Real Estate Web Design

The Economics of Online Marketing

In the last post, I outlined the economics of building a website. In this post I want to now outline the economics of online marketing. Hopefully, from the last post, you have decided that you want your website to be an lead generation vehicle and have taken the time and made the investment to build a custom website.

The next step is to then outline your online marketing plan. This will include some of the online marketing tools below, but will depend on how much time you have to dedicate to your online marketing efforts in addition to how much money you have to invest in this form of marketing. One of the first questions you must decide is how much money to earmark toward your organic efforts and how much to earmark toward your pay-per-click campaign. As a general rule, you should allocate about 20% of your online marketing budget toward your organic efforts and 80% toward your PPC campaign. Over time, these percentages will flip flop with 80% toward organic marketing and 20% toward PPC but this will be a general shift over the course of the first two years. **It is important to note that the cost of developing the website is a separate item when creating an online marketing budget.

Second, It is VERY VERY important to understand that all the calls you receive from all the sales people promising results are products or tools. They are NOT the secret to success. In most cases, these companies are offering a service which offers either very little value to no value at all. The internet is still the wild wild west and as such most companies as attempting to take advantage of a real estate professionals lack of knowledge.

If you are a Site Tutor client, always feel free to email or call for advise if you come across a sales pitch which you want to explore further. In most cases I will know the company or the type of product they are selling and let you know if it makes sense or if it is a scam. There are ocassions when there is something new I have not yet heard about and If I haven’t heard of the product, I will research it for you and get back to you with my review and recommendation.

The TRUE SECRET to success on the internet is to utilizing multiple online marketing techniques. Investing too much in any one technique exposes you to a tremendous amount of risk. The search engines are constantly changing and at any given time, they could change their algorithms and if your marketing is too invested in a strategy which they no longer consider as part of their algorithm, you can loose all your business overnight. So, now that I have written a huge caveat about internet marketing, there are a number of techniques which are well established and I believe that by utilizing these, you will be on the road to building a solid long term business on the internet. These techniques include the following:

• Additional content development - Unique content is the King of the Internet and also the easiest way to differentiate your self on the internet.
• NetworkingOnline:
  • Just as you network offline, you should continually network online. This includes:
    • Forums - You should participate in 2 to 3 forums on a regular basis. Site Tutor owns and manages the real estate forum, and is a good place to get your feet wet.
    • Social Networking Sites: On the success of my space, social networking sites which are industry specific are gaining momentum and I believe will become a powerful marketing tool in the years to come.

• Directory Submission - Careful directory submission will help expose your website to the search engines and generate additional traffic. These include top general websites in addition to popular industry specific directories
• Article Development - Writing articles which are submitted to industry specific websites and article submission services.
• Press Releases - Most companies release information about their companies. If submitted via internet services, this can be a powerful tool in regard to your online marketing.
• Pay Per Click - Bidding for Placement in the search engines. Although this can be very time consuming, if handled correctly, it can also be very beneficial.
• Blog posting - Consistently writing on your website blog and having 1 to 2 external blogs. Each Blog should focus on different areas and be hosted on an industry specific hosting platform. Keep an eye out for our real estate forum blogs which are expected to launch in the fall of 2007.

In addition to these tried and true methods, the internet is a constantly changing beast. New techniques are being developed and tested on an ongoing basis. It is always a good idea to read the online industry magazines to keep updated on the latest marketing techniques being tried on the internet.

Now, what will all this cost you? Well…………..Unfortunately, many of the techniques above are an issue of knowledge and manual labor. As a result, unless you are going to spend a minimum of $5,000 per month on any of the above methods, it makes more sense for you to undertake these efforts yourself. Now you may think I am crazy, but a majority of the calls you get selling you a service are actually tools which cost very little to manage. If a company was to actually contact you to provide you with the services outlined above, they know it would cost them at least $1,000 in labor costs alone. Then they need to add in all the associated costs with running an established company and so to make money, they would need to charge $2,000 to $3,000 per month and most small to medium sized businesses can’t afford this investment on a monthly basis.

I know that is not what you want to hear, but lets deal with facts. The small businesses who have been successful on the web to date have learned and implemented the techniques themselves. Large companies can afford to outsource these efforts, but even as they become more knowledgeable, even the big companies are bringing these programs in-house to maximize their investments.

That is why we at Site Tutor don’t offer a full search engine marketing management plan. Since the focus of our business is to serve small to medium sized businesses, we focus on teaching our clients the process through our consulting services. We know what it takes to be successful and we know that our most successful clients manage their own online marketing campaigns.

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