Online Marketing – The Effect of Reviews – Simple House Solutions

My name is Dwight Harrison, I’m one of the owners of Simple House Solutions, here in Dallas Fort Worth.  We are using Holistic Web Presence® and the fantastic “Timmy” (Tim Barrie), for all of our online marketing needs.

Online Marketing – You Need Online Reviews

I just wanted to tell you a story today; so basically what we do is flip houses here in Dallas.  We started with Holistic Web Presence 6 – 9 months ago now, he basically convinced us that “hey, you guys need online reviews”.  Well, what we have found is that organically more and more people are finding us – our closing percentages have literally doubled or tripled since we started going online and sharing the story from all of these sellers that we’re able to help, these people are just singing our phrases and they have been for years.

I’ve been doing this since 2002, my business partner has been doing this since 2007.  Simple House Solutions, here in Dallas, has been around for 5 or 6 years now, and we’ve never had a problem with clients, our clients love us, but nobody knew about us.

Online Marketing – Don’t Be a Secret Agent

When I first got into real estate, as an agent they told us “hey don’t be a secret agent”.  Well, it’s kind of what we were doing, only for the investment side of things.  I just wanted to make sure that – just take it from me – I was skeptical at first, we literally created a system around it, where after every single property closes now we go back, and I just cannot tell you the difference it has made in our business.

We bought 111 houses last year so we were doing great, we are at pace for a fantastic 2018, and quite a bit of that has to do with just the buzz that’s starting to surround us, and it’s not necessarily just people coming into our web site – which has been awesome as well with the organic side of things –  it’s because when people hear about us they’re hesitant, just because of our industry and they really want to kind of see what everyone else has been saying.

Google Stalking

Every single time we leave a seller’s house, a potential client’s house that they do business with us, we ask them all the time “what made you call us?” or “why did you decide to do business with us?” and the answer is almost always, literally, I think only one person in the last month has not Google stalked us – right?  So, they’re like, “hey we realized that we needed you, an investor, but we looked all across online and… so if anybody thinks that they aren’t looking at you and stalking you and doing their due diligence on your company before they call you – think again, they totally are.

Doubled Our Business

We have at least doubled the amount of contracts we’ve locked up due to the fact that everybody’s going online saying how awesome we are.  (Yep) It’s really going well, it’s going really well, and what’s happening, and I don’t know if you guys have even noticed this probably, we just got another review today that was on an appointment out in northeast Fort Worth. It’s in a town called Hurst – it’s a nice area and the houses are probably worth $240K.  Because Brandon sat there for an hour and a half and gave them a list of everything they would have to do to fix it up, to call a realtor, and sell it for top dollar – they came in and gave us a 5-star review. (Awesome, Wow!)

Reviews Just by Helping People – Even if They Don’t Do Business With Us

Yes, so what we’re doing is we’re getting people that aren’t even using our services now – we’ve had probably 6 or 7 in the last 10-12 – like literally 50% of the last 5 stars we’ve received, we’re not even doing business with these people.  (Wow, that’s a good anecdote to share how well that’s working, that’s why you’re clearly nailing it.) Because of the online reviews.

You Need More Than Just Your Website – You Need Buzz!

It used to be that the website was kind of your retail sign, if you didn’t have a website something was wrong with your business, and now you actually have to have people – a little bit of buzz around it, and it doesn’t even need to be a lot.  I mean, we started getting a ton of positive feedback when we only had 7 and 8 reviews and now we’ve got like 30!  (Right, exactly, yup just keep that flow going – it’s just brilliant!)