Tuesday, August 28, 2012

Why Your Real Estate Business Needs Online Reviews

by Brandon Barker on Jul 17, 2012

The business of real estate is staying ahead of the competition — for clients, for inventory, for marketing space. And traditionally real estate agent marketing has involved print material (brochures, fliers, yard signs) and more recently social media marketing (blogs and Facebook) to promote your real estate business and reputation. But Realtors need to quickly embrace one of the most powerful real estate agent marketing tools in the web 2.0 era: The client review. You see them everywhere — products, restaurants, businesses and services — and you can read a ton of them on ReachFactor.

Real estate agent reviews create an excellent after-sale line of communication with your clients in addition to being excellent real estate agent marketing tools. Giving clients the opportunity to comment on your skills, service and experience shows them that you appreciated their business, care about their opinion and want to improve the way you do business. Overall, it’s a good first step in solidifying your long-term client relationships.

In a recent article on AGBeat called 5 Reasons Realtors Should Embrace Online Ratings, reviews, author Marti Trewe writes,

“In a recent survey… home buyers revealed that the number one reason that they would choose to work with a Realtor is if that agent had authentic online reviews from past clients. And consumer studies back that up, showing that when a service or brand is reviewed by consumers, it gives them a definite edge over their competition – for services with online reviews the ‘look to book’ ratio is 4 times better, and they boast a 12.5% higher conversion rate than those without.”

As Mr. Trewe points out, clients trust the opinion of other clients more than traditional marketing, making the embrace of online reviews a pretty important move for any real estate agent. The truth of the matter is, you’re getting Googled and so is your competition. Grabbing your share of the client review market, and using a service like ReachFactor that will make those reviews searchable, is a great way to stand out and give your business some online pulse.

But what about negative reviews? No matter. According to the article, “According to a recent study, 68% of consumers trust reviews more when they see both good and bad scores – and building trust with the consumer is what online reviews are all about.”

For more insight in how to respond to negative reviews, click here: The Right Way to Respond to Negative Feedback.