Real Estate Marketing & Beyond
Huntsville, Alabama’s market is cooling off like most other regions because of rising interest rates and other economic factors. So, this week’s list of top real estate professionals may come in handy once the houses stop selling themselves. Luckily, we’re also homing in on good search strategies for people wanting to find the top agents in specific regions.
Using Google and Zillow and touching on a few digital marketing points led us to this group. At the end of the day, the best person to help you buy or sell a house will always have a combination of the traits/variables these pros exhibit.
Alabama’s top agent, according to many sources, Matt Curtis, has 1,900+ almost-perfect Google reviews and 11,000+ followers on Facebook. Who accomplishes such a feat? Okay, he’s only got 178 reviews on Zillow, but still. By now, I’ve scrutinized thousands of real estate professionals for this series, and not one tops this Alabama agent. Curtis even has an up-to-date blog. Oh, and as you can see, the Alabama agent has a great sense of humor.
Curtis also has a powerful Youtube presence, he’s engaged well on Instagram, and his almost visually appealing website comes in with a respectable score of 72/100. Interestingly, Curtis’ site won an international award and made the local media because of it back in September. Real Estate Webmasters, the company that did the site, seems to have done some push to get the notice. Curtis is also a regular expert in traditional media, so it looks like he’s got every base except Google Ads covered. And yes, he’d be my “go-to” professional if I had a house in Huntsville to sell.
Rebecca Lowrey has a charming Facebook engagement, her team fiddles with Instagram as well, and her website reaches just an okay level with an SEO score of 72/100 and pleasing aesthetics. What sets her apart are over 200 excellent Zillow reviews and 167 5-star votes on Google.
Another thing that sets her apart from about 95% of the real estate agents in America is her engagement on LinkedIn. You’d be surprised how many industry professionals miss opportunities to brand and get leads on this social network. Lowrey has thousands of followers on a business network connected to people who buy houses.
Seriously, it's nice to find a real estate professional going the extra mile for their clients. The whole point of these industry roundups is to illustrate how the most successful industry people leverage everything to serve their clients.
After 23 years in the industry, Amanda Howard is not one of those agents who rests on her laurels. In fact, with 312 sales in the past year, it seems to me she might be just getting started. I discovered her profiles and digital presence through a method I’ve developed over the past months, which seems to churn up the top digital marketing experts in real estate.
Using Zillow and Google as a starting point and with Facebook and other social media as a quick elimination process, Howard’s 469 Google 4.9/5.0 Google reviews, with 555 Zillow reviews at 4.9/5.0, and 7,000 engaged Facebook fans quickly put her in contention.
Almost 3,000 Instagram followers and professional social management further set her apart. And while an SEO score of 72/100 for the Sotheby’s website she uses is not ground-shaking, it does help differentiate her from many agents in the U.S. If Howard has any flaws in her marketing scheme, a little diversity and better imagery could support her FB and Instagram efforts.
Samantha Walker joined Facebook back in 2012. She’s on this list of top digital marketers because she has a slew of near-perfect Google and Zillow reviews. What differentiates her is that she has more energy than many of the top U.S. professionals we’ve featured. How can I tell she’s energetic? Well, she’s tried every conceivable media and marketing channel to get her message out. She wrote a book, and she’s appeared in magazines, created a Youtube channel, is trying to jam on Flodesk, has hit the airwaves on local radio,
She’s even got a Hi Hello digital business card. And her website, while atrociously ugly, has an SEO score of 80/100. I don’t find her or her team on Instagram, but she has hit the advertising trail as a Zillow Premier Agent. While organization does not seem to be her forte (scattered digitally), she beats many other local professionals with all those stamping little footprints. Plus, I love her little avatar/cartoon self. If she fixes the feature image on her website, she’ll be even more effective.
