BREWs are unique because they were designed by real estate agents in the field searching for solutions to their own digital marketing needs.
Lori Ballen, a real estate agent and marketer who founded Ballen Brands, built the company from her passion for digital marketing and real estate, fueled by agents who wanted to achieve the success that she’d reached.
Since then, her brothers, Jeff (who is also a licensed real estate agent!) and Paul, have taken ownership of the company and continue to develop new products and services that propel BREWs to generate more real estate leads.
The real estate website design features property listings, free home valuation tools, well-written content, built-in tracking, and measuring; it offers three templates to choose from and is entirely customizable.
Real Estate WordPress Websites
One of the advantages that BREWs offer, contrary to many company-provided real estate websites, is that they’re built on the WordPress platform, meaning it’s easy for you to drive once you take the wheel, and, more importantly, you own your content.
That’s a big deal. Here’s why:
Your website, over time, builds search engine authority based on the content you produce. You might publish a blog post once a week to generate more traffic, and your posts build up momentum over time.
Collectively, they create a big picture of who you are, what you offer, your location, and more. When that website disappears, so does your online presence and everything you’ve invested.
With some company-provided websites, it’s the company who ends up owning your content, meaning that if you switch brokerages, you lose everything you’ve built up to that point.
The company isn’t using your content, but they’re no longer hosting it on their platform. You’ll have to start over from scratch – including building your search engine rankings.
With a BREW, you own all of the content on your website and are free to customize it with an array of valuable tools.
Should you happen to switch brokerages, that’s okay! You can take your website with you.
The BREW Perks and Plan
All BREWs are enhanced with IDX Broker for displaying properties, ListingsToLeads for producing free home valuation calculators, Clicky.com for built-in tracking and measuring, and are fully designed for SEO.
All of these formidable tools work seamlessly with KW Command and most other CRMs.
Additionally, they’re mobile responsive, which is a critical element in digital marketing.
IDX Websites
What do people most want to see when they visit a real estate agent website? Unequivocally, the answer is properties.
And the more organized and elegant your property displays are, the more intriguing they’ll be to viewers.
IDX is the Internet Data Exchange that grants brokers and agents the ability to share access to MLS listing information on their websites.
IDX Broker is a top-notch, highly reputable service provider for IDX solutions.
With IDX Broker, you can display properties in a showcase, slideshow, carousel, or other eye-pleasing formats.
In addition to displaying properties, IDX Broker allows you to:
- Customize maps and search, including an Atlas and a Polygon maps.
- Access real estate market reports
- Create predefined search results pages
- Get social media sharing tools
Home Valuation Calculator Landing Page
ListingsToLeads is a lead generation platform whose main feature is the ability to offer a free home valuation calculator on your website with stunning landing pages. The free home valuation calculator is one of the main lead generators built into the BREW.
Aside from the home valuation tool, ListingsToLeads also offers:
- Automated social media posts
- Email marketing
- Farm marketing
- Database marketing
- Landing pages
- Social media ad designs
- e-flyer campaigns
- design elements for postcards and door hangers
- design capabilities for print flyers
Website Traffic Analytics
Clicky Analytics is an invaluable tool for tracking what’s going on with your website – including a live view of active users. The highly customizable tracking software includes, but is in no way limited to:
- Detailed information about every person visiting your site
- Heatmaps to see where users are scrolling and clicking
- Bounce rates to determine what content isn’t working
- Campaign tracking
- Track outbound links
- Track downloads
- Split testing
It’s imperative that you track your results so that you know which pieces of content are performing well and attracting viewers while building search engine rankings. You’ll also need to know which articles and blog posts are not hitting their mark – the ones that increase your bounce rate while decreasing search engine authority.
The Different Types of BREWs and Their Costs
The monthly service plan for Ballen Real Estate Websites is $149 per month (in addition to the BREW package price), including the suite as mentioned above of utilities, web hosting, and a 30-minute one-on-one consultation monthly to discover more ways to make your BREW work for you.
Here’s what you get for that price:
Decaf Brew
A decaf BREW is the basic package, but there’s nothing basic about it. What sets it apart from the other BREW packages is that it’s the least expensive, but it’s missing a critical element that is necessary for your website to rank on search engines: content.
With the decaf BREW, your website comes out of the box incapable of ranking on search or attracting traffic. It’s a blank slate. You’ll need to produce content by writing it yourself or hiring a freelancer or content agency to build in the bones that make your website a lead-generating machine.
If you already have content, such as an About Us page or agent bio, or someone to write it for you, you can have up to ten pages installed on your BREW for no additional fee.
The Decaf BREW rings in at the cost of $1,495.
Light Blend
A light blend has all of the elements of a decaf BREW, but it ups the ante by including eight pieces of expertly written content, including three community pages, two blogs for buyers, two blogs for sellers, and a hyperlocal article that establishes you as an expert in your area’s recreation, entertainment, parks, shopping, dining, and more.Â
A community page is about 700 words and includes information about your service area, including a description of the community, a brief overview of things to do, education, the climate, public transportation, median household income, median home values, and more.
Buyer blogs, seller blogs, and hyperlocal blogs are around 1,000 words.
Examples of buyer blogs include:
- How to Find the Right Buyer’s Agent
- Tips for First-Time Buyers
- Closing Costs for Buyers
- The Basics of a Home Mortgage
Examples of seller blogs include:
- How to Find the Right Seller’s Agent
- 6 Steps to Selling
- How to Price Your House for Sale
- Staging Your Home
Examples of hyperlocal blogs include:
- Things to Do (within your service area)
- Best Restaurants
- Things to Do with Kids
- Where to See Holiday LightsÂ
Pro Tip: You can order additional content independently or set yourself up with a recurring content plan for consistent publishing of valuable content.
Furthermore, with the Light BREW, you’ll get 30 Showcase IDX pages that allow you to categorize and market your properties by subjects, such as:
- Homes by Price
- Homes by Zip Code
- Homes by School District
- Homes in Golf Course Communities
- Waterfront Homes
IDX Showcase pages integrate directly with community pages, translating to ten showcase IDX pages per community page.
The light BREW comes at a fee of $2,495.
Medium Blend
A medium blend is the same as a light, but you get more content, and more IDX showcase pages. You get a total of five featured community pages, two buyer blogs, two seller blogs, one hyperlocal blog, and 75 Showcase IDX pages.
For a medium blend, you’ll pay $2,995.
The bold BREW comes out-of-the-box ready to start its journey climbing in search engine authority. Consisting of the same features as the other BREWs, this package includes the most content and IDX Showcase pages.
It offers a total of seven featured community pages, the buyer and seller blogs, the hyperlocal article, and 95 Showcase IDX pages, which gives Google more pages to index and viewers more opportunities to find you online.
The bold BREW comes with a price tag of $3,495.
Infuse Your BREW
Infuse Your BREW with an Infusionsoft (now Keap) Real Estate Lead Nurturing CRM and campaigns for contact management, automated SMS messaging, email marketing templates, and more.
Infusionsoft offers marketing automation, including forms, emails, and landing pages, along with sales automation and the ability to streamline and automate daily tasks.
The cost of infusing a BREW is $1,495 and an additional $239 per month.
Ballen Real Estate Website Reviews
Ballen Brands has a 5-star rating and is touted not only for its professional real estate websites but also for its outstanding customer service.
Many agents have stated that they began generating leads within days of launching their BREW.
The Ballen Brands family has been commended for tailoring each website to their clients’ needs, for exceeding expectations, being incredibly responsive, and offering ongoing, attentive, and compassionate customer support.
When you call Ballen Brands, you aren’t connected to a random operator or salesperson but to one of the family members who own and operate the small business.
The Bottom Line
Ballen Real Estate Websites, better known as BREWs, come complete with everything you need to succeed with your real estate website.
With a BREW, you can show stunning property views, offer free home valuation tools to capture leads, attract website visitors and search engine authority by publishing high-quality content, and then track and measure results.
You can also be proud to show off a well-built, highly functional, thoughtfully designed real estate website.
The small digital marketing business stands out from larger digital marketing companies for its customer support, innovative ideas, and robust products and services.
It was also developed by real estate agents who solved their own marketing pain-points and then shared that information with their peers.
And the fact that it’s all cared for by a close-knit family (including real estate agents!) who want to see you succeed makes the BREWs that much sweeter.
