The Chicago Association of REALTORS®, the “Voice for Real Estate” in Chicago since 1883, represents over 17,000 members from all real estate specialties including commercial sales, development, property management, appraisal, auctions and residential sales.
Learn how we help our 17,000+ members. Membership options are available for licensed real estate professionals and those affiliated with the real estate industry!
REALTORS® Real Estate School offers all kinds of real estate licensing and training. Browse self-paced, online training or live classes in our modern, downtown classrooms!
How can we help your business succeed? Your membership includes multiple resource guides on industry topics, tools to increase your knowledge and market statistics to help your serve your communities.
Those words can send shivers down the spine of some small business owners and cause looks of puzzlement with others.
Regardless, as a small business owner, you need to make sure digital is part of your marketing plan for 2015, if it’s not already.
Why? Because you need to go where the eyeballs – and the leads – are.
To help you formulate your next steps in digital, let’s address a couple of key areas – your website and your digital search strategy.
Website
Here are four questions to ask when determining whether or not you need a new website:
1. Do you know your competitors in the real and digital worlds?
Make sure your site sets you apart from others.
Conduct a website audit that checks on the user
experience, design, copy tone and brand appeal of your website vs. your competitors.
2. Do you know your audiences and what they expect?
You probably know who your target audiences are. But do you understand them? Do you know what they expect from your website? If there’s more than one audience, have you crafted an experience for each? All targets must see themselves in your site as they explore. Your story must come forward so they understand that you are catering to their needs. To build a truly exceptional user experience, you must identify what motivates each of your key audiences and even understand what devices they use to create an experience that exceeds their expectations.
3. Do you know your conversion metrics?
Find what’s meaningful to your visitors and give them something that they perceive as valuable, whether it’s a blog, video or white paper. Your site needs to help you close the deal.
4. Are you measuring your site’s success?
Without measurable goals, you can’t drive success. Use free tools like Google Analytics and others that are available to measure how well you’re converting your prospects.
Digital Search Strategy
A digital search strategy can connect your business to prospects with much greater conversion potential.
Your first step is to figure out the behavior of your customers. What journeys do they take throughout the buying cycle? How do they find you when they search for your service?
Mapping those journeys and providing relevant content every step of the way is key—and the content can come in many forms, like articles, videos, testimonials, photos…the list goes on.
For maximum effect with your content strategy, vary your content and seed it over multiple channels, including your website and social media. For the best results, make sure at the beginning stage that some of the online channels are third-party – such as media outlets or blogs – in order to build customer trust.
For more information – including videos – about these marketing strategies and much more, visit www.cbdmarketing.com/about/blog.
Mike D’Onofrio and Doug Davila of CBD Marketing, an award-winning, creative, integrated marketing agency in Chicago.
