Answer Reader Questions For Success

Why do people visit real estate agent and mortgage broker websites and blogs? Unlike YouTube, people don’t surf these sites for entertainment. Nor are they looking for the local weather forecast.

When someone visits a local real estate agent or mortgage broker website, they have questions and are looking for answers. The better job you can do in answering those questions, the more valuable you are to that potential client.

When I reference answering questions, I am not talking about the ability for site readers to post questions for you to follow with an answer. While this can work when done properly (a great example is Trulia Voices), I am actually talking about the overall content on your website.

When writing any content for your site, you must first consider the audience. Who are they? What is of value to them? What questions might they be seeking answers to?

By focusing on the audience and their needs, you stand a better chance of converting them into clients.

Each page of your website and every blog post should answer a question.

Blog posts are easy to follow this guideline. Identify a question, make the title of the post that question and go about answering the question in the post. This makes writing posts easier and can have great search engine benefits (many people search by asking questions).

Website pages can be a bit trickier to determine what questions to answer. Let’s look at a few common real estate agent and mortgage broker website pages/sections to identify what questions can be answered.

The About Page

Here is my own personal pet peeve. I rarely read an About page that truly adds value to the audience.

These pages tends to focus too much on the agent or broker and their personal lives, clubs, organizations, on and on and on. While this paints a picture of you to your audience, it doesn’t provide the information that they went to this page for.

When someone goes to your About page, they are looking for you to answer the question, “Why should I trust this person with the largest transaction of my life?”

Does your about page answer this question?

For Sellers / For Buyers

Your site is local, maybe even hyper-local. This means that you focus on transactions in a city or even in select neighborhoods.

This is where you differentiate yourself from the larger, national real estate and mortgage websites. Your focus provides extreme value to a smaller audience, but one who has better revenue potential for your company.

Keep your Seller and Buyer information localized. Answer questions like, “What should I know about buying or selling a home in this city or neighborhood?” and “How does this agent’s expertise in this area make them better qualified to sell my home or find me my dream home?”

Loan Process

Portraying your knowledge of types of loans and the general loan process can be a huge benefit to a mortgage broker. The process can be overwhelming to consumers and they want to rest assured that their mortgage broker knows what he is talking about.

As a mortgage broker, you must also battle the concerns created by bad press of consumers getting sold mortgages that weren’t the best products for them. Information is your weapon in this battle.

Answer questions like, “What types of loans are there and how do they differ?“, “What loans are right for each type of borrower?“, “How does recent economic changes affect borrowers in my city?”

Keep the audience in mind at every step of your website development and you will be rewarded with more visitors, longer visits, and hopefully, more people contacting you directly.