Internet Marketing

Internet Marketing 101

We've all seen the numbers and heard the latest predictions for the housing market, and the times they are a' changing. But change is often a very good thing, especially if it leads us to better and smarter ways of selling our services. Investing the time to learn about Internet marketing is one of the smartest investments those of us in the real estate business can make - especially if housing inventories continue to rise and competition becomes tighter.

What is Internet marketing and how does it benefit you?

Internet marketing is a broad term that covers all of the ways that the Internet can be used to promote your business and increase your sales pipeline. Internet marketing is one of the most cost-effective ways to expand you business. And the best thing is, once you set up a strategy, it works for you around the clock by filling your existing sales pipeline with new sales prospects and referrals. It also allows you to manage far more prospects at one time, thereby increasing your chances of generating more sales.

The main components of Internet marketing are search engine marketing (SEM), search engine optimization (SEO) and affiliate marketing. In the coming weeks we'll be looking at each of these components in depth. For now, here's a brief look at each.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM)

Search engine marketing gets your website higher rankings in the only search engines that really matter - Google, MSN, and Yahoo. And higher rankings are far more important than a slick website - most search engine users do not look past the second page of search results. So if you're not on the first two pages, you might as well not exist. If you tried our suggestion last month to search Google for the term "real estate in [your neighborhood]," then you know how tight your competition actually is.

SEM is a comprehensive strategy that includes SEO (more about that later) and the purchase of sponsored listings to so that you can get your website to the top of the results page quickly - without waiting for the results of a comprehensive SEO campaign.

Buying sponsored listings means that you pay to have your website listed at the very top of a search results page. To see how sponsored listings look on Google, Yahoo, and MSN, type "California real estate" in the search boxes and see what comes up. See the blue box at the top of the page that says "Sponsored links"? Those folks paid the search engines a fee (based on the popularity of the keywords) to have their listings appear there.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

Search Engine Optimization has become the holy grail of Internet marketing for good reason - it's the best way to increase your website's ranking and drive your Internet business. SEO is the art and science of increasing your website's visibility to search engines for the keywords and phrases that are most relevant to your business. SEO usually includes keyword research and development, META Tag optimization, linking strategy, and results reporting. An effective optimization takes time to build and to take effect, but the higher rankings that you will achieve are worth it.

Search engines generally all work the same way. They use an automatic program called "spiders." These spiders crawl through the Internet looking for websites and "reading" the content on the pages it finds. It then classifies the website and assigns value to that page in terms of backlinks. In Google's case, it assigns what's called a PageRank.

The core of SEO and successful PageRanks is keyword research. In order to achieve search engine visibility, it's critical that you use the words and phrases that your target audience is typing into search queries. These keyword phrases must appear frequently and prominently on your web pages. What are good keywords to use? Try to think like your customers and what they might search for. If you are located in Boston, your keywords might be "Best schools Boston" or "emerging neighborhoods Boston." Don't just limit yourself to standard real estate terms- try to get into the heads of potential home buyers and what's important to them.

The results of your keyword research can also be used for planning pay-per-click search engine campaigns. Pay-per-click campaigns are a healthy part of a good SEO strategy. With pay-per-click, your website is assured a top ranking just as long as you pay to be in the top listing slot for your keywords. If people click on your links, you pay a fee to the search engine. To see pay-per-click (or AdWords, as Google calls them) in action, enter "California real estate" again in Google. See the listings on the right hand side of the page? Those companies have placed the highest bids for the keyword "California real estate," so that they gain the highest visibility.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate Marketing is another popular component of Internet marketing in which an affiliate is rewarded (paid) when they send you traffic to generate leads. Affiliate marketing is the Internet equivalent of a classic business practice - paying finders'-fees for the introduction of new clients to a business. Compensation can be based on a certain amount for each visit (pay-per-click), registrant (pay-per-lead), or a commission for each sale (pay-per-sale).

One of the best things about this method, at least for the merchant, is that no payment is owed to the affiliate until actual results are generated.

In a nutshell, here's how affiliate marketing works:

Merchants (brokers, agents, etc.) earn revenue by selling products and services.
Affiliates, looking to earn revenue from site traffic, promote the merchants
Merchants pay a commission to affiliates in exchange for leads and sales resulting from their promotions.

There are a variety of ways to run an affiliate program, and you should research the market carefully before adding an affiliate strategy to your online sales channel. Some of the different types of strategies include hosted services, shopping carts with affiliate features, third-party affiliate networks, hosted services, and standalone software. The two most popular affiliate marketing intermediaries are LinkShare and Commission Junction.

Look for more in-depth information about these great strategies in the coming weeks. Next week's FAN will be devoted exclusively to search engine marketing for real estate agents, and will be filled with information to get you up and running with a great strategy in no time.

See you then!

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