The nature of real estate marketing today is akin to the ocean before the storm clouds appear. To the tourist the water looks great, to the old salt, the wave patterns portend a big storm over the horizon. Much of real estate marketing has not changed, the post cards, the continual meeting people live and developing and expanding the referral network, and the newspaper and magazine advertising.

But as real estate agent Burke Smith said back in 2007, “Technology won’t replace agents; agents with technology will replace agents.” What is masking this real estate marketing sea change is real estate agents’ natural propensity to not fix something that does not appear to be broken. The most successful real estate agents of today are the ones with the least impetus to embrace real estate Internet marketing or to treat is as an auxiliary marketing tool.

The nature of a market’s change is that the new idea starts small and, even at 100% growth, does not significantly change the market’s dynamics. Then when the 10% market share doubles to 20% the major players in the market take notice, but they are too late to adapt. Detroit ignored the Japanese imports and the customers’ desire for small, trouble-free cars driving that market. Similarly real estate websites were once thought of as the small world of technology freaks selling to computer geeks. But consumer’s buying habits have changed tremendously from 1998 to 2008. The luxury of shopping from home at all hours of the day caused many computer-averse shoppers to master their computer’s Internet browser.

The National Association of Realtors figure on the percentage of buyers who search for houses online is almost 80%. Clouding the picture perhaps is the inability to draw a line from the Internet listings searches to the final sales. The agents with the technology, with their one, two, three or more real estate websites, are not waiting for the dust to clear. They have detected the number of real estate website leads that turn into sales increase dramatically year over year and know which way the home selling market is heading. Real estate brokerages that are hiring agents to handle their overflow of leads from their real estate websites are also aware of the marketing shift.

The Internet has turned shopping for homes for sale into a virtual journey. MLS listings are evolving online from static images to walk through slide shows or videos. Google Earth has made checking the neighborhood something anyone can do from satellite photos. While the shoppers are on virtual house shopping trips, it pays to have a virtual real estate storefront.

Real estate websites exist to attract website visitors and convert them to warm home buying or selling leads. Real estate agents weighing the options in real estate website designs first need to decide whether to go with a custom website or a template website. This is an important decision since it affects your website’s ranking, brand reinforcement, visitor retention and ease of use.

Last time this topic was visited we looked at the dynamically populated templates. This time we’ll consider real estate website templates that are not dynamically populated. While a notch better for allowing search engine indexing, there are still pitfalls to using templates and expecting a miracle. Some common pitfalls agents make when using templates are:

The same meta tag descriptions and keywords are applied across almost every web page on the site. Or in the other direction, the metatags are only applied to the index or homepage. Meta tags are to help the search engines index the pages correctly. Website visitors never see these tags. Not using them correctly defeats their purpose. Real estate website developers of custom sites know the positive effect keywords have and painstakingly choose the keywords, craft the descriptions and match the meta tags to the page.

Search engine optimization is always a custom editorial work. Templates can allow for a certain amount of optimization, but the optimization that goes into a custom real estate website design is based on a designer’s ongoing education to stay current on the best optimization techniques.

Finally, adding content. Many templates come with pages of content that is the same that is sold to other sites with the caveat to edit it and make it your own. From the look of the Internet, that caveat is more often than not ignored. The problem with repetition of content is that search engines index pages on the site, compare them to other pages and penalize a website for having redundant content. The larger problem with not making the content your own is that your website is boring to your visitor. Personalizing the site, reinforcing your brand or image, makes your site a tremendous marketing asset.

Custom sites have a hybridized content structure, containing both ready-made and unique material. The difference is that custom websites depend largely on the real estate agent to provide the content that sells the sizzle. Though it creates some homework for the real estate agent (or an opportunity to invest in professional copywriting), the investment in good content always pays off both in attracting visitors and giving the search engines material to index.

Usually, the bottom line between template and custom design boils down to a quick website creation with long term regret due to paltry returns versus longer creation cycle with long term increasing return on investment.

As part of your grand real estate marketing campaign, you write an informative entry on your real estate blog detailing the changes in your local market of homes for sale…but no readers contact you. One small step can make your time blogging time well spent. In fact, there may be several areas in your marketing where one small step will increase your leads and your Internet exposure.

After you have written your blog entry (and checked the grammar and spelling) you upload it to your site. In your blog editor, look for an icon that looks like chain links. This is for adding hyperlinks - a coded link to another page on the Internet. By highlighting words in your article, such as your city’s name, your real estate agency’s name or the words “please contact me”, and clicking on the hyperlink icon you can link these words to your real estate website’s Contact Us page. In marketing, this is anticipating needs and shortening the steps. If your article triggers a website visitor’s interest, make the path to turning them into a lead easy - provide a link to your contact information. Use this technique when you add articles to your neighborhood news tool also.

Similarly, never send out an email without including your real estate website’s address in the signature. There are several reasons:

1. Reinforce your brand (as reflected in your domain name), and
2. Use every avenue to drive traffic to your website (how many of your emails get forwarded? OK, so sending really good jokes is now marketing!).

One of the ways Google measures your real estate website is by the traffic it generates. So while search engines lead traffic to your site, conversely, when the search engines detect your website getting a lot of traffic (directed from business cards, print ads, etc.) it benefits your real estate website’s search engine ranking.

Another underused area is answering machine messages. Include an invitation on your business answering machine to visit your website to search your listings, blog entries, and buyer and seller guides.

These are just a few ideas to examine the real estate marketing steps you are already taking and tweaking them to make the most of the opportunities.

Real estate website design pros have Internet marketing skills similar to a real estate agent’s ability to handle closing emergencies and have in-depth knowledge of the current market conditions and competition.

The closing emergencies. Handling the last minute problems that can hold up or torpedo a home closing is one of the areas where real estate professionals’ experience often averts or solves untimely problems. The critical “H hour” for your real estate website is when it is launched or when it is updated. With so many ingredients, such as images, external links, internal links and navigation, surprises do crop up that demand immediate attention. Similar to a Navy ship’s shakedown cruise, even with all systems tested, the real life interaction of the systems is the real functionality test.

Current market conditions and competition. This is where your real estate website professionals shine. In advertising, music and art there is an age-old history of “Borrow the best and drop the rest”. That, in a very small nutshell, is the art of working with search engine optimization, keyword optimization, finding niche market keywords, organizing content, polishing the graphical presentation and producing a finished product. Then the follow through to check how the real estate website moves up in the search engines rankings, captures website visitors’ interest, and creates warm real estate leads for the agent.

Fast-track your lead-building Internet marketing. Contact a professional real estate website developer, such as Internet Marketing Consultants, to get your real estate website actively ranked and powerfully building your personal real estate professional brand. Your wonderful family members who help you spend your income will love you for it.

Let’s take an argument for using a professional real estate agent and see if it also applies to using a professional real estate website developer for that agent’s personal website. Number one reason to use a real estate agent: they know the real estate business, the paperwork pitfalls, the staging nuances, the closing emergencies, the pricing versus appraisal scenarios and most of all the current market conditions and competition.

Selling real estate demands one set of skills, creating a real estate website demands a completely different set. There are individuals that can master both sets of skills and use them. But they probably don’t have much free time. Looking at the above list of real estate knowledge, they correspond in some ways to real estate website development.

Handling the paperwork. Hosting a real estate website, like handling a home sale’s paperwork, doesn’t demand a large amount of time, but it does demand experienced knowledge. A professional website developer’s hosting ability also demand in-depth knowledge of the activity. Knowledge of structuring and maintaining firewalls to block unwanted intrusions, setting up the email for the website, and understanding the posting of the website’s folders and files and the setting of file permissions.

The staging nuances. Just like staging a house to look its best and most attractive, website developers are very practiced in making an image, whether of the house or the real estate agent, look its best. In the credibility guidelines of a website, consider the agent photo as one of the key selling points. Old, grainy or poorly set photos do not add to the “professional” branding momentum a website is intended to create. [Note: Never have your photo staged outside a mobile home unless that is your niche market.] Professional website developers screen your photos to make sure you are starting with an agent image that has the necessary sharpness of detail for publishing on a website. Good starting images can then have the lighting and color problems corrected so the agent appears in their best light.

The other aspect of staging on the website is the content. Website developers also use professional writers since the way the content is presented is crucial to getting website visitors to read it. Getting the search engines to index the content gets a website ranked, but getting visitors to read and be impressed by your website’s content gets you warm real estate leads.

Next, real estate closings, conditions and competition in website design.

Plan your real estate agent photo just like you figure out how best to stage a house for sale. Your image as a professional real estate agent can be tremendously reinforced or seriously undermined by your agent photo. Here are several tips on maximizing your “image opportunity”.

1. Do not skimp, go professional.
Check the work of photographers in your area and choose one that has a solid track record for professional presentations. Resist the temptation to simply use the home photo from last September when your tan was at its healthy peak. Get digital copies of the pictures. Professional photographers have the lighting set up so there are no shadows on the wall behind you giving you that mug shot look.

If at all possible, do not use a photo digitized by scanning from a small photo print. This severely limits the ability of a web developer to fix any color or lighting issues and often creates imagery problems in themselves. Scanned photo prints often can appear on the website as grainy “yearbook” quality images.

2. Check your background.
Make sure it is not busy and that the backdrop color complements your clothing color. Wearing a dark suit against a black background often creates problems with having the agent stand out. You do not want an image of the real estate agent who is emerging from the shadows.

3. Be aware of outdoor photos.
The background of outdoor photos is often too busy. Nature has two tricks to impair your photos. First, the sun’s bright lighting often caused darker shadows around the eyes and chin. These shadows don’t seem so apparent outside, but when you review the image, you are struck by how recessed your eyes seem. Second, the wind ruffles hair, skirts and loose ties.

4. Dress for success.
Even if in your regular working environment you dress in casual business clothes to set your real estate clients at ease, for your professional branding, a more formal appearance projects a better image. Make the most your photo shoot and take several sets of clothes with different color schemes. For men, this may just be using different ties. With different color schemes in your clothes, you have more choice in photos to go with your website’s color scheme. If you run several websites, some just for individual properties, you have greater latitude in how you are presented.

5. Smile!