Real Estate Marketing Blog

Active Rain

Transparent Pat has written his Happy New Year post about Active Rain.

Active Rain is a multi user platform, nothing more, nothing less. Its success is its multiple users. Thousands I would guess. Its failure is because of its success.

Let me explain. The system rewards the conversation. The conversation is the back and forth that can happen from a blog responding to another blog thru commentary, trackback, or a blog post. Or all of the above.

AR rewards you for anything you post. The more you post the more exposure you get. So each post usually gets a ton of comments. Many are obvious attempts at what we in the off AR world would call "comment spamming". It makes for a very retarded conversation.It also makes for a very incestious community of self focused blogging as opposed to consumer focussed blogging.

This is not the only example of a multi-user blog, but AR was the first to come onto the scene (I say scene and not market because a market implies trade of usually dollars) market with its unique ranking system. And true to the predictions of the book "Positioning", being first to market usually wins.

Win what? is my concern. Move.com killed its buyout of AR. Did they figure out that free means no revenues? But I thought free is the new empowerment model that Web 2.0 is all about. I question that one all the time. Its hard to demand restitution from something you never paid for. Pat offers his advice that AR should offer unique blogs as a revenue model.

I agree, and it is wise to have your brand on your own URL as blogs at sites like AR can be used as brand extensions.

The Consumer Asks Why Do You Matter?

When I consult I teach that the web is becoming more and more about proof of your relevance in the marketplace.

click to see larger view

Active Rain has created a nice model to incentive agents to create content. These agents are only too happy to comply and create in many cases (not all), junk content. As the icon of agents online, I can only wonder what the consumer sees in the many posts like the screen capture illustrates. 

Notice when you pop up the graphic to your right, that the first post is far removed from anything real estate, and is more relevant to an IVillage discussion group. The bulk of comments on this graphic are for this first post. The only post that could be at all interesting to a consumer (other than a consumer looking to confirm the cultural view of a Realtor) is the last one. I snapped this graphic from the front page at Active Rain.

This is what the industry as represented here at AR is saying is their relevance to the single largest asset that the consumer/visitor owns. Can you understand why there is a demand for a Redfin in the marketplace?

Real Living: Real Marketing

This is the a follow up to my last post on the Real Living Real Estate franchise: Modalities in Mail

The article mentioned in DMNews gave a few glimpses to the sophistication of Real Living's approach to marketing.

Some of the more interesting facts are:

• Their marketing focus is on women 25-54
• They have instituted an in house on demand mail house
• The Real Living online and off line material uses Red and Orange, as opposed to the typical industry blues, and yellows.
• The Real Living marketing material use lifestyle images of women as opposed to still houses.
• Since 2002 they have expanded to 63 franchises in 20 states.
• So far this year they have printed 2.2 million mail pieces.
• They say they have implemented social networking on their site.

Continues.....

Content Content Content

The 3 most important words in real estate? Content Content Content.

At least on the web anyway.

The web was supposed to be the great equalizer. Today, it is becoming more and more expensive in money and time to compete.

Putting Your Money Where Your Mouth Is

I found this news very intriguing. A builder of townhouses in Torrance is guaranteeing buyers that they will not lose money on their home purchases.

Vote For HouseBlogger!

We have been put up into the MarketingSherpa Readers Choice Blog and Podcast Award.

All you gotta do is vote for us. We are about half way down the row, under Marketing to a Specific Consumer Demographic.

The criteria that they ask you to vote by is:

• Personality  ;-)
• Usefulness & content value
• Usability & design
• Would you revisit?

Really, more important than anything be aware of some of the great blogs outside of the real estate industry. I find that usually following the pack in any industry is a sure way to "Suck Just a Little Bit Less" (there is actually a story behind this phrase that I will share soon. It was one of the major business lessons in my life). By studying other approaches, you often can find breakthroughs that you may have never considered.

Other Industries Teach Us

I have always used other industry data to help lead us in dominating in the real estate and mortgage industry which comprises most of our client websites. By looking at other markets we can take inferences that lead us to understand new opportunities and solidify hunches.

A new study conducted by Compete Inc. for Yahoo Search Marketing concluded that consumers reached with search are attractive for financial services companies since they are both wealthy and of strong credit quality.

Now, this isn't exactly your direct client, but they share some similarity for sure. The finance industry is pretty closely related to real estate sales, and especially Mortgage Brokering.

"A third of people who are searching on brand terms are looking to establish a new relationship or expand their existing relationship" with financial service providers, said Mike Bailey, managing director of financial services at Compete, Boston.

The study found that 31% of all searchers online are looking for loans.

Now what I find interesting is that however, 80 % of the prospects researching a bank are competitor's customers. 

"From a search marketer's perspective, when I establish a portfolio of terms to put a listing on, I want to make sure I have coverage across general terms, specific terms and brand terms to reach all of the consumers investigating the products that I'm marketing," said Justin Merickel, director of the finance category at Yahoo Search Marketing, Sunnyvale, CA.

This is exactly the approach that we at Spider Juice Technologies use to capture more brand and lead generation for our Realtor and Mortgage clients.

Another interesting phenomenon is that Credit card prospects find it more convenient to apply online -- 83 % via the Web, 5 % through the bank branch and the rest by telephone.

But of those consumers who research their checking, savings and loan options online, one-third to one-half of those who open accounts do so at in-person channels. For example, 56 percent of checking account openings resulting from search were consummated at a branch versus 43 percent online. For savings accounts it was 38 percent in a branch, 60 percent online and the rest on the phone. For loans, the branch's share was 36 percent, the Internet's 42 percent and the phone's 22 percent.

This follows one of our Search Marketing Truths: "People research online and buy offline" . This is why I have argued over and over again that your website must serve one master, that is to capture online searchers names and personal information. All the branding and loyalty building is done after the capture.

Thanks to DMNews.com for much of the information for this post.

Real Estate SEO

When Mike Kehoe of Birdview Technologies reported to the Inman Conference that one of his clients received over an 11% conversion rate, I smiled with pride. For the site mentioned was designed and optimized for traffic and conversion by Spider Juice Technologies. Years of testing and bucking the "common" knowledge had paid off.

You see, we have discovered that the most optimal way for an online Real Estate agent to succeed is thru rapid lead generation and follow up. And in order to escalate your leads, you must start off with an acceptance of your current traffic and lead conversion ratio.

Ask yourself "How many visitors does it take to get to a lead?"

In fact, when we initially interview a potential client often times the conversion is close to 200:1. Depending on design features, you should really get at the most 50:1. And probably 30:1 is more like it.

Conversion comes from on page conversion optimization & Keyword representation.

On Page Factors

Most people have heard of Search Engine Optimization. Few talk about on page conversion optimization.

First of all, this whole concept pre-supposes that you are starting off with a most wanted action (MWA). Sometimes your MWA is Branding, sometimes it is Leads. And many times it is both lead capture and branding that you are asking your website to do.

If Leads are your goal then your call to action is critical. Other features on your page can distract the viewer from your objectives.

On Page factors that may increase or decrease conversion are:

• Asking them to sign up (making your call to action clear)
• A Johnson Box (these are those tabled boxes that break up your body copy)
• Color can attract or distract
• Too many buttons
• Animation
• Offer Placement. Where are you placing your call to action?
• Variety of Call to Action
• Frequency of your call to action

These are just a few of the attributes that may help your lead count to go way up.

HappyVille Real Estate

There is a reason that studies have found that Pay per Click search engine results often render poor conversion rates. Specificity.

The reason is that you can only use high volume keywords with pay per click (PPC). These high volume keywords are by their nature generalized. They are also the most profitable for the engine. But what may profit the engine does not always profit you.  (Thats not to say that PPC doesn't have its place in a search marketing campaign)

9 times out 10, I am asked to "make my site #1 for "My City real estate". While this is a worthy objective, it is at best very short sighted. Words like "City real estate", "city homes", city condos", are all high volume in just about any city you research.

However, a successful marketing campaign must employ search engine click thrus that are made up of general & specific "streams of traffic". This is because traffic is a comprehensive endeavor. You wouldn't just rent out 1 or 2 of your penthouse units and leave the rest your 150 unit apartment complex empty? You couldn't expect profitability would you?

However, this is exactly what most agents do when they go after a few high volume words.

Traffic is made up of the combined visits that come from various inquiries into a search engine.
Each inquiry represents a finite amount of possible traffic determined by the placement in the engine, for a particular keyword phrase.

So long story short, a few keywords aren't going to make your business. You need a Universe of words in order to get monster traffic and lead conversion.

Additionally, not all keywords or traffic are created equal. Step out of real estate monetarily and imagine yourself as Jeff Bezos at Amazon.com. What would delite you more?

500 visitors that typed in "Books"? Or 500 visitors that typed in "Harry Potter"? Or better yet, "Harry Potter, Sorcerors Stone"? The more specific you get, conversion goes up and the closer you can get to that elusive 1:1 conversion.

The challenge however, is that the more specific you get with our keywords, the less traffic you get. So you need to represent a large amount of these specific keywords that produce low traffic by themselves. But combined, create a large stream of very convertable traffic.

By optimizing your on page factors and your keywords that drive people to your site, you will take your visitor to conversion ratio down to a respectable number.

--------------------------

Tim O'Keefe is President of Spider Juice Technologies. His firm specializes in Search Engine Traffic and Lead Optimization strategies. An ex-Realtor himself, TIm has always started a project with the fastest path to profitability as his objective for his clients. You can consult with Tim personally, at 310-533-9145.

Writing a Real Estate Website's copy

A recent Eye Tracking study revealed some huge behaviors that should dictate your real estate website design and writing.

As outlined by Lorrie Morgan-Ferrero , the study proves the importance of headlines and subheads. In fact, it says the visitor gives us 5 chances to influence them thru headlines. It also says that smaller copy is better to force reading while a larger font is better for headlines. Upper left is where the eys is first drawn.

Read More.www.red-hot-copy.com/blog
Read the study directly at http://www.poynterextra.org/eyetrack2004/main.htm.

The Real Estate Brand

A new report put out by the Kelsey Group says that the the differences of brand and direct are blurred online..Source http://publications.mediapost.com

"By 2009, it may be more difficult to distinguish awareness advertising from directional advertising, as digital advertising platforms expand and lines between these forms of advertising blur," states the report, titled "Global Directional Media Forecast."

It says that search marketing, has caused the blur.

The report said that many businesses equate rank with brand equity.

In its forecast, Kelsey also predicts that the global market for digital directional advertising--online business directories, local search, and wireless directories--will reach about $10 billion in 2009, up from an estimated 2.8 billion last year.

Local search, in particular, is expected to skyrocket. In the United States, local search spending is expected to leap to 3.38 billion in 2009, from an estimated 162 million last year and a predicted 418 million this year. Internet Yellow Pages will grow from an estimated 478 million last year to 576 million this year and 1.331 billion in 2009, predicts The Kelsey Group.

Few industries are as competitive online like real estate.

I have always maintained that while your competitor attempts the brand equity thing, you should capture leads, and build brand on the back end once you have made a friend thru your offerings.

Search Affect on Branding

The report, titled "Internet Search Brand Effectiveness Research," studied the impact of search and contextual text ads on an array of brand metrics, including aided brand awareness, unaided brand awareness, brand image association and purchase intent.

For the search listing results, when respondents were asked to name a specific leading brand within a tested industry, they were 27% more likely to name the brand displayed in the top search result spot than those in a control group who were not exposed to the ad.

This is just more proof that Top Natural/Organic positioning and Sponsored Search results benefit your brand.