This real estate agency was having challenges getting sales due to stiff competition and economy changes. Agency owner Geoff soon realised that their old brochure website needed an upgrade to help them promote their new image and to attract new customers (both buyers and sellers). He also wanted to offer his clients extra services that would help them sell their properties.

Currently the agency was getting the majority of their new leads from referrals, and while they were happy with this, they also wanted to maximise their online presence to start attracting prospects through their website. Geoff wanted to position his company as experts in local property investment as a strategy for converting leads into clients, and to value add for their current clients to help them sell their properties and build their loyalty so they use the agency's services again.

Stage 1 - Website presence

Bloomtools built a professional, streamlined website design for the real estate agent - clean lines, white space and lots of images of houses and the local area in a professional flash header. They chose to keep the design simple and let the content and properties take center stage on the site.

Years of experience made the agency realise that it's not just a house their clients are buying, it's the area as well. So to make their site a 'one-stop-shop' for real estate information, they created a profile page for every suburb that they had property in. The profile contained information and images of schools, transport and entertainment in the area, as well as the facility for locals to comment and offer suggestions for people looking to move to the area. These pages became a hit on the site and played an important role in many of the agent's sales.

Other features of the site include:

Property listings - using Bloomtools proprietary real estate software, Geoff and his team created a directory of all their properties with images, contact forms and Google Maps. This looked very professional and put this agency far ahead of others in the local area. This tool also saved Geoff and his team lots of administration time because with the click of a button, they could export their listings to sites like RealEstate.com.au and Domain.com.au - without having to redo all the work!
Testimonials - the real estate agency wanted to make sure potential clients could see their traditional values and the importance they placed on face-to-face service so they collected testimonials from their most loyal clients then the Bloomtools designers built them into the sidebar of the site.
Community noticeboard - the agency started a community noticeboard on their website that enabled locals to advertise things for sale or wanted for free and local businesses to promote discounts and events, further adding to the agency's reputation as local experts.

Stage 2 - Driving traffic to the website

The real estate agency implemented a search engine optimisation program to help their site appear high up in the organic search results. Geoff also wanted to start getting traffic to the site immediately so he started a pay-per click advertising campaign on Google using keywords for their location and specialty areas. They created landing pages for whitepapers about tips on buying properties and real estate market statistics to capture the details of leads and position themselves as the expert.

The agency also wanted to promote their website by posting comments on forums and blogs. One of the agents sets aside some time each week to search through real estate discussion boards and blogs to add his comments to. He answered people's questions and shared his opinion on issues, making sure to add a link to the agency's website on each comment. The agent also added the business to numerous online directories.

The agency's most cost effective way to drive traffic to their website was through their alliances. Geoff arranged with all his alliances to place text links on their websites to the agency's site and wrote regular articles to appear in their email newsletters - putting his business in front of new customers each month. He also wrote a series of ebooks about property investing for their alliances to give away as gifts to their clients to raise awareness of their business.

Stage 3 - Direct people back to the website

The agency prided themselves on their industry experience and expertise and they wanted to use this to build their database of contacts. They set up 3 areas on their site for buyers, sellers and investors with articles, podcasts, case studies and whitepapers written by the agents in each section. Users could submit their contact details to sign up then access the resource centre at any time, plus have the latest news, articles and properties sent to them by email. This strategy positioned the agency as the experts and also helped them stay in touch with clients and prospects.

The agency's main aim is to sell their clients properties, so they decided to send out a fortnightly bulletin of new properties to interested parties using email marketing. It took them only half an hour to put together a newsletter with a welcome message, links to some articles in their resource area and then a list of all their new properties with a picture and 'read more' link to their website. Potential buyers can sign up to receive this bulletin in the buyers area of the site or when they meet an agent at an open home.

Tools used

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