Last week I talked about being visible via blogging, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter.  And I alluded that there was a caveat to doing so and that it wasn’t what you might think.

For years now I have been concerned about what I perceive is the lack of focus or direction that most real estate websites exhibit.  What I mean by this is that we seem to want a general purpose, one size fits all web site.  We want our web sites to be able to fit the needs of buyers and sellers no matter what their circumstances.  We also want to convey that we are the right professional for the visitor to our web sites.

But, there is a problem with that line of reasoning.  Because we have tried to be so broad in our reach, we are not appealing to anyone.  If I am a seller, I am not really interested in searching the MLS.  I am probably more interested in learning how you get your listings sold.  If I am a buyer, I am probably interested in finding out if you can help me decide which house to buy.  Yet, we trumpet MLS Search, here are all my sold listings and oh, by the way, I’m number one.  Really?

I know why we do this. We have been told by marketing gurus that we need to do it this way, and also because the cost of web sites is so darn high that we just don’t want to go through the expense of setting up individual and targeted web sites.  Well that was then.  This is now.  Now the cost of setting up an online presence approaches zero. And all those old school marketing gurus are now busily trying to reinvent themselves.

Some of us have figured out that we could set up low cost blog sites to act as targeted web sites.  Some of us have also learned that we could have separate Facebook business pages for each type of client that we want.

But most of us have not ever figured out who our ideal client is, let alone built web sites that were specifically targeted to find appeal to that ideal client.  So, we repeat our old marketing mentality on the new mediums available to us.  Some go so far as to pay hundreds of dollars to replicate their existing web sites on a Facebook custom tab.  Why would you do that?  Why wouldn’t you harness the power of that tremendous demographic database that is Facebook to find your ideal client?

So, here’s the point of this week’s post: Figure out who your ideal client is!  Is it a buyer?  If so, can you define that further?  Where do they want to buy?  What price range are they in?  What lifestyle needs do they have?  Are they sellers?  What are they selling?  Where are those properties? Are there other characteristics that you need to identify?

Answer these questions and you can then set up targeted online vehicles to locate them, engage with them and build relationships with them.  Fail to define your ideal client and you just won’t reap the benefits of the new online marketing tools.

And that would just be wrong!