Welcome, Newsletter Subscribers!

Today I announced the "retirement" of the Arming Your Farming newsletter. I've been publishing the newsletter for over two years, providing real estate marketing advice to nearly 2,000 readers (at the end).

But lately, I've felt that I'm duplicating my publishing efforts by running the blog and the newsletter. In recent months, the newsletter has basically become a summary of the content published here and on the main website. So I say ... why not trim the fat?

For the foreseeable future, I will publish all of my web communications through this blog. You can subscribe through RSS feed, or by entering an email address in the box to the right (I use a program that converts blog posts into email format and sends it out weekly or so ... a smarter way to operate!)

So once again ... welcome to the blog, newsletter subscribers!

~Brandon

Labels: Industry News

Free Online Mortgage Calculators for Your Website

If you need a mortgage calculator for your real estate website, you might find this press release interesting. The calculators are pretty nice and easy to customize. The only caveat (of course) is that you retain the company's "mortgage calculators" link back to their website. But hey, everything is a trade-off in life.

Excerpt of the press release:

Mortgage Site Launches Free Online Mortgage Calculators for Webmasters

Calculators4Mortgages.com, an online mortgage and loan resource, recently introduced a new, free product for webmasters with mortgage-, real estate- and finance-related Web sites. Sites can add value for their visitors by providing them with free online mortgage calculators.

Read the full release here

~Brandon

Labels: Industry News

Real Estate Lead Generation: Tip #57 of 100

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 57 of 100 - Understand Lead Generation

Lead generation is one of the most important pieces of the real estate marketing "puzzle." Without lead generation, you have no leads. Without leads, you have no business. Blunt but factual.

About once a week I get a call from a real estate agent who wants help with SEO [definition: search engine optimization] because they want to generate more leads from their real estate site. When ask what kind of lead-generation techniques they currently have in place on their website, I often hear silence on the other end of the line.

"But isn't that what good search engine ranking will do ... generate leads?" No, not necessarily.

If you increase traffic to a website with no lead-generation techniques in place, you will have plenty of traffic ... but no way to capitalize on it.

I won't lie to you. Real estate lead generation is hard work. It takes focus, imagination, and good old-fashioned hard work. You have to create something of value that people want badly enough they're willing to "raise their hands" in order to get it. If you'd like to learn more on this subject, refer to the article below.

Related article:
Real Estate Lead Generation - How Do I Generate Leads?

Look for tip #58 soon!

~Brandon

Labels: Internet Marketing, Lead Generation

Online Real Estate Marketing - New Article Posted

As more and more consumers go online to conduct real estate research, so too must real estate agents venture online ... for marketing purposes.

I don't need to tell you the importance of a strong real estate web presence. You already know that, because you've already read or heard all of the statistics about Internet usage among home buyers and sellers.

But what I feel I must tell you is that the "traditional" approach to real estate marketing is becoming less and less effective with each passing year. This approach consisted of putting up a profile type of real estate website, and then waiting for the phone to ring.

Those days are over. And I just posted a new article to the Knowledge Center that examines this subject in more detail.

You'll find the article here:
Online Real Estate Marketing - 3 Pieces of the Puzzle

Hope you enjoy it!

~Brandon

Labels: Internet Marketing

Differentiate SEO from Lead Generation - Tip #56 of 100

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 56 of 100 - Differentiate SEO from Lead Generation

As a provider of real estate SEO services, I get at least one call per week where the person says something like, "I need search engine optimization because my website does not generate leads."

The first thing I do is to ensure the caller knows the difference between SEO and lead generation. Search engine optimization is a traffic generator. That's it. If you were under the impression that SEO generated leads, I'm sorry to disappoint you.

Now, that's not to say that a good real estate SEO program cannot help you generate leads. It can certainly do that. But only when there's a lead-generation program in place on the target website.

In other words, if you increase traffic to a website with no lead-generation tactics in place, you will have plenty of traffic but no leads. But if you increase traffic (through SEO or anything else) to a website with effective lead generation, your increases in traffic will directly correlate to an increase in leads and inquiries.

SEO is a traffic generator, not a lead generator.

Related info:

Look for tip #57 soon!

~Brandon

Labels: Internet Marketing

On Vacation - Blog Highlights in the Meantime

I'm out for a week's vacation, so I thought I would leave you with some blog highlights from the last few months:

Talk to you again in a week.

~Brandon

Labels: Real Estate Marketing