Simple, actually, the ones that are using the Internet wisely are earning more than $100k annually while their competition, agents that are depending on traditional means to generate leads, are earning much less, according to "The Online Marketing Difference: Traditional Agents Earn $36,700 Annually; Internet Agents Earn $100,000+ Annually | RISMedia" by Mike Parker - http://rismedia.com/2009-05-21/the-online-marketing-difference-traditional-agents-earn-36700-annually-internet-agents-earn-100000-annually/#ixzz0Ge7CZBHx&A.
Prospect has behavior shifted dramatically; 80% of home buyers start with an Internet search so the agents that adapted to this change are found more easily by people actually ready to buy.
Mike Parker reveals what an agent needs to do to succeed using the Internet:
“All Internet real estate agents know these things:
You must be able to be found online by people searching for homes in your neighborhood. That means you must either maintain your own website, or you must let someone manage a site built just for you that produces these leads, and that site must employ the best in REAL SEO to make it found on the first pages of the major search engines by Internet buyers. As more people find your site, more people visit it; your traffic goes up.
Once people find your site, they must be incented to sign in. When they find your site, they are anonymous; you can’t call them back or answer their questions if you don’t know who they are. When 5-15% of visitors to your site sign in, you will receive enough leads to achieve consistent success.
In order to consistently succeed, however, you have to hold up your end: you must call all inquiries immediately and you must respond to their emails as fast as you possibly can. No less a great institution of learning than the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) says that all leads degrade substantially over time-even if not responded to in one hour. Contrast that to NAR’s finding that 50% of all agents call leads back within 54 hours, but that 50% of all agents never call them back and you’ll have no trouble understanding why so many fail at Internet Marketing.
It’s that simple, really.”
The movement of home buyers from traditional approaches to finding a house and a real estate agent to starting with the Internet was swift. Not all customer shifts are that fast and that dramatic. However, fast or slow, you must monitor your customers’ needs and buying behavior. You must change to adapt to their changes. If you do not, your competition will and you will lose.
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