Co-founder at Brevitas.com, Commercial Real Estate Marketplace and Platform Partner of the National Association of REALTORS®
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Real estate listings are pushed all throughout the internet. Syndications, MLS feeds and APIs have created a network of sites that can pull in real estate information from all over. That’s mostly thanks to the MLSs throughout the country that have created co-ops and the ability for brokers and agents to share this information. The same goes in commercial real estate, where listing syndication to various marketplace sites has gained momentum.
All this information being shared is great for the general market and creates a quick and effective way for information to be dispersed. However, if you’re looking to maximize the performance of your own listing, you can make a big impact by taking more control of how you share this property with your immediate network, whether that is other agents and brokers or investors. As someone who’s analyzed the performance of hundreds of thousands of real estate listings, tested and reviewed every type of property landing page and call to action, and is in the process of building a tool to give brokers this functionality, I can confidently say that dedicated property sites have demonstrated the strongest conversion rates time after time.
With a single-property website, you can create a landing page specifically for your listing. You can then focus this landing page on highlighting what you feel are truly the best features of the property. It’s likely that certain photos, features or future plans are the real selling point. Some of this information can be ignored when you’re allowing other websites to highlight your listing, as they’ll generally only show photos, details and a brief description.
By having a specific property site, you can provide direct access to your disclosure documents, allowing prospective buyers to immediately have access to the critical information they’ll want to review before submitting an offer. Disclosure documents don’t usually accompany an MLS listing, yet it’s one of the best ways to identify parties that are truly interested in submitting an offer. Knowing how many disclosure packets have been sent out is a way you can gauge the interest and the potential final sales price of a property.
Perfecting a landing page to convert to action is not an easy task, but well worth the effort. There’s an endless amount of readily available information on how to increase your conversion rates. By creating your own property site, you can then track the actions of your audience and keep detailed analytics. You know what they say: What gets measured gets managed.
Shareability is another big factor here. Don’t just leave it up to automated feeds and aggregators to share your listing. Create a unique URL for your property website, ideally with the address or property name in the URL. You can drive traffic to your site with email or share your unique link directly or on social media. Having a unique URL and property site also keeps your audience focused only on the subject property. With other websites, it’s easy for someone to change directions and start looking at other properties they find interesting. That could mean that all of your hard work getting their attention might go to someone else’s benefit.
Here are five items you’ll want to include when building your property site:
1. An easy-to-share, unique URL.
2. High-quality photos and/or videos highlighting the best features of the property.
3. Direct access to disclosure documents.
4. A clear and visible call to action.
5. Next steps and your contact information.
I know this may sound like a lot of work for one listing, but there’s good reason to put in the effort. With a number of technology companies offering this combination of tools to allow brokers and agents to create single-property websites, I predict this to be a continued trend in digital real estate marketing.
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