Many of our readers will recognize Dave Smith as the author of The Real Estate Blog Lab, a very popular blog about Dave’s experiments with using Wordpress. Dave also runs several blogs for his wife, Barbara Lasky, including the Tucson AZ Real Estate Blog and Tucson Real Estate In the News. Tucson Real Estate In the News has propelled BarbarLasky.com into a first page position on Google, while his other blog ranks equally well on MSN. Answering my call for guest authors to write about their Internet Marketing Strategy, Dave emailed me details on his real estate business. These included some production statistics that Dave later asked me to delete; I hope Dave will forgive me if I let you in on the secret that they were excellent.
Dave writes:
About 85% of our business for 2007 came from our Internet marketing. This is what I’m in charge of doing (you probably already had that one figured out).
2007 was our best year yet. Barbara has been in the business full time now for six years. I’m a newbie at just over two years, but was the database administrator for Long Realty Co. with more than 1500 agents in fifteen offices. They have expanded since I left.
I don’t know how many prospect/clients we are working with currently. I know it is quite a few. We have two sources of business.
- Past clients and referrals from them.
- The Internet marketing.
We have done more referrals this year than ever before. We have two commercial deals closing this month with a 20% referral which will be somewhere around $2.3 million between the two of them. These came from Internet leads from our blogs.
We do almost no print advertising except on our Sunday insert a few times a year. No magazine or other media. No mailings, nothing else except a small drip campaign: once a month a post card goes out with a tip of some kind from Barbara’s sharper agent account.
More Guest Authors Wanted
Do you have experience marketing your real estate business online? Has your web site rescued your business from the gloom of oblivion? If so, our readers want to hear your voice as part of our ongoing series, “What’s Your Real Estate Internet Marketing Strategy?” Please contact John Lockwood if you’re interested.
Related Posts:
What’s Your Internet Marketing Strategy: Author’s Guide
Tags: Dave Smith
March 25th, 2008 at %I:%M %p
Interesting statistic! 85% of your business (leads) are generated online? How about the % of sales made from internet leads?
Regards,
Anthony Brunetti
March 25th, 2008 at %I:%M %p
I don’t know about Dave, but for me Internet sales account for about 90% of all sales — the rest are one form or another of referral. The closing rate on print for me is 0%. Dave, care to chime in on your numbers?
March 29th, 2008 at %I:%M %p
I’m not sure the percentage from internet leads. Depends on what is a “lead” anyone filling in the form? or people that answer the email response back to them and have more than the initial inquiry?
We don’t consider them a “lead” till we have had two forms of communication established.
Of those leads we might work with them for a year or more. There are people looking at our market that far out. Some two years out.
Why?
Because Tucson is a desired retirement community so some plan way ahead for that event.
Because we have an air base and we get military families knowing this will be their next deployment looking in advance.
So it is hard to put a conversion to closing on those numbers especially since we have only been marketing on the internet actively for the past 18 months.
I do know the leads we do have keep us busy. And our leads from print might be 1%, the rest from past clients and their referrals.
April 2nd, 2008 at %I:%M %p
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