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How to increase your real estate marketing success by offering informational reports through your website:

Do you have a website? Do you have some basic research skills? If you answered yes to both questions, then you have the tools to take your real estate marketing program to an exciting new level.

In fact, by the end of the week you could publish a highly enticing report and offer it through your website (in exchange for a newsletter subscription or some other form of lead capture).

But like anything else in real estate marketing, you get out of it what you put into it. Some real estate agents use the free report method with great results. For others it's a waste of time. The difference is all in the approach.

Here are some keys to success:

1. It all starts with the report itself. You have to put a lot of value into it. Make it something that's not readily available elsewhere, like hard-to-find information about future development around a particular neighborhood. If the information is readily available, include a lot of it and focus on the timesaving benefits (because you've done the research for them).

2. People can't request something they don't know about it. So promote the report through your normal marketing channels -- direct mail, website, newsletter, ads, casual conversation, email signature block...

3. Create multiple reports on different topics related to real estate / buying a home / selling a home. Set them up on a separate page of your website. Let people "shop" for the free report of their choice. The more topics you cover, the more likely people are to find something they really want.

4. Show pictures. People believe in what they see, so feature a picture of the report's cover page, or maybe a sample image / graphic / chart from the body of the report. Use visual enticement, not just words.

5. Try to get a testimonial from somebody who found the information particularly useful. Feature it in a callout box near the headline, near the picture of the report, or near the "sign up" / "download" button.

6. Make sure the report is "king" of the page it's on. In other words, don't have a lot of other items competing with it for the reader's attention. If capturing their contact information is the point of that particular web page, make it the only point.

7. Have some way to capture leads. You're essentially exchanging your valuable item for the right to contact the person receiving it.

Informational reports can improve your real estate marketing program by creating a stream of qualified leads. But you only get out of it what you put into it:

Half-baked reports positioned poorly will flounder. Well-crafted reports marketed properly can become lead-generating machines. The difference is all in the approach.