Using Online Chat to Generate Real Estate Leads

Real Estate Internet Marketing - 100 Tips in 100 Days

Tip 64 of 100 - Experimenting With Chat Programs


When it comes to generating leads and inquiries online, real estate agents need to use as many different techniques as possible.

After all, you never know where people will go when they reach your website. You don't know their personality, their desires or their motivations. So if you present them with options, there's a much better chance they will move forward.

Chat programs are an often overlooked method of generating leads online. But these programs can be very effective when used properly, so I've dedicated this entire article to the subject.

The Value and Simplicity of Chat

In order to use this technique, the real estate agent or broker must have an office manager or customer service person -- someone who is near a computer for most of the day. So if you are a true sole proprietorship with no from of customer support, you might want to put this technique on the side burner for now.

For those al estate agents who are lucky enough to have an office manager or customer support person, let's move on to this useful technique for lead generation.

You've probably visited a website in the past that had a button encouraging you to "Get live help" or "Click to chat." These tools are a great way to get a spur-of-the-moment response from website visitors, the kind of response that could lead to a business relationship as well. Instead of sending an email and waiting for a response, people can click the chat button and have a dialogue with a live person.

How the Process Works

Here are the nuts and bolts of installing and using a chat program on your website. It's actually pretty simple, thanks to some handy software programs that are available these days. Here's an overview of the steps involved:

1. Choose a program to use.
2. Complete the setup process.
3. Put a chat button on your website.
4. Train the person handling the inquiries.

Step 1 - Choose an Online Chat Program

For starters, you will obviously need to choose a program to use. These are third-party programs that will either be (A) installed onto your web server or (B) hosted remotely by the chat software company. I've done a little research in this area to get you started.

The best approach when comparing these programs (or any software product for that matter) is to do a free trial of the software. To the best of my knowledge, all of the companies / products listed below offer a free trial. This allows you to judge the product firsthand, before buying any software.

Step 2 - Complete the Setup Process

Once you have chosen a program that meets your needs, you will then have to complete the setup process. Depending on the company / product you've chosen, this might be a very short step. If you are hosting the program on your own server, you'll need to upload all of the files to run the program -- a downside to this approach.

On the other hand, if you're using a remotely hosted program, you can forego this step. "Remotely hosted" means the program will run from the chat company's servers. This approach has the advantage of being easier and requiring less technical involvement on your end.

Step 3 - Put a Chat Button on Your Website

This is an important step, because it directly relates to the number of people who use the tool. If online chat is going to be an important part of your lead generation program (and it could be), you'll want to give the chat button its own piece of web space.

Where you place your button will depend on the layout of your website. If you have a left-hand navigation menu, you might want to add it at the top of that menu. The main thing is to give it some space so that the eye is drawn to it, a fundamental practice of Web Design 101.

Step 4 - Train the Person Handling Chat Inquiries

When I say you must "train" the person, I'm not referring to the technical details, which are fairly straightforward. Instead, I am referring to how you want to handle the online communication process with strangers. For example, how will you move these strangers toward contacting you by phone or email? After all, when they pop up on the chat screen, you'll only have their first name -- but no phone number or email address.

So the person handling the inquiries must be trained to balance two things at once. He or she must answer the person's immediate question (which is the whole point of a customer service chat program), while also moving the person toward a more formal conversation via phone or email. For this purpose, it will help to have some copy-and-paste scripts the customer service person can use, after handling the person's initial inquiry.

Free Real Estate Articles - New and Improved Article Center

I've spent the last few days revamping the real estate article center, and I'm pleased to say that it's now open for "business." If you need free real estate articles for your website or blog, check out the new and improved article center. Go there now

Improvements to the Article Center

Basically, I've made the entire website easier to use. I'll also be adding more articles over the weekend ... I have 25 new articles slated to go online by Monday! There are also better instructions for republishing the free articles onto your website, easier navigation to help you get around the site, and some good old-fashioned simplicity.

Here are the pertinent pages:

Article Library | Publisher Guidelines | Publishing Instructions

Hope you find it useful.

-Brandon

The New Real Estate Directory - Example of an Enhanced Listing

In a previous post we mentioned the launch of our new real estate directory of agents in the U.S. In this post, I'd like to show you what an enhanced listing looks like.

When you submit your website to the agent directory you will have to listing options -- standard listing or enhanced. The latter option gives you (A) more room for a company description, (B) additional links to your website sub-pages, and (C) a headshot photo included with the listing. Enhanced listings will also appear above standard listings within a certain city page of the directory.

The headshot is a rarity among real estate directories these days. As you may know from submitting your website to agent directories over the yeas, most of them only allow a short description and a link to your home page. Very few real estate directories will allow headshot photos like we do. As a result, there is no way to "break out" or distinguish yourself among all of those other links.

Look at the listing for Sam Carroll on the Austin agents page of our directory. Sure, he's the first listing for that city because our real estate directory is brand new. But even when the page fills in you can see how much nicer it is to have a photo (instead of just a link).

If you have any questions about the new real estate agent directory just let me know. I will try to answer most questions here on the blog for the benefit of all.

-Brandon

What Is a Realtor - General Public Doesn't Know

I have long suspected that the vast majority of consumers do not know the difference between a REALTOR® and a real estate agent. I won't postulate on whether there truly is a difference -- aside from the obvious membership dues. Instead, I'll share a recent "scientific" experiment with you.

Over the weekend, I was at a social gathering of about 30 folks. The topic turned to jobs and I mentioned that I performed various marketing services for real estate agents. Somebody said, "You mean Realtors, right?" And then somebody else said, "What's the difference?"

So before the conversation could go any further, I asked the group to humor me for a brief survey. I asked somebody to tell me what the difference was between a REALTOR® and a real estate agent.

[By the way, I have to write the word in all caps with the registered symbol on it every time. If I don't, the NAR's trademark police will send me a cease-and-desist email. It has happened before, so I'm aware that they have people who scour the Web all day in search of improper renderings of the word. Your membership dues help pay for this. But back to the story.]

So anyway, I asked the group: "Just what is a REALTOR ® anyway? Is there any difference between a REALTOR ® and a real estate agent?"

Of the 30 or so people present, the vast majority thought the two terms were synonymous -- that they meant the same thing, just like the terms optometrist and eye doctor. One person suggested there was a difference. She said that "Realtors were a little pin on their lapel while real estate agents do not." I asked what the pin stood for and she said "basically nothing."

Now, I did not have this experiment sanctioned by the Academy of Science or anything. But I would vouch that the 30 or so people present were a pretty fair sampling of the American public. Some were democrats; others were republicans. Some were white-collar professionals; others were blue-collar workers. There were whites, Hispanics, blacks and (to the best of my recollection) at least two people of Asian background.

So as far as I'm concerned, they were the "general public." And as far as they showed me, the general public does not know the difference between a REALTOR ® and a real estate agent ... nor did they seem to care (I was booed at one point for taking up so much time).

What's my point? Well, this is just me talking here. But it seems to me, that a REALTOR ® cannot expect the title to give him or her any kind of advantage in today's economy. At least not according to my experiment. It seems to be the equivalent of an eye doctor puffing his chest out and saying, "I'm not just an eye doctor ... I'm an optometrist."

Before You Send Angry Emails:

I am sure that some people will send me nasty emails defending the prestige of their title (and the logic of the membership dues they pay). But those people would be missing the point, wouldn't they? I am not responsible for public perception or opinion -- I'm only drawing attention to it. In other words, don't shoot the messenger!

Real Estate Directory for Agents - New Development

Hi everyone. I just wanted to create a quick post to let you know about the real estate directory we put online over the weekend. At the city level, the directory is still something of a "shell," but we will be filling it in with original content on all pages.

Basically, there will be keyword rich content on every city page to help draw traffic (which is good for the agents listed in the directory). This is just one way I plan to make this directory better than most real estate directories online today. Our directory is actually created for consumers, and not just for search engines. It is designed to be user-friendly and to help people actually find a real estate agent in their town.

Also, because it's part of the Home Buying Institute, our real estate directory will enjoy excellent search engine visibility in time. Those of you familiar with real estate directories will see the double value in this. Our agent directory has the potential to send direct traffic to your website, in addition to helping you boost your search engine rankings with a quality link.

I will create an information page with more details in the next day or two, and I'll post to the blog again when that page is up. But some people have been asking about the directory already, so I thought a brief mention was needed.

If you have any questions about the new real estate directory for agents just let me know.

-Brandon