Realtors – Should You Even Bother With a Website?

The real estate industry has changed over the years and will continue to change. Because of the internet buyers and sellers are armed with so much information. They can retrieve homes for sale, what recently sold, inventory levels, mortgage rates and market updates in the blink of an eye. The internet has made information faster and more accessible. The percentage of buyers who start their search on the internet continues to grow every year.

In my opinion, all Realtor should own a website. But from a marketing and business perspective how much time should you focus on it? Should you be the type of agent who owns a rinky dink generic real estate website just to say that you have one in your marketing presentation or should you spend a good bit of money and time to develop a web presence that consistently generates income?

One thing that I have noticed over the years is that the largest real estate producers are not the agents who make the internet their main focus of generating business. That is the case in Sarasota, Florida and I suspect the same in most other markets. Take a look at the top producers in your area. How many of them get most of their business via the internet? I am sure that there area some exceptions but my guess is that your market is similar in that the largest producers are the one who do it the old fashioned (yet effective) way - sphere of influence, referrals, open houses, farming and print advertising. They all may have a website but you most likely won't see them spending countless hours on link building, article writing and posting in their blog.

Even though more than 90% of buyers start their home search on the internet the old fashioned way of business still generates more transactions than the web. I have received several phone calls over the years from Realtors who just completed a transaction where their clients found the house on my website. A large percentage of buyers may start their home search on the web but that does not mean that they call the Realtor who owns the website that they are searching on. If they have a strong relationship with an agent chances are that they will call them to handle their transaction even though they are using a different Realtors website.

Knowing that the old fashioned way of doing business produces more sales than an internet focused business and that the largest producers in almost every market do not get most of their business via the web should you spend countless hours building your web presence?

Here are a few things to consider:

Quantity of leads

A successful website can produce a large quantity of leads. This is great if you have a team that needs leads or if you are very good at cherry picking. Plenty of prospects can be a blessing or a curse. They can lead to paralysis. You might get caught up in trying to figure out which ones or good and bad so much to the point that you don't do anything with them. You also might take them for granted thinking that more leads will come in.

Ranking well is critical for consistency

You won't generate a consistent number of transactions from your website unless you rank well in the search engines. You can get one here and there from someone who stumbled upon your website but nothing that you can rely on. The internet is massive and the consumers have so many websites to choose from. They visit several sites and most likely contact several Realtors. Unless you are near the top for at least few phrases you most likely won't generate consistent business.

Internet lead quality is low

There are few flowers in a field of weeds. Internet lead quality is lower than other sources of business. For example, someone calling from a yard sign is a better lead to me than someone who made an inquiry on my website from out of state that has never been to my area, is buying in six months and considering several markets. The sign call lead has prequalified the neighborhood, location, exterior of home and is motivated enough to hop in the car, drive by properties and make a call.

Do you want to be in contact with 200 prospects a year and close 25 of them or have 1,000 leads a year and close 25 of them? The percentage of closed transactions compared to leads generates is low when comparing internet leads to traditional sources of business.

There are only 10 organic listing on the first page of Google

Most people don't go past page one when searching for a website. How many Realtors are optimizing their website to get on that first page for any particular search phrase? There are well funded national sites like Yahoo real estate and Trulia trying to get to the top spots. You are also in competition with hundreds if not thousands of other companies and Realtors trying to get there as well. The competition is fierce.

Getting there isn't easy

Ranking on the first page in Google is not easy. It requires expertise, time and hard work. How much time do you want to spend on the computer optimizing your website? Would your time be better spent on something more immediate like an open house or farming your sphere?

There are thousands of blogs, websites and books written about how to rank well in Google. People spend all day every day looking for the magical formula to ranking well in Google. It is a huge industry because there are great benefits in having a highly visited website.

You can either hire someone to get you on the first page or you can do it yourself. One way is expensive monetarily the other is expensive in terms of time and energy.

Search engines evolve

Google, Yahoo, MSN and other search engines are constantly tweaking their formulas to provide better search results for their users. You will have to evolve along with the search engines. Don't be fooled into thinking that once you reach the first page that your work is done. Once you get there you may scale back your efforts but keep in mind that your competitors probably have not stopped working.

Lead generation is passive

Prospects will be contacting you so generating business becomes more passive with a successful website. If you are in a large enough market and ranking well you can sit back and just wait for the leads to roll in.

If you are generating enough leads you can build a team of buyer's agents and just take a cut of their business. It is a great way to work on your business and not in your business.

Not very loyal

Internet leads are not typically loyal. Prospects typically visit several websites and make contact with several Realtors before deciding on one to choose. Loyalty from referrals and your sphere of influence is higher.

Buyer oriented

Focusing on the internet is great if you don't like representing sellers or if you enjoy working with buyers. Most of the leads that you will receive from the internet will be buyers. I have generated seller leads but the buyer's leads outweigh them tremendously. If you hate hoping in the car and showing a buyer around town don't focus on the internet.

Perseverance required

Assuming that your website is ranking well you will receive plenty of leads. A good percentage of those leads are low quality. Therefore, you are generating plenty of low quality leads. Diligently working numerous low quality leads is very time consuming and exhausting. Perseverance and patience are needed. You may have to kiss a lot of frogs to find your prince.

Prequalification skills critical

Since a successful website can generate plenty of leads good qualification skills are important. There are so many time wasters in this business. I've noticed that a lot of people don't know how Realtors are compensated so it is no big deal to them if you spend a day driving them around town playing tour guide. And there are plenty of those tire kickers out there. I can't tell you how many times I have been asked to drive someone around town for a tour of Sarasota, Florida. Spinning your wheels with someone who is not going to buy or sell prevents you from growing your business. Prequalifying is not only crucial for success but also from preventing burnout.

Following up is important

Just because someone is not ready to act today does not mean that they are not a good prospect. Follow up is crucial for success when working with internet leads. Most prospects are months away from buying or selling so your follow up and organization skills are important. If you are not good at follow up your production will suffer.

So, in my humble opinion, building a consistently successful web presence is difficult, time consuming, requires expertise, produces numerous low quality, non loyal leads that require you to have persistence, perseverance and great prequalification and follow up skills in order to be successful. Some of you may disagree with me. If so, I would like to hear from you. With all of that said, I have been fortunate enough to have generated at least 80% of my business via the internet over the last four years. I am obviously in favor of creating a good web presence. However, in 2009 my business plan requires me to continue improving my website but also compels me to generate more business using the old fashioned methods. My goal is to develop a well rounded, diversified lead generation system. Since the most successful Realtors in almost every market locate their customers using the old fashioned way I figure it can't be all that bad.