Probably the most common question we get from real estate clients is: my website’s marketing is not working for me in terms of leads. I am getting leads but they are bogus or I contact them and they never call or email me back. Should I cancel my service?

Get out of your real estate agent shoes and into the shoes of a buyer or seller prospect. You are thinking of a real estate transaction sometime in the future and want to do some preliminary research.

You might be six months to even a couple of years away from buying or selling, but you really want to get an idea of what’s ahead in this very large financial transaction. So you go to the web, where you always find all the information you want on just about every product that you buy. It’s a fairly large city, and your search on “yourtown real estate” turns up a huge number of web sites. As you check them out, some require sign-up to look at listings and some do not. At this stage, you’re not really ready to divulge your identity just to get some basic information, so you try a few “no registration” listing searches on different sites.

One or more sites seem to stand out with a lot of free and detailed information about real estate in the area. Over a few months you get closer to buying or listing, and then you want to get more detailed information in your research. One site offers statistics and other detailed reports via email registration. This site has been one you’ve visited over the last months and found quite helpful, so you sign up for a few reports. You get what you expected and it’s helpful. Over the next month or so you get a few emails with more detailed information and links to helpful resources.

Whose client is this going to be?