You Get The Point

At his office in Jupiter Florida’s posh Admirals Cove community, broker Rob Thomson sits at a desk decked out with six computer monitors - seven if you count the laptop. Thomson calls it his battle station. On one screen is a Google Analytics page that tells Thomson who’s visiting his 20 Web sites, what countries and cities they’re from, how long they’re staying on his sites and what properties they’re looking at. On another screen, Thomson, owner of Waterfront Properties, keeps tabs on how his various sites - such as waterfront-properties.com and daveabernathy.com - rank in Google’s search results.

His goal is to be in the top 10 for search phrases such as “jupiter waterfront club communities” and “admirals cove homes for sale.”  Front and center is what Thomson considers the most important screen of all - the one he uses to forward the names, numbers and e-mail addresses of potential buyers to his 17 agents. If Thomson is away from the office, he uses his iPhone to accomplish this last task.

While waiting at stoplights, he checks his BlackBerry. Thomson’s tech department includes a “search engine optimization”  specialist whose job is to update blogs and make sure Waterfront Properties’ sites show up in the all-important first page of Google results. Thomson says he has spent hundreds of thousands of dollars developing his online lead machine. “It’s dramatically changed our business,” he says. And Thomson says it’s the main reason his company handled $200 million in sales in the past year, despite a difficult market. In recent months, two big sales reminded Thomson of just how powerful Internet marketing has become in what used to be a face-to-face business. Waterfront Properties sold an $8 million home and a $7 million house to buyers who arrived through the Internet.

“With less and less people wanting to drive around and look at properties in an effort to save gas, the uber rich are no different”, says luxury home real estate agent Jane Michael, “fuel all the way around has gone up, so my very wealthy clients are not flying their private jets like they used to, they are searching the internet for real estate just like everyone else so it pays to have a good search marketing firm.”  Michael’s also adds, “when the newspaper hiked their rates I pulled all the stops, canceled my ads and moved everything to the internet, and so far its paid off, unless a client demands an ad in the paper for their listing, I am sticking with my website and search marketing firm.”

by Laura Lake

Oh my, the sky is falling and we are in an economic downturn. It’s on the news and it is in the papers. Everywhere I turn we hear of the downward spiral of our economic state. I know what you are thinking; it’s time to cut that marketing budget. Signs of recession are all around us. Let’s start slashing costs and marketing is the first to go. Makes sense, right? No! Let me explain.

Don’t you dare cut your marketing budget. That is one of the first mistakes businesses make during times of economic crisis.

It’s time to get smarter about your marketing dollar and spend it to bring results. Sounds good doesn’t it? However, I can hear you - how do you do it? If ever customer intelligence was important it’s now.

The key is to look at your marketing dollars as an investment not an expense. Use the customer knowledge that you have and implement SMART marketing during these times of financial distress.

SMART marketing consists of the following

S - Strategize
M - Maintain market spend
A - Assess and allocate the budget
R - Research your customer thoroughly
T - Target and reach out to them

Read On…

By Sharron Senter

Small businesses must be extra imaginative with their marketing efforts in order to attract customers and get them to open their wallets. Even more challenging is that most entrepreneurs have shallow pockets and shoppers are being more selective as a result of the sluggish economy and volatile stock market. The following are six proven low-cost marketing ideas that help small businesses increase sales and generate referrals, ultimately helping you build your cash cow, while spending very little.

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