Mary Merritt is a digital marketing professional who provides services such as SEO, PPC, content marketing, and web design. She recommends that businesses develop a content strategy, blog regularly, optimize their website and social profiles, claim local business listings, and use analytics to measure results. Doing these activities can help drive traffic, establish expertise, and achieve marketing goals like generating leads. She highlights some companies that are effectively implementing digital marketing strategies for real estate.

1. Your business needs MORE:
DIGITAL MARKETING
Mary P. Merritt, Digital Marketing & Experience Design Professional
www.NerdyMind.com

2. Experience
• Over 10 years of experience in digital marketing
• SEO, PPC, Affiliate Marketing, Email Marketing, Web Design, Web
Development, User Experience Design, Writing and MORE
• Web Designer for Sierra Trading Post
• Website Business Development Manager for OtterBox
• I live and breathe the web because I am a NERD!
• Focusing on ways you can put some sweat equity and elbow
grease into your business! Dime-priced!

3. What we will cover today:
• What a good content strategy can do for you
• Different ways you can syndicate your new content
• Blogging, social, your website, article websites (hubpages.com,
squidoo.com, stumbleupon.com, etc.)
• Search Engine Optimization
• Pay-Per-Click (PPC) Marketing
• Free tools you can use for your business

4. Yes, you need a website.
• This is your ―home‖ on the web.
• A great place to stage all of your content (you can attach your blog
to your website, or if you build your website in Wordpress it comes with
a ready-to-use blogging function).
• This is where you build your brand.
• A poorly-designed website can really turn someone off (first
impressions do matter on the web).

5. Your website should…
• Drive the user to a desired behavior (filling out a form, calling your
phone number, sign up for your newsletter, read a blog, etc.)
• Make these behaviors seem natural…keep it simple
• Be beautiful
• Be consistent with your other collateral like business cards,
letterheads, vehicle wraps, etc.
• Be extremely optimized to the best of your ability
• Have GOOGLE ANALYTICS TRACKING

6. You should…
• NOT think that if you build it, they will come
• Understand that you have a lot of work to do after your website is up
• Add content regularly
• Make sure you are running tests regularly to make sure that your
conversion objectives are being met, and those experiences are
always being improved.

7. Content Strategy:
• What do you have to say? Why should people listen?
• Your content should be compelling and useful.
• Brevity is important, just look at these slides.
• Websites that never get updated won‘t win.
• Your people are looking to sell their house and/or RENT one of your
rental properties. What do they need to know? What should they
expect? What is helpful to them? These questions can help you
build your content strategy.

8. Example of professional content strategy:

9. Go blog about it.
• Blogging creates great content for your website and other web
properties like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin and more.
• This plays into SEO, and we‘ll get to that.
• You establish yourself as an expert when you speak intelligibly about
relevant topics.
• Link bait: When your content is so good, that everyone starts
linking to it because it is awesome.

10. Example of solid blogging strategy:

11. What tools are out there for blogging?
• WordPress.com
• Posterous.com (recently purchased by Twitter)
• Blogger.com
• Tumblr.com
• TypePad.com
• Blogymate.com

12. The Power of Recommendations
• Do you have satisfied customers?
• It never hurts to ask for a recommendation. Ask your customers to
give you a recommendation on Linkedin, YELP, Facebook and more.
• This business is big on referrals.
• If someone who has high social clout posts positively about your
services, you immediately get a positive presence in their entire
network of listeners. This is where ‗amplification‘ can occur.

13. Awesome Real Estate Websites
• Zillow.com
• HotPads.com
• Trulia.com
• BiggerPockets.com
• LoopNet.com (Commercial)
• Hubzu.com
• You can also post your properties in a variety of places like these to
get great exposure…but make sure they only find really smart,
awesome things about you once they start looking into you more.

14. Search Engine Optimization
• You always have to start with keyword research!
• This helps you understand what words and phrases are being
searched, and what kind of volume is behind those terms.
• Google has a ‗free keyword tool‘ that is easy to use, intuitive, and the
information is from the largest search engine in the world.
• There are other paid tools out there, but start with the Google keyword
tool and see how you do.

15. Search Engine Optimization & Content
• What should you do with your newly-found keywords?
• ‘Pepper’ your content with the keywords
• These keywords should drive some of your content strategy…
• Is ―commercial real estate investment best practices‖ a commonly-
searched term?
• If so, write an article about real estate best practices that is
helpful, useful and well-researched. More importantly: ORIGINAL.
• If you copy and paste content from someone else’s website,
Google skips RIGHT over it…leave YOUR digital footprint

16. Search Engine Optimization & Social
• Your social posts CAN and WILL get indexed in search engines.
• Use your keywords in your social posts on Twitter, Facebook, etc.
• Link to your website as much as possible (naked links).
• When your helpful, resourceful posts get amplified, more people
get exposure to that link. More people click in, and Google starts
liking you more and more.
• Optimize all social profile information.

17. Search Engine Optimization
& Your Website
• Make sure your META information reflects your keyword research.
• META information is basically hidden content- the user has minimal
exposure to it. Search engines use this information to understand
what your webpage is about.
• Only optimize for ONE primary keyword and maybe one secondary
keyword PER PAGE (over-optimizing is under-optimizing).

18. Search Engine Optimization
& Your Website Cont’d
• Most (good) content management systems allow you to add and
edit your own META tags for your website, but you might need to
hire someone to help you.
• Wordpress has a lot of SEO plugins, but we like SEO by YOAST.
• Blog titles should be optimized, and you should set up Wordpress
so it builds your URLS and META information off the title of your post
using their ‗permalinks‘ function.

19. Search Engine Optimization
& Your Website Cont’d
• Your navigation links should be optimized if possible.
• Your URLs should be optimized if possible. A good example is:
www.propertyinvestments.com/real-estate-investment-best-practices/
• Optimize it all: Search Everything Optimization (the new SEO).
• Images (alt tags and even image naming and directory naming)
• Text (page headers are always a best practice)
• Blogs, page content, titles, descriptions, anchor text, EVERYTHING.

21. Search Engine Optimization
& Your Website Cont’d
• Feel free to create SEO landing pages that are specifically written for
the purpose of ranking well for a high-volume term.
• Always write for PEOPLE, not search engines. Just saying ‗Real
Estate Investment‘ a million times on your website won‘t work.
• When users come to your site and then stay to read, it builds your
credibility with the search engines (and people too)!

22. Search Engine Optimization
& Your Local Business Listings
• Set up some local business listings in a few directories.
• Google, Bing!, Yahoo and YELP are the ‘big four.’
• Claim and optimize them.
• Sometimes it is just an email confirmation, sometimes they send
you a postcard, sometimes they call you…but claim your listings.
• Optimize your listing profile with your keywords.
• When someone searches for your services with geo-targeted
keywords, your listing will show up as a result.

24. Pay-Per-Click Marketing
• It can be complicated to understand, but this can be a very powerful
marketing tool for people in real estate investment.
• We always suggest that people hire a consultant to educate you, or
you hire someone else to set-up and manage your account.
• Spends can get out of control fast if you aren‘t careful.
• One of the most laser-targeted tactics for creating qualified traffic for
your website‘s conversion objective.

26. Pay-Per-Click Marketing Cont’d
• Make sure you understand your objectives VERY clearly.
• Are you trying to generate good leads on properties?
• Are you trying to find a tenant for one of your rental properties?
• Make sure you have your GOALS set up in Google Analytics.
• Optimize the ad’s landing page for conversion – no road blocks.
Simple forms that don‘t ask for your entire life story, your contact
information very prominent on the page, and lots of other components
that lead to goal conversion.

27. Pay-Per-Click Marketing Cont’d
• Try to keep your account very organized.
• Try to keep the keywords in each ad group down to 15 and under.
• Use those keywords in your ad copy.
• Always. Be. Testing.
• Test your landing pages against one another.
• Test your ad copy at all times (run two ads at the same time for 2-
week intervals, see which one has a better CTR—keep the ad with the
better CTR and make a new ad to run against the ‗winner‘).

28. Pay-Per-Click Marketing Cont’d
• Geo-target your paid search ads with ease.
• Use your keyword research to find out what terms have good volume
behind them with little competition.
• Do some of the keywords and phrases have locations in them?
• You can also play with your demographics (male/female, age, etc).

29. Analyzing Your Efforts
• None of this stuff matters if you don‘t measure your successes and
track your failures.
• What works? What doesn‘t? How do you know what to do next?
• GOOGLE ANALYTICS tracking code must be installed on your site.
• Set up and track your GOALS regularly. You can set up any action
on your website to be tracked by Google.
• This is a free tool, and your most valuable tool with regard to digital
marketing (being able to report and understand your digital presence).

31. Analyzing Your Efforts, Cont’d
• You can set up automated reports that are emailed to you monthly.
• Take the time to find out how people behave on your website.
• Make goals for yourself! Ten new leads per month? 5 rental
properties leased per month?
• Make sure that you are careful about how you spend your money.
Being analytical about your digital presence can really pay off (you can
find out where you should spend the most of your time.

32. Who is doing it right?
• SignatureHouston.com/Investing
• They made a ―microsite‖ that is all about Real Estate Investment
• Their website is easy to navigate, easy on the eyes, and it makes it
easy for me to get in touch with them.
• They are blogging maniacs! It makes them look very credible.
• Their website is highly optimized for local search (Houston).
• They are running solid PPC campaigns in Google and Bing!

34. Who is doing it right?
• RanchAcreage.com
• They have a beautiful website
• Good positioning, many microsites for different types of properties in
different areas (ThorntonHomes.com and more)
• You know exactly what to do when you get there!
• Their META information is optimized for search

36. Your business needs MORE:
DIGITAL MARKETING
Thank you for your time!
Mary P. Merritt, Digital Marketing & Experience Design Professional
www.NerdyMind.com
Mary.Merritt@NerdyMind.com
970-449-6868