Jumping on the Online Video Bandwagon

With the economic downturn and its effect on the Jamaican Real Estate Market, you need to continue to develop ways to stand out to your prospects. As I have said before it is key to continue marketing efforts, build your brand and the prize will be yours. Money is tight, but those who are on the market for real estate are spending cautiously, buying with more discretion in a competitive business environment.

Going back to online and social media marketing methods, video marketing comes to mind. Search engines tend to index video content higher in the search results. Also, there is no denying that people are watching online videos more than ever. An August 2008 study by eMarketer estimated that 129 million people watched online videos at least once a month.

Here are 7 points to help you develop your own Online Video Marketing Campaign:

1) Ensure the video covers the key points your target audience is looking for. Include the key selling points about your company, vivid images, contact info or website and a call to action. The good thing about online video is that people usually don’t care about whether your video has high production quality like a television show. They will choose content over quality.

2) Post your video on your website and across other video sharing sites. If you have several videos, show one on your website and include a link to your YouTube Channel. Also, in order to help optimize your website for the search engines, it’s good to have the videos on other websites with a link pointing back to your company’s website. Some other video sharing sites include Metacafe, Vidilife, Revver, Yahoo Videos and more.

3) Ensure that people can find your videos by using keywords / tags effectively, plus keyword rich titles. So if you have made a video about a listing in Barbican, your keywords could be “Barbican home in Jamaica for sale, Barbican Jamaica House for Sale, Jamaica Real Estate in Barbican”. You should include your company name in the keywords as well.

4) KISSS Keep it Short, Simple and Sweet. This is key for online videos due to slow connections which make it difficult to watch a long video and short attention spans when it comes to online videos. Two to three minutes is adequate.

5) Refresh your videos Keep updating your YouTube channel with newer videos. Even if you don’t have any new properties to showcase, you can tape customer testimonials from time to time.

6) Network within the online video community. Subscribe to other related YouTube Channels, befriend other users, etc. You can view and subscribe to the Jamaica Real Estate Guide channel here.

7) Tie in your online video marketing campaign with other online or social media efforts. If you have a Facebook Fan Page or Group, corporate blog, MySpace page or Twitter account, then you should promote your videos there too.

Jamaica Real Estate Guide Advertising Benefits

How Jamaican Realtors can use Email Newsletters to their advantage

In a previous post, I mentioned the need for Jamaica Real Estate websites to have a sign-up form to build an email list. Building a list and following up with email newsletters is a key component of the real estate marketing mix that seems to be overlooked in Jamaica.


Email marketing via e-newsletters is an effective, low-cost tool to build brand awareness, loyalty and even bring in new leads. Some of the various benefits of email newsletters are:

• Keeps your brand in front of your prospects


• Helps to build and maintain relationships with your prospects


• Helps to position you and your company as an authority in the real estate industry

The key is to provide value in the form of information and not make it too much like a ‘sales letter’. If executed correctly, your newsletter will bring in leads in the form of referrals from current customers and prospects that enjoy reading it.


Getting Started The first thing that the Jamaican Real Estate Broker should do is to sign up with a newsletter program like iContact or Aweber. Upload your existing contact list to the program – people who have emailed you for property information through your website, classified ad or open house. Upload a sign-up form to your website asking website visitors to sign up for your newsletter, property updates and alerts and local real estate news.
Contents of the email newsletter The email newsletter should contain:

Featured Properties

Latest Rental Properties available

Helpful hints and tips about moving, buying a house for the first time, etc.

Testimonials, recent sales, awards, company sponsorship or charitable involvement

Real Estate Industry news

Leverage your newsletter program features Use autoresponder features to schedule newsletter deliveries ahead of time, send a standard welcome email and even segment your list. Provide an opportunity for the subscriber to forward the newsletter to a friend. Program your newsletter to use each subscriber’s name in the greeting section of the newsletter and at any other appropriate opportunity.


Build your subscription list Put a sign-up form for your newsletter in a prominent place on the home page of your company website or preferably on every web page. Put a sign-up form on your corporate blog if you have one and also on any of the social media platforms you use, like Facebook.


An increasingly popular way to build your subscriber list is to offer a free download to a special report such as ’10 things you should do before buying a house’ or ‘Make a good first impression – preparing your home for sale’. In order for your web visitors to view these reports they would have to submit their name and email address.


In summary, your newsletter, just like other advertising vehicles, reflect on your brand. Email newsletters should be professionally written, marketed and consistent. Check your statistics regularly, like open rate, bounces, etc. Also conduct surveys periodically to get a feel for what kind of information your subscribers would like to see. Statistics reporting and surveys can be done with most email newsletter programs. You may assign a point person, perhaps a sales manager who will handle aspects of email newsletter marketing or outsource to an Ad agency or digital marketing agency . For information on how Butterfly Publications can help, please click here.

Tips for a Jamaica Real Estate Website that Works!

It is no doubt that your Jamaica Real Estate Agency needs a website as many are starting their search for Jamaica property listings online these days. This is even more so the case for the over 2 million Jamaicans living overseas. At last check, the monthly average search volume for this keyword search term “Jamaica Real Estate” on Google is 33,100*. Many are ahead of the game in this respect with at least basic websites while some have high end websites with flash images, slideshows and the like.


But how is your website working for you? Does it bring in leads, inquiries? If it is working, it very well should be! If not, here are some tips for an effective Jamaica Real Estate Website


1) Make sure your contact information is accessible and clear This can cleverly be displayed on every page of the website or via a Contact Link on your site navigation bar. Offer your web visitors multiple ways to get in touch, such as phone/fax numbers, email address and a contact form. In keeping with the social media trend, your contact page should also alert the web visitor to your Facebook Page or Group, Twitter profile and/or Corporate Blog.


2) Property Search Engine You need to have a property search engine, visible from the home page or if possible from every page of the website. The search engine should have a segmenting function according to your listings. For example, an opportunity to search via Parish, Property Type, Price range, etc. This makes things easy and user-friendly for your web visitor who usually does not want to sort through all your property listings to find something that fits their criteria.


3) Use Pictures A picture says a thousand words. In the real estate business, property photos are essential. When you have a website, you need to use up the real estate (no pun intended) and include as many photos as possible. This is the platform under which the Jamaica Real Estate Guide was developed. People want to be able to see property listings in full colour pictorials.




4) Mailing List Signup Form I have noticed that many Jamaica Real Estate websites do not have a signup form to collect names for their database. This is an important, low-cost element in the agency marketing mix. An email list of persons who have made inquiries about properties, requested for alerts of new property listings or just asked for general information – is so valuable. This ready database can be marketed to over and over again. You can keep them abreast of new listings, photo opportunities or press coverage; ask for testimonials, leads and more.


5) Search Engine Optimized You may have heard this term before or its acronym “SEO”. When people are searching on the Internet for information about Jamaica Real Estate, they usually start with a popular search engine, like Google. Next they will use keywords or search terms like ‘Jamaica Real Estate’, ‘Buy a house in Jamaica’ or ‘Jamaica Properties for Sale’ to find what they are looking for. Now, here’s a quick test. Go to Google.com and type one of those search terms in the search box, then click search. Do you see your company website in the first page (top 10) results? Second page? Fifth page? If not, then your page is not search engine optimized for the most popular search terms people use to find Jamaica Real Estate. Studies have shown that most people do not go past page 2 of the search results to find information.


Some web design firms consult with SEO experts or Marketing consultants to help with optimizing their clients’ website. Check with your website designer to get your website optimized or you can consult with Butterfly Publications, publisher of the Jamaica Real Estate Guide magazine and website. You will notice that www.jarealestateguide.com is in the top 10 results for all the above mentioned search terms.


6) Update often Keep your website updated and fresh. Ask your website designer to install a Content Management System so that key persons in your firm can update the website when necessary. The Content Management System needs to be user-friendly and preferably managed only by the appointed persons in your firm for consistency and uniformity.


These are just a few tips to get your website working for you as a valuable marketing tool and provide a perpetual return on investment. For a free consultation or more information about any of the tips mentioned above, please contact us here. Also, take a look at some of the marketing services offered by Butterfly Publications, click here.
*Google keyword analyzer tool