Want to know why your blog posts aren’t bringing in leads for all your real estate marketing efforts? Oh, they may be bringing in traffic, but are they bringing in leads? Too much traffic and not enough leads. Not a great problem to have.
I’d rather be on the not much traffic but a ton of leads boat, wouldn’t you? (And yes, I define a lead as someone who is willing to give you a way to contact them. Someone willing to give you their email address.)
Posting content for contents sake is a short sighted, short term solution.
Content is your blog posts. Contents sake is posting posts and pages to your website so that your website looks big to google. Short term solution means it’ll temporarily drive traffic, but the traffic it’ll drive won’t bring in the leads it should.
As Real Estate Agents (I work in the Real Estate Industry so my focus is Real Estate Agents, but this applies to any industry) we are so focused on plopping up keyword crap that we miss the forest for the trees. We miss the fact that people are looking for answers, not ten second sound bites. There is a time and place for ten second sound bites. Your blog posts are not that place.
Yes, I get it. It’s not possible to provide a thorough answer for a question in a 300-500 word blog post.
I also know that blog posts that get the highest amount of traffic and the highest amount of engagement are between 500-1500 words, with 750 being the sweet spot. The place to strive for.
I also know that you can answer a question, with a good answer, in 750 words.
You see, real estate agents, the ones who are actually online, are focusing on pushing out their listings or they are focused on getting content up as quickly as possible so they rank high in search engines.
While it is about how many pages of your website are indexed in google – it also, isn’t.
It doesn’t matter if one million pages are indexed – if you don’t have the “meat” that people are looking for – if they come to your site and realize that you aren’t answering their questions, they will leave.
If they come to your site and realize you are just playing a keyword game (which is dying by the way), they may not consciously know that you are playing a keyword game, but they will know that you didn’t give them what they were looking for, even if your site popped up on the first page of google.
They will become frustrated. Disillusioned. If they do give you their email address (which isn’t likely to happen with these visitors), they won’t be loyal. You want loyalty. Loyalty is created when you’ve built a relationship. A relationship is created when you anticipate the lead’s questions and truly answer them. Loyalty is created when you give.
So now that you’ve realized you’ve got to actually answer a site visitor’s questions, before they ask them… how do you get them to take that next step and give you their email address so they can become a lead?
You give them more.
Answer their question in the blog post. Then, answer it deeper and more thoroughly in an ebook, or a white page, or a video or or or. There are a ton of ways.
It’s that simple.
The consumer wants to know that you know what you are talking about. The consumer wants to be confident you are an expert. It doesn’t take long for them to form their impression, but once they do, they act on it. They’ll either leave your site, simply use your site to look at homes, or they’ll want to be connected with you in some way. They show this connection by giving you their email address, in exchange for something you are giving to them.
Give them what they are looking for, for free. Then give them MORE of what they are looking for in exchange for their email address.
You’ve given them a reason to begin a relationship with you. Continue that relationship. Then give them a reason to be loyal to you. Then give them a reason to believe that your service doesn’t compare to anyone else’s. A reason they should do business with you and only you.
So here it is.
Reason number one why your blog posts aren’t bringing in leads is that you are too busy writing short, keyword focused posts, without providing actual answers for the site visitor.
Reason number two why your blog posts aren’t bringing in leads is that you aren’t giving them a reason to want more from you.
Give. Then give more. Stop focusing on dying keyword crap. Start focusing on giving value. Focus more on giving value. When you think you’ve given more value than you can possibly give, give even more.
Thanks to Christina Ethridge of LeadsAndLeverage.com for this great post!
Christina Ethridge has been involved in real estate for two decades. She lead a highly successful real estate team, a team that was technologically forward and focused on client satisfaction. Christina lead the way by being first on the web, first in blogging, first in social media, and ultimately the first in whatever is coming next. Through her experience in building a real estate business, she learned the snags and limitations faced by real estate agents as they grew their own businesses. She quickly realized that her passion for the integration of technology to build relationships would help more people by focusing on helping real estate agents grow their businesses. Together, with her husband, they created LeadsAndLeverage.com, a business focused on bridging the gap between social media and reality, by helping real estate agents get the conversation started.
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