Online Real Estate Technology

Ian Grace Mr Real Estate Advertising

I thought it was time I opened up this blog to a few of my friends and colleagues in the real estate industry and one that I’ve had the pleasure to work with over the years is probably the leading expert on real estate advertising worldwide, Ian Grace.

Ian has presented his training course all over the world and is one of the very few Australians to have spoken at the NAR conference in the US, there is not much that Ian does not know about creating great real estate advertising, so as part of this series, I’ve asked Ian to put together his top 10 tips for writing great real estate ads, I hope you get benefit from Ian’s advice.

The Top Ten Tips for Writing Great Real Estate Ads

HOODOO – a great word to help you to remember the two things that make advertising effective:- WHO – is the person who will see the most value in the property and therefore pay the highest price [that's target marketing]. DO – now show them and tell them, what they will be able to DO as a direct result of their purchase.

2. HEADLINES – remember the WHO when you write your headline, then qualify it quickly, so the reader knows you’re both on the same wavelength. Then ideally, reinforce or remind about the headline at the end of the ad. The headline must include one or more of the following:- 1. A benefit or implied benefit 2. Something that is new, news or topical 3. A curiosity element without gimmicks for gimmicks sake.

3. PHOTOS – make sure your main photo matches and works together with your headline [not the other way around] and that the other photos also match the body text.

4. PEOPLE – put people and/or pets in your photos – it’s a great way to show people what they will be able to DO when they live there.

5. NAMES – use names in your ads to personalise them – yours [in full] and even the sellers’.

6. DIFFERENT ADS – the use of different ads for different markets, enables you to talk to each prospect group about what is relevant to them only e.g. one ad aimed at first home buyers and one ad aimed specifically at investors.

7. MEDIA MATCH – make sure your press ads match with other media and vice versa, with particular reference to the main photo and headline.

8. KEEP THE SAME AD RUNNING – once you’ve written a great ad, run it at least four times if not more, as research shows people need to see the same ad or message three times or more, on average, before they will respond

9. PRICE, LOCATION, NUMBER OF BEDROOMS – if all the research done shows conclusively that these are the top three pieces of information potential buyers require, then common sense says – give it to them!

10.   OBTAIN SELLER ADVERTISING DOLLARS – research proves that the higher the seller paid advertising percentage, the higher the listing to selling success rate.

11. BONUS TIP – TEST YOUR ADS – Firstly, sellers must see the ads before they run, but most importantly, ensure at least one of your colleagues checks your ads to confirm every word and phrase will make sense to the market it is written for. Secondly, when buyers who have responded to the ads view the property, ask them if the property has matched their expectations from your ads – the feedback will be terrific and will keep your advertising right on track.

If you’d like to contact Ian you can visit his web site Ian Grace Marketing

Google and Real Estate

For those of you who are interested in Googles ultimate goal for its real estate listings service, they have finally announced their plans for the service. In New York, Sam Sebastian, the company’s director of local and business-to-business markets has told the Inman technology conference that Google’s recent refinements in the real estate space, which include creating “place pages” for individual listings, don’t mean the search engine giant is moving to create a national multiple listing service.

He said the recent refinements have improved the quality of traffic the search engine delivers to advertisers — including big brokerages that Google is out to sign up as clients.

“Agents have always been pretty engaged” in buying keywords and targeted ads from Google to drive traffic to their Web sites, Sebastian said. “But the big brokerages that can really do this in scale, and work this into their marketing programs — that’s where I think the future is.”

Since Google got into targeted advertising, agents and small real estate offices have been “very entrepreneurial” in taking advantage of its ability to deliver potential clients, Sebastian said.

“They could compete with the big boys, and we were building a good set of users,” Sebastian said. Then third-party listing aggregation sites emerged, packaging and selling the leads traffic to their sites generated to brokers and agents.

Google got into the listing game itself, through its Google Base service, which accepts listings from agents and third-party aggregators.

Aggregating listings is not nearly as controversial as it was when third-party aggregators started cropping up more than a decade ago, Sebastian said.

But Google has captured the attention of the real estate industry in recent months by creating individual “place pages” for listings and making it easy to find them in map-based searches

Place pages, Sebastian said, were originally created not for real estate, but as a way to give local merchants a presence on Google. Place pages pull content from around the Internet, such as reviews, photos and other information Google has tracked down, organizing it in one place.

When the implications for real estate became clear — that Google, in theory, could amass a database of every property on Earth — not everybody in the industry was thrilled with the idea.

“We got a little bit of hemming and hawing,” Sebastian said. Some wondered if Google was taking the first step in building a national MLS, he said.

But the sites providing the information indexed by Google are finding that the quality of traffic the search engine delivers to their site has improved.

The plan was not to take business from real estate brokers, but to provide a better user experience, Sebastian said.

“It’s not some evil plan we have in Mountain View (Google’s headquarters in California), with millions of folks talking about how we want to take over the real estate markets,” Sebastian said.

Asked about reports that Google has been talking to real estate search site Trulia.com about an acquisition, Sebastian said he could not comment. (A Trulia spokesman told Inman News in December that the company “does not comment on rumors or speculation.”)

But Sebastian did say that Google is likely to continue acquiring one to two “small and nimble” companies a month, a pace it’s kept up for the last 18 months.

Source: Inman News

Wordpress Blog Platform

I’ve mentioned a number of times on this blog the number of women who are now using social media sites including blogs, to not only research business and products, but who are directly influenced by what they read or research on these networks. The influence of social media on the female internet user is often underestimated by business.

In the US, new research from SheSpeaks highlights that social media networks have become a must for women this year and social network penetration climbed from 58% of internet users in 2008 to 86% in 2009.

When asked about brand related activity on social sites, 80% of female users said they had become a fan of a product or brand directly from a social network. In addition, 72% had learned about a new product or brand, or joined a group around one. To me, one very interesting trend stood out, women were less likely to participate on Twitter with product or brand related activities.

Another interesting point is with actual purchasing of products or services, with one-half of female Internet users buying a product because of a social network. Purchases based on social networking sites and blogs both increased dramatically over 2008.

Users seemed more receptive to social network advertising than they were in 2008, with 9% saying that they always look at ads and often click through, compared with just 2% last year. Thirty percent look sometimes, versus 13% in 2008, and fewer users felt annoyed by ads or actively ignored them.

Brand Related Activity on Social Networking Sites

The ROI for business with a social media strategy that is well set up and planned is well worth the effort and the work put in, and with that in mind, I’ve been really inspired by this research, so much so that I’m prepared to help you get your blogging efforts set up and running for the month of January, I’m going to set up 10 free wordpress installs. No sales efforts, no push, all you have to do is drop me a comment on this post and tell me why you need/want a blog and how having a blog might benefit your business.

To Qualify:

In order to qualify all you need to do is buy one of my hosting packages for a period of 12 months, they are really inexpensive and won’t cost you an arm and a leg. Let me know if you’d like additional information on this.

This is what I’ll include -

• I’ll install and configure WordPress for you. The self hosted version.
• I’ll upload and activate a theme of your choice for you so that your blog looks a million dollars.
• I’ll set up and install add-on software (otherwise known as “plug-ins”) to give your blog a bit of a boost. Things like Disqus commenting, Akismet Spam protection, Tweetmeme, etc.

This is what is not included:

• I won’t move content over from another blog. I’m setting up a brand spanking new blog for you in this case.
• You won’t get personal one-on-one blog coaching. I’m not saying that I wouldn’t sit down with you for some one-on-one coaching if you needed it. It’s not included in this Basic Install. If you’re interested in coaching, then please head over to  Mike Andrew Consulting
• You won’t get tech support. I’m happy to answer any questions that you might have if time permits.
• You’ll need to buy or already have your own domain name as the blog will need this. I’ll help you work out the best domain name for you but you will need to have it ready.

So there you have it, as I mentioned I’ll be happy to do about 10 of these installs so to qualify all you need to do is get writing and leave me a comment, if you already have a blog then please  send the link or recommend this to someone who doesn’t have a blog yet.

If you’re a real estate agent or small business owner just getting into a social media strategy, or already using social media networks such as Facebook and you haven’t yet created a Facebook brand page, then go and create one right now. They are an excellent way of promoting your brand not only to others on Facebook, but also promoting your brand or product via Facebook adds.

If you are considering using Facebook adds or any form of on line advertising then it’s important to understand the searching and viewing habits of the audience you’re trying to impact. Social media sites are changing the way we search on line, and as marketers, relying on this information and understanding where and how your audience views or searches for information on social media sites is vital.

So which are the best days to run your adds or banners, and which days generate the best click thru rates for advertisers? Some new research out today helps shed some light on this and I’ve detailed some of the results for you.

Content posted on Facebook based brand pages has a higher than average click thru rate on a Tuesday, the average click thru rate on Tuesday is 9.89%, the highest of any day. Wednesday follows closely behind with click rates of 9.87%.

Friday and Saturday had the lowest click rates with a very measly 2.67% on Friday and 2.7% on Saturdays. If you  take all the days into account, click thrus for Facebook brand pages average 6.76%. This average is lower than Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday, but still much higher than average CTRs for display advertising across social networks in general, including Facebook itself.

So really what this research means, is that certain days of the week are better for launching a product promotion, and by really understanding how consumers use social media sites, you and your company can start to target where you’ll get the best return on your investment.

In a nut shell, you really need to have a well thought out communication strategy for updating your Facebook brand page, and an understanding of when to create promotions to get optimum response.

Response to your marketing on social media sites is better early in the week then dwindles and picks up again on Sundays.

What I’ll cover for you in the next post on this subject, are results of the latest eye tracking study on social media pages, where are users eyes focused when viewing these pages and how does it differ from other web page viewing.

This has an impact when you’re deciding to use advertising on social sites such as Facebook etc, does your target market actually look at the adds? I’m sure you’ll find that an interesting read.

About the data:The sample data reported is compiled from nearly 200 million fans impressions on Facebook pages over a five-month period (March – August 2009).

Image via CrunchBase

I don’t know about you, but I’m a little over the Twitter fad, I haven’t yet found it a successful advertising or promotion medium and it pails into insignificance when you compare it to Stumbleupon for promotion of blog posts and actually driving readers to your blog or web site.

There are those that will say it works really well for them, but in the last few months I’ve been tracking all the referrers of traffic to this blog and Twitter does not even rate, so either there are a lot of passive followers or as new research indicates very few advertisers think it an effective promotion tool. The survey carried out last month by linkedin Research network/Harris Polls found out of advertisers surveyed only 8% thought it effective.

The study also found that advertisers are more likely than consumers to know about Twitter and are more likely to believe in the microblogging tool’s future power to help promote products and services.

The research, which included surveys of both advertisers and the US public at large, revealed that just less than half of advertisers (45%) think Twitter is in its infancy and its use will grow significantly over the next few years. In contrast, 21% believe Twitter will not move into the mainstream and it will remain something mostly young people and the media will use.

Among consumers, the study found a different picture, especially in terms of awareness. A large majority (69%) say they do not know enough about Twitter to have an opinion about it, 12% think it’s in its infancy, 12% say it is just something that young people and the media use and 8% say it is already over.

Consumer Research Twitter

Effectiveness of Twitter

Among those who have an opinion about Twitter, feelings about the effectiveness of it for promoting products and ideas are lukewarm among both consumers and advertisers:

Among advertisers, just 8% say Twitter is very effective for promoting products and ideas while half (50%) say it is somewhat effective. One-third (34%) of advertisers say it is not that effective and 8% believe it is not at all effective for promoting products and ideas.

Only 8% of consumers say Twitter is very effective for promoting ideas and products and 42% believe it is just somewhat effective. Three in ten (31%) consumers say Twitter is not that effective and 19% feel it is not at all effective for promoting products and ideas.

I’d be interested in your thoughts on this survey either from a Twitter user or follower, just leave me a comment.

Feedback on Content

I’ve had this blog running now for over 12 months and what started as a bit of fun for me has developed into a great passion. The blog has been more successful than I would have imagined, when I started it in June of last year.

Successful, at least in the number of people who read my posts and visit the blog on a daily basis, so I thought I would ask the question of you, what information do you find the most helpful? What content would you like to see me feature or write about on this blog that helps you the most in your business in the next 12 months?

In checking out the popularity of my posts over the past year, some articles that I thought would be popular were not, whereas other posts on Blogging and SEO were very popular, so it’s clear to me that you prefer certain topics over others.  Articles on Social Media for example, have been amongst my lowest read posts.

So the question I put to you is, which of the following topics would you like more information on:

SEO

Technology

Internet Marketing

Social Media

Blogging & Podcasting

Copywriting

Video

Even if the topic is not listed above, let me know what content you would like and I’ll do my best to provide the information you find most useful.

C21 Wins Best On Line Real Estate Ad

Nice to see innovative on line Real Estate advertising recieving recognition, Century 21 has won the award for “Best Real Estate On line Ad” at the Internet Advertising Competition in the US.

The Mother-in-Law series highlights the company’s advanced mapping features by taking a lighthearted look at how a property searcher might use its pinpoint mapping technology to draw specific lines on a map to avoid living near their dreaded mother-in-law.

“Our goal is to capture the consumers’ imagination with our advertising as much as we capture their attention with our exceptional real estate mapping technology,” said Bev Thorne, senior vice president, marketing, Century 21 Real Estate LLC. “This award is an outstanding accomplishment for our brand and further evidence that our online marketing efforts are succeeding in reaching consumers in an entertaining and informative way.”

Congratulations to the Century 21 team, well done!

Every day I visit real estate offices and talk with agents about how to improve their marketing on the web, and part of that presentation looks at social media strategies that are designed to improve their profiles on the search engines and open up new communication channels for them to network on the web. 

Once I’ve done the presentation, I know a number of them will want to head straight to their office and try and get started on their social strategy, and unfortunately a great number of them will end up failing, why? 

The reason a lot of agents fail is because they apply traditional marketing strategies to a new media environment. The rules that apply for print, magazines or brochures will not always work for you on the net or social media, you need to tailor or adapt your message to the strength of the medium and get an understanding of how to communicate to users of the new media. There’s a tendency to take what worked for you in one medium and transfer it unchanged into the new.

Social media is all about the sharing of information and not about product, yes that becomes part of the mix, but should not be the focus of your strategy. As real estate professionals, when you are in a social situation, what do people talk to about when they find out what you do? talk about the weather, no, I’m sure they will ask you about the current market and pick your brain about real estate and information. You’ll more than likely ask them to call you or hand out your business card and then continue to enjoy your social time. Social media is no different, it is not nor never was designed to be a commercial medium. 

New research is backing up this statement with 38% of on line Australians today considering advertising on social media sites to be an intrusion compared with 29% in 2007.

So before you start, read this post, once you’ve read it, then and only then, put your plan into action. Design your strategy and think about how you are going approach social media or digital marketing. 

Remember, it’s about sharing, networking and providing information to your future clients.

Another real estate portal has launched onto the Australian property market and this one with the unusual name of Enormo Australia. Their tag line, “Every property Everywhere” sums up what they are all about as well as being one of the worlds largest property portals with over 7 million properties world wide.

I’ve been playing with the site today and I have to admit to being a little underwhelmed by their search functionality, and I can’t really see what they are doing differently to the other portals.

The site is nice and clean with little clutter and free of annoying third party advertising, but as a consumer tool it’s a very bland offering. Compared to what’s currently available with video and multiple photos etc, this really doesn’t offer me, the property consumer, anything I don’t already have or want. In fact in checking some of the properties, I noticed a lot were listed back in 2008 and 2 examples I looked at were 12 months out of date.

Enormo Australia Front Screen

As I’ve said a lot of times in the past, when asked the question about whether an agent should support new property web sites coming into the market, if it is a free offering by all means, use the site, but if they are charging you to list your properties then you really need to look very closely at what you will get from paying to be there.  Yes, they have a strong international base and if you are looking for that market, then you could justify the cost, but for the domestic market, I’d wait a little longer and look at how they perform locally.

Property View Page

 
When I searched Google for Enormo Australia they didn’t come up on the first page, so that they’ll have to fix.

The cost to you at this stage is US$ 129 for 1 – 100 listings and US$188 for 101 – 1000 listings. This without any qualification on traffic numbers etc in Australia and with Myhome and Homehound still offering a free listing service and struggling to get consumer support, it’ll be interesting to watch how Enormo plans to sell this to the consumer, let alone the industry.

My advice, is wait and see how they perform before you go and spend your money on advertising and listing, particularly when budgets are tight and you need to account for every dollar and make those dollars drive leads.

Now, if one of the portals would look at taking advantage of what is happening with Social media and include as part of or supplemental to the subscription, tools such as Blogging,podcasting and Video logging, all attached to the suburb searches and feeding off the traffic, to me that would be providing you the agents a valuable tool, instead of looking at new product all the time that AM’s struggle to sell.

I’m going to share some information with you all now, regarding my attempts to find out about property last Sunday 5th April, and this is the first chance I’ve had to write this post, so here goes. 

I’ve been interested in looking for a new home because of the interest rates being so low, so Sunday, I was motivated to search some suburbs very near to my local area on the Gold Coast, as I’m an Internet user, my first point of call was, of course the Internet. Just like 9 out of 10 other people in this country, well let me now share with you the frustrations that I encountered in just trying to get the information I was after.

I encountered out of date headlines, in fact one listing had “Must sell before Xmas” as the headline, and this mind you in the month of April, no open for inspection times, so I gather not one agent worked on the weekend, because none of the homes I looked at indicated any open times. Oh, i did find one listing that had an inspection time in the heading, but it was for March 31st!!!. No prices on a lot of the listings, in fact, when I did a price search between $700,000 and $1,000,000 in the area I was really interested in, I did find a fantastic home, so, given there was no price at all on this property, my wife got me to ring the agent, who then told me the property was for sale at a price of $1,300,000. $300,000 over the price search criteria, when I mentioned to him that his property was in the above price search, he coughed and spluttered and said he didn’t know that it was coming up in that price range on the net. 

 He should have taken the time to check it, and I should have called the OFT, because that was just downright annoying.

Of course a lot of the listings also had no addresses, which meant we couldn’t go and check it out, so we had to guess where the property was, and then, I couldn’t send an email from the site I was on due to an internal error, and they wonder why email enquiry is low. Then when I actually got out and found some properties by driving around, cos I really had no other option, Upon trying  to ring one agent to check the price on a block of land, she had no message bank, just a recorded message saying a text message will be sent on your behalf if you hang up now, which I naturally did. 

I then rang their office number, proudly marketed on their for sale sign, only to find it rang out engaged, which it did all day. I then rang the agents mobile again and got the recorded massage again,in fact that happened all day, when she finally rang me back the next day, she left a message on my voice mail saying she’d been in a meeting with clients, What all day?, so all in all a very frustrating exercise. 

AC Nielsen’s research on Internet usage in Australia late last year, found that 9 out 10 buyers,9 out of 10 renters and 8 out of 10 sellers now conduct research on the net and as I found last Sunday, it can be such a frustrating exercise for the consumer, yet all it takes is for you the agents to take a little more care in what you do. I’ll guarantee that if you take the time to make sure your information is correct, that you update your listings regularly, and don’t leave it to your admin staff, you’ll get more leads and property views, also remember, the more frustrated I got, the more I blamed you the agent.

It’s not good for your brand and it’s not good for your reputation.

And please, please, take care in what photos you use, because some of them that I saw were totally useless, but that’s another story for another day.