My Projects
Head Down Working
2010 was a very interesting year. We started the year with three distinct options open for our company to grow. Homequest our software application, custom agent wordpress sites and M Realty our fledgling brokerage. I had the opportunity to speak at many Real Estate conferences around the country about what we think and do. I met many fun smart people and the truth is I became enamored with the talk and debate and LOVED the attention.
However the business of translating ideas and fun conversations into practice on the ground is very hard work. When you are advising your agents to adopt these ideas and their livelihood depends on it there had better be some tangible benefit for them.
Talk is cheap and brushing aside questions about ROI is dangerous. I had a moment this year when I looked in the mirror and wondered if what I was advising our agents to do was bullshit. Jeff and I decided to change our focus from industry talk/debate and presenting agents with “cool” tech and ideas to something much more substantial.
We shifted focus to $ goals and closed transaction goals then began to systematically build tracking for all our key metrics. All SM, blogging, content creation, conversion points, paths to agent/client conversations must be measured. All agent sites and content, development on HQ and agent coaching and accountability programs are now attached to measurable metrics.
This has become our obsession…to understand the paths that lead to real estate conversations and closed transactions. Test…refine…test…refine. Then to assist our agents in the adoption and consistent implementation for measurable results. Our future depends on it.
We have a very clear mission, a system to measure our progress, and a lean smart core group that knows how to get shit done!
Coaching M agents – Marshall Wells Landing page
I will get back to the featured neighborhood pages on Alicia’s site. We have produced close to 50 Neighborhood landing pages on the site but managing the process turned out to be way more complicated than we anticipated. The difficulties include organizing taking the photos, processing the photos & video, writing, and producing the supporting content with multiple people responsible. We have a revised system in place and will be back in operation next week. A big part of why we are trying to create a system for good content production is that we work directly with the agents at M to transfer best practice. Which leads me to Jewel one of our star agents that has taken on a farming project from scratch in the Pearl district adjacent to Downtown Portland.
Pearl District Real Estate
Jewel has produced landing pages for the Condos buildings she is passionate about. She is from New York and loves the converted loft style condos. The Marshall-Wells lofts condo building is a great example. In only 8 weeks Jewel has gone from not knowing what WordPress was to managing a beautiful site with very good content that has a place withing a marketing plan.
45 Portland Neighborhoods in 45 days
Focus focus focus…conversion conversion conversion! As some of you may have picked up from my recent posts and talks, I am becoming militant about conversion! There is so much talk in our RE tech crowd about SM, WordPress, blogging dead or not etc. and I contend that unless there is a direct connection than can be documented and repeated it is not all that useful to our industry.
What does this have to do with 45 Portland neighborhoods? …well an analysis of new how out team produces new clients revealed that a significant portion of our web registrations originate through a Google search that combines a neighborhood name with either “real estate” or “homes for sale”. We built and tested several neighborhood landing pages and a strategy to promote the pages with a series of posts. Now that the prototyping is done and tested it is time to switch to operation mode and get some shit done that makes us money. BAM!
I will be describing the process over the next 45 days showing the example neighborhood page and hopefully some insight on the keys to converting neighborhood content into new appointments and closed transaction.
Portland Neighborhood #1 of 45 – Portland Heights
Portland Heights Real Estate is on the high end for our area. I drive through it every day on the way to work and when our little brokerage really takes off I would love to buy one of the spectacular moderns. The page took about 4 hours to build, I walked the neighborhood for 20 min taking pictures and a video with my iPhone, I used next gen gallery, and embed video served from you tube. The listing are pulled in using our Homequest IDX plug in short code.
Conversion on this page happen when the 3rd listing view is attempted and from request showings.
There are numerous on page details and conversion strategies to discuss, but this is only day one so….see you tomorrow;)
Yes…the Real Estate Blog is Dead!
My opinion is based on several years of running sites for My wife’s team and working with agents at M Realty.
When it comes to generating leads from search, the past, present and future of real estate sites is SEO, not blogging, transparency, authenticity and finding your voice. The way to get clients is to show up where the most concentrated group of most motivated buyers/sellers are hanging out and ask for the business. This is why SEO focused content kills blogging…it is targeted directly at the relevant phrases and lands on pages designed to satisfy needs AND convert into conversation. Directing visitors interested in Portland Real Estate to our site generates appointments with new clients. People searching for Homes for sale in Sellwood neighborhood will register on IDX display of listing in the neighborhood. As I tailor most of my content to support the landing pages for valuable terms am I still a blogger or have I become an SEO focused content writer…is there a difference?
I am defining the Real Estate agent blog as an agent site to publish thoughts and ideas about real estate and possibly other things. A traditional agent blog can have solid impact in the direct support of an agent sphere relationships. It can become a dynamic newsletter of sorts that can be referenced in facebook and can be the content source of actual email newsletter campaign. This site will not (in general) produce quality organic traffic from search engines that will convert into clients at a rate that justifies the effort. Unless the site is used as a support to a more traditional campaign of meeting people IRL and direct marketing its ROI sucks. If you feel it is your calling to write and this is you outlet fantastic…do it because you love it. If you see a blog as a lead generator think twice.
IMO…the future of agent sites that have measurable ROI are hybrid site that use blogging platforms (WordPress) and employ very good on page SEO targeted to terms that convert leading to landing pages that generate registrations of some sort. The “blog” or “dynamic” content serves to supplement the high quality static landing pages that are the primary conversion points of the site. That is not to say the site necessarily must become a cold site with no agent personality coming through.
The future of web generated leads belongs to agents who become very proficient in SEO, understand conversion, and can write for the humans and bots that end up on the landing pages.
Don’t get me wrong I am all for transparency and authenticity. However I would suggest spending significant time and effort on the structure and conversion so your authentic, transparent voice will produce a significant number of transactions not just an opportunity to lead a session at Barcamp. WOW that was a tad snark wasn’t it 
Thank you cards – Traditional & Tech
We are always working on systems to enhance our effectiveness. I meet so many people and generally followed friend and it has helped me cultivate more relationships. I recently had a conversation with a great agent I know who was intrigued by the SM follow up but has been writing handwritten notes to her friends and especially new people she meets. Our discussion led to ideas about how to layer new technology with this tried and true high impact activity.
Lead generation – BuzzRE Orange County
I am Speaking at a great event on April 29th in Orange County CA – BuzzRE OC
Question…what is “Lead Conversion”? I like to bring everything into the real world experience of being an agent. In my mind lead conversion occurs the moment I set an appointment with a new buyer or seller. We will be talking about conversion from IDX registrations and sphere interaction.
There’s a great lineup of smart speakers including Dustin Luther, Linsey Planeta, Stacey Harmon, Robert Luna, Gahlord Dewald, Loren Nason, Dale Chumbley, and John Lansner
Hope you can make it…register here
Geographical farming
Part One – Initial site construction
Is high tech farming the next big use for Websites and tech in RE? Our websites has been focused on SEO/SEM conversion for the last few years and done well but there is only so much room at the top of Google for “Portland Real Estate“. As M realty expands and we focus on helping agents build their practice it has become obvious that many agents have expertise is specific geographies often down to the neighborhood level. We are now focusing on building hyper local sites that will become the hub for agents geographical farming activity.
A good example is NWportlandblog.com that focuses on NW Portland Real Estate . We planned our basic page structure focusing on three neighborhoods. Westover, Nob Hill, Willamette Heights and built landing pages. Each landing page follows a format of Main picture, picture gallery, Text blurb, and List of all active listings. The site and initial page content took approximately 30 hrs of work from wp install, planning, page building, Photo/video shoot, widget and supportive graphics creation, etc. Homequest charges $150 plus $80/month for A Thesis theme configured with IDX plugin. and $60/hr. To duplicate the NWPortland.com site would cost approximately $1,950 with $80/mo for the HQ lead management back end and hosting.
The site launched on a new domain on 03/01/10 and within 3 days was getting organic google traffic from indexed listings on the Neighborhood landing pages. The search traffic is nice but we feel the larger value will come from going out into the community, actively viewing the inventory, blogging about market activity/conditions, engaging homeowners directly, traditional marketing, Highlighting local business community, etc.
The site is up, the basic structure is complete…now is it time to go into the community. More to come on what we learn…stay tuned.
An Unconventional invitation (pg-13)
Wednesday October 7th 4:00-6:00
Come visit with us, learn how we use social media, blogging & tech.
Please RSVP – haley@m-homes.net
We work very hard everyday to build strong real estate practices and a brokerage environment that will contribute to our agents success. Blogging, social media, Homequest and technology are part of our daily lives. It has created an environment that is both informal and very focused on success. We are opening up our office to agents to experience what we do and how we approach Real Estate. Please beware the vid below contains two BAD WORDS. But we think it represents us pretty well.
Invite to M Realty (pg-13) from M Realty on Vimeo.
Blogs that work – Information, Search and Passion
Our agents blog. or more accurately they utilize WordPress sites effectively in their practice. We are very connected with our agents activity because we develop & provide the WP sites, design and SEO. There are three primary configurations that are working for our agents, each site configuration has associated “marketing” techniques that work best. All of these can be very productive for the agent if implemented correctly.
Passion Blogs
passion blogs are the most compelling in my opinion, but not necessarily the most productive in terms of transactions. These blogs are extensions of an individuals love and passion and in a real estate context would be niche site such as modernhomes. These are very good at creating a connections with people who are passionate about the same topics. Long term organic search and return visits from subscriber build effectiveness over time.
Information Blogs-
A little less opinion and a little more information. these blogs tend to have a general topic such as Portland Relocation, Portland home auctions or Portland Market news and trends. The basic strategy is to cover the topic in a comprehensive manner with strong emphasis on SEO. These are designed as a resource and to present the agent as an authority. They require systematic content production and attention paid to analytics.
Property Search blogs
Very search centric sites with some neighborhood/condo building and possibly property niches. These sites tend to rely heavily on SEO and possibly PPC marketing campaigns. a good example would be Portland real estate. These are very good for consistent lead generation on high volume sites and staff to follow up. This requires relatively high budget for PPC and/or resources to win top organic placement for most competitive search terms. Only effective with agents that are skilled at following up with information and showing requests.
The keys to success:
1. Assessment of agents - past success, area of genuine interests, personality type, writing ability and desire.
2. Site design – style, look and feel, design elements, color pallets etc.
3. SEO – key word research, on page SEO, agent SEO training.
4. Content production – content plan/road map, blog training, accountability.
5. Traffic generation – social media, sphere marketing, organic SERP, PPC, traditional marketing.
6. Move forward – Consistent effort, keeping in the areas of strength.
The sites are providing a growing number of contacts and leads and something tangible to focus on in growing their business.
M Car – Mobile Office
Our M Car is an experiment and development project focused on taking the agent out into the field while providing tools and data connection. The car is equipped with computer, scanner, printer, GPS navigation, GPS vehicle tracking, webcam and more. We are experimenting with how to maintain a connection to all the data needed and tools to help the agent in the field. I think virtually all of the functionality in this car will eventually be available through an iPhone app. (hint hint we are working on it now)
In Action – Day One
In Action – Day Two