Attention Real Estate Agents & Brokers: Take Back Your Listings & Leads

If you are a real estate agent or broker you understand the power is in the listing. He or she who owns the listing lasts in this business.

With all new technology there are positives and negatives.

Technology helps us do more tasks however, sometimes we are either encouraged to use short cuts and sometimes we are just plain lazy and look for ways to get done faster and with less effort.

This happens with syndicating your listings on the internet.

What started out as a really time saving idea of having our listing syndicated to all the different portals on the internet  but ended up losing sight of owning our listings online.

In this Free Workshop you will discover:

1. How to own your listings online
2. How Google determines who owns your listings and why that is important
3. How to get more leads from your listings when they are properly marketed online

Click here to register for the workshop:

katerinagasset.com/webinar-take-back-your-listings-and-leads

The workshop is on August 25, 2016 on Thursday at  5:00 P.m. Eastern Standard Time

Make sure to register. Being in the webinar live is always the best experience.

However, I do understand life happens!

Make sure you are registered and then if you can not make it, I will post the replay for about 24 hours or so for you to watch or re-watch.

Webinar: 7 Questions You Must Ask Before You Buy or Build a Website

Join me on my workshop to discover the 7 most important questions you must ask before you buy or build a website.

Webinar: Website Best Practices

Thank you all for all your wonderful participation in these free webinars that I am teaching a couple times each month! I love the questions and more so, I love to see how you implement the trainings in your businesses!

This next webinar is titled: Website Best Practices

This webinar is for you if you fall in any of these categories:

• You are looking for a new website
• You are revamping your website
• You might have a Google penalty
• You have never had a website
• You want to get your blog on your website
• You are going to build your own website
• You are looking at industry specific ( like Real Estate) website templates
• You are getting pricing on custom designed websites
• You are using your website for direct leads
• You want to have a website to get sellers
• You want to have a website to get buyers
• You want to have a website for your small business

We will go over the best practices for websites. This will be a live training where I will walk you through key factors and best practices.

As always, IF you register for the webinar and for some reason you can not make it to the live session, you will get the recording sent to you via email.

The webinar is on Wednesday March 30,2016 at 3:00 p.m. Eastern Time.

Go now to register:  Webinar: Best Practices 

 

Webinar- Blogging On Your WordPress Website Fast

Free Webinar- Blogging on your WordPress website fast and easy! 

Are you ready to start blogging on your WordPress website? 

In this webinar I will share with you some ways in which you can post to your blog much faster.

• I will show you how to create your blog on using Thrive Themes- super fast.
• I will show you can add images, video and graphics quickly to your blog posts.
• And some more tips and tricks to speed up your blogging process.

This will be a rather basic webinar so if you are new to WordPress this is perfect.

If you are new to Thrive Themes, this will also be great for you.

Webinar:

Wednesday March 9, 2016 at 3 p.m. Eastern time

Register now: 

Free Webinar- Blogging on Your WordPress Website Fast 

 

Listing Experts Academy RELAUNCH is now open!

Listing Experts Academy RELAUNCH is now open! 

I am getting amazing feedback from the core video trainings I put together for you prior to the relaunch of Listing Experts Academy. 

From Barbara Todaro: 

“Katerina, you have no idea how excited I am that I have your modules and other information about listing and marketing listings….after seeing the amount of information one gets from participating in your Listing Experts Academy, I decided it was NOT equivalent to a Masters program but rather very close to a PhD in this area…. thanks again, Katerina….the material will give me a real “workout”….”

In case you have not signed up to receive your 4 videos I made for you- go here now to start watching: 

http://www.listingexpertsacademy.com/esignup/

Here is what you will be learning inside of the 4 training videos which you can access without a credit card: 

Video 1: The 4 Core Essentials of a Top Listing Agent

Video 2: How to become an Authority in your Niche 

Video 3: Tech Savvy Agents get more listings and you can too! 

Video 4: Moving forward- what your lifetime membership in Listing Experts Academy includes.

After you sign up for Listing Experts Academy you will have access to my private Facebook group for members only which is a huge support group where you will learn a lot and be able to ask questions. I am in the group every day helping to answer your questions. 

You will also have access to all the Listing Experts Academy core modules from our last live sessions which were all recorded. This will give you a great head start for when we start our relaunch of the live sessions. 

You will also have access to your main bonus course which is Fast Track SEO! This is a very in-depth SEO course which will change the course of your online marketing. Just ask anyone who has completed these courses. 

Listing Experts Academy will be all live webinar trainings for 9 modules plus Question and Answer sessions over the webinar platform where you get to ask questions. All these will be recorded so long as we don't have recording issues with the gotowebinar platform, which has happened on occasion but not very often. If we ever have a recording issue I will redo the main module by screencast and the post the module however the Q& A part obviously would be lost. I have 3 people recording the trainings so 99% of the time we end up with a recording. I just like everyone to be aware that technology glitches can and do happen. 

Yes, there is a lot of content because I believe in under-promising and over-delivering. 

No, you don't have to do it all. One of the perks of being in Listing Experts Academy is being able to hire the virtual assistant team I trained to do all the tasks in Listing Experts Academy. If you are a busy broker or team leader or a solo agent you will get the systems to delegate to the team. 

In order to be a successful real estate agent in this technology age of doing business I can not stress enough how important it is for you to gain some type of online marketing knowledge. You must make the time. 

At the very least you must do your avatar work, know your target niche market and keywords and then map out a strategy to get your online marketing up and running correctly and efficiently. 

The core course training in Listing Experts Academy consists of:

• Module 1: Avatar Deep Training

 

• Module 2: Niche Markets Deep Dive 

 

• Module 3: Listing Presentations 

• Module 4: Expired Listings 

• Module 5: Open Houses 

• Module 6: Branding 

• Module 7: Reputation Management 

• Module 8: Mental Triggers 

• Module 9: Bonus Training: Facebook Marketing 

To find out more about each of these modules please watch video #4 in your training videos. 

Every Listing Experts Academy member also receives my Fast Track SEO course which replaced my SEO To The Top course. This course will work for newbies to experienced bloggers and SEO knowledge.

From Stephanie Anson, Broker: 

“When google required all websites to be mobile friendly I missed the deadline to convert my site for several months.  

Due to this delay in making the necessary changes to a mobile friendly theme and update my SEO, I fell from page 1 to page 3 on google.

I was very behind on SEO updates and retook Katerina Gasset’s SEO webinars and applied the recommended changes to my site.  It took me about 12 hours to clean up the site, fix the SEO and get rid of what might cause google to flag my website (what was previously considered optimal for rankings). 

It took about a week after the changes that it went from page 3 back to being in the top three on page 1.  It just shows how a little bit of dedication and applying the correct techniques Katerina teaches to rank once again!  Thanks Katerina, I am a fan for life!”

You also receive surprise bonus trainings. I love to surprise my members with relevant listing experts content. Some of the bonuses are YouTube SEO and Image SEO. 

Just a couple days ago I had this strong impression to add a bonus training to Listing Experts Academy which is: Blab and Periscope for Real Estate. So I am now adding that bonus training to be included in the LEA course.

There are only 21 seats remaining because there were 2 agents who jumped on board right before the doors opened. I only allow 23 new members in live webinar settings so that you each can feel like you are being paid attention to. Then 

Sign up to watch your free training videos here: 

http://www.listingexpertsacademy.com/esignup/

Then watch your email for the delivery of each of your 4 videos. They come every other day in your email inbox. So please check! Don't miss out on any of these videos! 

When you get to the fourth video you can sign up for Listing Experts Academy. There will be a button to click to sign up on the 4th video web page. 

I look forward to seeing you in class! Teaching is my passion and making a difference in the lives of others is my life's work. Watching the members grow really brings a smile to my face and a tear to my eye. I wish each and every one of you the wildest and best success you are designed to achieve! 

See you at the top! 

 

How to Choose the Right Website for Your Target Market

How to Choose the Right Website for Your Target Market

Websites – What Kind of a Website Should I Get? 

What kind of website do you need to have? 

What kind of website do you want to have? 

Before you answer either of those questions the first step to choosing a website is to find out: 

• Who is your avatar? 
• Who is your ideal client? 
• Who is your target market?
• What are they hungry for? 

The famous copywriter Gary Halbert would ask his students: 

“If you were to open a restaurant what would be the single most important factor for your success?” 

The students would give answers like: 

1. have the best tasting hamburgers 
2. offer the highest quality ingredients 
3. have better service than the other nearby restaurants

Gary Halbert would say they were all wrong. 

 

What you need is a bunch of HUNGRY customers!!!! 

 

 

 

It is the same thing with opening up a website. 

You need to be in front of the customers that want something that you have to offer. 

 

If you have these words at the top of your website: 

“Our real estate company works with integrity and we are honest”  Who cares? I am not saying that people want to work with crooked salespeople but that is just not what they are hungry for when they are searching on the internet. 

 

I highly doubt this is the search being put into google right now by buyers and sellers: 

” hard working honest real estate agent full of integrity in Wellington Florida ..”

 

You MUST first and foremost KNOW what resonates with your avatar, what is she or he really looking for? What kind of information do they crave that they are not finding on the other sites? 

 

 

Choose a website design that serves a purpose not your ego. 

 

The biggest mistake that REALTORS® make is they go out to buy a website BEFORE they even know who their target market is. They buy a website based on what THEY like! 

 

Get over yourself. Your website is not about what you like and want unless it is your vanity page. 

 

If you are going to choose a website for your ideal customers – do your research and find out what they want the site to look like. 

 

Don't buy websites because your other real estate friends are buying a certain site. Don't buy websites and pay for high design fees just to look pretty on the internet. That is a recipe for disaster. When agents hire me to coach them many of them have spent over $10,000 on websites that will never rank in Google or be very very hard to rank. 

 

 

Make sure that your site is mobile friendly.

There are millions of websites that are not mobile friendly now. It has become such a problem that Google is actually sending out emails to website owners to warn them that their websites are not mobile friendly. Read more on this post I wrote about Google sending out mobile friendly notices. 

 

If you are starting all over again or are at the stage of choosing a website there are different options and most of those options now have a mobile friendly version that is a click of a button and some edits. There is no reason to have to pay for two websites, one that is mobile friendly and one for computer screens. A small upgrade in price for custom designed sites to add on the mobile compatibilities is normal. 

 

 

Choose the website platform that is going to resonate with your avatar and be easy for you to use and add content to on the blog page at least. 

 

There are many different platforms and we have tried most of them. After using different platforms and with Mary McKnight's design input when she was here – these are the best suggestions we have: 

 

1. Custom designed wordpress sites that are high end and highly functional will cost you around $6,000 and up. We know a fabulous custom designer for this area of design- Inna Hardison. Not all agents need a site such as this because not all consumers are looking for this style of a site. Let me know if you need an introduction.

 

2. Semi-custom designed wordpress sites that you can build yourself or have us build for you. If you want to build your own site with a very flexible theme that can have the blog page running down the home page or on a blog page and then have a home page design with a call to action- these will run you around $2,900. 

 

You will need to have your own hosting account on Bluehost, not godaddy. You can get a hosting account for a very low price. I have seen sales at about $3.95 per month which you pay annually. 

 

This style of site works well in Luxury niche markets and to market to sellers. We do not use IDX on our sites anymore. Instead of a lot of pages of unimportant content and duplicate content from IDX providers- we use home search widgets that serve a higher purpose. 

 

Here is a screenshot of one of the websites that I designed for a REALTOR® in North Carolina: 

 

 

Her home search widgets go right to her Market Leader site where she can capture them in her Market Leader CRM. That way, everything is in one place, saving a lot of time, effort and money. 

 

The website is not totally finished yet. I am still waiting for items from her in order to finish the site.

Visit her site at: http://asheboronchomesforsale.net 

 

Here is a brand new site that I am currently building for a REALTOR® in Canada. Again, the focus on this site is for sellers to contact him. Here is a screenshot of the home page which is the only page nearly completed at this time.

This is the link to the website if you want to see how it flows on the home page.

 

 

 

We re-designed his sell my home page and turned that into a squeeze page.

 

A squeeze page has ONLY one call to action and NO menu bar or navigation to be able to click around. The purpose is to either get the person to call you or give his email address. The email address part is not functional yet. They had a very outdated website before we started this one: 

 

The only cost to these websites is your design services and then yearly hosting fees and on the back end you should have a CRM or at least a place where the visitors land for their home search. You can use RealBird for this as well. Many of you have direct MLS home search widgets that you can use and will do the job just fine. 

 

3. DIY yourself Themes in WordPress: you can build your own websites if you have the time and some eye for color and design. 

 

BEWARE: 

• Don't use FREE themes UNLESS they are the ones that wordpress offers- You get what you pay for here. Most developers who create free themes do not keep up with updates for security breaches. They put out a free theme and rarely update it. If you have a very old free theme it is most likely not mobile friendly and also may have been hacked. However, the free themes you get when you install wordpress on your hosting account- the “twenty-thirteen” and  “twenty-twelve” are safe. They are consistently updated and they are also mobile-friendly. 

• Don't buy a theme expecting that when you upload the zip file to your wordpress account that the theme will look like the one you saw before you paid for it!!! That was the toughest lesson I learned. I spend hundreds of dollars over the years buying themes that I was hoping would be ones that I could just add my photos to and it would look like the demo site. Unless you know some html language or some CSS you are not going to have it be looking the same way as the demo. 

 

The theme that I recommend for faster building is ThriveThemes. ThriveThemes has a very nice variety of themes that you can purchase very inexpensively. They also have a wordpress plugin that you can purchase and edit all your themes in a visual drag and drop format that is quick to learn and easy to implement.

 

Shane, the developer is from Sweden and is very exacting and methodical in his design and applications. He provides great tutorials on how to use his themes and he also have a membership forum where you can ask questions about how to do this and that. The team is very responsive. I always get an answer back within a few hours with our time difference. I suggest the yearly membership because it is very very low cost but high support and also you can use ALL of his themes within your membership and the WP plugin. 

 

Here it the link to go to to get ThriveThemes:  Thrive Themes WordPress Website Builder

(I am an affiliate of this product.)

 

4. Wix Websites:  Wix had a great Super Bowl ad this year. If you want something simple and fast, then Wix sites may just be for your audience. 

 

Wix sites are in html5 and with just a couple of tweaks to their mobile friendly site you have a great looking site. Wix sites are templated sites with full customization options that you just drag and drop, hold handles to resize and a lot more. You can customize to your heart's content or be very simple. 

 

The sites are free but for SEO you need to upgrade from the free version. You also need to upgrade if you are going to use your own domain name. The hosting is very reasonable. It runs about $8 per month when you wait for a holiday sale. They offer their sites for 50% off on holidays. 

 

Click here to learn more about creating your own Wix website. 

 

Here is a screenshot of a website I created in Wix for a dentist. He is already getting patients from this website and it was just completed a couple of weeks ago. 

 

 

Here is the link to his site if you want to browse the menu tabs and see how the rest of the pages were built: http://BestBoyntonBeachDentist.com 

 

You can build these yourself but if you want us to build one for you – the pricing is based on what you want on your website. The site prices for us to build one start at $997.00. 

 

5. If your audience is only buyers, if you are a buyer's agent then you can start with a very inexpensive site at Placester.com at only $10 per month. 

 

The placestor option offer templated clean designs for you to choose from. There is no customization available and you can not add a bunch of widgets etc to the sites. But heck, you can't beat that price!!! It does include a blog page. They have a library of content that you can add to your site but I don't recommend that at all- it will dilute the authority of your website. Create your own content! 

 

Your MLS gets pulled in through their home search results pages and of course, your MLS must approve the site. You can use domain names that you already own on the site. 

 

This is also a great option if you want to test a specific niche market before you spend money on site design. 

 

Here is a screenshot of the home page of the placester site that we just started: 

 

 

Now that you have chosen which website you are going to run with get ALL of your content together at one time. 

 

The biggest complaint that REALTORS® have about web designers is that their sites are unfinished. Most of the time, the agents have not provided necessary items that are requested by the web designer. Make sure you stop and take the time to put together the items that you will need.

 

Here is a partial list: 

• Your Logo
• Your mobile phone number you want prospects to call you on – include area code
• Your photo in high resolution and in a png or jpg file format 
• Your company Logo if your company requires it 
• Your company broker name and company name per state requirements 
• Your company address per state requirements if applicable in your state 
• Your geo market! I can't tell you how many times that is not provided. We can't read minds:). 
• Images that YOU have taken or you have the license to use of homes typical of your area and the price points of your avatar 
• Images of your community- parks, shopping centers, etc. 
• Your community information 
• Your email address and fax number
• Your social platform links 

 

That is a partial list but it is always good to have all of those items in a folder labeled with your name on google drive. 

 

Now you are off to a great start with getting your new website!!

See you at the Top! Subscribe to my blog to stay in touch with Digital Marketing Strategies! 

Shifting Your Focus In Order To Sell More Homes

Shifting Your Focus In Order To Sell More Homes

There are some shifts in the real estate marketplace that have been taking place over the last year. One of the most important strategies you have as a real estate agent in order to be successful in selling homes is to be aware of shifts and changes in the marketplace. 

When our market was super hot that the prices were going up thousands of dollars per hour- Nestor knew that the market was going to go bust so we got out of the residential marketplace and switched over to the parcel assemblage niche- putting properties and owners together for developers and builders to buy. 

Then Nestor said a few years later that we would need to shift again since the signal that the land assemblage niche was not going to be lucrative any longer was when builders stopped going through with the sales and terms. 

Nestor said that short sales were coming around the corner- this was in 2007 so we positioned ourselves to be there when the market crashed. At that time, there were no designations for short sales. There were no rules. We did very well during those years with having a high 98% success rate in closing our short sale listings and staying in the top 3% of closed sales for our MLS. 

So what are the new shifts? 

Developers are back in the marketplace. New construction is happening again. Those are 2 great niches. 

Where are you focusing your marketing? 

The Move-Up buyer pool is one of the markets that is shrinking. There are 18% less move up buyers. Move up buyers typically are between the ages 36-45 years old. These move up buyers were born in the 70's. 

Think about it. How can these people be move up buyers when they have negative equity in their properties in most cases, still. In most cases, these would be move up buyers bought their first homes about 10 years ago at the peak of the market and we are not anywhere near those prices again, at least not yet. 

Some of these buyers are instead coming into the marketplace as boomerang buyers. They are starting over again and have been through short sales or foreclosures. 

We have always said that if you want to make more money selling real estate you either have to sell more units or sell higher priced units. I would rather sell fewer homes at higher prices any day over selling more units. 

The Luxury home buyer niche is growing and at a good rate. 

Stock prices have been going up and the interest rates are still low, this fuels the luxury niche. 

This niche are people between the ages of 46 to 60. These buyers are the tail end of the baby boomers. They are wealthier than any other generation before them. In many situations, their kids are grown and typically both spouses have successful careers or own their own businesses. They also have less debt. 

This group is good with their money. They have success in business equity, they own financial securities, stocks, bonds and mutual funds. They also tend to have income producing real estate, trusts and life insurance. 

The best part about this niche- is there are  A LOT of them! 

The best group if you love to help people is the older baby boomer generation, the ones who are turning 65. 55+ communities are popular with this age group but we also must consider multi-generational households who would not qualify for active adult communities. 

8 million people will be turning 65 over the next 10 years. This group tends to be very loyal so if you develop the loyalty they will refer their friends to you. In this group- you will see a lot of them will move in social groups. One couple will move into a community, fall in love with the community and start telling their friends about it. Soon more and more within that social sphere move into the same community. 

While Florida and Arizona have typically benefited from this group of buyers that is no longer the case. Yes, they will continue to flock to Arizona and Florida but many in this group will retire in places like Logan Utah, Boise Idaho and Fargo North Dakota. They also will move to places close to their grandchildren. 

Be ready to shift in your marketplace. Embrace the different niches you can work within to be successful and sell more houses this year!