Use Media to Optimize Your Real Estate Investor Website

Let's see what you can do with each of them to add some power punch to your presentation.

Use of HTML

During last Lesson we discussed the importance of personalizing your follow up messages.

However, you probably noticed, when you receive a regular (text) e-mail, if you're scanning through it quickly, it's easy to miss that name. It doesn't stand out in any way from the rest of the message.

Therefore, even though you might be using that feature in your messages, it may not work as well because of that.

Well, since it's so important for your prospect (let’s call him Bill) to see his/her name, it actually makes sense to force it to stand out.... just like I did. You didn't miss it, did you?

All I had to do was to change the color of the word, increase the size of the font as compared to the rest of the sentence and "bold" it to get your attention. It's pretty easy to do with HTML.

Do you think there is a chance that your prospect will instantly hit the "delete" button and won't give this e-mail at least a quick glance over - if it has his name in big bold blue or red letters on top of it?

I don't think so!

Use of Graphics

Now let's talk about using graphics and/or pictures.

Obviously, if you sell or rent homes you'll be absolutely crazy not to have the pictures of the homes on your site. That goes without saying.

But let's say you're sending out a price reduction notice or a special owner financing notice to your Buyers list.

You could as well, include a picture of the home that you want to profile.

Want if you want to get a particular seller's attention and try to make him decide on the offer you made previously.

You can send your prospect this short message:

 

" $7,800 in CASH    could be in your hands by Friday next week. Isn't it time you eliminate your dependency on buyers, lenders, inspections, appraisals and just get it over with?

Well you can. Simply sign and initial the offer I sent you and FAX it to me at....

I'll take care of the rest!"

Alex Gurevich at 346-3467.

As you can see, the use of the "cash-in-hand" graphics is very appropriate here to grab Seller’s attention and will increase your response.

Use of Voice

Voice has multiple uses in both your follow up messages and on the regular pages of your website.

The main objectives accomplished by using the voice clips is - for your prospects, it adds a sense of dealing with real people.

Having a website has a lot of marketing advantages. We already discussed several of them.

Yet most of the websites you see have a serious problem too - they're faceless and voiceless.

There's no feeling of a real person there. Just company names.

Many businesses are so "online" they don't even have phone numbers and addresses anywhere on the site.

Yet, in the real estate world Buyers and Sellers get seriously concerned if they can't see the person on the other end of the table.

One of the ways to overcome this - is by adding a feel of a real person behind the website. You can do it by using voice messages.

Let's say you were talking to a particular seller and you feel he's close to making a decision, but hesitates giving you a deed to his home and letting you take over payments.

He's not sure if you're credible enough. Well you can send him an e-mail that contains a message like this.

 

"Hi John.

We've been talking about your home at 99 Long Rd. for a while. I feel we could put this together and take care of your payments for you.  I know you were a little hesitant about letting me take over payments.

I wanted to send you this little audio from Bill Smoker, another customer of mine. We bought his home last December in a situation just like yours. 

Simply play this recording and you'll see how selling your home this way could benefit you. Click Here to play.

Looking forward to hearing from you soon. Call me at 346-3467.

Alex Gurevich"

 (By the way, did you click on the “click here” link above? You were supposed to – to see for yourself what your clients experience with this powerful feature.)

Think about the effect a testimonial like this could have on your ratio of accepted offers!

Another use of the voice could be collecting testimonials for building credibility and believability from:

-         Buyers

-         Sellers

-         Bird-dogs

-         Private money lenders

-         Other business associates

Once you have them, you can put them on appropriate pages of your website with a little player icon. Take a look on this "About Us" page where such customer testimonial coupled with the picture is used. Click Here to see.

The difference between having text testimonials and voice testimonials on your pages is dramatic!

Obviously, your job is to collect the testimonials from your customers and have them available on your website, as well as available for sending them over e-mails.

As you probably know, the best time to ask a customer for a testimonial is immediately after they signed the paperwork to consummate the transaction with you.

My experience shows, they're at the highest point of satisfaction when they:

a) Just got a check at closing from selling you the home, or

b) Just got the keys to the house after buying the home from you.

That's when you need to have your website ready to take their audio testimonial. In fact, having their audio testimonials together with a digital picture of them next to the house they just bought or sold is the best and most re-assuring combo.

It’s also your responsibility to make it extremely easy and quick for your customers to give you audio testimonials. Ideally, you want to be able to get your cell phone out, dial a number, hand your phone to a customer and have them says several sentences right there and then – when they’re most excited about the transaction.

That’s how my own system does it.

One last word on the format of your audio.

As of now, the best format to have your short audio clips is FLASH. The main reason is:

It plays instantly, there's no download time. The visitor clicks a button (or link) on   your website (or in the e-mail) and the audio starts playing, just like you’ve seen in my example above.

As opposed to other audio formats, it doesn't require a listener to use the traditional WindowsMediaPlayer, or RealAudioPlayer, or WinAmp player applications. It means, there’s no need to educate them on how to use technology, applications, etc. to play. The simpler it is for them to hear it – the better.

With FLASH you can make as simple as saying “click here” to play.

When you put this all together - HTML with colors, graphics, audio - you got a pretty high impact presentation that gets your prospective customers to pay attention, remember you, separate you from the competition.