Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Port St. Lucie, Florida, is the most unusual real estate market we’ve looked at concerning how the top agents convert sales. From a marketing expert’s perspective, the lack of marketing spend by professionals in this region is astonishing. Over the past year or more, I’ve developed a method for finding the best marketing experts in real estate by narrowing and comparing variables across the web spectrum.
This method has involved searching for a city or region’s top-reviewed professionals on Zillow. Then correlating their marketing effort and other reviews, looking at their SEO on websites, and other methods is a practical way to discover excellent real estate pros. But, Port St. Lucie professionals do not operate like their colleagues in other regions.
Does this mean we found the market where homes leap from the listings to sell? I think this is only partially true and we’ve left out a big part of what it takes to be a successful home seller. The brick-and-mortar work digital experts scoff at is still a chunk of highway on any road to success. That said, here are four unique real estate pros with nowhere to go but up, digital marketing-wise.
Jeff Tricoli has amassed an impressive 372 sales in the last 12 months, plus 706 excellent reviews on Zillow. As I’ve said before, this level of success with flawless reviews on ANY platform indicates a very special business. Very few Agencies worldwide can boast such numbers. That said, like many of the professionals we’ve looked at in this part of Florida, Tricoli does not rely heavily on digital marketing. The team’s Facebook is operated correctly, but Tricoli has so few followers now it’s insignificant as a lead generator or branding channel. The broker also maintains a friendly YouTube channel, but again, it’s underutilized.
Tricoli’s cookie-cutter KW website is functional but an eyesore compared to the best in the US. On Instagram? Ditto. Tricoli is not getting calls from home-hunting Instagram followers, and Team Tricoli’s social boost in SEO is not in effect. An interesting side note is that I had to find Port St. Lucie’s superhero real estate pro by reverting to the US News & World Report lists. Tricoli’s amazing stats on Zillow have not put his team in a premium view. That said, Tricoli is the only agent in the region with almost 500 very high Google reviews.
From my perspective as a media expert, Tricoli has accomplished all this without any massive marketing campaign. His team has one media mention in the Palm Beach Daily News for being 41st with a sales volume of $285.85 million. Like the other Florida professionals in this lineup, high sales volumes and success come as a kind of pure magic. I suspect Tricoli’s reputation and live network are massive.
Website, Facebook, Contact # 1-561-220-9118
Richard L McKinney is unique among all the real estate professionals we’ve profiled here on RealtyBiz. The RE/MAX GOLD agent could even be called an enigma. Mckinney and his team are #1 in the region, with 338 sales in the past year. In addition, the team has 588 perfect Zillow appraisals. In business since the late 1990s, I guess McKinney has established one heck of a recommendation network because zero Facebook followers or Tweeting to one hundred-something Tweeps a couple of years ago is atypical for top professionals anywhere in the US. I am sure his superlative Instagram channel and his Zillow Premier status help.
Ah, but wait! With over 5,000 LinkdedIn followers and nearly daily postings, this could be part of the answer to the puzzle. The team uses the RE/MAX GOLD website with only a text link to their Facebook, no stylish button, nothing! McKinney does have a decent blog, which links to his YouTube Channel. Again, nothing special there. Mckinney’s team was almost unbelievably ranked as one of the top agencies (#29) by the Wall Street Journal in 2021. Richard Mckinney became the region’s leading real estate guy the old-fashioned way, and we must top our hats to that. I can only imagine how many sales the team would make firing on all marketing channels.
Kristi Stewart of Coastal Home Real Estate is missing from the first or second page of Zillow agent reviews. She is, however, one of the top agents in Port St. Lucie, trying to cover all the sales marketing channels online. She’s had 22 sales in the past 12 months, with over 110 perfect Zillow reviews. Her Facebook effort (2.5k engaged followers) beats dozens and dozens of other Port St. Lucie area agents since about half of them don’t even bother with social media. She’s on LinkedIn with 400 plus connections, and Stewart even tried her hand at Twitter back in 2016.
On the downside, Kristi’s website could use some SEO optimization love, with a score of only 67/100. Aesthetically, the online billboard is pretty good, though. IT person could also lose the Google social link and add her Facebook profile to the buttons.
Jason Coley of Team Coley has been in business in Port St. Lucie since 2005. In the past year, he’s sold 143 properties, according to Zillow, where he’s a Premier Agent. Of the agents we’ve scanned in the region, he and his wife Renee (with Jason above) are among the few professionals with a 6k-plus fan Facebook channel. More frequent posting there would undoubtedly pay dividends for the veteran agent. On Instagram, he’s exceptionally upbeat and personable, which converts to a positive reputation down the line. His is a bit tough to find unless you use the Instagram profile. And the Atlantic Shores Realty site could use a facelift to get leads from passers-by.
A dead link from Zillow to Coley’s LinkedIn profile is not helping matters either. The site’s 67/100 SEO score is also below industry par. Coley does have an effective LinkedIn channel with 1,000 connections to his credit. He’s made our list today based on 300+ perfect Zillow reviews and his accumulated limited press. Jason Coley has a YouTube channel, too, but with only one prescriber. Based on what I’ve seen in Port St. Lucie, homes must be selling themselves because world-class real estate marketing is not a thing in this part of Florida.
Realtors need to stop STEERING. It is against the law yet they do it every day.