1 Day Web Marketing Bootcamp for Realtors

June 12th and 19th we are offering a brand new course at Reachd.

It is a 1 day web marketing Jumpstart. The idea for this course was spurred on by Vic Jang the owner of several Sutton real estate offices in Vancouver. We already have realtors from Vancouver as well as agents from Calgary flying in for the course.

The course is about learning as well as doing. There will be about a 70 – 30 split in the day. 70% information and 30% actually putting the information into practice.

What items will be covered?

• Getting Started with Twitter and Facebook
• Introduction to Search Engine Optimization
• Basics of Blogging
• Basics of using online Video

Two special bonuses

• Free Flip Video Camera for all participants ($125.00 Value)
• Free Ubertor Website for 6 months (Expires June 5th – TODAY)

Register for the 1 day bootcamp

Or drop your questions in the comments section of this blog!

Reachd is Growing

In July I will be moving with my family back to my home state of Kansas. Yes – Kansas, the place where Dorothy and Toto are from – Yellow Brick Road and all.

Today, Vancouver realtor Ian Watt let the cat out of the bag and I wanted to confirm the story for you. You can watch Ian’s Video here or view it below.

The move is actually exciting news for Reachd because with this change in my life it will allow us to grow our business further and begin setting up training centers all around North America and maybe even globally.

The training in Vancouver, BC will continue. We have already identified a new instructor for our Vancouver courses and will be announcing that information to you soon.

If you are in the Wichita area plan to join us for some of our upcoming training if you’d like to learn how to market your business online. You can view a full list of  Wichita internet marketing courses on our website.

I will be teaching our courses through the month of June and we’ve also added some additional June dates to help facilitate the training of our new instructor.

Still committed to your success and helping you learn to market your business online!
Rodney Bartlett
Lead Instructor – Reachd.com

2 Ways to Improve the Customer Experience

Your website is your store. Even if you don’t sell anything online. It is the place where people make decisions about whether they should work with you or not. How can you improve your customer’s experience on your website.

Below is a quick video about my experience “shopping online” recently. Check it out as I give two tips for ways that you could improve the customer experience on your website.

My two Tips:

1. Add video and as much information as you can about your product or service

2. Add live chat to your website to engage your customers with their questions.

If you have tips or questions, leave a comment below.

2 Essentials of Web Marketing

Web marketing can be a complicated and overwhelming landscape. You have to consider, Google Adwords, SEO, blogging, analytics, web hosting, and then when you start to get advanced, there is testing of all your marketing efforts. We teach people that are mostly new to the entire scene of web marketing. I have found for these people it is easy to get overwhelmed. In the video below I try to simplify things as much as possible. Check it out and let me know what you think.

See when it comes to web marketing there are only two elements that matter.

1. Traffic

2. Conversions

Each time you are learning a new skill or considering a new marketing direction, ask yourself, “How will this bring more qualified visitors to my website?” or “Will this tool or approach increase the conversion rate of the visitors that I already have?” These two questions are the only ones that matter. If the things that you are doing online are not helping you better accomplish one of these two goals, then it is likely that you are, dare I say it… wasting your time.

Don’t waste your time, and don’t over complicate things. All that matters in web marketing is – Traffic and Conversions.

Neil Godin at the Vancouver Sales Meetup

Earlier this week I had the chance to listen to Neil Godin speak at the Vancouver Sales Performance meetup. I’ve heard a lot about Neil from Shane Gibson but this was the first time I had a chance to hear him speak. We were there with our Video camera so we caught the whole event on film and you can watch it below. (Email subscribers please visit our blog to watch the video)

Neil’s presentation is 20 minutes long and the title of the presentation was, “Organic Marketing and Sales”

But according to Neil he did not want to just talk about organic marketing and sales, but how we can develop a conscience intentional approach to whatever we do.

From there Neil went on to a talk about a simple three step process for evaluating your current sales and marketing approach. The steps are listed below. Neil is a dynamic speaker and insightful. You should take 20 minutes out of your life and check out the video.

Phase 1: What do you do? and Why do you do it? Are you just exchanging time for money in your job? Take a minute and evaluate what you do.
(sidenote: a blog can be a great way to help you process these thoughts)
Phase 2: How do you do what you do? Do you have an intentional process for completing your work or do you just “do what comes natural” Also how is your approach to your work, working for you?
Phase 3: How can you change every aspect of what you do to be more and more effective?

If you’d like to connect with Neil you can visit his website or connect with him on Twitter.

Engage Your Web Visitors with Live Chat

With every Adwords course & SEO course we teach our focus is always on conversions. What will it take to turn visitors to your website into customers?

One important tool that we introduce people to is Live Chat. Live chat provides a way for you to actually talk with your visitors to your website. What typically happens with Live Chat is a there is a button or some link on a website that visitors can click on to engage a conversation. Below is a video / phone interview that I did with one of our students that added live chat to his website. David Watts a notary public in Vancouver, decided that live chat looked like an interesting idea so he is giving it a try. (If you are reading this post via email, you will need to click here to view the video)

2 Things to point out from David’s comments

1. I check my email once per hour and I’m often on the phone or busy, but my computer is always on, so live chat is way to easily and instantly connect with me.

2. David mentioned that he though live chat was an interesting concept. In his mind the jury is still out for him, but the big key is that he is trying something new and looking for a fresh way to connect with his customers.

If you have questions about Live Chat or would like to learn more, about how it could be used effectively on your website, drop your comments below.

Tracking Your Online Marketing

Last week we introduced a brand new course exclusively for Ubertor customers.  Once I had all the detials of the registration up and running, I thought I should really practice what I preach. Namely, track your marketing. See what works and see what doesn’t work. Stop doing the things that absolutely don’t work and improve the marketing channels that do currently work.

I use Google analytics and I used the URL Builder tool to create custom URL’s for all of my online marketing channels. What does the URL tool allow me to do? I can use this tool to create custom URL’s for every piece of advertising that I do online. Now if you register for my event from a blog post or via twitter or facebook or an email I will know. Check out the video below to see the results of some of my tracking.

What does this mean for you?

1. Compare your online marketing and offline marketing. Can you track your offline marketing efforts? Tracking is one of the powerful features of using online marketing. Switching to more use of online marketing over offline will give you a wealth of knowledge that you can use in future campaigns

2. Make a list of all the places that you market your stuff online and generate unique URL’s for each. By doing this you can track the absolute effectiveness of each link to your site.

3. Decide on the level of tracking that you need for your business. Made you don’t need to go as granular as I did but you need some level of tracking.

4. If you don’t at least have Google Analytics installed on your website, get it installed.

The 1st Fraser Valley Real Estate Meetup

Reachd and Ubertor hosted the first meetup out in the Fraser Valley. Ian Watt a Vancouver Realtor, gave a presentation he entitled, “The Death of the Old School Realtor” You can watch the video of the entire presentation below.

If you want to RSVP for the Meetup, please go to this page. FYI, the meetups are not just for Realtors. If you don’t believe me just ask Corinne on Twitter. She attended the last meetup and said that she learned a ton.

Use Your Call to Action Delicately

Many website I see don’t have any call to action at all. Big Mistake! Some website which do have a call to action do not think about what is the next logical step for their visitors. Is the next step to call? or Is it to read more? Some times there is an interim step that your visitors need to take before they call you or fill out your contact form. Lead your visitors by the hand to the next step and you will get more conversions.

You Don’t Need a Website You Need a CMS

CMS stands for Content Management Systems. I don’t know how many business owners have come to our training proud of their website and then leave without the ability to implement anything they have learned because they do not have the ability to make changes on their website. A content management system (CMS) gives you control and allows you to make changes.

Below are a couple of links you could use to explore content management systems if this concept is still a bit new to you.

The content management system I use.
An open source content management system you could use. There are lots of these.
Blogging platform also open source that can be used as a content management system

If you have questions or if you are not sure what is right for you or your website redesign. Drop me a line on Twitter or comment here and I’ll try to help out.