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Among all the real estate marketing companies, Real Geeks consistently stands out. That’s because a Real Geeks website engages visitors and generates leads like few others can.
Do a little research into Real Geeks, and you quickly become aware of their great reputation. I’m not just talking about the testimonials on their own website either. Over at ActiveRain, the most active social network for real estate professionals, Real Geeks enjoys a 4.89 out of 5 rating. Here, I’ll provide an overview of their services, and compare their offerings to those of their closest competitors.
Before I start however, I feel there is something I need to make clear. I am not employed by Real Geeks, but I do build Real Geeks websites as an independent developer. That being said, I would never promote something I do not strongly believe in. Real Geeks is not the first IDX website marketing platform I’ve worked with, but it is certainly the best. Today, it is the only one I recommend to my clients.
Brief Overview of A Real Geeks Website
There are several reasons why I prefer Real Geeks over other platforms, and these will become apparent as I describe their services. Overall, I love Real Geeks because their websites are great for generating consistent, quality leads.
This is not to say that you can just launch your Real Geeks website, and leads will magically start appearing. To make your site productive, we’ll need to put in a good amount of work. However, with the appropriate effort, and the right kind of content, your website can be very productive indeed.
In the following section, I’ll go over the many features that make up a Real Geeks website. The live site that clients interact with is only a small part of the picture, albeit a very important one. The rest of the picture is made up of fantastic lead generation and management tools. All together, the various parts coalesce into an extremely effective real estate marketing whole.
The Real Geeks Website User Experience
Real Geeks websites excel in their simplicity and functionality. The guiding principal behind their design is- give people what they want. In this case, an easy-to-use real estate search portal that works seamlessly. Moreover, loading times are lightning fast. In turn, visitors to your site stay engaged and are likely to come back. Even better, they are likely to register, providing you with a steady stream of valuable leads.
Real Geeks Front End Features
The front end features of a Real Geeks website refers to what visitors actually see and interact with. Features such as an advanced property search, a map-based search, home valuation calculator, and more. Altogether, they add up to an impressive whole that keeps visitors coming back.
MLS Property Search
Real Geeks websites come standard with comprehensive MLS search tools that make it a breeze to find any kind of property. Moreover, a tabbed layout optimizes user experience by making it easy initiate different types of searches.
Tabs include advanced search, condo search, foreclosure search, zip code search, and even address search. If you want to see what homes recently sold for, simply click the ‘sold search’ tab and set your criteria. Those seeking a specific property can easily do so with the ‘MLS Number Search’ and ‘Address Search’ tabs.
MLS Map Search
Another notable feature, standard in any Real Geeks website, is the map search. A large interactive map displays homes by location, with a list of properties to the left ordered by price. The map works seamlessly, allowing users to efficiently search for homes in desired neighborhoods.
Home Value Estimate Landing Page
The home value estimate landing page is a great way to generate home seller leads. It provides potential sellers with a quick and convenient way to learn the current market value of their property. In exchange for a detailed home value report, leads are required to provide their contact information, including email and phone number.
Real Geeks allows you to set up as many of these home value landing pages as you’d like. In turn, this allows you to target specific communities within your market. Localized landing pages, together with a similarly localized Pay-Per-Click campaign, can be very effective at generating a steady stream of contacts for your marketing database.
Local Market Reports
Local market reports provide valuable insight about current home prices and whether those prices are trending up or down. Visitors to your Real Geeks website are able to get information about active, sold, and under contract properties. Moreover, they can generate market reports based on very specific criteria.
The strength of the market reports feature comes from the ability to get extremely specific both in terms of location and property types. In terms of location, one can search by county, city, subdivision, and even by individual housing development. In addition to location filters, there are many great property detail filters. They include typical filters like price, square footage, bedrooms, bathrooms, and all the other usual ones.
As is typical with Real Geeks, they take these filters a step further, with options for community extras, water frontage, garage spaces, and much more. Want to know what downtown luxury condos are selling for? Or perhaps waterfront homes within a specific neighborhood? With Real Geeks market reports, it’s easy to find out.
Market Reports In Your Area
As great as the market report tool is, it’s not available in all areas. There are several MLS boards that don’t provide recent sales data. In the absence of this data, the market report tool is not of much use. Do you want to find out if your local MLS board provides recent sales data? Please get in touch and I’ll be happy to look into it. If your MLS provider is among those that don’t provide sales data, do not be discouraged! MLS organizations often change their rules and standards. If there is popular demand for sales data in a given area, it’s not uncommon for the local MLS board to capitulate.
Lead Capture Forms
Real Geeks’ forced registration form excels when it comes to capturing leads. The form asks for vital contact information including name, phone number, and email. Furthermore, providing these pieces of information is not optional. This way, you avoid getting mostly partial leads with no way to contact them. Visitors to your website encounter this form as a pop-up that displays after they perform a certain number of searches, or after they look at a specific number of properties.
Real Geeks gives you lots of flexibility in determining when visitors encounter the form. You can have the form pop-up after a single property view, or after a set number of views. It’s up to you how you want to set it up. I recommend having the registration form show up after a visitor looks at three specific properties. That way, leads can appreciate the value of your IDX website and how easy it is to search for properties.
Real Geeks Website Loading Times
Perhaps the best part of all these search features is that everything loads extremely quickly. Almost the moment you hit the property search button, results appear on-screen. Any user experience expert will tell you that fast loading times are vital for keeping visitors engaged. Furthermore, the faster your website loads, the better it will do on search engines including Google, Bing, and Yahoo. These days, with so much competition out there, it’s vital for your website to include every possible advantage. Fast loading times are essential to any website that wishes to succeed and stand above the crowd.
Back-End Features of Your Real Geeks Website
While front-end features describe what visitors to your website see, experience, and interact with, back-end features describe the administrative tools behind your Real Geeks website. Back-end features fall into two primary categories- lead management and website management. Real Geeks offers a fantastic array of back-end features that make it easy to work your leads and update your website.
Real Geeks CRM
All leads that you capture on your Real Geeks website automatically go to the CRM (customer relationship management)- a feature-rich platform that allows you to track and nurture them over the course of the sales cycle. Every time a lead signs up, you get an instant notice via email or text, giving you an opportunity to immediately follow up.
As you most likely know, the faster you respond, the more likely a lead will convert into a client. Even better, you can track live lead activity on your site, allowing you to contact them at opportune moments. Furthermore, the SMS autoresponder tool optimizes your response times, thus maximizing your chance of converting.
In addition to enabling timely responses to everyone who signs up on your IDX website, Real Geeks’ CRM allows you to easily organize and filter your leads. This becomes more and more useful as the size of your database increases. You can organize leads based on everything from user behavior, to types of properties viewed, to geographic area, and much more.
In sum, Real Geeks’ CRM makes it very easy to manage your leads. Even after accumulating a great number of them, you’ll find it’s easy to keep track with all the useful filtering options.
SMS Automatic Responses & Texting
This is easily among the strongest features when it comes to retaining leads and converting them into appointments, and ultimately into sales. Research shows, and common sense dictates, that text messages are much more effective for converting leads. While the average open rate of emails is 20%, the average open rate of text messages is a whopping 97%. Yes, you read that right. Only 3% of prospective clients don’t open their automatically generated text messages. Real Geeks’ text messages are carefully crafted to engage leads with friendly prompts and useful information.
How does it work you ask? It’s really quite simple. Every time a lead registers on your Real Geeks website, they input their phone number, along with other personal information. As soon as the registration goes through, the lead receives a very friendly text message. The text message simply asks if they are just browsing, or if they are ready to start a serious home search. How many Realtors® do you know of that use this kind of technology? I bet the answer is ‘very few’. Considering this, it’s easy to appreciate how automatic SMS messages can help you stand head and shoulders above your competition.
Facebook Marketing Tool
Facebook is a great platform for real estate marketing. It allows you to target your ads according to highly specific criteria. Even better, most realtors are not taking advantage of this platform, and erroneously focus all their efforts on search engines like Google and Bing. Real Geeks offers a seamless way to create compelling Facebook ads that drive traffic to your website’s landing pages. This tool integrates directly with Facebook’s advertising interface and makes it really easy to create and launch ads. You can have your ad up and running in only 3-5 minutes, compared to the average 25-30 minutes. Furthermore, robust ad tracking features let you easily determine which ads are effective, and which need to modified or discarded. Among other things, you can measure number of likes, shares, and other useful conversion measurements.
Real Geeks Website Support
When it comes to customer support, few can rival the responsiveness and attentiveness of Real Geeks. Having trouble with your website? Want to know how to set up custom searches or area pages? Not quite sure how to use a specific feature? Real Geeks has your back! Simply give them a call, and you are sure to reach a live person with no hassle. Not in the mood to call? No problem. There is also a contact support portal that makes it easy to submit a help request. You can expect a response either the same day or by the next day. Unlike many real estate marketing companies, this one does not ignore its customers once they are signed up.
For a more in depth review of Real Geeks’ support system, check out my detailed rundown of their help services.
Real Geeks in the Press
Considering how many real estate professionals have experienced success through the Real Geeks platform, it comes as no surprise that Real Geeks enjoys a great deal of public recognition. From stellar reviews on ActiveRain and other websites, to glowing praise from various business publications, there is no shortage of adulation. Curious about what others area saying about Real Geeks? Just do a simple Google search and you’ll find a good deal of glowing praise.
Considering Your Own Real Geeks Website?
When it comes to generating local real estate leads, there are few platforms that rival the effectiveness of Real Geeks. That being said, I know there are a lot of factors to consider, and you likely have a lot of questions about how this all works.
For a detailed breakdown of website development costs, please visit my Real Geeks services page. You’ll find the link on the main menu on the top right of this website.
For information regarding Real Geeks setup costs, please visit my Real Geeks pricing post. These costs are what you pay directly to Real Geeks, and are unrelated to website development costs.
Curious about some of the Real Geeks websites I’ve built? Here are a few for your review. These are all successful sites that generate leads on a consistent basis.
Want to see a Real Geeks website example in action? Please check out my thorough analysis of seangalligan.com.
I’ve built several successful Real Geeks websites, and am happy to address any of your inquiries. Please feel free to contact me at (619) 758-5044.
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