Importance of internet marketing
If you’re about to become a home seller, it’s worth assessing your agent’s use of the internet before signing on the dotted line and here’s why.
More and more purchasers make their first contact with properties for sale via the internet. In my area over 90% of buyers I speak to use the internet as their primary research tool to find their next home or investment. They’ll log onto a variety of national portal sites including www.realestate.com.au, www.domain.com.au and www.myhome.com.au to name a few. The majority of agents in Australia use one or a combination of these sites to advertise their client’s properties. An agency will also have their own website.
Even inexperienced web users soon work out how to differentiate the buyer-friendly (i.e. great photos, loads of info, price and address etc) website listings from the time- wasters (i.e. poor images and no info, no price and no address).
Agent’s website listings that get repeat visits and a healthy number of emails or phone callers from would be buyers do so because users can access the information they want quickly and easily. Time is relative and in the Information Technology universe, seconds can seem like forever. Several unproductive clicks might only amount to half a minute, yet this can spell disaster for the seller’s enquiry rate on their property.
Your potential purchasers demand access to full details about your listing on the agent’s website or on a portal site. Avoid making them experience the frustration of thinking they have to make a phone call because they don’t know if the property is in their price range and if the address is suitable.
After all, the internet is known for providing a plethora of information on subjects most people had never dreamed existed. Users have high expectations of what this information-rich resource can do for them.
In this day and age, real estate buyers use the internet to anonymously research as much as they can about their potential investment before making any contact with an agent. So make sure that people interested in your property can stay anonymous until they choose to reveal themselves.
There’s nothing more likely to annoy purchasers into clicking away than being required to give contact details or e-mail addresses in exchange for price or address information. Naturally purchasers may decide to give their e-mail address if it means they’ll get updated information more quickly in the future, but they resent the implication that they are trading their anonymity for information that should be right there on the website for all to see anyway.