A Real Estate Discussion Blog

I was recently on a panel to discuss Web 2.0 principles and an interesting discussion ensued regarding if it was actually necessary to have a website anymore as an Agent. 

What sparked the thought was talk around how expensive and labor intensive it can be to maintain optimum search engine ranking.  Another challenge was keeping the content on website fresh and relevant, especially when it is necessary to go through a web developer to update them. 

Ultimately, everyone agreed that the more marketing you are able to do, the better.  But when you are dealing with limited time and resources, you have to make choices.  This lead to the question, is a website necessary?

Fiduciary responsibility to advertising your Seller's listing- When you get a listing, it is your job to get that listing in front of an audience.  The first thing you do is enter the information in the MLS, which automatically gets it in front of a large audience of Realtors.  Further if your MLS or Brokerage has partnerships with other websites, the information is distributed to them.  The listing also appears on your company's and/or Broker's website.  Then we look at the top consumer sites, most of which are free to post to, and your listing can easily appear on all of these by subscribing to a listing syndication service.  Getting the listing in front of millions of people- check.

Electronic Brochure- What about having a spot on the web to direct people to for more information?  Take your pick of almost any site you listing is currently appearing on, and it is bound to have a unique URL (recommended to pick your Broker's site if possible).  Next, simply to go to GoDaddy.com and purchase a web address relating to the property for a few bucks and point it to this listing's page.  Electronic brochure with a customize URL- check.

Farming for new business and lead generation online- This is where a blog can pay off huge, as the benefits of blogging have exploded in the last couple of years.  One could argue that a blog is actually a website.  But this type of "website" optimizes incredibly quicker and often better than a traditional website ever could!  You can take it a step further by easily including a widget in the side bar that searches the IDX, turning the blog into a lead generation tool.  These leads are on top of those that you will receiving from conveying your personality and your expertise to the public through your blog.

These are just some of the reasons why I believe you can have a very effective internet marketing plan without a website.  To take the plan to the next level you can add resources like: subscribing to lead generation services; commenting on other blogs; participating in Discussions and Real Estate Forums; and getting involved in social networks like LinkedIn, Facebook and ActiveRain. 

There are so many resources available to as Realtors (most of them cost nothing or are a benefit from paying dues), you can cast a very wide net online without the trouble of maintaining a website strategy. 

I am curious to hear if anyone has altogether forgone a website in lieu of listing distribution and Web 2.0 marketing techniques?  

This just in, the Zillow family of partners grew a lot bigger today with the addition of all Realogy listings to the site. 

This means if you are a Coldwell Banker, ERA, Century 21 or Sotheby's Agent, your parent company is going to upload your listings to Zillow's marketing platform of 4-5 million users for you on a daily basis.  This will be a great addition to your listing presentation and a new source of free leads!

Zillow.com® Adds All Property Listings From Realogy's Residential Real Estate Brands

Parent company of CENTURY 21, Coldwell Banker, ERA and Sotheby's International Realty will now distribute 700,000 property listings daily via the Zillow® Listings Feed program

SEATTLE, Feb. 19 /PRNewswire/ -- Leading real estate Web site Zillow.com today announced an expansion to its marketing agreement with Realogy Corporation that will result in approximately 700,000 total property listings from Realogy's brand networks to be posted to the Zillow.com Web site on a daily basis. Realogy is a leading global provider of real estate and relocation services, and includes some of the largest and most recognizable real estate franchise systems, including CENTURY 21®, Coldwell Banker®, ERA® and Sotheby's International Realty®. ERA Real Estate was the inaugural partner in the Zillow Listings Feed program, which was announced in October 2007.

"We've been working closely with Realogy for the past four months to showcase its ERA brand and drive significant exposure of its listings on Zillow and traffic to its agents and local brokers' Web sites," said Lloyd Frink, Zillow president. "ERA's participation set the tone for the success of our listings feed program in such a short amount of time, and Realogy's decision to include its other brand listings is a great testament to Zillow's value as a marketing partner."

"Our ERA brand has benefited from the added exposure its listings have received on Zillow.com. The expansion of Realogy's marketing relationship with Zillow to include our other brand networks and Company-owned offices was a natural next step in our online listings distribution strategy," said Alex Perriello, president and CEO of the Realogy Franchise Group. "We look forward to having all our brands receive the same level of online exposure on Zillow.com that ERA has enjoyed in recent months."

Property listings under the Realogy brand networks, which include listings from Realogy-owned brokerages operated by its subsidiary, NRT LLC, will be dynamically uploaded to Zillow on a daily basis, providing its brokerages with additional marketing exposure for their properties while enhancing the search experience for Zillow's users. Upon viewing the listings on Zillow.com, consumers will have the option to click a link to the listing brokerage's Web site where they can locate a Realogy-affiliated agent to guide them through the home buying and selling experience.

Zillow Listings Feeds allows real estate brokerages to post for-sale listings directly to the site in a bulk feed, giving the homes a virtual for-sale sign at no cost, in front of Zillow's 4 to 5 million visitors per month. For enhanced exposure, individual agents can create a free profile page with photos, contact information and more details about the agent, linked directly from each listing. Approximately 100,000 agents have created a profile on Zillow to date, which also allows individual agents the ability to list properties for sale. For more information on Zillow Listings Feeds, visit http://www.zillowfeeds.com/.

Hi Sara,  I am a mortgage broker. What is Zillow and would I benefit from it?  Thanks, Jim

Zillow is a real estate community where each month more than 4 million people visit each month to get their real estate questions answered.  They want to know  things like "approximately what is my home worth", "what is for sale in my neighborhood", and "are mortgage rates going to go up or down".

As a mortgage broker, there are some ways that you can leverage Zillow to grow your business.  But we are currently working on even more!  Click here to register to be the first to know when this new functionality is released. 

Today one of the best ways to demonstrate your expertise is to get active in our Discussions area of the site.  You can search existing discussion threads already happening and jump in the conversation, or you can start your own.  

Here are some examples of conversations happening now:

"I am about to close on a loan, but am thinking of switching jobs, will this affect my loan?"

"Pros & cons of assuming existing loan w/o lender approval"

"How can I improve my credit score?"

You can also search for keywords within the Discussions area.  For example, there are 100 discussions going on right now on the site regarding 'interest only loans'. 

If you don't see a topic you are interested in, feel free to suggest a new discussion thread. 

To get started, you simply need to create a free profile and then type away! 

If you are looking for even more exposure, you can utilize our EZ Ads which are zip code targeted ads that appear all over the site.  You can chose the geography of the ad and the duration of the ad (one week to three months) and you only pay one penny each time the ad is displayed.  This ad can link where you would like it to, whether that be to your home page, a form page that lives on your site, or a page that outlines current mortgage rates. 

Thanks for the question,

Sara

Despite attempts to block the bill by local and state Realtor organizations, the Mass Transit Tax was approved this week by the Chicago City Council. 

In Chicago, Buyers are required to pay $7.50 per $1000 of purchase price for a Real Estate Transfer Tax.  After April 1, this Transfer Tax is going to increase 40% to $10.50 per $1000.    

The latest numbers available from Zillow (Q3 2007), show the average home in Chicago sold for $242,000.  If you buy this average priced home pre-April 1, your Transfer Taxes will be $1815.  If you buy this same home post-April 1, your Transfer Taxes will be $2541.  A difference of $726!!

So if you are sitting on the fence about buying, now is the time to get the process in motion.  Remember is takes approximately 30-45 days to close on a home, which means you should shoot to have an approved offer in hand by Feb 20^th.  Looking for something romantic to do on Valentine's Day?  How about some home shopping!  Let me know if I can help get the process started. 

* Update since writing this blog, this piece can now be found at http://www.zillow.com/static/pdf/Why-Agents-Use-Zillow.pdf. 

Agents who are using Zillow as a marketing tool often ask at trade shows if I have any information they can use in their presentations. 

The answer is finally, yes! 

We are working to get a link to this piece on the site, but if you want to be the first to have it, send me an email and I will get you the pdf.

Zillow helps you connect with buyers, but now we hope to help you win over sellers as well!   

Got a question the other day from an agent who exclusively works with buyers, asking how he can use Zillow to generate business.  The question stemmed from a post I wrote entitled Online Display Advertising For Branding vs Clicks.

Advertising in general for this type of agent can be a little trickier because one doesn't have listings to leverage as a marketing tool.  Here were some of my suggestions for him (all are free!):

1) Create profile, start by clicking here.  Give complete contact information.  Don't just say that you work in Clear Lake, as this could be Clear Lake, IA or Clear Lake, Texas.  List all the various ways people can communicate with you.  You never know if the client's preferred communication is going to be the phone, text, email or live chat. 

Be sure that you write stellar marketing text. If your goal is to get them to visit your site, saying "click here to visit my site" isn't going to make the masses click.  You need to give them a compelling reason to leave the site that they chose to visit in the first and go over to yours.  What is on your site that they can not find anywhere else?  At this point in the game you need to sell benefits of using a Buyer's Rep or using your website, not necessarily yourself. 

2)  Re-purpose some the blogs you have written into articles and post them in our Real Estate Guide - http://www.zillow.com/wiki/RealEstateWiki.htm.  On each article you submit, you will get attribution and a link back to your profile.

3) Get active in the Discussions area of the site.  You can post a new topic to discuss, or you can jump in an existing one.  You can search by topics you are interested in contributing to.  For example, I just did a search for Michigan and got these strings-  http://www.zillow.com/forum/Search.htm?s=michigan.  This is a great way to advertise your expertise, verses yourself, something that buyers react much more favorably to. 

4) On every home we have an section for Home Q&A where anyone can ask or answer on a question and it all gets posted to the site.  Here is an example of a conversation going on around a particular home. Spend time on the site on the site seeing if anyone asked questions you could jump in on and give meaningful answers to.   

Finally, there is our paid advertising opportunities on the site.  You only pay one penny per view (each time the ad is displayed).  You pick the max you want to spend, the zip code, and the duration for the ad to appear.  Here to you need to make sure you are communicating value point, not just saying "pick me because I am me"!  You could advertise things like: click here for free maps of the area, click here to historical appreciation rates, View neighborhood videos here, etc. 

I know there are some buyers out there now, contemplating making a move.  Use some of these tools on Zillow to get in front of them now, as they are just starting their real estate search process. 

These days there a lot of places on online for you spend ad dollars, but to what result?  First let's look at the difference between advertising for brand and advertising for traffic.  I am going to use Zillow as an example, because I have access to results, but the principles apply across any website, even the ads you see here on Active Rain. 

Advertising for Branding

This is an ad promoting your brand in general.  Think Miller Lite ads in the Superbowl.  Everyone knows what Miller Lite is, Miller is just spending millions of ad dollars to stay top of mind the next time you go to the grocery store.  The chances that someone saw one of those ads during the game and then immediately took an action like running to the grocery store to buy beer or put down their Bud Light down and instead grabbed a Miller, is extremely small. 

Example of Brand Advertising:

The click through rate on these types of ads are low, however the reach of this ad (people who saw it) can be quite large. 

The one week this ad ran on Zillow it was displayed 2949 times and had a click thru rate of 0.20%. 

Keep in mind that general click thru rates on branding advertising run 0.05-0.08% (meaning 5 clicks for every 1000 times this ad was displayed).  By running this type of advertising, you are not going to drive a lot of traffic to your website.  You do this type of advertising so that in the future when someone in your farm area decides they want to call a Realtor, your phone rings. 

Here's the problem I see all over the Internet.  A Realtor says they want to increase traffic to their site.  They run an ad like the one above.  They get a very low click rate.  They say the website didn't work for them. 

Keep this general statement in mind- PEOPLE GO TO REAL ESTATE WEBSITES TO SEE REAL ESTATE.  Knowing this, does this ad give people what they want? 

Advertising for Clicks

Conversely, keeping the above statement in mind, let's look at advertising actual real estate. 

Click through rates on these two ads, run for the same amount of time in the same zip codes as the branding ads, was 3.68% and 2.43% respectively.  When shopping for real estate, especially in the beginning of the search, people primarily care about price and location.  Sorry to crush any egos here, but they could really care less who is actually listing the property.  So give them what they want and guide them to you.  Entice them with listings to get them to your lair, where you from there you can demonstrate why they need to do business with you. 

What I really found interesting in this example is that the ad with more information got more clicks.  How many of you out there take the attitude of leaving off one key piece of information to try to lure people to call you for it?  Today's consumer is a lot less likely to take this bait because they know if you aren't going to give them all the information, then they can go somewhere else and get it for free, anonymously, and instantly. 

If they can look at 100 homes with all the information available and then they see your one listing with something missing, they are not going to go to the trouble of calling/emailing you then waiting for a response.  Today's shopper wants ALL information upfront and ultimately will call/email the Agent when they are ready.  They resent being "forced" into this conversation prematurely.  And as a bonus, the clicks the Agent with the more complete ad got, were probably more qualified.   

When advertising for clicks, always incorporate some type of call to action.  "Your Realtor For Life" is not a call to action, it is a branding statement.  Examples of compelling reasons to click: Open House this weekend, $5000 in closing costs, Just Reduced, Still time to pick your finishes, Click here, Free Neighborhood map, Free, Free, Free, Walk to public transportation.... Whatever works in your neck of the woods. 

So sit back, grab a Miller (or a Bud), and think about your objective when doing online advertising, and them make sure your ad creative aligns with this goal.