When people consider relocating, or purchasing a new home, they go through several stages of online research. One of these phases is a period of browsing through the homes for sale in a particular area. During this time, homes are bookmarked, and notes are made about the locale. It is typically a little while later that that casual browser is going to return to those bookmarked listings with a more serious eye to evaluate a future purchase.

As a the proud owner of an Advanced Access real estate website, you have a huge advantage in reaching more of these clients who are doing home searches. When you manually add a listing to our ListNOW program, it gives us the freedom to syndicate that listing (complete with details and photos) to a number of additional platforms. Recently, we announced that your listings will now also be added to Google’s real estate search via Google Base. This gives you an additional advertising opportunity to have your listings viewed and bookmarked by future clients. This makes it even more important for you to take advantage of these options by learning about our ListNOW section of your virtual office.

Due to regulations from numerous MLS organizations, we cannot syndicate listings that are “imported from IDX”, where we capture and add that data automatically. Naturally, we understand that it does take an investment of time for these listings to be manually added, so it should be a personal marketing decision for each real estate professional to decide if you would like to take advantage of the additional advertising available.

Remember we’ve got Virtual Office training Webinars, and Customer Support available to you so you can learn and understand how to add your listings.

We invite all Advanced Access clients to participate in our first-ever video contest for your chance to win an iPhone*! Come see us at NAR to record your video, or upload your video to YouTube and email us the link!

If you are attending NAR, come to booth #1335C and see Anna! She will be recording video testimonials in the Advanced Access booth on Saturday and Sunday (Nov 14 & 15) at NAR.

If you can’t make it to NAR, or you want to create your own video entry, please upload your video to YouTube (or favorite video site) and email the link for your video to contest@advancedaccess.com.

In your video, please cover at least one of the following topics for a valid entry:

- Why did you choose Advanced Access?
- How has your Advanced Access website impacted your business? (Include statistics, financials, etc — anything noteworthy)
- Describe the role your Advanced Access website played in a recent transaction.
- What is your favorite feature or service from Advanced Access and why?

All valid video entries will be entered into a drawing for an iPhone*. Select entries may be featured on the Advanced Access website, blog, or other marketing materials.

All entries must be received by 11:59 PM Pacific Time on Sunday November 28th. We will announce the winner on Wednesday December 2, 2009 in our Weekly Marketing Tip email.

*Prize is an Apple gift card for the value of the most recent model iPhone. Gift card will be electronically mailed to the winner. Already have an iPhone? Use the gift card for any Apple product!

Win Cash from Advanced Access at NAR!

Visit Advanced Access in Booth #1335C at the National Association of REALTOR® Annual Expo in San Diego November 13-16 and WIN CASH!!!!

That’s right…

Enter for your chance to grab as much cash as you can in a thrilling, 30-second dueling cash grab! Compete against your fellow show attendees to grab more cash—the person who grabs the most cash wins double their money!!!

AND…

While you are at the Advanced Access booth, check out our exclusive NAR special that is so good we can’t even put it in this email!

See you in San Diego!

Can’t make it to NAR this year? You can still take advantage of some of our show specials from November 13-16! Call us at 800-335-1563 or email us at info@advancedaccess.com for these great savings!

In honor of Halloween, I thought I would go over a topic that strikes fear into the hearts of real estate agents all over the country: Social Media.

Social media does not have to be spooky. It does not have to be a all-consuming effort either. If you can talk to another person, you can tackle social media.

For those just joining us, social media includes interactive websites such as Facebook, Twitter, and various Q & A websites. Chances are you have been nervous to jump into the conversation, but now is the time to get involved.

What’s in it for me?

The first thing we need to establish is that social media is about the conversation and not primarily about the conversion. By getting involved in social media you can add a voice to your business and your community. By building relationships with other realtors and the general public you are opening yourself up to future ventures, be it referrals or your next real estate transaction.

Where to start?

Niche Communities

By now I’m sure you’ve heard of sites like Active Rain, Trulia, and Zillow. Each community has its own features and own purpose. If you are just starting out in social media, these are probably the best places to test the waters since you will be familiar with the audience.

General Social Media

Though not niche specific, there are still a number of social media websites and tools to help you get into the social realm. Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn are good starting points. Again each has their own advantages, though in this case each site is very unique in how you interact with other real estate professionals and consumers.

I Get The What and Where, But How?

Start simple! If you’re new to social media start slow and build 1 profile at a time. More importantly if you start a profile do so with the intentions of finishing it. This means have a brief bio and picture ready to post on the site. Remember to keep the bio original, even though you may want to talk about the same things you don’t want to look automated.

Social media is just that, it’s social. If you aren’t giving people a face and an idea of who you are no one is going to want to interact with you. Give people at least SOMETHING to work with and be sure to put a link to your real estate website or blog in any profile that will let you. This gives potential friends and followers just one more idea of who you are and what you do.

Once you’ve set up your account explore the community a little. Again each of these social networks has different features and work in different ways. Observe the community and get a feel for the conversation, the tone, the kinds of comments and questions being passed around. Take the time to get a better perspective of how the community works before you dive in with your own thoughts, ideas, and insight.

If you need help, feel free to find Advanced Access on various social media websites and connect with us to get started.

If you want more leads from your website, it doesn’t have to cost you more money, and it doesn’t have to take too much time. There is a reason Advanced Access is the leader in real estate websites: we already include the tools you need to make your website into a powerful lead generator…are you taking advantage of them?

If you take a quick tour of your website, you’ll notice several default contact forms. These are a great start for lead generation, but you can step it up a notch. And in times like this, who doesn’t need to increase the return on every investment?

What are you telling potential clients about right now? What is the topic of conversation? How do you make those cool leads into hot leads and sales? Whatever your strategy, take fifteen minutes and write a quick list of compelling reasons someone should do business with you right now in your locale.

Turn that list into a couple of paragraphs of text. Add the text to a new page on your website, then add a form to that page. Be sure to include a “Questions” box on your form so you have a good conversation starter.

Add a link to that new lead generating page on the homepage of your website; don’t be shy! If you have a blog, create a post that drives people directly to that page. If you use Twitter or Facebook, update your status including a link to that new page. Remember to use a title that grabs people, such as “3 Reasons You Can’t Afford to Wait On Real Estate!”

The key here is including the form. You can make a special IntelliCards list for the leads to go to and start the contacts on a campaign. We recommend calling your leads right away if they provide a phone number, or at least emailing them back immediately.

Do you have any other secrets to getting leads from your website? Email us at marketingtips@advancedaccess.com – we love to hear your ideas!

Advanced Access is happy to announce that we have added Google Base as our newest listings syndication partner!
We are now exporting all hand-entered listings to Google Base. This is another significant boost to your internet presence and marketing your listings from Advanced Access! The best part is, you don’t have to do much to take advantage of this FREE addition to your service.

What do you have to do to get your listings to Google Base? Enter complete listing information into ListNOW. The “Export this listing” box will be checked by default. If you want your listings exported, don’t uncheck it. That’s it!

Complete listing information vs. the bare minimum

Once you add your listings it seems many of you enter the bare minimum. That is not a very effective marketing strategy. You want your visitors to connect with a property and want more. You don’t want them to need more because there’s practically nothing there.

I have heard many agents say they don’t add extensive listing information because they want the website visitor to call them. It’s a way of getting leads. In my opinion, this is not the best way to get leads: someone calling you because they felt your information was inadequate. Will they really call you?

Your website content is the place to engage your visitors. Relevant placement of contact forms within your content is paramount. This is the way you want leads coming to you: confident in your knowledge and abilities. Listings are prime content for a real estate website!

Every field in ListNOW serves a purpose, and should be completed to the greatest extent possible. You may think you don’t have the time. If time is money, invest it wisely. Take the few minutes to enter complete listing data.

Why bother? There’s a photo, they’ll either like the property or not. I’ve put it in front of them, the rest is up to them. Wrong answer. If you leave out the most important information, you may find yourself without “them“.

Consider your seller for a moment. They want to know you are doing all you can to get the most exposure for their property as possible. Without adequate listing data, you run the risk of having your listings excluded from our syndication partners.

We export manually entered listing from ListNOW to various sources - the newest being Google Base. Once the listings reach our syndication partners, those without enough data are dropped and not displayed on their site(s). This is an industry standard in marketing your properties; you need to be sure you take advantage of the options available to you.