Online Real Estate Technology

Strange title you may think for me to use in my blog, however it’s a term that I have used so many times in my past management career and a tactic that I have employed in the past 4 months with domain.com.au.

Over the past few months I have been working with lots of real estate professionals across all states and my theme in the presentations has been built around dominating the web in your local area of operation. This doesn’t always mean you spending substantial marketing dollars on the portals, what it means is taking a holistic view of the web and making sure that you have an all round strategy in promoting and marketing you or your agency. Profile is really what I mean in all of this. The use of new technology and communication tools such as blogs or podcasting and social media. Using SEO and SEM tactics to dominate the Google search in your area.

The general feedback I receive is the market is tough, sales are slow and agencies need to cutback on expenses. One area that is being cutback is on line, as I have mentioned before in this blog and in my presentations, do not cut back on your on line marketing, searches are up, UB’s have not dropped back so why cut on line?, yes make sure that what you spend is working effectively for you, and in that arena if you need help then email me or call me or ask for help, that’s what I’m here to do. If you are going to cutback on any area, cut your print, it’s expensive, reduce your add size if necessary.

As an example, take what I’m doing with Domain.com.au, I’ve upped my activity level in each state so that I get to see as many agents and clients as I can, we have introduced our seminar series, designed to provide you the agent with good information and education that will help you use the web more effectively, and at a time when most businesses are cutting back, I’ve convinced the powers to be at Domain to actually increase what we do and up our activity level where it really counts. There’s the announcement of the ninemsn joint deal, to replace realestate.com.au as the provider of real estate to all ninemsn customers, and we recently annonced the joint distribution deal with ebay. That’s because right now for me, it’s important to act, as Warren Buffet said just recently,”When the market is greedy, be fearful, but when the market is fearful, be greedy” that’s not an exact quote but hopefully you’ll get my meaning with this. 

However I think the biggest challenge for most real estate businesses is how do I ride this market economy to survive until it picks up again. It’s a cycle that comes around, it appears to me, every 10 years or so. Being able to face that market change and ride it through requires a mindset change or repostioning of your current thinking and work place practice, and that’s where a business coach can be helpful to you. I’ve done  seminars with Grant Thorpe in the past on this subject and I’ve covered articles from him as well, here’s a reminder of one of those posts for you,When the Times are Tough, the Tough Get Going  and after spending the last week on the road in WA, and having a great time with all the professional real estate agents there, I thought it time to share with you a very timely article from Grant.

The article is called “Now is the Time to Strike” and I hope you enjoy what Grant is talking about with this very positive look at how you can effectively change your direction or mind set.

Here’s the link to the article, please enjoy: 

http://ezinearticles.com/?id=1675681