Online Real Estate Technology

I’ve been in Bundaberg this week conducting both the “Copywriting for the Web” seminars and internet marketing audits for real estate offices, so I’ve been busy over the last few days, and that’s why I haven’t had much chance to update my blog. However, the good thing about going around the country is I get to talk with lots of agents and business owners about the current market conditions and Tuesday, I had the privilege of spending time with Ken Callec and his team at Yes Realty in Bargara, and I must congratulate Ken as he has a great motivated team in his office, not to mention the great dinner he treated me to earlier this week, so thank you Ken. 

Ken reads my blog, so he’ll get the message.  

But the point of this post is to look at a comment that Charlie, one of Ken’s team, asked me about when we were sitting around dissecting the teams listings on line and looking at why some properties have high property views but very low email lead conversion. Charlie asked me how, as a marketing agent, he could be different when marketing open listings, in other words, “How do I stand out from the crowd”, well Charlie, that is a very good question, in fact, most agents wouldn’t even bother to ask me that one with an open listing, so well done Charlie for considering the vendor.

So lets then look at what Charlie could do to be different in his approach to an open listing, or, better still,why don’t we just look at how Charlie can stand out from the average agent with every listing.

First of all lets throw away the rule book, lets break every rule in the so called real estate traditional “marketing 101″ book.    

Lets look at 10 points that Charlie can use to stand out from the crowd

1. Identify the target demographic you want to aim the property at, and be very specific in your marketing to that buyer. Make sure the content is relevant to who you are marketing to, for example, a first home buyer looks for different content than an investor does, as a retiree does, so really aim the content of that listing to the target market. By being too broad in your targeting for any property, you will actually miss the very buyer you are trying to impact.

2. Rotate the target demographics every 2 weeks. 2 weeks to a first home buyer and 2 weeks to an investor. There is absoultely nothing wrong with this, and in fact will start to provide frequently updated content to the searching consumer. It will also help keep the property fresh. Do this with all your properties and see what the results are.

 3. Gender, aim the marketing to the people who are looking at your listing, in general, it is likely that 6 out of ten people who will view your listing will be female. When doing audits in offices, the female staff members are often quite critical of listings written by male agents, when given the chance to offer an opinion they will privide you with a wealth of really good feedback, so guys, don’t wait, get them to critique every listing you write, before you publish it on line.     

4. Photos, be prepared to be different with this, before you make any decision on that main photo, think about who you are targeting, and more importantly, what will impact that buyer. Do a virtual drive through of the suburb, see who you are up against, and do something different than the other agents. Employ a strategy to update every listing weekly, Monday’s are the highest traffic days so put in place a plan to change your photos and body copy every week. Frequently Updated Content is what consumers know they can get from the web, so what is new today, is tomorrow old news, Update to reflect the changing community needs. You will reap the rewards by frequently updating your content. Write your body copy to reflect what is happening in the real world. How many of you updated your first home buyers properties last Tuesday to reflect what the reserve bank did with interest rates? 

5. Strong lifestyle and catchy headlines. Make sure you have a strong lifestyle driven headline on your copy. Don’t use bland real estate headlines. Make a statement and drive the consumers attention by trying something different.

6. Include Lifestyle or local suburb Information on Your Listing, when I worked for the Raptis group in 2001, our job was to write advertising for off the plan apartments, so how do you write for something that doesn’t exist? by creating emotion and selling the lifestyle expectation of what I would get as a buyer, in other words, what is in it for me, me, me!!! Remember, females over 25 are still the most dominant users of real estate sites in Australia, and what are they  really interested in? schools, security,local transport etc. 

7. Walkscore.com, include a jpeg grab of this great mapping web site on all your listings, research coming in from domain.com.au and an agent on the sunshine coast in Qld who is using these images as part of their property marketing is that the www.walkscore.com image is the most clicked on image on that property, why?  because the on line consumer is looking for lifestyle information on the suburb and the property, and these images and a great resource for both buyers and tenants alike.

8. Include a Video Tour or Video Update.Try to include a video tour on every property you do, remember in a previous post I talked about how research was showing that property searchers like video and that a well produced video tour can increase the perceived value of the property by up to 6%. Property Videos Increase Percieved Property Value . Now, If you can’t get the vendor to pay for this, why not include your own weekly market update and attach it to your property and up date it weekly. Domain.com.au will indicate a video tour and provide a video icon on each listing, but please let the consumer know that you have included a local real estate market update that is refreshed each week, and they will then start to look for your updates. 

9. Create your youtube real estate channel.Attach your channel to all your listings content and load all your videos to youtube. Promote the channel on your listings as a way for local property searchers to be constantly updated by you, the local real estate expert.

10. Include a strong call to action on all your properties. Brand your self the “local real estate market expert” and ask people to call you, email you or stalk you, do what ever it takes to get people to respond to your listing.  It’s not good enough just to leave a phone number, ask them to call you.

That should be enough to get you thinking about why being different will help you stand out, it’s also about being entreprenarial about how you market your brand and properties. There is no right or wrong with this, if you find your property views drop off, you change the target market and change your photo. You are only ever a minute away from making a change. Remember, search volumes have increased on the portals, so people are still searching, you just need to work harder to get the lead.