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
- The internet can be a great equalizer for smaller real estate brokerages, and
- 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?
Awesome article. When people get to my office they even knock on the door because their not sure anyone is home it is so small.
Wow, do you find that it hurts you though or does it really matter to your clients? We don't really use our office very often, we find it's more convenient for our clients if we go to them, and they appreciate it.
We probably get people thinking this. We get calls and emails all the time from our web site, but we have a 3 person office, basically; myself. my husbnad, and our son. we lease a small office space in a large building. I don't care that we are small, but I do wish we had our own building. I don't think it matters to most of our clients.
Kevin and Monica, You are right. I usually meet them at a convenient place to have a coffee and chat and we are off and running. Most of my contracts are done in PDF form and well......they don't want to waste time in an office in Florida. They want to be outdoors on the beach! :)
Sounds like you're doing a great marketing job, Kevin and Monica. Do you spend a lot of money on your Internet advertising?
Hello Kevin and Monica, we find more and more it is much easier to meet a new client at a coffee shop rather than our brokerage's office. We are virtual agents and agree that our presence on the Internet is invaluable. John
I love it! I too, have a small office for several reasons...one is that I don't believe in supporting a huge overhead, two is that I don't have 40 agents to house and nor do I want to, three is that I run my brokerage under the creedo of form and function over fluff!! I provide a well located, clean, bright, and very techy environment for successful agents to utilize, not a lounge for donut eating, coffee drinking gossip mongers! I have had that same remark from people about my office and I always reply with this...success doesn't have to come from a huge building! Good for you and congrats on your success online!
People don't really understand the new reality - you don't need a big old building. Good post!