mRELEVANCE Creates Award-Winning Social Media Programs

mRELEVANCE won seven awards at the 2009 Greater Atlanta Home Builders Association's OBIE Awards Gala in November taking home the lions share of the awards for E-Marketing.

Pictured are mRELEVANCE managing partners with the award for Atlanta Real Estate Forum (front) Carol Flammer and Mitch Levinson with the the mRELEVANCE team (L-R) Michelle Serra, Mike Rieman, Jill Wise and Bo Gilbert.

mRELEVANCE won the following awards:

• Gold OBIE for Best Print Ad – Magazine
  
• Gold OBIE for Best Interactive Application for http://www.atlantarealestateforum.com/
• Silver OBIE for Best Website Associate for the company’s website http://www.mrelevance.com/
• Gold OBIE for Best Website for Heron Bay Golf & Country Club
• Silver OBIE for Best Social Media for Heron Bay Golf & Country Club
• Silver Awards for Best Marketing Campaign/Promotion – Developer for Heron Bay Golf & Country Club
• Gold OBIE for Best Social Media for Bowen Family Homes
  

For more information about mRELEVANCE and their programs and services, visit http://www.mrelevance.com/ or call mRELEVANCE team member, Jill Wise at 770-383-3360 x22. You can also become a fan on Facebook or follow along on Twitter @mRELEVANCE

Request Information Contact Forms

Website Contact Forms? Request for Information? The goal of most real estate websites is to generate a lead. How do you want that lead to come in? Ideally that person would just show up at the sales center and announce they were on your website. They could pick up the phone and tell you up front, " I am looking at the community information on your web site". Lastly they could fill out your email lead form or send you an email directly. Most builders and real estate agents would rather have one of the first two leads to happen, yet most websites assume the only way they can get a lead is the last option.

Look at your website. Are you asking them to visit you? Are you making the phone number prominent on the website along with a reason to call? The next time you look at your website, think about the consumer and the goals you want to accomplish. Decide if the web site is helping you to accomplish those goals or if something can be changed to direct the traffic on your website along a path you want them to follow.

Web Site Article Published

Mitch Levinson and I co-authored an article about Builder Websites that was recently published in the NSMC eNews. See the article posted in their archives by clicking over to Your Web Site: Is it working for you?

A lot of the information was covered in an article I posted on my blog last September.

Internet Marketing

What is Internet Marketing?

Many things come to mind when someone uses the term Internet marketing, especially when you are applying it to Real Estate and new home construction. It could refer to placing a new home community on an Internet listing site like move.com or Atlanta New Homes Directory, bidding on keyword clicks at sites like google and yahoo or it could be altering the title and meta tags to make the website come up in search engines. Being found on the Internet is the most important thing for a website. You spend money to have the website designed and hosted so that it can provide the story, the information about the new homes you have to offer, but if no one ever sees it or they can't find it, you have probably wasted your money on building a website in the first place.

Internet Marketing begins with proper website design and functionality. Using the search engines, the listing sites, tracking statistics, email marketing programs, and lead management software are all parts of effective Internet Marketing strategies.

Does your website get home buyers to respond?

If you have noticed, my lasts few posts are continuing with the same theme.

There are a lot of fancy websites out there that are built to market new homes and condos. I find many of them are using the latest and greatest techniques to wow the site visitor with flash, graphics, or sound. They lack the marketing message. What are you selling? Where is it located? How much does it cost? When will it be ready? What do you want me to do next?

The most visited new home real estate websites are the Internet Listing Sites; sites like Realtor.com, Move.com, NewHomeSource.com. These sites provide a basic search feature to allow the home buyer to search by city, price, number of bedrooms, and number of bathrooms. A list is given with lots of information. These sites are all in the business to make money from advertising. They provide a service to get the site visitor to your website that should give more information about the home they just saw. In many cases, websites advertised on these listing sites do not even answer the basic questions. How much do your homes cost? When will they be ready? I have had to hit the back button sometimes to get back to Realtor.com to figure out if I was on the right website.

Homebuyers on the web are searching for information. Holding it back will get a few people to contact you and ask the questions; "How much do your homes cost?", "When will these homes be ready?", "Where exactly are you located?". I feel that many homebuyers will simply move to the next website where their questions are answered.

Look at your website. Ask yourself the basic questions. Would the website make you want to go to the next step? Make a phone call? Visit the sales center? Request more information via email? If not, it may be time for a new website or at least some website modifications.

Contact Form needs Contact Information

This is pretty simple, but often overlooked. I frequently run across new home community websites with no contact information on the Contact Us Page. The person could be looking for a phone number. If they have to search very long, they will probably just move on to the next website or try to find the information they are looking for somewhere else.

I typically recommend putting the phone number, the sales center address and preferably a link to get directions or a link to location map on the Contact Us Page.

If you are trying to sell new homes, make sure the person knows how to take the next step. Tell them to call the sales agent, visit the model, schedule an appointment, or request information via a contact form sent via email and tell them these things often, not just on one page.

The basics apply on the web too.

How many times do you run a print ad for a new community and not tell them something about the product? What is it? Where is it? How much does it costs? When will it be ready? These basic questions should be answered on the website. You have a lot more space and ability to educate the consumer about your product. I can't figure out what so much is left off the website.

I am often asked to analyze why websites are not performing. In most cases, its because the website does not answer the simple questions. I have seen so many websites recently that are designed to entertain the consumer. They are not doing what they should be doing, which is generating interest, leads, traffic and sales.

Why would you have a website if it is not even going to provide as much info as the media that sent the consumer there? Imagine a print ad that says "Condos from $200,000 now pre-selling with delivery in 4th qtr 0f 2007 in the heart of Atlanta's Buckhead District" visit our website at www. communitywebsite . com ...The community website makes you hunt to figure out what is being sold, never mentions buckhead, never tells you what the costs are, has annoying music that makes everyone in your office look up when you visit the website, and does not provide a contact phone number. What are the chances the website is going to show any value in your overall marketing? You would be better off just putting the print ad on the web and supplying a good contact form. This is not the best scenario, but would probably generate better results than a website that does not answer the simple questions.

Does your website generate leads?

This post is targeted toward the new home sales agent.

Are you getting leads from your company or new home community website? Before you answer that question, let me ask you the following questions. What is defined as a website lead? Do you ask everyone that comes in the door of the sales model if they have been to your website? If you get a phone call, do you ask that person if they have visited your website? If you are not getting any leads; walk-ins, phone calls, or email leads, your website may be the problem.

My first action would be to test the contact form on your website and make sure it works. I have seen a lot of forms that do not work or have the wrong email address plugged in for the contact. Sometimes the email service provider is actually blocking the leads. Next, make sure your phone number, address and driving directions are easily found on the website. See if the website is getting any Internet traffic. You may have to ask your manager or marketing director to get you this information. If the site is getting traffic, some website modification may increase lead generation. If the site is not getting any traffic, its time to review the Internet Marketing Plan.

Email text links on your website

One way to guarantee that you get on a spam list is to put your email address on a website or webpage. Spammers have programs which spider through web pages, looking for email addresses contained in mailto: HTML tags. One way to prevent this is to use web forms with spam filtering tools.

Here are some examples of new home websites with spam prevention methods on the contact form:
http://www.oaklandparkatlanta.com/docs/contact.asp
http://www.talleystreetlofts.com/docs/contact.asp
http://www.iveytownship.com/contact_us.php

Can't be found on Google!

Have you ever been frustrated with not being found on Google?

There are a lot of reasons why you may not be found.

One thing to consider, is your site completely designed with images or programmed all in flash? If it is, you will probably have a hard time getting Google to index your website.





Look at the image above, imagine it being a website.
You can read the text, but because of the way it was created google can't read it and does not know what to index in its database. As far as Google is concerned, it it simply an image and it will probably be ignored. If Google can't read the image, the text on the image will not help you get indexed. Text like this above should be entered as text and not shown as an image.

Other factors contribute to being indexed, this is just one thing to consider when having your website designed and built.

Your Website. Is it Working for You?

“Do you have a website?” Back in 1998, that was THE question I asked to home builders and developers before I pitched advertising services on the Internet. Internet Marketing was very new to the building industry. With the exception of a few national builders and some of the bigger local new home groups, very few companies were taking advantage of this extremely cost effective means of reaching new home buyers. Today, most home builders and new home marketing professionals have accepted the fact that they need a website to have an effective marketing program. Unfortunately, many of those websites are not doing their job --- They are NOT working for you, and, in fact, may be working against you.

Does the creative message on a print ad influence a homebuyer’s decision not to visit the community? Maybe the color, the layout, the copy, the lifestyle photos; something about the ad just turned them off from wanting to learn more about your new homes and new home neighborhoods. What about your community entrance and sales model? How would uncut grass, an unclean sales model, or trash at the entrance and throughout the neighborhood affect your sales? An improperly designed or poorly managed website has the same effect. There are a lot of websites out there with poor navigation, a lack of information, or even worse, outdated information. Some are just plain ugly. Many home builders and developers lose sales due to the image that their website is projecting, especially if their top competitors have better websites. Remember, home buyers look for ways to reduce the number of communities they visit. You can not afford to be scratched off their short list because of your web presence.

A lot of companies build websites and more are getting into the business every day. If you think you need to look at your website strategy, I would like to offer a few things to consider during this process. First of all, make sure you work with a company that has worked with real estate companies in the past. If the company does not understand your business from the start, how can they help you sell your product? In addition, many builders and developers do not have experienced internal staff members to manage an effective website project. They may underestimate the challenges and time required of their internal resources and project team. You may want to consider hiring a consultant that can effectively act as the project manager and coordinate all the internal requirements and development, while keeping the project on time and within budget. With a consultant focused on your project, it will be easy for them to stay focused on your project when internal company resources begin to be pulled in different directions.

In all circumstances, however, it is important to accurately identify the goals and business requirements of the project. Specifically, you need to define the process, document the goals, requirements, and process completely in the initial stage of the project. This will allow you to get your internal team and the web design company all on the same page, working toward the same goals, and focused on the end product.Getting an effective website defined, built and launched is only the first step. Next you will want to look at ways to increase your leads and drive more traffic to your website. You may have heard of the term SEO. SEO stands for Search Engine Optimization. Check out my next blog for some more info on SEO and how it can help you.