Online Real Estate Technology

Interesting story coming out about the terrible events in Mumbai, it appears that social media sites such a Twitter and flickr were inundated with messages and videos from the scene, more so than even the more traditional sources of news such as CNN could carry. Reports from Twitter were that people who were either trapped or close by the tragedy were blogging reports and updates from the scene. Apparently at the height of the attacks, more than 80 messages or “Tweets” as they are called, were being sent to twitter.com via sms every 5 seconds, providing eyewitness accounts and updates. Users sent pleas for blood donors and some were even asked to help transcibe the names of the dead and injured, which were then listed online.  

However, there is another side to this and that is the number of ugly unsubstantiated reports and inaccuracies. Numbers of those killed and reported on twitter varied and numbers were reported as high as 1000 at one stage.

What can’t be ignored though is the obvious impact that social media sites have on engaging and reporting on news items such as the events in Mumbai and tragedies and natural disasters, although you have to remember that the information is often unsubstantiated and subject to the wild rantings of users.    

Social media has come of age and it is showing itself to be very influential tool however inaccurate, at times, it may be.

The final Future of Real Estate marketing seminars will kick off next week and I would invite you to join us if you have not already done so. These seminars are a look at what and how technology will affect you and your agency in the future, as well as a look at social media and it’s impact on the real estate consumer.

There are 2 new venues for you next week and those agents in NSW who would like to attend the location is as follows: Monday 1st December, Sydney Marriott Hotel 38 College Street Sydney 10:00am for 10:30am start.

On Wednesday 3rd December I’ll travel with the domain.com.au team to Cairns and we’ll kick off at Cazalys Function Centre 344 Mulgrave Rd Westcourt Cairns commencing at 9:00am.

I’ll look forwrd to chatting with you on both days.

So who made up the rule that your on line property listings can’t be updated to reflect what is happening in the community? No one did, it’s just one of those things that most agents never think of. Lets use the recent rise in fuel prices, internet search volumes for real estate, individual suburbs searches and more importantly property views increased during the period of high petrol prices, why? because a great number of consumers decided to do more searching at home, so how many agents reflected this in their listings, how many included the words,”Not travelling as much, don’t worry we’ll come to you” or enticed their property readers to “attend the open for inspection at home, anytime at your convenience”.

Constantly using the internet to update your listings to reflect what is happening in the local community, is to me, a very effective way of making the net work better for you. You are tapping into what affects people in real life. In the cluttered market we have today with lots of stock available, why not take the approach to use the strength of the medium, it’s ability to instantly update the consumer with new and relevant information. You’ll stand out from the crowd and consumers searching in your suburb will pick up on this very quickly, why? because one of the most common complaints about property listings is outdated information, so turn the tables!! 

Another issue to think about, I often see properties being targeted to a very wide target market and one that has not been properly defined, by doing this, you actually miss the very people you are trying to attract.

An example of this, which I encountered yesterday in an office, was a property being marketed to both a property investor and a first home buyer. Great idea except, to me, these conflict? An Investor will be looking for something totally different in that home than a first home buyer. The investor looks for rental return, good existing tenants and potential capital growth, whilst a first home buyer looks for a “home” to live in.

The agent trying to market this property would be better to properly define their target and write the copy to attract that targeted buyer, not by trying to be everything to everybody. There is also nothing wrong with marketing this listing at the first home buyer for 2 weeks and then changing the target and copy, to market to the Investor. What you achieve here is constantly updated properties that are well targeted and well defined.   

There is nothing wrong in this at all, In fact it may just help you stand out in a cluttered market and you will start to use the medium more effectively. It will also improve your copywriting skills and you’ll start to rotate your properties so that they don;t get stale. Remember, the longer they stay online, the worse they will perform, so update your target market regularly and update the property to reflect the changes in the community. Tap into issues like interest rate cuts etc. It’s all about cut through in a crowded market and the entrepreneur will be the winner.

This blog post available as a podcast: www.mikeandrew.podomatic.com/Updating Your Listings Body Copy to Reflect the Current Market

Hello everyone, as promised I’ve now been motivated to add the Mike Andrew Real Estate Channel to YouTube and the address for this is here: http://au.youtube.com/MikeAndrewRealE…

Please check it out, and there is a little surprise there for you as well, just check out the video in my favourites “A Soft Place To Fall”, a little bit of me in a past life as a rock guitar player, I’m sure you’ll like the video, not real estate based but something a little different. I’ll be adding more videos to this in the next few days and weeks as I move more into vlogging, so please check it out and as always, please let me have your comments good or bad.

If you have been reading my blog for awhile or have attended one of my on line presentations, you will have gathered that I’m a fan of using video as a tool to market not only yourself and office but also your clients properties. Check out my previous post on this Research on the Power of Real Estate Videos .

Whilst I’m a fan I realise there are some limitations of the medium, and that is, in most cases the consumer needs to view the video in it’s entirety and hasn’t had the ability, well at least here in this country, to view the various chapters or rooms and navigate around the video like you can on a virtual tour. If the video of the property is longer than, say 90 seconds, I believe you lose the attention span of the consumer, but now available in the US and I’m hoping it won’t be long before someone does it here is Australia, if you do provide this capability please let me know, and I’ll include you in my presentation and free publicity, is a video tour that enables the consumer to jump chapters and view the areas of the property that are important to them.

Here’s a screen grab and link to the home page which will give you an idea on how the video screen shot appears and how you can then use the chapters to navigate around the property.

http://www.realtyflix.com/

Another great idea from RealtyFlix.com, is that you can film the property on your own camera and if you don’t feel comfortable about editing it yourself you can forward the full video to them for editing. Yes they charge a fee but it may not be an issue if you’re not familiar with editing software. The technology available now, is making the process of using and making video more and more accessible to agents and consumers alike. The growth in video on the web has been incredible over the past 12 months and will continue to be a powerful tool for real time marketing on the net.

YouTube founder Chad Hurley recently gave the following quote on where he sees the future of online video: “In ten years, we believe that online video broadcasting will be the most ubiquitous and accessible form of communication. The tools for video recording will continue to become smaller and more affordable. Personal media devices will be universal and interconnected.”

Experiment with video, read my post on Creating Cut Through In A Cluttered Market – Create Your Own Video Show!! on how you can use video, don’t limit your imagination, this medium is portable content and you can use it lots of different ways to market yourself.

Most of all, be creative and good luck!! See you at the Oscars.

I’ve heard Grant Thorpe, Business and Life coach talk about Dreamkillers during his seminars and over the past week I’ve encountered Dreamkillers in my day to day activities with agents and the company I work for. Last week I presented my seminar on the Future of Real Estate Marketing and It’s a look at how you, the real estate professional, will be doing business in 5 to 10 years time. What new technology will you have to contend with, how will the real estate customer change in that period and probably more importantly, have you a plan to evolve your business so that you stay ahead of the trend? and right there is where the Dreamkiller strikes.

In some offices, and I use Warren Tate,Franchise manager of the Hodges group in Victoria, he’s so far ahead of the game, by evolving and instilling into the group, a futuristic vision of how they will adapt and utilise new technology and communication channels that will see them continually evolve as a business far past 2015. Then take Bianca and Neil Brown and Craig Marshall from Century 21, all these business owners have a vision of what they want their business to be in the future and how they can adapt and evolve into the future, and they aggressively seek out people who can help them take and shape that vision .  This is the future, but what of the dreamkiller? that’s the person within your business that won’t take the chance, won’t evolve the business, won’t look at new technology and this attitude has an effect on everyone in your business, sometimes it is not always recognisable, but it is always there. I found this out last week, when I suggested the company I work for start leading from the front and implement new technology for a better consumer experience, the response was,”it’s a gimmick” and “Our competitor hasn’t done it, so if they don’t we shouldn’t either” WHAT!!!!

Lets decide here if we are a leader or a follower, our business needs to be at the forefront of technology for real estate professionals and consumers and if we apply a very traditional view on what should or shouldn’t be implemented then we will be doomed to failure. I think the big issue here is the “traditional” way of thinking, that’s what holds most businesses back, and unfortunately the dreamkiller is often in a position of influence in the business. If you don’t evolve you won’t survive in the future, that’s a no brainer.

So seek out the dreamkillers and remove them, don’t let them influence you or your business, look to people who can help you with a future plan, those who can help build your business for the future and who can help you adopt new technology and prepare your business for the changing consumer and/or vendor. 

Just imagine if Wilbur and Orville Wright had mentioned their idea of flight to the Dreamkillers?

This past week I’ve spent time in Victoria and NSW visiting real estate offices and I must make a very special mention of Bianca and Neil Brown from Century21 Wentworth Falls, I was in their office yesterday and spent what to me, was a very inspiring morning. Their desire, commitment and dedication to evolve their business on the net actually inspired me. During the morning the subject of video came up, including the use of video for an office profile, on their properties and vlogging, that’s the video version of a blog. My attempt at this just recently astounded me with the results that my little piece got from Viddler.com, Over 200 embeds and 50 views, not bad for a 4 minute piece recorded in a hotel room and then placed only on my blog.

So I thought I would go one step further with this and evolve the process and look at what a real estate agent could achieve with a weekly or daily video update. Technology has made this process so simple now that anyone can record a video and then load it to the web, and you don’t need any real skills to do this, just a camera or webcam and a computer. The idea of communicating in real time by blogging, podcasting and Vlogging is just starting to be utilised by real estate marketers here in Australia, although it is very popular with US based agents. I was chatting to Neil and Bianca about using video on a weekly basis to provide market updates and create a communication tool that could be syndicated via their own C21 web site and also tap into social media sites such as Facebook and YouTube and Itunes.

So lets look further into this and see where it could go, real estate agents could use it to provide information instantly to clients and buyers alike, provide market updates,even market their clients houses via these updates. Record your video after your weekend open homes and provide that information to your vendors or just report on the results of auctions on that weekend. You could even create your own real estate show using this method, interview local people and share information to your audience. Promote your show via your marketing on listings and traditional marketing, add it to your letter box drops etc, this all helps to create an audience for your show.

I know some of you reading this may think you have enough to do now without adding more work to your day and I agree this will not be for everybody, but just think of the niche you could create for yourself with this, being able to provide your clients with real time market information or use it to create a wider market for your business.  I’m going to put my own thoughts on this into action and start to introduce more video into my blog, I’ll add it to Itunes and Youtube as well and see how popular it becomes.

So after having this flash of creativity, I did some research on the power of video and during this research it led me to a Canadian Realtor by the name of Tom Everitt who is based in Vancouver Canada. Tom is a realtor who has created his own TV show and along with his wife Kerrie records and uploads videos to his web site daily. I’ve included one of those videos for you to see his profile after being interveiwed for the local TV news channel.

If after watching this video you would like to visit his web site and look at his videos, here’s the link for you. http://www.thinktom.com/

The concepts and ideas are limitless for this, so get your Video camera ready and start recording!!!!

Got this last night as a media release and thought I would check out the web site of Sydney company YouVu. The company have just released a new advertising product called YouVu Property Advertising which allows agents more features when marketing a property on line, but does it live up to the hype of the press release? Well I thought I would check out the offering for you, but first here’s a little of the media release from the company: 

“The innovative folks at YouVu Interactive have created a brilliant new web tool that can assist real estate agents to cut through the clutter of properties for sale on the internet by capturing the buyers’ attention, and maintaining it for longer.

Sydney, NSW (PRWEB) November 19, 2008 — Sydney businessmen Gary Bateman and Trevor Reid have created an innovative new web tool called YouVu, which takes the best of the web, and applies it to real estate property marketing.

The result is a real estate advertisement with many differentiators. It is a real estate ad that will attract the attention of a potential buyer and maintain their focus for many minutes.

Online property portals are emerging. Whether they be in Europe, the United States or Australia; more buyers are consulting the web for property information before buying than ever before. In Australia, research has shown that more than 75% of buyers use the internet to research properties and in excess of 7.5 million unique browsers view properties advertised on the web each month.

Bateman and Reid of YouVu realised that the biggest challenge with internet advertising is making sure that an agency’s properties stand out from the crowd.

Bateman said: “Sure, you can pay for a prime position. But once the potential buyer clicked on your ad it was clear to us that they all looked the same.

“A few details in small font, a clever headline if you are talented enough and a handful of images. What you get is a potential buyer having made up their mind ‘yes’ or ‘no’ after a few seconds.”

YouVu Property Advertising is definitely different. Its goal is to display a holistic view of a property to the potential buyer.

Reid explained: “Firstly, it can have as many as 25 rooms with their own individual pages.

“Secondly, within each of those rooms, our ‘Emotion Icons’ allow agents to bring certain key components to further attention of potential buyers. For example, you may want to highlight a feature on a wall or an appliance in the kitchen.

YouVu also allows one to add a Virtual Tour and/or Image Slideshow to their ad, making it more interactive and viewer-friendly.

And how do the people behind YouVu plan to get this magnificently dressed up ad to thousands of potential buyers?

“Easy,” says Bateman. “Most agents use existing portals such as realestate.com.au and domain.com.au, and we would be asking them to do the same, except they will also add the link to their YouVu ad to encourage people to take a closer look at their property.

“We already have dozens of YouVu users doing this to great effect.”

YouVu is the most comprehensive a real estate advertisement can get. The key selling point at the moment is the price it is offered at. From only $40, any property can become extra sellable with a YouVu ad.”

So lets have a look at what features this product has ,Here are 2 grabs of the main image:

Screen Shot

Firstly, you can add shots of different features of the house and then have emotion icons that allow the property searcher to view features that may be lost in a standard add, when you place your cursor over the icon the feature pops up on the right hand side of the screen, a feature that I really like in this product is the use of Google street view and the ability to include local suburb information that is easily accessible by the consumer. You also have the ability to share the listing on social media sites such as Facebook,Myspace and on bookmarking sites such as Delicious and Yahoo Bookmarks. You can also add a virtual tour and image slide show, whilst the developers have not indicated this, I really hope they allow a dedicated video tour link as well, I’m sure you could add this as a virtual tour, but I’d like to see a dedicated icon for video.

You can add the link to the YouVu add if you are using domain.com.au but it’s going to be interesting to see how realestate.com.au reacts to this, as they don’t allow hyperlinks on property listings, nor will they probably like traffic being directed away from their portal to YouVu, because, in essence this is what happens when a buyer clicks on the link, nice little idea from these guys to build traffic to their website and you the agent pays for the privilege. Any product that allows agents to market their property smarter and provide additional information to the consumer, particularly on local suburb and lifestyle info, will get my endorsement. You’ll pay $40 for a 12 week run and the site will allow unlimited changes on each property, but they don’t say whether they provide traffic statistics for each property such as property views and email enquiry results.

It’s worth checking the site out, so here’s the link: www.youvu.com.au/ 

I can’t help but think though, that if you give a lot of thought to how you market a property,define the target market and then develop the content in line with your target market, add great photos using 15+ or more and a video or virtual tour plus adding local suburb information from www.walkscore.com, you will stand out on the mainstream portals. It really comes down to effective marketing of your property with the right target market and content.

But that’s just my thoughts, check out the site and let me know what you think, I would be really interested in your comments.

It’s funny sometimes how you get motivation to write a blog post, and this morning sitting outside reading my morning paper with my first cup of coffee, I looked at the local newspapers real estate section, I personally don’t do this very often, but today it got me to thinking. How well do real estate marketers combine both their on line and press adds, well after researching this morning, my impression is not very well. There appears to be little or no cross promotion, no push to get readers to go to your internet site to get additional information or view more photos, virtual tours,video etc. At least not from what I read today.

Your listings are very one dimensional in press, with limitations on how much space you have to work with, so why haven’t most agents yet to understand how to integrate the two? Yes I know some agents do this very well, but others, not so good. A recently Google commissioned study indicated a brand or product showing up both online and in the newspaper increased buyer credibility and trial by up to 50%. An integrated, multi-channel approach amplifies your credibility factor significantly in your marketplace.

It’s critical to your marketing’s success that it needs to play to the strengths of the medium, using on line to show additional information that meets the needs of the buyer plus supplying a wealth of information that supports the property, whilst using your press advertising to promote and keep your brand prominent and featuring a strong call to action to encourage readers to visit your own branded web site.   

I noticed this morning, 90% of the property advertising in the local real estate section, did not have a call to action nor did the agents refer prospective buyers to their web site to obtain additional information.

We all know that the dominance of press and online advertising for real estate has changed, but the need to integrate all your advertising and link them all has not. Employing a marketing strategy that plays to the strength of all mediums, will enable you and your office to maximise your presence as well as your marketing dollar.  

Press advertising is expensive, so why waste the opportunity to integrate all your marketing, because that’s where the real power is to you and your brand.

This post now available as a podcast, download this here: http://www.mikeandrew.podomatic.com/

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