Brian first published this blog on October 1, 2007. Every word of it rings true today some 14 months later.
A while back I gave a speech at a real estate franchise convention on the topic of online marketing. 200 weary brokers filled the room. They expected to hear about new technologies and cutting edge tactics.
I let them down. I decided, instead, to tell them this:
The first thing to do when thinking about online marketing is to forget about technology completely. A carnival of blinking tools and barking vendors has clouded your thinking. I want you to go back 15 years to a time when your marketing was guided by an understanding of business fundamentals.
Now — in 1992 — where do you start in thinking about how to market your business?
Right here: Understand your customer.
Then what? Meet their wants and needs.
It is then reasonable to say that your marketing effort should be about telling and showing prospective customers you have what they want.
Let's fast forward back to today and apply this formula to your business and the Internet.
What are your customers' wants and needs? There are some things unique to your market, but a decade of research from NAR, CAR and others has pretty well established what consumers want and need most when they go online for real estate:
#1 Listings
#2 Home value information
#3 Community information
Now, let's meet their wants and needs.
First off, put a full IDX feed directly on your home page, front and center. No "featured homes", just quick access to a full feed of listings for your market and prominent promotion of the "homes by email" feature that comes with your IDX system.
Next, dedicate a full section of the site to detailed, up-to-the-minute information on home values in your market: Recent sales, list to sales price ratios, days on market and your own analysis of what it all means. Put this on a blog, email it in a newsletter and make it easily printable. Get it out there!
Lastly, leverage the local knowledge within your company by placing detailed neighborhood information on the site. Focus on the small stuff no one else covers. This may be done via a blog or blogs, or, if you don't have skilled writers in your company, at least hire a local freelancer to craft some core neighborhood guides.
You can forget about everything else about until you master these things.
How, then, do you tell and show prospective customers you have what they want?
First, eliminate almost everything that does not make a connection between what you know your prospective customers want and what you now have to offer them. Employ the electronic marketing platform you've been using to send e-cards and cookie recipes to distribute all that neighborhood and market knowledge you know have on your site. Switch out all those newspaper and bus bench ads touting your brand to simple calls to action along the lines of "Search every home for sale in _________ at www.___________.com" or "Sign up for weekly home sales prices in your neighborhood at www.__________.com".
If you look at online marketing through this lens, things will become much clearer. You'll also have a framework for judging what online applications are important for your business and which are not. You'll find a new focus that will move you beyond the clamor of the carnival.
— Brian Boero
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20 Tools to Bring your Real Estate Business to the Cloud
A mist of difference
Freaking...
Spot on! Basics
Thanks for the confirmation! I've been working on a redesign for my main site that is exactly that – we're calling it "Trulia-style."
Amazing concept – give people what they are looking for rather than playing games to get their contact info.
Speaking of playing games, does it bother anyone else when an agent puts a listing on the MLS without an address and a note to call the listing agent for more info?
Brokers are concerned about third party quasi-MLS systems using their listings to take away eyeballs (so that they can sell them right back), yet they allow these listings, which diminish the value of their REALTOR(r) owned MLS.
I agree.
All Realtors need three things to be effect today.
1. They need to be on the Internet.
2. They need to be found on the Internet, and
3. They must have what visitors are looking for, Inventory!!!
I'm continually suprised by Realtor sites that come up high in Google only to show me their 2 or 3 featured listings and then the agent wants to tell me the internet doesn't work.
Go figure.
Great advice, I can do better!
When I worked in a major real estate company (won't mention who) the broker told me to delay posting my listings onto MLS even tho it was part policy to do so within 48 hours of listing a property. This window helped create extra time to fool-around and get ahead of the pack.
This is one of many small real estate marketing ploys! Great read.
Anthony Brunetti
When I worked in a major real estate company (won't mention who) the broker told me to delay posting my listings onto MLS even tho it was part policy to do so within 48 hours of listing a property. This window helped create extra time to fool-around and get ahead of the pack.
This is one of many small real estate marketing ploys! Great read.
Anthony Brunetti
When we launched our website early in 2008, brokers around the area laughed and said but you're site is basically just an entire map.
They didn't get it. People don't care what the brand name is, they don't care that we service a huge area. They only care to see what they want homes for sale in the area they care about.
If you get sent to a website to find listings that you have to click three times before searching, you're going to find somewhere else to go and that click is lost.
It's the brokers that get this that are going places.
I have spent almost ten years trying to make realtors understand that buyers DO NOT CARE ABOUT "THEIR LISTINGS". You can disguise it as "featured properties" or however you want…. NOBODY cares! Buyers are interested in ALL properties that meet THEIR requirements, and they don't give a lick about listings of yours that you're trying to peddle on your website!
Yes, sellers are often hoodwinked into believing that your personal website gets a ton of traffic (come on, we know most don't get much if any!), and it's good to appease sellers by making their property featured somewhere on your site, but so many still devote the majority of their home page to THEIR listings.
For the hundredth time… ITS NOT ABOUT YOU!
The K.I.S.S. philosophy of ANYTHING seems to reach the simple minds of the consumers we work with each and every day. On my "HoneyDo" List is to create a web page that has HOME VALUE information in a format that is easily digestible, educates, and informs consumers. Thanks for the "friendly reminder" to Keep It Simple Salesman.
Excellent. I am in the process of doing a new web-site and getting rid of the one I have had since 1999.
I have been so reluctant to do that as the SERP has been good and lots of work to get it there.
But, it is just old school.
In designing my new site, I have Search the MLS, front and center. Community Information, and Market Reports.
Keeping it simple, this was a great confirmation for me.
I’ve heard about John Beck on the television talking about his products. Are those products really reliable? I found it interesting when I watched the advertisement but want to know if they really work.
I have numerous troubles with my browser Net M@anager on your internet site. The chimpanzees are still in the page
.
Hey i was wondering how much you would calculate to set your design up on my blog for me, because i really like the look of your website but i don’t know how to create such a great theme.
Speaking of playing games, does it bother anyone else when an agent puts a listing on the MLS without an address and a note to call the listing agent for more info?
Brokers are concerned about third party quasi-MLS systems using their listings to take away eyeballs (so that they can sell them right back), yet they allow these listings, which diminish the value of their REALTOR(r) owned MLS.