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

Having just gone through the process of buying and selling our family home, I could relate to this video. The real estate agent who handled both of our transactions did not fall into this category but I had to laugh when I watched it, so please enjoy it before it gets removed.

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

During my research I’ve come across a great video that I thought I would share with you, the video was compiled by Socialnomics09, and is called Social Media Revolution: Is Social Media a Fad?

For those real estate business owners that have yet to consider social media as a business strategy then hopefully this will provide some insights into the On Line world of the future. This video details some facts and figures that are hard to ignore.

I’ve been like a voice in the wilderness promoting the value of a social media within the real estate industry in Australia so hopefully this video will add some weight to my voice.

If you do decide to adopt a social media strategy for your office, make sure you get someone who knows what they are doing, read my post on Fake Social Media Experts before you get fooled to part with your hard earned dollars by these so called experts, or better still, give me a call.

Please enjoy

I’ve had a couple of agents send me emails this week inquiring about QR Codes, so I thought I’d write this post to explain what they are and how you can use them in your real estate business.

QR stands for “Quick Response”, and they are the next generation of bar codes. They have been in Japan for awhile with the Japanese going absolutely crazy over them and they are just starting now to appear in this country.

So what do they do?

• They contain lots of information such as your web site address

• They can be read upside down and faster than a standard bar code

• You can get a QR reader for your phone or iPhone – as long as it can browse the web.

• They can be scanned from a computer screen,a newspaper or flyer, magazine and Property billboard or Listing signboard.

So how does it apply to real estate, by generating a code, which is a simple process, you can apply the bar code to your listing sign board,your advertising including print and magazine or flyers, and people can simply scan the code and your phone will take you directly to the web site that the code has embedded.The code is scanned by taking a photo of the code and the phone then opens up a browser which takes you directly to the URL in the code.

This is a great tool if you want to specify a web site or property for First Home buyers or Retirees etc, as the code will take your reader directly to the URL you have specified. You can create your QR code to send people to a web site URL, a telephone number,an SMS message or text message.

Here’s a code I created, which when read will send you directly to my web site at www.mikeandrewconsulting.com, although I could have scanned any URL and sent you there if I wanted to promote a product or service.

You can add these to your business cards as well, which is a great promotional tool for your agency. You can download a QR reader from iTunes if you have an iPhone and some of the Nokia phones have the reader as standard.

To generate the bar code is a really simple process as all you do is search on the web and you’ll find a site, in fact to make it easy for you here’s the link to one I used.

Good luck and have fun with this, it’s a great promotional tool and you can add it anywhere.

If you’d like to have more information on this or are not technical enough to add it to your marketing, send me a comment or email at info@mikeandrewconsulting.com and I’ll help you out as always.

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.

Great Words of Advice

Today whilst visiting a real estate office we got talking about social media strategies and why as a real estate office they should be working towards implementing a social media strategy, not just to farm new pastures, but also to help them in the optimisation of their web site. During the conversation we got on the subject of blogging, and why creating a blog would help their Internet marketing efforts.

Well I have to admit that over the last few weeks I’ve neglected this blog a bit as I explore new areas and work on my web site, so with a little bit of a guilty feeling, I’ve motivated myself to write this article, and you can probably guess what it is about, making sure you create and maintain a disciplined approach to blogging.

In my research I come across a lot of blog writers who after a period of time, and it’s often around the 12 month scenario, tend to get a little bit of writers block and lose interest in maintaining their blog, which is what happened to myself, and in a number of cases the blog gets abandoned altogether.

The Internet is full of abandoned blogs, left in the wilderness by writers who lose interest.

It’s not easy maintaining a blog on a regular basis, you also have to work hard at maintaining your audience and coming up with new content that appeals to your readers.

So today I’ve written a list of things that I will do to assist me in writing articles for my blogs and I’ve listed them below for you, if you are just starting as a blogger I hope they help set you on a disciplined approach and most of all don’t give up.

1. Set aside 1 hour each day to research for new articles – doesn’t matter what time of day it is, just DO IT! – Talking to other people also stimulates ideas for posts. Mornings I find are much better, I can sit in my pajamas and coffee and read.

2.Write when you get urge - A lot of times I’ll come up with an article idea and leave it till later, in most cases later never comes.

3. Create a list of topics and categories – Then write first about what you like or are passionate about. That way you’ll enjoy writing about your favourite topic.

4. Revisit your old articles - Some of these older stories can be updated and rewritten. As some of these topics are changing almost daily, providing updates on these old stories can generate new ideas.

5. Read other Blogs & Bloggers - This will help to create ideas as well, it gets the creative juices flowing and helps with topics and trends.

6. Subscribe to RSS Feeds - Make sure you get updates delivered right to your computer, and use some of these articles on your own blog. They help break up the style of writing and provide different opinions on topics. But remember, always credit the author of the article.

6. Commitment - Now here is the magic word, once you start you really need to be committed to your blog, so create that list.

That is what I intend to action from today, I put it up on my office wall so that every morning the first thing i see will be the list.

I hope that if you are just starting out, this little list will help keep your blog on track and if you have any additions to the list please share them with me.

How do you choose the right keywords for your piece of copy or blog post to really make sure that you’ll get readers to your blog or that you’ll get a good ranking on Google. It’s hard sometimes when writing, to find the right keywords to use, and even harder to put them into sentences that are optimised for the Internet. So I’ve decided to write a little piece on it for you, and give you a few ideas on how you can choose those keywords and then check to make sure they have enough search volume to rank. Remember my post on Red Widgets and how to include keywords in your article to get a good rank on the search engines, well lets now look choosing the right keywords for your target market.

The first thing to do in your real estate office, and this works really well with any business, is to sit down with all your staff and find out the most commonly used words or phrases your customers use when they contact your office, either by phone or face to face, create a list of these words and then identify the words or phrases most often used.

Develop these into profiles, you could for example have a first home buyer profile, or an investor profile, a green profile, a retiree profile etc.

Determine which one of these groups your article is targeted too and then weave the words that are keywords from each group into your body copy when writing your article.

Technology can be of real benefit to you here, as you can use Google Adwords keyword tool for checking keyword popularity and the tool will give you suggested variations on your chosen keyword.

Another great tool to use to find variations on your keywords is to use Google’s “Wonder Wheel“, now what is this you ask? when you type in a search term on Google you get the results on a web page, on the top left hand corner is a link called “Options”, click on the link and now you have a side bar on the left hand side with a number of options for you to use including one second from the bottom called “Wonder Wheel”.

Click on that and you see the wonder wheel appear in your screen, I’ve included a screen grab below for you which shows a search for Real Estate.

Real Estate Wonder Wheel

By clicking on the Wonder Wheel link, I now have a list of real estate companies, if I click on any of the links surrounding the wheel it gives me variations on my search term

Googles Wonder Wheel

This little tool is really handy for finding matches to your search term or for finding other keyword variations, the best way to understand it is to play around with it for awhile, so go and have some fun.

Image via CrunchBase

With the recent addition of real estate to Google maps in Australia a lot of discussion has been generated over its value to the real estate industry.

So far, to my knowledge, of the main portals only myhome and homehound have uploaded listings to Google, although I’m sure that realestate.com.au and domain.com.au internally have been in discussions about the merits of uploading all their listings to Google.

Google will have a full time job controlling the quality of listings available, and making sure that old, outdated or sold stock is removed, just look at the issues that myhome.com.au faced when it first launched in the market with trying to maintain quality with its listings.

During a presentation to one of the major franchises on Tuesday night I was asked my opinion on this very subject and in follow up discussions with a number of people in the industry, this is it seems, more about the potential changing of the guard than anything else.

There is a feeling in the real estate community that Google may just break the monopoly of realestate.com.au.

Well, I thought I’d provide you with a link to an article that Simon Baker, ex CEO of realestate.com.au has written on his blog about this very subject, will it work for Google and what, if any impact will it have on realestate.com.au in the future.

To read the article click here

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.