Home buyers and sellers can be similarly influenced by reviews. No, they aren’t looking to see what people think of the property 123 Oak Way, but they want to know about the real estate professionals who help people buy and sell properties like that.

According to a study by BrightLocal, Local Consumer Review Survey undertaken in late 2010 to understand the level of trust in and use of consumer reviews, the study revealed:

• 67% of local consumers have consulted online customer reviews of local businesses
• 69% trust online reviews as much as personal recommendations
• Just 9% consumers either don’t need reviews to trust a business or dismiss online customer reviews entirely
• Good value (40%), expertise (33%) and professionalism (32%) are the other most important reputation traits
• Almost three-quarters (71%) of consumers said a minimum of between 6-10 reviews is required for a local business to earn their trust and the more reviews a business has, the more trust a consumer will place in the reputation of that business
• Businesses with 50 or more reviews earn the trust of 29% more consumers than a business that has 6-10 reviews

What does this mean? If your business is listed on a site with reviews attached (such as Yelp.com), be sure there are reviews for your business — and hopefully they are glowing reviews. If you can encourage your previous clients to write reviews when they are happy with your service, remind them to do so. Direct past clients to the site where they can read the reviews and (hopefully) agree that your service is spectacular — and then write about it.

Link to your glowing reviews on your blog and website. Testimonials have always helped real estate professionals grow their business. Reviews have continued that trend.

Let us know what you’ve learned from reviews about your business — or others’ businesses.

The key word is “new.”

These new home sellers and buyers haven’t heard everything you’ve already said about home buying and selling.  The content they are looking for is likely something you’ve already covered in-depth many a time before.

With that in mind, don’t just cut and paste old content, but update it for today’s real estate market and add your new insights.  These new home buyers and sellers aren’t going to tire of the topics you cover as they’re new to them.  Keep these leads and prospects informed with informative content, but don’t reinvent the wheel every time you need new content.  Some of your tried and true information about buying or selling a home in your area is still relevant and useful to new home buyers and sellers — and effective in bringing in new leads and prospects.

Let us know how you recycle, reuse and repurpose content to find new buyers and sellers.

If you’re looking for content for your content marketing efforts, you’ve come to the right place.  Gooder Group prides itself on providing useful content for real estate professionals to find new prospects.

Gooder Group brochures and handbooks are designed to be included as a free offer for a “special report” in your marketing.  Prospects respond for further info and you engage the home buyer or seller in further discussion to assess their needs, timeline and exact situation.

For the month of January, Gooder Group is offering brochures and handbooks for 50% off — essentially, buy one, get one free.  Check out the 19 buyer, 28 seller and 11 general brochure titles and see which ones work best for your market.  REO, Foreclosure, Sell Fast, Short Sale and #1 Best Seller TAXES are moving fast!  Check out the in-depth 24-page handbooks for buyers, sellers, financing and relocation too!

Let us know how you use Gooder Group brochures and handbooks in your content marketing.

The author explains the “Sell Side” of the retail world which is made up of the retailers and all their “tools” to entice and encourage consumers to buy.  The “Buy Side” is the consumer himself, taking in the retail world, deciding what, if, when and how many to buy.

Even though real estate sales and marketing is not the retail world, there are many similarities.  As a real estate pro, you’re on the “Sell Side,” working to find home buyers for the homes on the market — or homes for the buyers you’re working with.  You have the same “tools” that the retailers have at your disposal — marketing in every media and research on consumers from the national association.

The bottom line connecting you as a real estate pro to the national retailers?  You’re both working to find buyers for your goods.  Just as emotion, budget and mood can affect a consumer’s behavior in a big box store or a boutique, the same set of conditions affects consumers looking to buy a home.

Consumers are driven to purchases in the hopes of solving their problems.  Buying a new home solves the obvious problem of “where to live,” but the home’s features can also fulfill other needs and wants of the consumer just as buying other retail goods.  Ultimately, it’s not just your professionalism alone that helps you sell homes, it’s also having homes that solve home buyer’s problems.

How do you ensure your “Sell Side” marketing appeals to the home buying “Buy Side?”

Never fear, Google still ranks #1 with 970 million unique visitors that same month and Microsoft is #2 with 869 million.

Facebook is  a hugely popular site, attracting more and more visits on an on-going basis.  It’s where advertising is moving to get some of these visitors’ attention.  Are you advertising on Facebook yet?

To look at Facebook historically, their swift rise in traffic is evidenced by their overtaking the following sites:

• MySpace,  April 2008
• Amazon, August 2008
• eBay, January 2009
• AOL, February 2009
• Wikipedia, August 2009
• Yahoo, November 2010

Facebook is beyond a fad.  If you aren’t on Facebook and your business isn’t on Facebook, you’re leaving lots and lots of potential business behind.

If Facebook were to take over Microsoft or even Google’s top spot in terms of unique monthly visitors, when do you think that will happen?

• Be consistent. If you haven’t started your blog yet, don’t aim to post daily. Instead, work on a schedule you can easily adhere to such as once per week. If you’ve started a blog and let it languish, jump back on the wagon, but with an easier to handle posting schedule.
• Proofread. Before you post anything, be sure you’ve re-read it for typos, grammar, readability and content. If you have an extra set of eyes to read over your posts before publishing, that’s the best way to proofread.
• Establish a schedule. Sit down to determine what topics you want to cover and how often. Repetition on your blog is acceptable as you’ll be gaining new home buyer and seller readers over time who need to know information that others have also needed.
• Ask questions and invite comments. Engage your readers and encourage exchanges. Reply to comments promptly and in detail.

If 2011 is your year to blog, start out right and work to make it the most informative blog for your home seller and buyer readers.

Let us know what your blog plans are! We’d love to read your blog!

Were retail sales up in your area? If so, consumers may have a renewed sense of security, edging toward making purchasing decisions that they have been holding back on for several years. Besides buying electronics, household items, etc., they may now be back in the mindset to purchase something larger — like real estate. If there have been fewer layoffs by major businesses in your area, new growth in a niche business in your area, or simply stability where there was none, these consumers may be ready to make a move in real estate.

Take advantage of the momentum after the busy holiday season to ramp up your marketing. Reinvest in your business with renewed efforts at lead generation to attract the attention of new home buyers — and sellers too! Reassess your marketing — add appropriate electronic and print campaigns to find leads in niche areas you may have dropped in the recent past. This spring’s real estate market could be a different one than in the past. Are you ready?

Social media is the perfect place to differentiate these different segments of buyers and sellers.  You get to know exactly what their goals are by how they react to various postings, listings, comments, photos, etc.   It’s the same thing on your blog.  Comments are all coming from buyers or sellers, yet they have differing opinions and points even though their goal is exactly the same — to purchase or sell a home!

Segmenting your marketing to appeal to these different sub-groups within your buyer and seller prospects is vital.  You will want to appeal to the needs and wants of each prospect and treat them as individuals.  Remember to treat each buyer and seller as the individual that they are.  They want to work with you because of your individuality — make sure you recognize theirs!

Let us know how you meet buyers’ and sellers’ needs.

When you market to home buyers and sellers, what are you selling?  Yes, a home.  Real estate.  But, to the first-time buyer or seller your services hardly stand out from another real estate professional.  The one way you can stand out is to ensure your marketing is consumer-driven.  Consumer-driven content and offers connect with home buyers and sellers.  Consumer-driven material appeals to the consumer and speaks to their needs and wants.  When you reach home buyers and sellers through their needs and wants, they are more likely to reach out to you when they are ready to buy or sell a home.

Customer-driven materials are not hard to find.  All of Gooder Group’s products offer consumer-driven direct response marketing.  If you want to reach home buyers and sellers on their level, feeding their need for solid real estate information, provide them with useful real estate content and information.

Share your experience with customer-driven marketing efforts.

Does the marketing you do — whether it be direct mail, email, blog or website — speak to the consumer?  Does it answer their questions?  Address their concerns?  Assist with solutions to their problems?

When you build your marketing to encourage home buyers and sellers to make a move, then you’re on to something.  If your marketing is shiny and new and you like it like that, it’s not enough to make your recipients take notice, let alone take action.

Take a step back from your marketing efforts and put on the home buying or selling consumer’s hat for just a moment.  Read, review and think like a home buyer or seller.  If the marketing still appeals to you…move forward with it.  If the marketing is all about you and how wonderful you are, rethink and retool.

How do you ensure your marketing is appealing to home buyers and sellers?