January 08, 2009

Track, Measure and Manage Your Real Estate Marketing

A look back at day 1 of the Inman Connect Real Estate Technology Conference

A commentary by Susan Harrison, Senior VP Web Development, EXIT Realty Corp. International.

There were 2 main take-aways for me at yesterday morning's Inman Connect Internet Marketing Bootcamp:

1. Track, Measure and Manage. Now, more than ever, it's important to know what's working so you can do more of it, and what's not so you can stop doing it - tracking your online traffic helps you get there. If you're not already using an analytics application, start there. Google Analytics is good and it's free. Reviewing the statistics weekly will help you determine such things as:

- how visitors to your site are finding you - search engines? by typing the URL directly into their browser? by clicking on a link in another site?

- how many people are actually visiting your site, where they're going, how long they're staying and from which pages they're leaving

Once you have this basic information, you can tweak your site (or blog or whatever it is that you're monitoring) to improve its usability. Now try some more in-depth tracking like:

- setting up funnels and conversion goals. A funnel is a series of clicks you want a visitor to pass through to get to your desired goal, such as a "thank you for contacting us" page. By analyzing how your visitors move through your site, you can tweak the content to guide them to where you want them to go.

- creating dedicated landing pages - Let's say you're advertising in the local newspaper to ask readers to visit your site and sign up for your market newsletter. Instead of simply including your website address in your ad, direct readers to a specific website page you've created just for them, for example www.mysite.com/newsletter. The content on the page should be specific to the visitor - Hello XX Newspaper Reader - Thank you for your interest in my market newsletter - enter your e-mail address here to sign up, etc. Now you can use your analytics application to see how many people visited the page as well as knowing how many people signed up. This will help you to track your marketing expenditures and direct your efforts towards what's working.

2. Use focus groups and user groups. Why not gather a few customers together in person and watch them navigate your site? Are they looking for the "home" button to be in a different place? Are they getting the information they need as soon as they hit your site? Are they looking for content that's simply not there? You can't beat real-life feed back.

Brad Inman welcomed attendees to the afternoon session with Inman News' list of 10 recommendations resulting from their Roadmap To Recovery, which includes a tougher new regulatory framework for real estate agents and mortgage brokers, providing buyers and sellers with better data and accountability and an overhaul of the real estate commission compensation model. The list of recommendations will be posted on the Inman News website next week.

Craig Newmark's official title is "customer service rep and Founder" of Craigslist.com. Newmark sees the the internet impacting our lives now and in the future in many ways such as:

- the public is staring to use the internet to affect social change "from the bottom up" - think of how Obama used it in his campaign

- the Millennial Generation (18-34 year olds) believe they have the opportunity to rebuild the US and become the next great generation

- Smart phones users around the world have the ability to take a photo, upload it and talk about it in a way we've never seen before

- during tough economic times, the internet brings about a balance of people helping people

Follow Craig Newmark's blog.

And frankly, that's where the conference lost me yesterday. The rest of the day was spent discussing what happened to the market and what we're going to do about it. In my humble opinion, unless one has been sleeping for the past year, it's pretty clear that the US economy suffered a crisis of lending, credit and common sense, and we'll need financial innovation to help us recover.

I'm looking forward to today's program which includes a look at the future of MLS, the evolution of the media and building your personal brand online. There are 5 breakout sessions this afternoon to choose from and I'd like to be in 5 places at once. I'm leaning towards attending the session entitled "Technology Breakout" but the "MLS of the Future" session beckons too... and then there's the one on "New Business"...