There’s nothing more painful than working hard to increase your web traffic, only to succeed then sit there waiting while nobody actually contacts you. Every day you see dozens or even hundreds of people visiting your site, but your blackberry stays tragically silent, no rings, beeps, chimes or anything.

The problem is that most agents spend all their time generating great content and focusing on attracting visitors, without thinking about how to convert those visitors into actual leads.

The secret is to make it easy and natural for your visitors to contact you:

Tip #1: Put a contact form at the bottom of every page on your site.

Type “WordPress contact form” into Google, and the first result is a simple plugin for your WordPress blog.

Make one simple contact form, and then you can start making more custom versions for different pages. On your “selling” page, for example, put a form where sellers can request a seller’s guide and enter basic property info in exchange for an estimate of their home’s value. See an example of forms on every page on these single property websites.

Without a form, visitors aren’t going to take the initiative to send you a detailed email requesting a price estimate… it’s just not going to happen.

Tip #2: Include a call to action at the end of every post.

A call to action means telling your visitors exactly what to do next.  The more specific and personal, the better. For example, “you should follow me on twitter” has been proven to be dramatically better than “follow me on twitter”.  It’s hard to believe, but we all have a natural tendency to simply go with the flow and do what we’re told.

This doesn’t mean be pushy or overly sales-y, it just means make it easy for a busy, tired visitor to cruise through your site and go on to the next step — in this case, the next step is filling out a simple form for more information.

After that, the next step is up to you!

Image Source: My Single Property Websites Data Source: 2008 NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers

As part of it’s “Right Tools, Right Now” program, our national association is generously providing the 2008 NAR Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers free as a download to Realtors (go to www.realtor.org to download).  I spent some time reviewing the profile and combining it with my own experience, and wrote a lengthy summary of it on my single property websites.  You can view my full review and the other graphs I made here: Real Estate Marketing: What Sellers Want.  Here is an excerpt:

The pie chart above shows what sellers most want from real estate agents. There are four nearly perfectly equal “biggies” that were picked by over 80% of sellers, with everything else picked first by less than 20% of sellers. The four things sellers wanted most:

• Help price the home competitively
• Help sell the home within specific timeframe
• Help find a buyer for home
• Help seller market home to potential buyers

Notice that these four things are nearly perfectly equal, at 20% each except for pricing help at 21%. That means if you want to give 80% of your sellers the #1 thing they desire from a real estate agent, you need to hit all four of these nails on the head. Read more…

A few highlights:

Point 4, using free/ low cost online crm software:

Most Customer Relationship Management software, especially that made for the real estate industry, is notoriously hard to use. Are a few custom fields worth hundreds of dollars and hours of syncing and tech headaches? If you don’t think so either, try Highrise, an online CRM that lets you manage up to 250 contacts for free, with more powerful plans available for only a few dollars a month.

Point 7, picking up the phone instead of spending more on advertising:

I learned this idea from the course “Ninja Selling” by Larry Kendall. His great advice: make 50 brief calls to people you know every week and offer them real estate information of value (sales in their neighborhood, market update, etc.). This costs you nothing, and is probably the single most effective thing you can do to generate more business. Try it for a month.

I learned this idea from the course “Ninja Selling” by Larry Kendall. His great advice: make 50 brief calls to people you know every week and offer them real estate information of value (sales in their neighborhood, market update, etc.). This costs you nothing, and is probably the single most effective thing you can do to generate more business. Try it for a month.

Point 2, using free or low cost real estate transaction management software:

If you’re looking for a quick way to differentiate yourself and offer great service to your clients, try using free/ low cost online transaction management software such as Basecamp. You can add tasks, milestones, messages, upload documents, and best of all your client can login and view his listing or purchase status at anytime. You save money by not needing a transaction coordinator, your clients love the transparency, and you’ll save time because there will be less emails and calls back and forth.

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