Even while you sleep, your website is out there 24/7 spruiking your business. It never sleeps, never asks for a pay rise and never asks to go on holidays. At the end of the month – just like a good real estate agent would – it’s giving you the results from the hard work it’s put in over the past few weeks.
In this episode of Real Estate Pros, we’ll explore the importance of treating your real estate website like another salesperson on the road and actionable tips to generate more traffic, more email subscribers and ultimately leads for your business.
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During our digital marketing masterclass series in late 2015, my co-presenter Tim Martin, from Net101, described the website of any business like a salesperson on the road.
Even while you sleep, your website is out there 24/7 spruiking your business. It never sleeps, never asks for a pay rise and never asks to go on holidays. At the end of the month – just like a good real estate agent would – it’s giving you the results from the hard work it’s put in over the past few weeks.
It’s been said a million times in real estate that to be successful in this industry, you need to know your numbers – and all great salespeople and business development managers do. They know exactly what their prospect to appointment ratios are, how many appointments converted to listings and how many listings converted to sold.
Unfortunately, few real estate professionals look at their digital marketing numbers just as closely and, for the most part, it’s because they’re not sure where to start or what to do with the numbers. Just like any good salesperson or business development manager, there is an expectation that they will produce results – your website should be no different.
Web analytics can be overwhelming but it doesn’t need to be scary. The key to avoid drowning in the sea of numbers is to start small. Pick a metric and aim to improve it every month. You see, digital marketing is measurable. Far more measurable than most of the marketing you will ever do offline. And when your marketing is measurable, it’s telling you in real-time how people are interacting with your brand – allowing you to pivot, change, improve and optimise your marketing to drive measurable change.
If just one more person filled in a contact form on your website to sell or manage their property as a result of a single minor improvement you made to your website, it could potentially add tens of thousands of dollars of commission to your business.
So what should you be measuring? Let’s have a look at five simple metrics and how to use the results to improve the performance of your website.
But before we start, you can access these numbers easily from your Google Analytics dashboard – or request that your web developer deliver you a report each month with only these five metrics.
Let’s start with your site visitors.
How many people have visited your website during a specific timeframe. Google Analytics benchmarking shows that the average amount of visitors to real estate websites in Australia throughout 2015 was 580 visitors a month.
By increasing the amount of visitors to your site – and more importantly the amount of potential clients – you’re increasing the likelihood of someone calling you instead of your competitors. In a world where the overwhelming majority of people research online before picking up the phone, it’s more important than ever that you’re driving traffic to your own website.
The number two metric you need to be measuring is referrals – that means where your site visitors are coming from. Is it social media, Google search, realestate.com.au or review sites. Knowing where your website visitors are coming from can give you valuable insight into where you need to pay more attention, and what other sources you may need to pay less attention.
Number three is bounce rate. A bounce is when someone visits your website and immediately clicks the back button or closes their browser. While not the most important metric, this can tell you whether the content on certain pages needs attention to convince people whey they should continue looking at other pages of your site. A bounce rate of above 50% is considered high. You should be aiming for a number below that.
Number four is exit pages. An exit page is a page on your site whereby your visitors have browsed multiple pages and then exited your website. Aim to increase the likelihood that your website visitors are exiting on pages with either a contact form or a subscription form for your enewsletter or blog.
Last but not least, the most important metric – you guessed it. Conversions.
That doesn’t just mean leads for sales and property management, those things are important. But conversions can be people filling in a form to download an ebook or subscribe to your newsletter.
I met with a business owner just last week who has increased their agency’s blog subscriber list by 90 people month in month out for the past six months and generate consistently between six to nine sales-ready leads for their sales and property management departments every month. How would you like those numbers in your business?
Well you can. With a little focus on improving these five basic metrics, you will be in the top 2% of agents who care about their digital marketing – the ones who drive actual business outcomes from their website.
None of this replaces what you are doing offline. I always say that whatever marketing you are doing online is an “as well as”, not an “instead of”. Keep up your offline marketing if it’s generating results for you but with a little effort and by paying attention to these basic metrics, you can turn your digital marketing assets such as your website into a lead-generating machine while you sleep.
Good luck.
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