The benefit of online marketing is no big mystery. It’s all about return on investment (ROI), just as it is for any other promotional and advertising method you may use to obtain paying customers. You do X and as a result your business grows by Y. Simple!
Let’s look at an example of how online marketing, specifically search engine optimization, can help you grow your real estate business. Suppose you do business in Washington Heights, the north Manhattan neighborhood where I spend much of my time.
Using the Google Keyword Tool we can see that there are about 1000 exact searches and 5400 broad searches for the phrase “washington heights apartments” in the Google search engine per month.
A broad search count includes searches that have all the words in the phrase in any order and may include other searches as well. So for example, if someone searches for “apartments in washington heights,” it counts as a broad search for “washington heights apartments.” An exact search count only includes searches for the exact phrase in question, i.e. in the same order with no extra words.
You can perform SEO and target exact searches as well as broad searches by creating and promoting a page on your website that’s optimized for “washington heights apartments” and also includes a lot of text that relates to the topic. You can include information such as a description of the neighborhood, the types of apar.tments available there, and current apartment listings. This will cast a wide net to capture many of the broad searches.
Now suppose that due to your SEO efforts, 10% of people that search on terms related to “washington heights apartments” visit your site (experience shows that this is a realistic figure), and then %1 of those close their transaction with you. Consequently, 540 people looking for a Washington heights apartment would be visiting your website every month, and then five (rounded) would complete their transaction through you. So that’s five commissions month after month just for targeting one search phrase.
And depending on the scope of your business, you could be targeting 10, 20, or more such search phrases. Now you should be asking yourself how much is that type of action worth to your business?
