Online Real Estate Technology

Earlier this week I was a presenter at a training session in Sydney run by one of the major real estate franchise groups, and my topic for the session was “How to Market More Effectively Using On Line Technology” , or in other wards, how to write better copy to be found on the search engines such as Google and Bing.

The first part of the day focused on writing for print, and the presentation really was quite good, it focused on writing clean copy with no clutter and writing catchy headlines and avoiding cliche’s.

A lot of time and effort went in to focusing on the print side, how to submit your editorial, when was the best time to do so, what style of writing does the editor like etc, and then, when looking at the end result, which had been written up on a white board, I thought about how those headlines or keywords would research on the web. A lot of agents simply copy and paste their print copy onto the web, with no consideration of keywords, search phrases etc.

You really have no idea whether your copy or headline will have any impact on the property searcher unless you have a clear understanding of how they search on the web, what phrases do they use, what are the trigger words or keywords they search for, these are all the questions you need to answer before you submit your copy to the web.

It’s even more important today, with Google’s real estate section now publishing listings, because anything that is published on the web, will be indexed by search engines, so make sure you start to optimise your copy with keywords or phrases that target your market, if you don’t, you’ll end up not showing on the search results, or being missed by your buyers, and whilst those headlines look OK in print, they may not work on the web.

With 9 out of 10 property searchers starting their property search on the web, how much time are you going to spend on your research to get it right. So lets give you a few ideas on where to start: A really good place to start your research is in your own office and for a refresher please read my earlier post “Choosing the right Keywords for your Content”

The post I’ve highlighted will give you some really good ideas on keyword research, so next time you sit down and start brainstorming ideas for your headlines and listing copy, give some thought on how your buyer searches on the web and what phrases or words they use, if you do that you’ll have a head start on getting your property found on the web.

Be aware of what you publish in your property advertising

Writing good property listings for the internet is all about content and creating cut through in a very cluttered market, but what content should be included?

In this day and age, real estate agents need to be aware of what they write and publish in listings either on the net or in traditional media.

In an article written by solicitor Tim O’Dwyer on the Australian Real Estate blog, he warns that information you provide in your listings, if found to be deceptive at a later stage, can result in you being sued and the contract cancelled. 

Here’s a snapshot of some of Tims article: “The Supreme Court of New South Wales recently ruled that the buyers of an off-the-plan property were entitled to a rescission of their contract and a deposit refund because the estate agent for the developer had engaged in misleading and deceptive conduct. These inexperienced investor-buyers had relied on baseless representations in newspaper advertisements that the value of the inner city terrace units being marketed by the agent would double in five years. A major law firm soon issued a media release suggesting that, in a falling market, off-the-plan buyers might try to get out of deals done years earlier by relying on pre-contractual mis-representations. Property developers and their agents were warned “to carefully check the wording of their advertisements or other representations” to make sure they were “based in fact”, while any statements regarding future value must have a “reasonable basis” with further information being provided to qualify those representations”.

So be very careful what information you include in your on line property listing, check all information carefully before you include it and publish it on the net.  Also make sure that you flag your properties as “under contract” or “sold” and move them to the sold data base on the portals when the deal is complete. I’ve had cases where the Qld Dept of Fair Trading had contacted me in my role with realestate.com.au after consumer complaints to them, about agents not flagging properties as under contract or sold. The consumers can get very annoyed about this and they don’t think very highly of agents who they see as wasting their time. 

If in doubt, don’t include it, and if it’s sold, move it!

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.

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

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.

The content that consumers look for in your property listings is constantly changing and more often today is being driven by what market forces are at play. For instance in the new NAR 2008 Home Buyers survey, a very important consideration is the suburb and the properties location to the buyers workplace. This is being driven by the higher price of fuel, yet how many real estate agents reflect these social changes when writing copy for the net? 

Do you change your copy content to match the market? Well, after conducting some real estate office audits this week on the Sunshine Coast, the response to that question from me would be no! So lets look at what should be included as part of your on line copy to maximise the response from buyers to your listing. 

Suburb choice is now very important in the selection of a home, what schools are in the area, how far is the local shopping centre or local transport, what is the street appeal of the suburb and the list goes on.

I’ve just recieved the October 2008 PRD Nationwide consumer research on this and have included the results for you below:  

What are the features you would find most important when deciding to purchase a unit or apartment?

Whilst this is aimed at the unit/apartment buyer, location of schools, cafes and shops is very high on the priority list and I don’t believe this is very different from those priorities of the home buyer.  

57% of people who will click on your listing during the search process will be female, so write your listing with the demographic and gender in mind. These people are in research mode and will be researching properties and suburbs to see what information they can find about lifestyle conditions in the area, as well as practical considerations such as travel time etc. Use www.walkscore.com to help generate local area information, walkscore will tell you the distance to local amenities such as parks, shopping centres, local transport etc.  Cut and paste the images of the maps in your photo selection to indicate the local area and provide this under “your local expert” tag.

The best layout of your listing, should be as follows:

Headline – Sells the lifestyle and gets attention so make it strong

Property Information – This is the nuts & bolts of the property.

Suburb and lifestyle Expectation – This is the what’s in it for “me” section and why i should buy here, more importantly, this is the part that provides the emotion and expectation of what the area provides, so use this section wisely.      

Call To Action - This is where you market yourself, don’t leave this out, this is where you ask for the order or the lead, and way too many times agents leave this off. In the recent CAR home buyers survey, 45% of consumers said that agent contact information was a very important part of the information provided to them on Internet listings.

Real Estate agents should market themselves as the local experts in the area, but make sure you are what you say you are. 

Now one word of warning with all of this, don’t go and write War & Peace, make sure you provide succinct information that is relevant to the search and selection process. If you add too much waffle, the consumer will close you down, make it relevant information that will assist them in making the decision to go to the next step and that is to contact you. 

I’ll cover the new NAR 2008 Home Buyers Survey in more detail for you in the next few days.

Hi All, I’ve now got the final dates for the follow up seminars to our recent presentations on the future of internet marketing. These are the special request seminars and the subject is ”Writing Copy for The Internet” and I’ll also cover what content consumers want and how your on listing should be formatted. There will also be a few other little surprises on the day. The follow up dates and locations are listed below:

Sunshine Coast: Wednesday 5th November 9:00am to 11:00am - Creek Hotel Karrawatha Drive Buderim

Toowoomba:  Thursday 27th November 9:00am – 11:00am Toowoomba Showgrounds

Bundaberg: Tuesday 9th December 9:00am – 11:00am Spinnaker Restuarant Bundaberg

If you would like to attend, please contact David Foki at Domain.com.au. His number is 0458 220 091

Today I’ve just finished the second of the domain.com.au power breakfasts here in Qld and we will continue the series over the next few months with Bundaberg next Wednesday and then it’s off to WA & Perth during the second week in November, followed by Adelaide in SA just after that.  I know after the feedback that I received directly after the seminars had finished that there is still a real need for training and advice on internet marketing for real estate agents. One question that does come up quite frequently is getting your listings to work more effectively in driving both property views and email enquiries. As a follow up to this current seminar series, we have planned to run writing successful copy for the net seminars in each of the regions that we have been to so stand by for that, I’ll be letting you know via this blog the locations,dates and times for each of these follow ups. I’ll also then conduct all the Audits or Health Checks on the offices that have requested them of me.

I thought as a starter to this that I would look at publishing for you a Best Practice Check List that can be printed and placed next to your computer or given to your admin staff as a check list. This is by no means as complete as what I will go through for you during the copy seminars, but it will give you the basics on what to check and tick off before placing your property on line.

This is a starter to introducing a best practice policy within your office. The link is below, please click on it and print the list and place next to your computer, and don’t put a listing on line with out ticking every box.  As always have fun and let me know if this is helpful to you.      

Good-Online-Advertisement-check-list

I’ve just completed a technology presentation on Hayman Island to members of the north Qld zone of L J Hooker and what a great bunch of people they all are. I had a lot of fun with them yesterday and during the follow up conversations with the team, the question of what constitutes a good listing on the net was asked of me.

I decided to revisit some research conducted by Yahoo some months ago about the changing nature of on line real estate search habits. An interesting point raised by Yahoo is that the consumer is now searching through the search engines and mainstream portals to delete properties from the search, not include them. In the early days, consumers would search the web to find properties, now it appears the pattern has changed.

So what can you do to make sure that you and your properties are not deleted from the search. First thing, is to make sure all your listings on the net are complete and that you include full and relevant descriptions. Include as many photos, virtual tours and better still video on your listing and change them regularly. Remember,frequently updated information is King. Heres the list of the 7 Sins of Listing Management below for you.

1. No Indication of Price – 92% of on line property searchers recently surveyed said they would not look at a property without a price.

2. No Photos or insufficient number – 72% want more than 5 photos, include as many as possible including virtual tours and video and floor plans.

3. No Street Address – 74% of property searchers indicated an address was extremely important and said they drove past the property before contacting the agent.

4. Tacky Headlines – Real Estate based headlines such as “ Will sell fast so you must hurry”, or “Be Quick” etc do not work, and remember the older the listing the more irrelevant the headline becomes.

5. Short Descriptions with Useless Information – Create a consistent approach within your office to providing the essential content that property seekers want. Make sure all relevant information including all features and benefits as well as your call to action and suburb information is included. Remember, you are the suburb expert.

6. Layout of your Listing – Using bullets points to highlight features and benefits makes your listing more reader friendly and make sure you don’t use long sentences, break them up into smaller paragraphs to make your listing easier to read.

7. Out of Date Information – Make sure your listing is up to date, remember consumers do not like seeing old or outdated information, make sure you have the latest available information on the property. It is you and your brand that will suffer if you don’t provide the best information possible.

If you find this helpful, I’ll add some copywriting for the web tips in a later post, so as always, let me know if you find this post helpful. Remember, always check your spelling before uploading!!!!

Good Luck

Mike