What images does this evoke?  Hopefully, you are thinking of websites, as that is the most powerful form of online marketing that you are currently using to gain exposure for your business and your services!

But what does “online marketing” mean?  How can you market online in other ways in conjunction with your website?  How do you turn your website into a lean, mean, online lead generating machine?

Online marketing is a way of selling products and services over the Internet.  Usually, this means websites that contain information relevant to the capabilities, functionalities, and benefits of said product or service.  With most people going online for key information regarding everything from clothes, to education, to real estate, to self-help, this medium for reaching the masses has become increasingly powerful.  General word or term searches have become the quickest method to access specific information on a topic from all corners of the globe.  The world is, literally, at your fingertips!  “So, how does this relate to my website?”, you ask.  There are many things you can do to be part of this massive information sharing that is occuring.

You have already taken the first step by creating a website, having recognized the need to put yourself in front of these millions of people hunting for relevant information.  The next step is to customize that site with the content for which these people are searching.  Applying this directly to real estate, what is there in the neigborhoods that you service that stands out the most?  What are the names of the specific neighborhoods?  What terms and phrases would these online hunters be using?  Is there a local attraction that draws attention?  All of this data should be used within the content on your site, as well as your Search Engine Optimization (SEO) for those specific pages.  This customization will help the search engine crawlers find you and your website, thereby increasing your online marketing!

Another great way to share this information is through blogging.  Point2 Professional and Premium members have the opportunity to integrate their own blogs within their websites, providing another online marketing piece.  We talked earlier as to how people are like hunters – they skulk around the forest of information that is the Internet.  They are looking for their prey: the specific content that meets their needs.  Hunters want their prey, and while they are willing to spend the time to make sure they get what they want, they want a fairly quick capture.  The same applies to our online hunters. 

They are willing to spend a bit of extra time to find better quality information, but they don’t want to spend hours reading through it.  Blogs alleviate this aggravation, as they are meant to be short and quick captures of key pieces of information that could include everything from real estate specific events like open houses, to local events like parades, to advice-type articles like vantage points for watching the local parade.  Keep yourself focused on what matters the most to people within your community, as well as those visiting your community. 

This works in your favour in many ways: entries don’t require a lot of creation time, they help your SEO efforts, you will appear to be the expert of that community, and people will repeatedly return to your site once they know that you will deliver the information in an easily-digestible manner.  Okay, done with the hunting analogy!

Another online marketing tool is Point2 Syndication, which gives you the power to syndicate your listings out to the Point2 Syndication Partners.  Since online visitors look in a variety of places for their information, the more you are exposed in those venues, the better the chance of those markets seeing you and what you can potentially offer them.  Having the control over which listings are syndicated to each Syndication Partner gives you the chance to control how that online marketing tool works for you, your business, and the listing itself.  Syndication also helps with your SEO, as it can redirect visitors to your website and blog, further online marketing tools you have implemented!

Since the premise of online marketing is getting the information onto the Internet, and since the goal of visitors on the Internet is to find this information, we have covered aspects that will help you be found: customized content on your website, SEO customization for terms and phrases that are specific to your serviced areas, blogs with concise paragraphs relating to topics that are specific to readers, and using the Point2 Agent to syndicate listings to Syndication Partners.  Changing the conventional way of looking at marketing by incorporating these online marketing tools with traditional marketing strategies, you will be covered on and off the Internet. 

Quote to ponder: “Change your thoughts and you change your world.” – Norman Vincent Peale

~ Tanya Spilchak, Education Coordinator, Point2 Education Team