Real Estate Marketing Blog

Prices Dropping Sales Rising

Everywhere I look I get the down side of the market. Prices are dropping.

In fact, I just got an email this morning from my Pal Mike passing on a recent Inman story.

However, it was my dear ole Dad that emailed me proclaiming that sales have actually increased. What was that? Positivity in this real estate market?

After some prudent use of my Google skills & calling forth all the Boolean logic I could muster, I found it.

Sales of existing homes held steady with a modest gain last month, another indicator that the housing market is transitioning into a more normal market in contrast with unsustainable activity last year, according to the National Association of Realtors®.

Now the naysayers will say, " yes but prices have dropped."

As a marketer, really who cares?

I know most of you have been used to selling based on price. That is why you might be having trouble in this market.

This isn't the danged stock market. Real Estate prices have gone up over the long term for, well... always.

So why sell it like it is a commodity? Where will that leave you? The market knows they don't have to get in now. And they know that if they wait, they have a pretty good shot at a lower price.

What they do not know is that they might not get the home they want right now.

So you have to find value elsewhere. In sales 101 you all should have learned that people buy for emotional reasons and justify with logic. So now that you don't have money lust as your primary driver you will have to find other just as emotional drivers for your prospects to buy. Their logical justifier is long term value, and the greatest logic of all is the tax savings.

As a side note: I always can tell when a company has gotten lazy when they stick the hot 19 year old babe up as the front of their campaign. They got lazy and cannot think of anything else so they go for the hottie. Once the attraction is felt viscerally, the feeling is attached to the company or product. BINGO it works. Sex sells.

( This reminds me of the Long Beach California Realtor who ran a Billboard size picture of herself in a bikini. I wonder if you hired a bunch of Chippendale's dancers for an open house if you could get some play? Hey I'm not gay but I know that women make most of the home buying decisions. But I digress...I really have to stop enjoying my evening Rum & Coke while blogging :-)

I have always felt in a hot market that sales agents get lazy in the same way and immediately go for the money lust driver.  Hey it works.

But what happens? Pretty soon everyone is selling on the same driver. After that, what else do ya got? Go after their most important emotional reasons to buy now and your sales will continue to rise.

If I may be so bold to state that you are their salesman, and your fiduciary responsibility does not, & in fact last I checked,  it precludes you being their financial adviser. If they come to you, then they want a house. Sell it to them without reservation.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Happy Thanksgiving and thanks for reading HouseBlogger.

"Not what we say about our blessings, but how we use them, is the true measure of our thanksgiving." ~W.T. Purkiser

And a cool quote I picked up from a workout website:

Excuses are for people who satisfied with average or less.

Happy Turkey Day!

#10 of Real Estate SEO Myths

#10 of the:

The 10 Myths about Real Estate SEO

1. PageRank & Metatags are everything
2. A top ten position will solve all your sales problems
3. SEO is metatag manipulation
4. Content is King
5. The engines love blogs more than regular webpages
6. Get ranked for the top 20 most voluminous words and you will be successful
7. If you just get rankings and Traffic you will be Successful
8. SEO is the single most important action  you can do for your website
9. Its all about more links!
10. There are magical shortcuts to getting SEO traffic

Sales people,that is Realtors live and die by a sense of urgency. It is their nature. Getting traffic from search engines are not an overnight endeavor however. It is an investment into the next few years of your business life.

Case in point is that if you have a brand new URL and website, don't count on getting traffic for competitive keywords for at least 6 months and probably a year from Google. And so far this year MSN, & Yahoo have been not so favorable either. This has come about mostly because of changes in the business models for MSN (Live), and Yahoo trying to decide on what business they are (forgive my cynicism).

I think the latter will ease up as they adjust, but my point is the SEO for the competitive field of online real estate is a long term play.

Get Rich Quick Syndrome

Many sales people have a hard time putting on a marketing hat which tends to take a longer view. This view is better when looked from a strategic lens than tactical. It takes patience and a deliberate move away from living from the "next thing" to the "next thing", tactic to tactic.

However, I have been pitched by and have reviewed "deals", and "schemes", that many of my own clients have fallen prey.

These deals offer schemes such as "hijacking" 1/2 of Google's and other Engines Screen whenever someone types in your keyword phrase they sell you. Amongst others I got pitched on is a deal to "shadow" your current site.

This deal was rife with a straight path to BAN hell. And sure enough those sites that I know that participated enjoyed a 3 month rise and then ban from every Big Engine.

Don't get me wrong, this is not a judgment. But notice I call these deals, schemes, and a play. Those are words usually used to describe tactics that are short term. Even in real estate you might call a sale a deal. Why? Its not permanent. That money is gone in most Realtors case before escrow or settlement day.

Strategy

Strategy employs tactics to achieve an end result based on your larger vision for your company. We started Spider Juice Technologies when most Realtors did not know what SEO meant. Then, everyone said "oh yah, SEO, all you do is metatags". Then it was trading links. Then it was page rank. Then it was "fill in the blank".

Tactics, tactics, tactics. As David Weiss showed us in his interview, he gets into the heady-geeky stuff, whilst his wife gets the up front sales stuff. I believe thats how Rain City was born with Dustin creating a site for his wife. The site is part of a much bigger vision or plan.

They do the techno crud so the sales person can sell.

So the point of this Rule #10  is that SEO is but a cog in a much larger wheel, which is of 3 other wheels, which is of a bigger vehicle called your business.

The 10 Myths about Real Estate SEO

1. PageRank & Metatags are everything
2. A top ten position will solve all your sales problems
3. SEO is metatag manipulation
4. Content is King
5. The engines love blogs more than regular webpages
6. Get ranked for the top 20 most voluminous words and you will be successful
7. If you just get rankings and Traffic you will be Successful
8. SEO is the single most important action  you can do for your website
9. Its all about more links!
10. There are magical shortcuts to getting SEO traffic

Out Zillowed By Fidelity

Fidelity just released their Web 2.0 answer to Zillow.

Zillow promises "Free Instant Valuation and Data for 67,000,000 + homes .

Fidelity (called http://www.cyberhomes.com/ ) offers ,".. more than 100,000,000 property records".

The reason I have harped on Zillow in the past is for the misleading offer. Instant Valuation.

The Cyber Homes offer is exactly what it is Property Records. Although they do offer an estimate of value (which sucks just as bad as Zillow's), at least it is honest about where it is coming from.

Blogging is All Local

A recent post by the Real Estate Tomato asks:
Why is a nationwide audience a good thing if I specialize in local real estate?

I say its not a good idea as a local agent.

The number #1 reason realty bloggers do not make money is that they comment on larger geographies and issues that are outside the scope of their marketplace.

To quote Jerry Maguire: "Show Me The Money"!

In an interview heralding a couple of bloggers here on the West Coast, a prestigious paper paid tribute to the team's success. When asked however, have you made any money from your blog. The answer was no. I paraphrase as I would rather not mention the team as I am not here to lampoon them.

The Virtual Coffee Room

The common myth is that blog readership is skyrocketing. True, but by whom?

The main readership of blogs are an incestuous mix of other bloggers and Realtors that get caught up in the so called conversation.

If you are a Realtor, I assume that the reason you blog is for the almighty $.

Although it is fun to socialize with other Realtors doing Blog Carnivals and such. Listen to Super Agent Jerry as quoted above. Be careful of these Virtual Coffee Rooms as no one is buying anything from you there.

Most on line bloggers are fixated on the idea of the "conversation". I have just shown you why you are probably talking with the wrong person, if not talking to yourself. A conversation is cute, but how about making money?

The real power of a blog is the ability to create yourself as a thought leader. Now I see this in some cases with agent bloggers, but many times they are trying to influence the wrong person.

Thats akin to calling expireds by opening up the phone book. ( I just dated myself, can you  even call expireds anymore?)

The Blog Hype

I have been around the real estate industry for almost Twenty years as an agent and vendor. And I have never seen anything as over hyped as blogs.

A blog is simply a set of web pages. Commonly called a website. So why blog? It is easier to manage thats why.

Oh I can hear the cries, "But the search engines love them!". That is sooo 2004 people. They love and hate blogs like they love and hate websites. The only cool thing about blogs that everyone should understand is that it forces people to update their website.It is what you should have been doing in the first place!

Think about this, the common seller or buyer may very well land on your page of your blog. They probably don't know that we geeks call it a blog. Nor do they care.(Web visitors are very self indulgent that way).

They are at best a transient subscriber. Meaning even if they bookmark you, write your url onto a sticky note and post it on their screen(yah right), you only have them for a short amount of time before home searching is not of much interest to them anymore. Ie. They bought or sold and are now more interested in Johnie's Soccer game and Mary's recital.

My point is that trying to comment on national issues can only quickly frame you in the wrong place when you want local buyers.

What About Relocation Buyers?

Even someone on the other side of the pond is not going to type into a search engine, "real estate". They attach locality to the search. And they sure as hell aren't going to type in "blog" or "real estate blog". This is SEO 101.

Speak to your market by representing your market in keyword form.

I see way too many bloggers getting way too caught up in the so called blogosphere, instead of worrying about who is and should be reading the thing.

Thought Leader VS. Journalist

The real power of a blog is it gives you a simple interface to prove your credibility in the marketplace. You can even become an expert in your area by writing about local issues. Or even national events as they affect your local market.

After talking and consulting with hundreds of agents and brokerages about succeeding on line, it never fails to astound me at the profound need to please their Writing Teacher from the 7th grade.

What do I mean? Compelling writing, persuasive writing will not happen if you write like you were taught in school. If you can persuade people with your words in the real world, then you have it in you to write persuasively on line.

But to blog successfully, you must find topics that you can take a position on thus establishing your leadership on the subject. If you need topics that matter to your market go down to the local building department and Board of Realtors for a good start.

Remember just like a politician where all politics are local, all blogging is local. For a real estate marketer anyway.One more thing.....

After demonizing the whole "conversation" thing, I am not against participating across the web with other Realtors (If I was one). But I do it knowing that it is a good source of links, and maybe a referral.

NAR Does Their Job

NAR has launched a huge campaign to the tune of $40  million dollars to help frame the  home buying /housing bubble "debate". The Media commentators are posting all over about this major spend.

I say debate because it seems that there are forces that would like to revel in the bad news of lower home prices. Lets face it, an expose on little Mary Jones getting kicked out of her home with her three kids sells papers! Yah sex sells but so does bad news. There is a reason the morning news is basically Tabloid on Video. Then to look just a tad journalistic they love to turn to the bad news. The victims. This is more compelling than saying that foreclosure rates have reached normalized levels over the past few months. That is such a yawner.

The traditional media is a just couple gasps away from death.

TV News ratings are dropping by the month and it seems big Media Outlets like the LA Times have layoffs on a weekly basis. Its becoming the Steel Industry of the early 80's. No Billy Joel songs singing about Allen Town though. Noone is shedding a tear.

So big media wants to point out how bad everyone has it to not only sell, but to get your prospects attention to prove their legitimacy.

So NAR finally has stepped out on the curb and is going to the ropes with this challenge to frame the minds of their buying public. This sounds like marketing or selling. What a concept an organization that supports marketers and salespeople to actually sell.

In a full-page newspaper advertisement running in six of the nation's leading newspapers beginning today, the leadership of the National Association of Realtors(R) is launching a national campaign to urge home buyers who have been waiting to buy the home of their dreams to act now before the market changes.

High Fives to the NAR for finally getting it.

Client Gets Punked

I usually do not place clients on the front of my blog. But this one gets up for the A+ effort.