Western Montana & Missoula Real Estate Blog & Area Information

I Thought Your Office Would Be Much Larger based on Your Internet Presence

Creating a strong internet presence through the use of websites (with good SEO), blogs (like ActiveRain and ActiveRain Outside Blogs) and posting your listings on other national sites, can help you reach more potential buyers and establish yourself as a local authority in real estate.

We had a buyer/investor from Texas contact us this week when he was in Missoula about looking at investment properties in the area. Kevin spoke to him on the phone several times about what types of properties he was interested in and they agreed to meet at our office.

When our client arrived he said,

"I thought your office would be much larger based on your internet presence. I was expecting you to have an entire two story building or something. When I was searching online, you guys took up the top 10 places on Google for what I was searching."

While we maintain two small offices, we are highly mobile and work mostly on our laptops. Our internet presence and marketing is our priority. We maintain several websites, blogs (including ActiveRain and our Outside Blog), and online ads. As a result, we tend to do very well in the search engines for local real estate terms and often come up before the larger real estate companies in our area.

What we've learned is that

1. The internet can be a great equalizer for smaller real estate brokerages, and
2. The size of your internet presence does not have to correspond with the size of your office space or the number of agents you have working for you.

How is your internet presence and how does it help you in real estate?

Lender - You're Doing a Great Job Marketing My Old Home!

We had a surprising compliment from one of our clients yesterday, a lender we represent on a couple of bank-owned properties.

The bank has stated in the past that they like working with us because we promote their listings so heavily on the Internet - a primary strategy in our marketing plan. They just recently received confirmation that our marketing plan is working and that their properties have high visibility on the internet from an unlikely source - the prior owner of the property!

The home had been listed for more than a year prior to the bank taking the property back and the owner had tried very hard to sell the home. When he called the bank to let them know that he was removing the last of his personal effects from the garage he told them, "The agents that you have marketing the home are doing a really good job. The listing is everywhere!" He had seen our ads on multiple sites and commented on how impressed he was with the exposure it was getting.

I "Googled" the street address of the property (not even including city and state) and our ads came up ten times on the front page of Google - including:

• Two of our ActiveRain posts,
• Our single property website,
• Our ads on Kijiji,
• Craigslit,
• Trulia,
• and Zillow!

It was nice to get a confirmation that our Internet Marketing is not only working, but even the most unlikely people are noticing!

*To clarify - this was a spec home and not someone's residence.

****************

Kevin and Monica Ray are Missoula Real Estate sales and marketing professionals for Access Realty in beautiful Western Montana. We provide services in, but not limited to: Missoula, Superior, Alberton, Saint Regis, Lolo, Clinton, Turah, Potomac, Florence, Corvallis, and Hamilton.

For more information on Missoula Real Estate or surrounding areas, they can be reached at 406-207-1185 or online at www.AccessRealty.net.

By TwitterButtons.com