Strategies Of Rationale for Encouraging Repeat Visits
The more often people visit your site, the more likely they are to find a property
they are interested in buying or the more likely they will decide the time is right
to sell or the more likely they are to choose you as their agent. You want to
ensure that the techniques you use to get repeat traffic are appropriate for your
target market. For example, if you were having a contest on your site targeted
toward commercial buyers, you would not want to give away a bread-maker as
the prize. That would be fine, however, if your target market is the first-time
home buyer. You want to offer something of interest to the market you are
targeting. If your target market is oceanfront property owners, then a sea kayak,
Adirondack chairs, or a tide clock might work.
I am a big proponent of leveraging everything you do for maximum market-
ing results. Almost every repeat traffic generator provides an opportunity for
permission marketing and also for viral marketing. Make sure you review the
repeat traffic generators you use on your site and incorporate the appropriate
permission and viral marketing elements.
The more often a person visits your site:
• The more your brand is reinforced
• The more your target market feels a part of your community, and people
do business with people they know and trust
• The more likely they are to give you permission to stay in touch
• The more likely they are to tell others about you, your listings, your
services, etc.
• The more likely you will be first in mind when they go to purchase or
sell a house or piece of property.
Use a What’s New Page for Repeat Visits
A What’s New page can mean different things to different sites. For most real
estate Web sites, this page updates users with summaries of their most recent
listings or the most recent listings in the MLS system. Of course, your What’s
New page could also include any awards you or your company has received
and new additions to your Web site, such as a new mortgage calculator or new
information on mortgage rates. Your What’s New page should be accessible.
from your home page so that when people visit your site, they do not have to
search through your entire site to find out what is new. If visitors repeatedly
find interesting additions in the What’s New section, they will come back to
your site on a regular basis to check out what’s new. Here you can leverage this
repeat traffic generator with permission marketing by asking if visitors would
like to be notified via e-mail when you’ve added something to the What’s New
section. It’s all about getting their permission to send them e-mail and therefore
include them in your community.
Other approaches for the What’s New page could be What’s New on your
site, What’s New in your company, or What’s New in your location. Whatever
it is, you should always make sure that it is of interest to your target market.
Again, you can ask your visitors if they would like to be notified when updates
are made to this section of your Web site. This, once again, gives you permis-
sion to e-mail them and present them with new information that might make
them want to come back to your site again.
Free Stuff—Everyone Loves It
Offering free things is a great way to increase traffic—everybody likes a freebie.
If you provide something for free that is valuable to your target market, free
mortgage calculators for example, you are sure to have a steady stream of repeat
Giving things away is also a great way to increase traffic. When you have
giveaways on your site, such as a free staging session or a free carpet cleaning,
your pages can also be listed and linked from the many sites on the Internet
that list places where people can receive free stuff. To find these listings of free
stuff, simply go to a search engine and do a search on “Free Stuff Index” or
“Free Stuff Links.” You will be amazed at how many people are giving things
away online.
You don’t have to give somthing away to everyone. You could simply have
a drawing every week. You could then ask entrants if they would like you to
notify them of the winner, which again gives you permission to e-mail them.
You should change your freebie often and let your site visitors know how
often you do this. Something like “We change our free offer every single week!
Keep checking back” or “Click here to be notified by e-mail when we update”
also works well.
Freebies provide ideal viral marketing opportunities as well. Have a “Tell a
friend about this” button near the freebie so site visitors can quickly and easily
tell their friends.
Everyone Wants the Best Price Coupons and Discounts
Offer coupons and discount vouchers that can be printed from your site. By
partnering with non-competing businesses, such as a cleaning company or a
moving company, and offering their coupons to your visitors, you can get people
to come back to your site again and again. You can change the coupon daily or
weekly to encourage repeat visits. People will come back to your site again and
again if they know they can find good deals there. You can ask people if they
want to be notified by e-mail when you update the coupons on your Web site.
This once again gives you the opportunity to present them with new informa-
tion about your business.
By offering coupons from your Web site, you also cut down your overhead
cost because people are printing the coupons on their own printers, thus not
using your paper. Remember that you should have terms and conditions on the
coupons that are available for printing. For example, you should have an expi-
ration date. Someone could print a coupon and try to use it in a year’s time. You
should try to have the expiration date close to the release of the coupon. This
will create some urgency, enticing the visitor to use the coupon more quickly
and then come back for more coupons.
Coupons provide ideal viral marketing opportunities—for example, “Send
this coupon to a friend.”
Open House Listings Keep Visitors Informed
A comprehensive, current calendar of open houses can encourage repeat visits.
Your calendar should always be kept up to date and be of value to your readers.
When someone is planning to purchase a house or a condo in a new area, they
want to know when the open houses are being held and they are often inter-
ested in what’s going on in the area. Sometimes a great calendar of events can
encourage a visitor to stay longer.
A calendar of open houses and events can encourage a lot of repeat traffic
as long as the calendar is kept current and complete. Again, you can ask people
if they’d like to be notified via e-mail when you update your calendar.
Luring Customers with Contests and Competitions
Contests and competitions are great traffic builders. Some sites hold regular
contests on a weekly or monthly basis to generate repeat visitor.
tests is also a great way to find out about your target market by requesting
information on the entry form. See Figure 3.1 where Federal Real Estate is
having a contest where participants can win free rent in an apartment in down-
town Montreal. The contest identifies renters and potential clients who are look-
ing to rent in downtown Montreal. It also builds Federal Real Estate’s database
with the name, telephone number, and e-mail address of potential, highly quali-
fied clients.
You can simply request that people fill out an electronic ballot to enter the
contest. If you want to find out something about the people entering, ask them
to answer an appropriate question or two. If you want to do some market
research, again, ask a question or two. Make it easy and unobtrusive. The more
fields they have to fill out, the fewer people will enter your contest. Be selective
with the questions you ask.
You might have contestants answer three questions relating to your real
estate Web site on the entry form. Of course, to find the answers to the ques-
tions, visitors have to visit a number of pages on your site, and the three ques-
tions are marketing related; sending visitors to pages that may influence them
to take a desired action. A question like “What do you get when you join our e-
club?” will take them to your e-club sign-up page to find that they get 15 per-
cent off the cost of a property appraisal when they join the e-club. Chances are
they’ll sign up while they are on the page.
You can use the contest to get information about your target market. When
contestants enter the contest, have them rank what influences their buying.
ask them when they are planning to move. The information you request
can also provide you with demographic or psychographic information.
Allow site visitors to enter your contest often. It boggles my mind when I
see contests that limit the number of times a visitor can enter. The objective of
the contest is to get visitors back to your site on a regular basis! I’d suggest that
to accomplish this objective, it might be more appropriate to tell your Web site
visitors to “Enter today! Enter often!” “Bookmark this site—The more times
you enter, the more chances you have to win!”
You might consider changing the information on the contest Web page around
the entry form on a regular basis. Create Web site stickiness by providing links
to other areas of your site—perhaps to other repeat traffic generators you are
using on your site.
Whatever type of contest you determine best meets your marketing objec-
tives, be sure you encourage permission marketing (“Click here to be notified
when we have a new contest”) and viral marketing (“Tell a friend about this
great contest”). Leverage, leverage, leverage: “Tell five friends and receive five
extra ballots for yourself.”
Make your contest conditional: “Sign up to receive our weekly e-specials and
be included in our drawing for (something of interest to your target market).”
Before you go ahead with holding any kind of contest, find out if any legal
issues concern you. There may be restrictions that you are not aware of (e.g.,
you might be required to purchase a legal permit to hold lotteries). You should
also remember to ask the entrants the e-mail address at which they want to be
notified of the winner. This, again, grants you permission to e-mail them to tell
them who the winner was, and also to inform them of the new contest or new
listings that you might have on your site that month.
You want to promote your contest through public and private mail list
postings, newsgroup postings, your e-mail signature file, press releases, and
links from other contest sites.
It always amazes me when I see an online contest where the winner is an-
nounced only on the Web site. What a missed opportunity! As much as contest
owners might like to think that all the people who entered the contest are anx-
iously awaiting the date the contest ends (perhaps they have even put a re-
minder in their scheduler) and the winner is announced so that they can beat a
path back to your site to see if they were the winner—it’s not going to happen!
To take full advantage of having the contest and achieving your objectives, you
want to send an e-mail to all contest participants notifying them of the winner
and, in the same e-mail, offer them the contest prize at a discount only available
to the contest entrants for a limited time or for the first 20 respondents. In the
same e-mail you also want to tell them about your new contest and provide a
link back to the new contest entry form.
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