One more question I hope the experts here can assist with. I'm looking for a generic download book for buyers and sellers. Something my customer may be wanting to download, and register in order to receive this info. (sign up here, and download a free "how to sell" handbook) type of thing.

Are there any pre-written generic online books I can either buy to give away, or someplace I can download and personalize this information. I am getting tons of unique hits to my site, lots of return visitors, but none are leaving contact information (which is what I want to have from all of this). I hope I'm not generating income from my website and having them go to another realtor to do business. So I'm thinking of a free offering of some kind in order to capture their information.

Any thoughts?

Thanks!

Rick Burton

http://www.UtahHomeSales.com

Rick,
Go to RealMarketingPros.com.
It's a great site for exactly what your doing. And the people on RMP can help you along this path as most have done this before. Comparing it to iSucceed.com and others, it's one of the best around and worth every penny.

Brian Rodgers, owner of RMP, is an expert at this and has TONS of content available for members.

I know it's given me a lot of direction in where my site is going. (When it goes online).

If you're going to use generic content don't expect to get anything more than average generic contact information. Have you considered a newsletter, or writing articles or something like that? Unique content would be much better in this scenario.

If you're looking for content for your site, we offer several options - all free. We've got several feeds you can use on your site, as well as forums you can integrate. Feel free to ask any questions....

Rick,

Do you have a newsletter sign-up on your website? It's a great way to capture email addresses, provided there's value in the newsletter.

I conducted a Realtor website survey a couple of months ago -- http://www.armingyourfarming.com/websurvey -- and I was surprised to see how many agents and Realtors had no way of capturing information via a simple newsletter.

You can offer plenty of reasons for someone to sign up: free home-buying or selling tips, market updates, the latest interest rates, information on area schools, etc.

Good luck.

I would hit up the title reps that come in your office. They are usually armed with some good content. Read through all of their handbooks and pull the best ideas to create your own. My college professors were right, just because you're done with school, doesn't mean the studying stops!

Title reps are GOOD contacts for information, but implementation is key. I know people hate pop-ups, but we collect A LOT of email contacts, leads, and sales from our website pop-up. BUT, don't ask them to sign your guest book or signup for a newsletter... people just don't do that anymore. When we dropped the "sign our guest book" and "signup for our newsletter" and replaced it with, "I was wondering why you came to my website", we captured tons more email addresses.

Yea, I know many people have pop-up blockers, but we STILL get a bunch of leads from our pop-up.

We also get a lot of leads and business from our free reports. In the last year, we have captured 270 email address, and have done at least 4 transactions that I can directly credit the free reports lead generation. (and we use the industry general free reports)

(you can see our pop-up/free reports at http://www.OrangeCountyCastles.com)

Greg, that is one of most inconsistent websites I've seen. Is that intentional or just the stitching together of different efforts?

what do you mean by "inconsistent websites"

Over the past 4 years, it has had a lot of hands in it, and does need a re-write, (shoe makers children go barefoot thing) but I'm not sure how a website can be "inconsistent"?

(altarealtor: I notice your profile is missing a link to your website. Is that intentional or just an over-site? We would like to see what a consistent website looks like

"BUT, don't ask them to sign your guest book or signup for a newsletter... people just don't do that anymore."

This is a general statement that might apply more to the quality of the newsletter offered than to the general practices of all web users.

As far as web marketing goes, there is only one indisputable fact: You never know what will work until you try it. A newsletter might work wonders on one site but flop on another site. Same goes for any other lead-capturing system.

People do sign up for newsletters, provided they're relevant, properly described, and properly positioned on the website.

There are many recent surveys that support this, like the trend reports sponsored by DoubleClick:
http://www.doubleclick.com/us/knowledge_central/trend_reports/email_marketing/

I would be interested to see the industry-wide stats or surveys that reveal how people don't sign up for newsletters anymore.

I would recommend testing a newsletter, a free report, and a simple survey to see which one captures the most email addresses. It's the only way to know what works for your site. Aside from testing, everything else is just conjecture.

Good luck!

"This is a general statement that might apply more to the quality of the newsletter offered than to the general practices of all web users."

Since people have NO IDEA the quality of your newsletter before they signup for it, that sentance makes no sense at all! I don't know that quality of your newsletter BEFORE I get it, and once I get it, you've already got my email address.

I speak from experience... The signups from newsletters on our sites was close to ZERO. We changed the newsletter popup to a guestbok signing popup and still about the same results, ZERO. (each had over a year of exposure) We changed the popup to a simple question, "In a continueing effort to improve my website, I was wondering if I could ask you a question: why are you coming to my site?" They get a drop down list of reasons, and a place to put their name, phone, email address. Our "LEAD" capturing soared! And this doesn't cost you anything, and doesn't take any effort to send out a newsletter each month. OF course you do need a good system for constant followup!

OCCastles - I like your reports (you quote numbers and stats.)

I think your question popup is also good not only at getting leads but I would definetly use it to tailor your site/content based on the answers (you might already be doing this).

To quote someone I admire "If you want to know why John Smith buys what John Smith buys you need to see the world through John Smith's eyes"

"I think your question popup is also good not only at getting leads but I would definetly use it to tailor your site/content based on the answers"

Yes... over the past 5 years of doing 100's of sites, it's pretty obvious that 98% of the people come to a Realtors site to search the MLS. About 1% come "for infomation on buying a home", and the other 1% split between selling info, just looking around, and other. I don't think we've ever had a person wanting to use the mortgage calculators or for loan information.

OCC - do you have a custom field so people can enter their own reason manually?

I went to your site with IE and Firefox and did not get the popup (I have it set to allow all popus from your site), is it disabled at the moment?

No, I don't allow visitors to enter their own reason. They have to pick from the drop down. But the Realtor who own the website can enter as many reasons as they want, then set up a email follow up campaign to automatically follow up with that lead.