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Pop Quiz! True or False, Hyperlocal Will Help Your Business.

The hype on HYPERLOCAL

If you read our REinvent Blog regularly, you know that we are always talking about ways to engage with consumers. We also believe there is a huge opportunity for real estate agents and brokerages who can get consumers to think about them even before they are ready to make a move. A hyperlocal focus on your real estate website is incredibly important to the long-term health of your site…and your business.

So what is hyperlocal? Wikipedia tells us that it’s information oriented around a well defined community with its primary focus directed toward the concerns of its residents. In other words, it’s targeted local content that helps consumers.

These are YOUR consumers we’re talking about.

Those same consumers that frequently find Zulia and its brethren online before they find you. Residential real estate is a uniquely LOCAL business model. Consumer online searches should find YOUR real estate website, not a national portal.

If you put the right focus and commitment to hyperlocal, then you’re offering something the large, faceless, national real estate portals do not. Namely trust, authority and long-term commitment to the local communities you work in.

This is exactly what homeowners – past, present and future – deeply desire. Their home is the biggest investment of their life; a national portal can’t offer the care and certainty your local real estate company can.

So there are two key benefits to really beefing up your real estate website content with a focus on hyperlocal:

  • Your hyperlocal brand beats Zulia at its own game; and,
  • You keep consumers engaged with your real estate company, even when they aren’t thinking about moving.

In a nutshell, Hyperlocal = Helping consumers = Staying engaged = Building authority = Increased businessDenessa Munsterman, VP Marketing & Communications, PCMS Consulting

Is hyperlocal a tough task?

Not really… it just requires a different mindset. Most of us are already there, in some capacity. But instead of it being a throwaway on your real estate website (standard, generic information on schools and neighborhoods, etc) it takes center stage.

Refine what you’ve already started, and make your online brand stand out.

Where do you start? Don’t think of yourself as a real estate broker or real estate agent… all that does is simply imply a transaction and a commission.

Redefine yourself as the local authority on the communities you serve. Do this by providing in-depth knowledge: drill down to the local level on each neighborhood you actively work in. This is about proving your expertise in the communities you operate in. Provide resources and information about these communities on your website, and update it frequently. Simply put, provide value.

We have a very successful broker friend/client who describes himself as someone who is in the business or marketing real estate. He doesn’t even use the word brokerage. That is awesome and a big reason why he has profitably grown leaps and bounds in recent years. 

That said, we think hyperlocal thinking should go even beyond that. And we’ll be talking about that next week.

jose-perez-regards

This article reprinted with permission from PCMS Consulting. The original can be found here.