Real Estate Marketing Online - Generate Leads With a School Report
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by Brandon Cornett
From a real estate marketing standpoint, information can be the agent's best friend. People look to agents for their expertise on local home prices, local market conditions, local school information and more.
You can turn this desire into a real estate lead generation campaign simply by giving people what they want ... local information.
Take schools, for example:
The quality of local schools affects all homeowners, with or without children. If they have kids, they'll certainly want to know about schools (student-teacher ratio, average class size, overall rating, etc.). But even home buyers without children should care about schools, because schools will affect their home's resale value.
In this article, you'll learn the following:
- How to research local schools
- How to quickly and easily create a "report card" based on your research
- How to market the report on your website
Step 1. Find the information.
Before you create your report card of local schools, you need to find information about those schools. Thanks to the Internet, this step is fairly easy. There are a number of websites you can use to pull information on local schools.
TheSchoolReport.com is one of them, and the real estate section of Yahoo.com offers similar reports.
With each of these sites (and others), you simply enter your city or zip code to generate a list of schools. Most of the schools will be hyperlinks you can click on for more detailed information. You'll find information about school size / enrollment, student-to-teacher ratio, graduation rate, average class size and more.
Helpful Hint: These websites compile information from reports submitted by school districts. For the most part, this is the same data used by companies such as eNeighborhoods.
Step 2. Organize, modify and format the information.
Once you've gathered as much information as possible, you'll need to organize it. Create a format for each school so you can present the information consistently.
With a program like Microsoft Word, you can easily make professional looking table layouts that you can copy and paste for each school.
Your table data might include school name, address, a photo of the school, and then whatever information you've pulled from the Internet.
Step 3. Create a cover page.
Why create a cover page? Because people believe in what they can see. Because it adds legitimacy. Because it will increase the prospects desire to obtain the report. Because it adds visual appeal and interest.
How do you create a cover page? Well, if you know somebody with basic page layout or graphic design skills, they probably create a simple but attractive cover in 30 minutes or less.
If you don't have any design-minded friends, try this simple formula: Step 1 - Put the title at the top in large font. Step 2 - Put your name at the bottom in smaller font. Step 3 - Put something interesting in the middle (like a picture of one of the schools, or school-related clip art.
Of course, if you want to make it fancier, all the power to you. The more professional the appearance, the more people will be inclined to ask for it.
Step 4. Market the guide on your website and elsewhere.
The first place you should market your "report card" is on your website. If you're getting traffic to your website, this simple addition can increase the number of leads you get from that traffic.
Make the report visible from the home page (or give it a page of its own). Give simple instructions on how people can obtain it. This might be as simple as: "Call or email me today for your free copy." Or it might be more advanced, such as: "Just enter your email address into the box below and click Submit. A download link will be emailed to you!"
Don't stop with the website though. Postcards. Flyers. Email signature block. Any place that your prospects will see it.
Step 5. Position it properly in the reader's mind.
Create a solid report and sell the value of it — those are your keys to success with this method. We've already talked about how to create the report, but how do you sell the value of it? How do you convince people it's worth the small amount of their time it takes to request the report?
* Highlight the immediate value: For people with school-aged children, a report like this will help them learn more about potential schools their children will attend. For people without children, they'll want to buy in an area with good schools for resale / property.
* Include the secondary value: A report like this will also save the reader time and effort. They won't have to scour the Internet for school information because you've rounded it all up for them. You've also presented the information in a concise, readable way that conveys the most important information.
* Point out that it's free: This might seem like a no-brainer, but be sure to remind them that the report costs nothing (though it's highly valuable). If you do a good job selling the value of your report, people may think there's a price tag attached. Make it clear that there's not.
Conclusion
A "report card" of local schools can generate interest and leads from your key prospects. In fact, you could apply the same principle to a number of topic areas, such as mortgage information and home buying tips.
