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Dear Friend,

Why settle for average when amazing can be this easy?

You’ve got a website. You’ve got your own URL, and you’re starting to get some visitors, but you’re not convinced your website is working.

Here are some simple ways to get MORE visitors, MORE prospects and MORE ready-to-buy buyers, ready-to-sell sellers, and ready to borrow-borrowers…

1. A Compelling Reason To Get Visitors To Your Website

The most important part of any web strategy is what you do to get people to your site in the first place.

Simply putting a site up is not going to get them there – you need to orchestrate the process of getting people to your site.

One of the easiest and most cost-effective ways to get people to your site is to start putting your URL on everything you do. Put it on your business card, put it on your property flyers, put it in your info-boxes, on your voicemail, in your property ads. But don’t just put your URL on there alone. Start using some compelling REASONS for people to come to your site.

“Hundreds of homes you can buy in Winter Haven with Zero Down Payment at www.LivinginWinterHaven.com” or, on the property flier outside one of your listings “Take a virtual tour of this home at…” offering a reason for people to come to your website will improve the response you get to your ads, and an increase in visitors to your website.

2. Real-Time Statistics

Once you have a working strategy to get people to your website, the next step is to keep track of what’s going on. One of the most important statistics you can know is the number of unique visitors that come to your site daily, weekly and monthly. Knowing this number can help you adjust your advertising strategy, and also know what’s happening when people come to your website. Are they coming and leaving, or are they engaging in a dialogue with you?

Once you start monitoring your numbers, you’ll effectively be able to track the effectiveness of the offers on your website. You’ll be able to know that when you have 100 visitors to your website, “X” of them will request something from you, or start a dialogue by email. When you know those numbers, you can test different offers on your front page and see the impact it has right away.

Just like any direct response advertising, knowing your numbers is a big advantage. If you can increase the number of requests/100 visitors, you can increase the percentage of people who ultimately become clients.

3. A COMPELLING offer on your front page to get visitors to share their email
address with you.

If you think about your front page as the table of contents, or the cover of Cosmo magazine…and it’s job is to compel people to take advantage of your services, what kind of offers can you make people that would compel them to leave their email address?

Think like your prospect. What would they like that you have access to? How about information by email on the best properties they won’t find advertised yet?

How about a FREE Report by email about special Zero Down Home Loan Programs thatthe banks won’t tell you about?

Whatever you offer, the best thing you can do is put your offer right up front. Make it compelling and get it up there on your front page. Putting your offer on the front page will increase the chances that your visitor will see it, want it, and take advantage of it.

One of the biggest mistakes I see is burying your offer in the depths of your website, where only a few people might stumble over it.

4. An autoresponder/listserver to handle all your prospect follow-up

The greatest thing about the internet, is that it gives you the opportunity to completely automate your marketing.

You can use technology to sort and sift through all your prospects and deliver only the very best ones to you – when they are READY to buy, sell or get a loan.

The most important tool for doing this on your website is an autoresponder/listserver. My favorite is getresponse.com because they have the ability to pre-load as many messages as you want, and send them to all the people who request something from you in any interval you want. You can send a message the instant they request something, and follow-up messages on day 3, day 7, day 10 day 14 etc…as many as you want. When you load the messages, they are delivered in the exact same order to every prospect individually starting with their first request.

You can also “broadcast” a message to everyone on your list whenever you want. This is great for sending out your “Weekly Best-Buy” or “Home Loan Of The Week” newsletter. Think of this list as an opportunity to communicate for FREE with people who have raised their hands and told you they’re going to be buying a home or getting a loan sometime soon. This is a great list to offer free buyer workshops, free over the phone consultations, your homefinder service, a tour of homes. All the things that you can think of to advance your relationship with them.

5. A Very CLEAR next step…

Think of your website as a catalyst for a relationship. Don’t think of it as a way to avoid a relationship by giving them all the information they need, and hoping they call you when they’re ready.

Your website should have the purpose of connecting with your prospects, letting them know that you understand EXACTLY what they need and want, and that you have a way to give it to them. It should be very clear to the best prospects that if they are going to buy a home in your town, the BEST thing they could do for themselves is take advantage of your FREE Homefinder Service, or at least get more information on your Home Loan Finder Service before they just go and get a mortgage from their bank or credit union.

The best websites are relationship starters, and everything about your website should be designed with that in mind. Visit your website through the eyes of your prospect, and ask yourself if what you see would compel you to take the next step. How clear is it that you have a way to help your prospect get what they want and need? And how easy is it to take that next step?

It’s very interesting when you can get a pair of objective eyes to look at your website. So here’s what I’d like to do. Twice a month I do a WebClinic for By Referral Only where we take a look at your website and I give you some coaching.

If you have a website that you’d like to me look at here’s what I’d like you to do. If you would send me the URL at marketingmonday@gmail.com and put ‘Website Makeover’ in the subject line. If you do that in the next couple days I’ll choose a few sites were I’ll do a special Marketing Monday segment specifically for your website. This would be a great opportunity for some national exposure and possibly get you some referrals to your area.  I will get on a call will you and will give you some coaching on how we can improve responses and maybe do some simple little changes that can have a big dramatic impact in the amount of number of people who respond on the offers to your website.

I’ll pick out 2-3 websites and will contact you probably sometime this week so that we can schedule a time where we can get together and I will record the calls so that I can show everyone the before and after. It will be a great exercise for our podcast.

So if that’s something you’d like to take advantage of I’d love to help you out.

That’s it for this week, tune in next time and we’ll see what happens with our Marketing Monday Makeovers.

Have a great week.