real estate news.”

With the spam legislation rapidly evolving in the industry, I expect that the

next round will allow you to send only those things that people have specifi-

cally requested. That is, if someone has given you permission to send them your

Open House updates, you don’t have their permission to send your newsletter

or your Real Estate Trend Report.

It might be a good idea to consider integrating your permission marketing

requests with an e-club. If you have an e-club and encourage people to “Join our

e-club to receive our Real Estate Trends Report, Just Listed, Just Sold, Open Houses,

and other great information available only to e-club members,” you are essen-

tially getting umbrella permission to send all types of marketing information.

Permission marketing is extremely effective because it’s not intrusive. Your

target market volunteered to receive your information because it is of interest to

them. Because of this, your target market is expecting to receive your informa-

tion and is more likely to take the time to view it and be receptive to it.

Always make sure your offer is something valuable to your niche market

and is specifically of interest to them. Make sure the offer is positioned appro-

priately on various pages of your Web site. It should be above the fold—your

visitor should not have to scroll down to be provided with the enticing offer.

Grab the visitor’s attention to the offer with the graphics, the color, a great

headline, and a call to action.

Uses of Permission Marketing

Permission marketing is a great way to increase your online success. There are

many ways in which you can integrate permission marketing with many other

Internet marketing tools like repeat traffic generators, special reports, “hot”

information, customer loyalty programs, newsletters, surveys, contests, and so

covers many repeat-traffic and customer-loyalty-building tools

that you can use on your Web site. Permission marketing is an excellent way to

enhance and leverage the use of those tools—a few of which are covered in

depth in this chapter.

Newsletters are one of the most popular resources for integrating permis-

sion marketing on real estate sites. With newsletters you can ask visitors if they

would like to receive notification of market conditions, mortgage rates, com-

munity information, recent sales, open houses, and so on—whatever might be

of interest to your target market. People who sign up to receive your newsletter

do so because they have a clear interest in the information you have to offer.

In your newsletter you can integrate strategic promotional opportunities to

encourage readers to come back to your site or to take some other course of

action. Whatever the content of your e-mail newsletter, encourage readers to

“follow this link” to your Web site to see the updates, reports, or additional

details. When they click on the link, take them to your Web site. A newsletter is

a great way to keep in front of your target market and constantly remind them

of your presence while at the same time providing them with valuable informa-

tion. Permission marketing opens the door for communication with your target

market; this is an important step in building a long-lasting and profitable rela-

tionship with them.

Another ideal opportunity to put permission marketing to work on your

Web site is offer to provide them with new listings details that meet their

unique criteria as soon as they become active on the MLS system. They set the

parameters: “I’d like to receive information on all waterfront properties that

come on the market in Waverley, Nova Scotia, with a price range of $500,000

to $750,000.” How’s that for letting you know what they’re looking for! If

you’re the first to provide them with the information, particularly in a hot

market, your chances of being the agent to show them the property increase

substantially.