This month’s Agent Success Newsletter features William “Sean” French of RE/MAX Town Center at Easton in Columbus, Ohio.

After years of trial and error, Sean has a website that captures above average visitors, and business practices and processes in place that are making his business more successful than ever.

Sean French has seen a high ROI from the BuyerLink program that drives buyers to his website – last year he invested $18,000 and saw $75,000 in return!

During our exclusive interview with Sean, he gives advice on the following topics:

• What a successful website should include
• Where to send website visitors
• 4 steps to better qualifying leads
• How to hit home runs with follow up phone calls

Listen to Sean French’s advice and business strategies:

To hear more HomeGain Radio interviews, plus find real estate articles, survey results and more, visit our Media Center!

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I recently read an excellent article published by Baylor University, “Lead Generation: What Really Works”, which articulately discusses lead generation. The three categories the writers included in this article were lead generation, conversion of the lead to an appointment, and closure of the appointment to a transaction.

One of the studies I found particularly interesting was finding out the extent that real estate agents and brokers take to keep records of their lead generation efforts. And for those who keep records, how detailed the records are that they keep.

For “conversion to appointment” only 23% of the respondents reported their records as Moderately Detailed or Extremely Detailed. With a mere 32% reporting moderately or extremely detailed for “closure to a transaction”.
With a reported 17% of the respondents marketing budget allocated on the Internet or Website activities, unfortunately, or fortunately for us, the online world remains this big black hole. And, without keeping detailed records, it shall likely remain this ominous, monstrosity, money pit for many but it doesn’t need to be this way.

HomeGain’s BuyerLink does a great job of tracking your advertising budget. I’ve been using BuyerLink for years now. The concept is that it’s up to you to keep on tracking your results from the initial lead generation, to conversion through close.

Regardless of your preferred marketing method, they discuss how are you attracting your leads? Are you “seeking” or “attracting” your leads? In today’s tough market the survey results reflected that more seek oriented (60/40) for highest lead conversion in a tough market.

Of the leads generated 58% were buyers and 42% sellers. Many brokers, including myself, consider home buyers a premium in this Continue reading this post

On Cinco de Mayo (May 5th), HomeGain had a special treat, as Kelly Barnes, a Realtor from Hawaii, came to visit us in Emeryville.

Mr. Barnes has extensive real estate knowledge within the Honolulu and West Coast mainland areas. He owns several multi-family apartment buildings in the Honolulu area and is accustomed to handling real estate transactions of tremendous value.

A BuyerLink subscriber for over a year, Kelly provided some great insight into what’s happening in his market as well as what HomeGain has done for his business.

“I feel confidant investing my marketing dollars with HomeGain, due to the simple fact that it works,” said Kelly.

Ryan Monsanto, Senior Sales Manager at HomeGain, stated, “Kelly had a great time visiting us and the feeling was mutual for HomeGain, as we are focused on building strong relationships with our clients.” Continue reading this post

Mitch Ribak of Tropical Realty (a HomeGain Advisor and a contributor on this blog) is the special guest on HomeGain Radio.

Mitch gives advice to real estate agents and brokers for how to get leads, especially via the Internet, and how to convert a higher volume of leads into clients.

Listen to Mitch’s advice for real estate agents:

During the call, Mitch mentions how HomeGain’s marketing program, BuyerLink has helped deliver more consumer traffic to his website and boost his business.

To hear more HomeGain Radio interviews, plus find real estate articles, survey results and more, visit our Media Center!

Mitch Ribak is the Broker/Owner of The Mitch Ribak Real Estate Team, Tropical Realty of Suntree.

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Leads are the lifeblood for an agent. Without leads it really doesn’t matter what else you do well. If you have no leads you have no one to convert to a client and therefore no one to follow up with and no sales to close.

I think a successful REALTOR® will have more than one avenue in his lead generation model. If one method fails or slows he/she will have other ways to keep his business successful.

Consistency is one of the main keys in a successful Real Estate practice. I think you have to pick about 3 lead generation tools—a 3-legged stool if you will –- that will keep your pipeline full.

The three we use are as follows:

1) Internet—Surprise!

We use a combination of our own websites and the HomeGain system. Our own sites include one devoted specifically to Fort Benning, Georgia, Real Estate as well as one devoted to Columbus Georgia Real Estate and rank well on their own merit. Continue reading this post

Why is HomeGain’s BuyerLink program successful for our business? It is just PPC (pay per click), isn’t it? Couldn’t I do this myself and save money? Wouldn’t it be better to just use the natural search and not pay for clicks at all?

These are all valid questions I have asked myself – especially in a tough market like this – and I am sure I am not the only one asking! We all need to run our budgets as lean and mean as possible right now.

Isn’t the BuyerLink program just PPC and couldn’t I do this myself?

BuyerLink is a form of PPC but it is professionally administered. There is a whole learning curve involved with learning to run a successful PPC campaign. You will pay for this learning curve in one way or another. We could run it ourselves and just make the mistakes that are inherent when an amateur attempts something like this. That is one way to pay for it.

Another way is to simply hire someone to teach us. This is another form of payment but what if things change and the skills we learn become obsolete? Will we be able to keep up with current trends? Probably not.

The final way to pay for PPC is simply to allow HomeGain to administer it for us with skilled professionals who do this every day. To me that makes the most sense as I have other things to do and this is not my expertise. Continue reading this post