The Internet has changed the way real estate agents and brokerages market in many ways. We're spending a lot of time and money in building websites, blogging, creating content, learning about SEO, paying for clicks and more. It's all good, as more business every day comes to real estate agents who place value on their Web marketing and make the effort to create a website that is useful to buyers and sellers.

Much of our focus on content creation is in writing articles, blog posts, and creating pages that will appeal to the random buyer, seller or investor searching the Internet for local real estate information. That's the proper strategy focused on a huge group of people we don't know, and we have no idea what they want for information or when they'll want it. However, what if we took a more "traditional media" approach in conjunction with our websites to be more targeted with our content?

The Traditional Ad's Nudge to the Web

Even those real estate agents who have embraced the Internet and are doing all of the right things online are also still doing much of the traditional marketing we've all used for years. We're doing direct mail, farming neighborhoods, using business cards, running print ads and more. We're still doing all of this because it still works. There's an opportunity here, the use of Web landing pages created specifically to greet visitors delivered from traditional media marketing.

Let's use a direct mail farming campaign as an example. We're mailing all of these postcards and probably running out of new stuff to say. What if the next postcard goes out with the offer to view a recent sold property report for the neighborhood? It's a brief offer that will fit in well with other information in the limited space of a postcard. However, it's going to point them to a landing page we've created on our site specifically for this mailing. It's something like "Yoursite.com/Scarsdale," which is the name of the subdivision or neighborhood.

You create a landing page with recent sold property data for that area. Keep the domain name short, as they will be typing it in. Study after study and many surveys tell us that when someone sees our advertising in traditional media, before they want to make direct contact, they want to check out our website to learn more about us. You're giving them an entry door into your site that's very inviting. They may be thinking about listing their home for sale, and it's an irresistible offer to see what's happening in their market.

This is a "landing page," and it's created just for this purpose. You want their information (sold statistics) to be prominent at the top and "above the fold" as they say in print advertising (near the top before they have to scroll down). You also want a call-to-action, such as a form offering more detailed reports or a free CMA for their property if they'll contact you. Or, perhaps you ask them to call you to get more recent sold stats. However, generally at this stage the form and email is more to their liking.

Direct mail isn't the only traditional media where this works. Business cards are inexpensive in small quantities, so why not a card for homeowners you meet around the area? It's specifically focused on homeowners who want to sell, has the message you want to convey to them and an intro to this page on your site. It works in newspaper and magazine ads, as well. When you're advertising one of your listings, a small line at the bottom with this page's URL for "Current market statistics here" will get you some traffic.

To view the original article, visit the WebsiteBox blog.