marketing-interactive

2010-03-29T05:43:00.000-07:00

In the heat of the tweet - Twitter growth chart

2010-03-09T05:24:00.000-08:00

Master the Lead Game through social Media

Some real estate pros have been reluctant to try social media because of the massive hype, trendy names, and unfamiliar practices. Others have found a competitive advantage and new ways to connect by diving into Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Flickr and YouTube. Despite market doldrums, social media in real estate is growing at a furious pace.

Many real estate professionals missed the inflection point where Internet marketing surpassed traditional channels in value and effectiveness. While some agents continue to question its value, real estate rock stars already use social media to:

Generate local exposure and word-of-mouth
Increase Web site and blog traffic
Build their contact lists and new business partnerships
Answer expertise requests
Connect with clients and qualified prospects

The traffic that social media drives to real estate Web sites is currently about 3 percent of the total audience. But given its explosive growth, real estate pros can ignore social media’s potential at their own peril. A quick look at the numbers shows that social media is changing the way millions of people—including your target audience—communicate:

Facebook claims more than 250 million users; 30 million access the site through mobile devices
Twitter has 30 million users and its year-over-year growth is over 1,000%
Google and other search engines are weighting social media more heavily in search results Real estate traffic from social networks like Facebook, YouTube and MySpace is booming

If you make a living in the real estate industry, you not only have to be ready for technology changes within the industry, but from outside. If your target audience embraces mobile technology and social media, you must master those channels as well. Get used to it. The number of marketing options will only increase in the future.

Many agents and brokers are excited about exploring social media and mobile marketing, but not sure what can be expected in terms of ROI. The good news is that new and old school technologies can be measured.

To read more on how social media can increase your real estate business download our FREE ebook http://www.eneighborhoods.com/report_leadgen.html

2010-02-23T18:28:00.000-08:00

Power up your presentation skills to meet 2010 commission goals

Each year, U.S. corporations spend thousands of hours and millions of dollars on advertising and promotion to create opportunities for their sales teams. But too often, the lion’s share of those dollars and hours invested don’t pay off.

Why? Nearly every promotional dollar spent is about getting to that all-important initial meeting. But once the meetings are scheduled, many sales pros deliver presentations and proposals that simply are too weak to move prospects to the next step. It's probably too much to say that every dollar that doesn't result in a personal meeting is wasted, but it's a dollar that won't help you reach your sales goals.

In any type of sales, the fastest way to earn more is not adding more prospects to your pipeline – it's converting more of those prospects to clients.

Unless you have a secret formula, generating more prospects and leads for your pipeline also means spending more money and time. If you operate on a local level, there are a limited number of prospects in your market. By becoming a more effective presenter, you can you can build your bottom line without spending one additional hour or dollar on promotions.

In the end, it doesn't matter how brilliant your knowledge, insights and solutions are if you don't present them effectively. Your ability to turn more presentations into closed business can be called your "propose-to-close" ratio, which shows how effective you are at turning prospects into clients. If you set up four meetings with prospects and one becomes a client, your propose-to-close ratio is 25 percent.

Make presentations your competitive edge

Focusing on your presentation power may be the single best investment you can make in 2010. First, few sales and business development pros make it a priority to continually improve their presentations, so there’s a clear competitive advantage. It’s also a small expense with huge potential results. To help you get the most from each meeting, here are some ideas to deliver more profitable presentations and a simple way to measure and improve your sales success in 2010.

- Play a role. Many veteran sales pros consider themselves masters at marketing presentations. Unless you're turning every prospect you meet into a closed sale, there's room for improvement. Early in your sales career, you may have experienced the power of role-playing in overcoming objections. Role-playing is still one of the best ways to build sales power and effective listening skills. Before meeting with buyers or sellers, consider role-playing with a colleague who will provide a candid critique of your current skills.

- Personalize your presentations. Do you prepare for every presentationthe same way, with the same materials? If so, please take a moment to close your laptop computer and use it to smack yourself in the head. Web and mobile resources featuring maps, charts and video have raised the bar for consumer expectations. Younger buyers and sellers raised on special effects and 3D animation are not impressed with black-and-white printouts. Your in-person presentation materials should be equal to or better than the materials they just saw on the Web or their smartphones. Invest in the tools to make personalized, high-impact presentations you can tailor to individual buyers and sellers.

- Tell a story. Most people’s brains are wired in such a way that they soon forget facts and figures, but they remember stories. With so much product information available online, consumers quickly become overwhelmed by data. It’s been said that reports convey information, while stories convey experience. You should know your product facts and statistics by heart, but your goal in the meeting is to create a shared experience with prospects that makes them feel comfortable working with you. Don’t tell people how fantastic your solutions are, let them learn it from the success stories and experiences you share.

- Profile your prospects. In today’s Web and social media world, it’s easier than ever to profile your prospects. Google their names and professional information. A few minutes of research on networks like Twitter, FaceBook, LinkedIn can help you better target your presentation and help identify a prospect’s goals, priorities and background. Your presentation for a graphic artist would probably be very different then one for an engineer. Once you learn what they know, learn who they know. It’s always helpful to mention someone you know in common, particularly if that person thinks highly of you or is a past client. If you feel comfortable, call the person you know in common and ask for a referral prior to your meeting. You’ll blow past the getting acquainted stage and move on to productive advisor status much more quickly.

No goals, no glory

What you don't measure, you can’t improve. This oft-repeated business maxim is oft-repeated because it’s true. Just by committing to continual improvement and measuring your progress, you can become a more powerful presenter. Remember, if one presentation can change your career – imagine the financial impact of making the most of every presentation.

2010-01-04T08:07:00.000-08:00

Prospect where there is gold—online
According to a California Association of Realtors® study, traditional agents earn $36,700 annually. Internet agents earn more than $100,000.

Where is this real estate gold? Mostly, it’s online. The percentage of home buyers who begin their search online is north of 85 percent and climbing, while sellers begin researching listings, neighborhood information, home prices and more long before contacting a real estate agent. Internet agents were
identified as those who generate 70 percent or more of their leads from online efforts, sold one home each month as a result of online marketing efforts, and who realized that their livelihood depends on how well they attract prospects online.

Internet agents don’t waste time duplicating what the Internet does—they complement Internet information with their own neighborhood knowledge, marketing and transaction skills. They begin where the Internet leaves off. Why is it that so many real estate pros don’t focus on prospecting and lead generation? One reason is that many of today’s most important prospecting strategies—search engine marketing, email, social media, mobile marketing and direct response—are not key skills for many real estate pros.

Two skills you must master are evaluating leads and optimizing your marketing mix. Only you can identify the most effective lead generation strategies for your practice and local market. Then, it’s a matter of ramping up the effective activities while eliminating unproductive activities and driving down costs.
To learn more on how you can master lead generation http://www.eneighborhoods.com/report_leadgen.html

2009-12-08T08:11:00.000-08:00

Talkin’ about lead generation

Real estate boils down to a fairly simple job description: Generate leads and turn them into closed business.
–Real estate columnist and coach Bernice Ross

Leads are the lifeblood of any real estate practice. Along with converting prospects to clients, lead generation is probably the most profitable task you can block into your schedule. It’s not overstating the case to say that lead generation skills mean the difference between success and failure in a changed real estate market—just ask the thousands of former real estate agents who fell by the wayside in recent years.

Why? They simply lacked a cost-effective way to create a steady stream of leads. When listing opportunities dried up, so did their real estate careers. With fewer active buyers and sellers in today’s challenging market, it’s more important than ever to make the most of every opportunity to generate leads and turn them into personal contacts.

Today’s do-more-with-less business climate means operating with scarce marketing resources, so it’s important to invest wisely in lead generation.

Converting prospects to qualified leads is the first link in the chain of conversions that brings your business to life. Without a consistent lead generation program, you may never get to the client service activities most real estate pros consider to be their core strengths: presentations, proposals, offers, negotiations and closings.

Master lead generating skills with this free ebook: http://www.eneighborhoods.com/report_leadgen.html

2009-10-28T14:10:00.000-07:00

Check out this audio slideshow tool

2009-07-15T07:18:00.000-07:00

Realize that telling isn’t selling!

Many of us have attended a sales training course and heard this familiar refrain. It’s not enough to tell your prospects about features and benefits – you must also SHOW them. That’s why the best way to present real estate knowledge is visually. Buyers want photos, video, virtual tours, and 3D maps to help them understand properties and neighborhoods quickly and easily.

It’s also important and crucial to recognize that this trend is accelerating especially with young buyers who are currently emerging as a force to be reckoned with in real estate transactions. Younger buyers also known as generation Y are individuals who grew up on blockbuster movies with special effects and playing 3D computer games; are not going to be happy with columns and rows of data. Younger buyers are visually stimulated.

The best way to make complex information easy to understand is to make it visual. It enables you to show the relationships and comparisons that can make buying and selling decisions easier. Find out other ways you can attract buyers.

Download this free real estate ebook: Stand Out and Sell More: Using Real Estate Knowledge to Build Your Business http://www.eneighborhoods.com/report.html

2009-06-30T07:31:00.000-07:00

In Real Estate, Deliver Knowledge not Data

Full service real estate pros know how to compete with information overload and are comfortable stepping in to supply information where the Internet leaves off. Buyers and sellers need a trusted guide to transform overwhelming information into valuable knowledge. Real estate pros who know the difference between data, information and knowledge will be a step ahead.
Real estate information overload on the Internet also presents issues for agents. It doesn’t:

Data is unstructured, individual bits of information, such as MLS data some agents give their customers.

Information can be defined as data displayed graphically in maps, graphs or charts that can help buyers quickly understand the details of homes, schools and neighborhoods.

Knowledge is information that can be applied to a specific client’s circumstances to make better buying and selling decisions. Real estate knowledge that answers practical questions – Is this neighborhood more or less expensive than my current neighborhood? – will help you win business.

Make information overload work for you. Too much information will raise concerns about choosing the wrong house, the wrong neighborhood, wrong school or wrong financing. The key is listening to your buyers and to anticipate the information they really need. If you can cull out the misinformation and non-relevant information, buyers will appreciate your service.

In addition to helping you win business, real estate information can help real estate pros avoid steering issues. Agents can’t say whether a school is good or bad. But they can deliver a report comparing SAT scores, graduation rates, student-to-faculty ratios and other information that can help their clients decide.

It’s your role to package, personalize and interpret information for your prospects, buyers and sellers. And the best way to make complex information quick and easy-to-understand is to make it graphic. Want to learn more ways in which you can deliver knowledge to prospects? Download our free ebook Stand Out and Sell More: Using Real Estate Knowledge to Build your Business. http://www.eneighborhoods.com/report.html

2009-06-25T06:05:00.000-07:00

Take back the information advantage

Real estate professionals historically have held a clear information advantage. Listing and neighborhood information was locked up in 3-ring binders or dumb terminals tucked away in brick-and-mortar real estate offices. Buyers and sellers needed to work with real estate pros to get the information, or fly blind.

In the 1990s, the tide began to turn – eventually into a tidal wave of real estate information across the Internet. Neighborhood demographics, sales trends and robust listing information appeared on thousands of websites. As the information advantage shifted toward consumers, some traditional realtors were caught by surprise, and many thought that advantage would never be regained.

Today, agents are less frequently recognized as a valuable source of information. A 2008 study by the California Association of REALTORS® showed 10 percent of respondents found the Internet a more useful source of real estate information than agents. The percentage of respondents who found Internet information less useful than agent-provided information has declined sharply since 2004.

How can you differentiate the information and expertise you’ve built throughout your career from something your clients can pull up on Google? Follow the guidelines in this special report to give your clients information they need and can’t get on their own, marking you as the true Neighborhood Expert.

Download this free ebook: Stand Out and Sell More: Using Real Estate Knowledge to Build Your Business http://www.eneighborhoods.com/report.html

2009-06-15T11:48:00.000-07:00

The Secret Formula for Increasing your Income is Really no Secret.

In real estate appraisal terms, the “highest and best use” of a property is how that property would be used most efficiently or profitably. In the same way, the highest and best use of your time as a real estate professional means making the most of those events that lead most directly to income-generating activities– sales, referrals and repeat business.
In other words; Spend more time with better prospects, using better presentations and proposals.

Real estate’s top performers and coaches will tell you the highest and best use of your time is in personal meetings, proposals and presentations. That’s why it’s vital to have a system to make the most of every marketing proposal, open house, and buyer showing. A system that enables you to convert more prospects to clients may be the best marketing investment you can make.

If you think you don’t have time to provide detailed neighborhood knowledge, consider the benefits. If you’re trying to sell a fixer-upper in a desirable area, it’s important to let buyers know about potential appreciation. When working with buyers, it’s a good idea to “sell the neighborhood” along with individual homes. This provides an opportunity to maintain buyer interest and loyalty even if a particular property is not available or doesn’t work out.

Want more tips on how you can increase your income? Download our free ebook Stand Out and Sell More: Using Real Estate Knowledge to Build your Business. http://www.eneighborhoods.com/report.html

2009-05-11T12:22:00.000-07:00

Welcome to our new format – the 2-minute real estate coach! In today’s challenging market, eNeighborhoods subscribers are telling us their concerns:

1. Looking for ways to work smarter and faster

2. Interested in business-building tips for recessionary times

3. Making the most of their marketing dollars. Staying motivated, organized and productive

We hear you! With our new format, we’ve teamed up with our sister company Homes.com to offer today’s best ideas and success strategies from the industry’s leading real estate professionals and coaches. Send comments this way: Success@eneighborhoods.com
_______________________________________________________________________
Are you making the most of every meeting, proposal and presentation with your eNeighborhoods products? Real estate information is all over the Internet today, but does it really deliver what buyers and sellers need – and you need – to be successful?

Here are a few thoughts on how real estate pros can take back the information advantage while building their brands and delivering the first-rate service buyers and sellers expect from a full-service real estate professional: Knowledge is (earning) power

Today’s top real estate pros know how to compete with information overload on the Internet and turn it to their advantage. Buyers and sellers need a trusted guide to transform information overload into valuable knowledge. To solve the “too much information, not enough understanding” problem for prospects and clients, it’s important to know the difference between data, information and knowledge:

Data is unstructured bits of information, such as the MLS printouts some agents give their customers.

Information might be defined as organized data. Examples include maps, graphs or charts that help buyers and sellers see relationships and make comparisons. Knowledge is information that can be acted on to make better buying and selling decisions (and results in higher satisfaction, with you, their agent).

It’s your role to package, personalize and interpret information for your prospects and clients. Is this neighborhood more or less expensive than my current one? Are the schools better here? Can I afford the taxes? Real estate knowledge that answers practical questions helps you win business.

The best way to make complex information quick and easy to understand is to make it visual.

Visual impact = financial impact

Many people are visual learners, and the best way to present real estate knowledge to them is visually. Buyers expect photos, video, virtual tours, and interactive maps to help them select or reject properties quickly and easily. Younger buyers who play 3D computer games and watch special-effects movies in high definition are unimpressed with columns and rows of data from an MLS printout.

Important: In addition to helping you win business, neighborhood knowledge can also help you avoid mistakes like steering issues. You can’t say whether a specific school is good or bad. But you can deliver a report comparing SAT scores, graduation rates, student-to-faculty ratios and other information that can help their clients decide.Eager to show off their knowledge, many less-experienced real estate pros spend lots of time feeding their opinions to their clients. More seasoned agents know that buyers and sellers trust their own judgment above all, and help them arrive at their own conclusions. The result is often a smoother transaction and clients who are more comfortable with the buying and selling decisions they have made.

This article is from the upcoming eNeighborhoods Special Report:

Build Your Career and Your Profits with Neighborhood Knowledge

It’s coming soon and we’ll notify you when it’s here. Get ready to build your business - and your profits – with Neighborhood Knowledge!

2008-10-20T10:47:00.000-07:00

Six tricks: Keep marketing content on track

For veteran copywriters and content providers, it's always gratifying to see research highlighting the effectiveness of text copy to attract online visitors, persuade them to take action, and ultimately drive sales. Text copy will always be a key driver in marketing and sales, but in the evolving online, multi-platform world, it's no longer sufficient to seek comfort in the "content is king" credo and write on.

Why? For all types of marketers, the true north of actionable content has always been to make it relevant and deliver it to the right audience at the right time. These same principles apply across platforms, whether content is distributed through Weblogs, streaming media or podcasts.

But as people become more sophisticated and diverse in the types of content they consume, the application of simple rules becomes more difficult. Is your content breaking news or old news? If you're not sure, here are six tricks to ensure your content retains its regal status:

Mind your medium: Today people have the opportunity to interact with more types of media than ever before. Your message could be delivered through an animated billboard, podcast or a branded desktop application. You probably wouldn't send the same content to a senior corporate executive and a 19-year-old gamer. But many organizations will try to reach both target audiences with the same marketing channel. While television may reach both parties, it may not be the most effective way to reach either one. It's said that more than $50 billion is spent annually on television advertising, but young males may spend more time playing video games.

In your eyepath: Eye-tracking is an increasingly popular way evaluate web pages because eye movements provide insights into the human thought processes that cannot be derived from surveys and self-reporting. On a very practical level, eye-tracking has confirmed things like scanning behavior and "banner blindness" in web users. Although studies have underscored the relative importance of text versus graphic content, they have also shown that people habitually scan rather than read, skipping large portions of text on every page they visit. Use color, bolding, bullets and subheads to break up copy so it can be easily scanned.

Target your list: Direct response diva Lois Geller champions a quick formula to identify the components of success in direct marketing campaigns: The offer and list are each responsible for 40 percent of campaign success, with creatives accounting for the remaining 20 percent. You may have extremely relevant and valuable content, but if it's sent to the wrong list, you won't make a connection. The best practices of direct response marketing have been developed for more than a century, and they still provide valuable direction in the 2.0 world.

Remember the offer: All the persuasive and elegantly written copy in the world can't make up for the wrong offer at the wrong time. If your campaign is underperforming, and you’re fairly certain you are sending the right creative to the right audience, then you probably have the wrong offer. There aren't that many moving parts... time to test some different offers to see what's most attractive. If this offer-list-creative trio is beginning to sound like the old CLUE board game (Mr. Mustard in the conservatory with the candlestick), it should. Put the three together in the right combination and you've found the killer (marketing campaign).

Keep it in order: It sounds basic, but a quick survey of print ads, emails or web pages will yield plenty of examples of putting the cart before the horse. The problem of ordering your message becomes more difficult as technology provides people with more and more control over how they consume media. In many cases, a solution is pitched before a compelling business problem is outlined. In others, the proposed solution may follow the problem too closely. Especially in more expensive or complex sales, let your content and campaign establish relationship with successive degrees of involvement. Print, broadcast or interactive, the right content in the wrong order is a recipe for mediocre results.

Consider the source: While telling your own story is an essential skill for marketers, sometimes it's better to let someone else take the podium. A great rule of thumb from Marketing Experiments is to back up your own claims with data, while leaving qualitative praise for your product to customer testimonials. The same can be said for online credibility indicators such as seals and certificates. Placing the Verisign logo or Better Business Bureau seal next to your checkout form is probably simpler and more effective than creating a long explanation of why prospects should trust you with their credit cards. And if you can get Steve Jobs, Seth Godin or Guy Kawasaki to say anything at all about your product, that would help too.

Get eNeighborhoods’ Now's the Time to Buy Free Special Report today.

http://www.eneighborhoods.com/time

2008-10-06T12:08:00.000-07:00

When is a Good Time to Buy a Home?

No one wants to purchase a home only to see its value decline. But should you wait to buy a home until prices bottom out? A quick web search will yield a number of articles and opinions for and against timing the real estate market, but beware of those in favor of market timing who also want to sell you a how-to book or system.

Many people who have tried to time the market miss out on the chance to build equity by waiting to buy until prices rise again. The chart below shows the gradual increase – along with typical ups-and-downs – of home values over nearly 40 years. The arrows indicate market low points when home values dipped before continuing their historical rise.

The problem? Market cycles only become clear in retrospect. In the midst of a market slowdown, it’s very difficult to predict when housing prices hit their low points. In addition, this trend line represents home prices at the national level, which may be very different than housing prices in your neighborhood. Broad national indicators may lag the market by months – meaning the actual price floor would not show up in reports until weeks or months later.

The best way to protect against buying at the wrong time? Sell at the right time. In many cases you can’t control when to sell, but you should plan on keeping your home at least six or seven years. The longer you own your home, the better chance you have of building wealth and protecting yourself from the market’s ups and downs.

Getting nervous buyers off the fence is one of the toughest challenges facing real estate pros right now. People are rightfully concerned about buying a home that will drop in value in the coming months. But buying a home is a long-term investment, and there’s more to consider than the just the purchase price.

Depending on the rate and the amount financed, the price of financing can easily exceed the price of the home. In the example below, it’s easy to see how mortgage costs can exceed a home’s purchase price. What’s more, the total cost of buying a home rises more than $70,000 when interest rates rise a single percentage point.

Rates have risen in the first half of 2008, but in historical terms, mortgage financing is still a great bargain. From 1980 to today the 30-year fixed rate mortgage has ranged from more than 18 percent to less than 6 percent, says Jim Elfelt, a mortgage banker in Virginia Beach, Virginia. If you’re waiting for home prices to come down another $10,000, you may pay more in the long run if mortgage rates rise in the meantime.

When you’re looking for a bargain, don’t lose sight of the big picture. If you try to time the market to save a few thousand on the price of a home, you could end up with a higher monthly payment and total overall cost of home ownership.

Get eNeighborhoods’ Now's the Time to Buy Free Special Report today.

http://offer.eneighborhoods.com/time/

2008-09-22T09:40:00.000-07:00

Mastering the Market in Turbulent Times

In turbulent times, real estate professionals have a unique opportunity to step up and successfully guide buyers. You will be ahead of the game if you help clients separate the facts from the hype and clarify how national real conditions affect local markets. Buying a home can be stressful under the best of conditions. When you add in general anxiety and confusion about the housing market, you’re bound to have buyers waiting on the sidelines for a better day.

Go local. The Internet puts today’s consumers a click away from a world of real estate information. You can’t know all the news that’s available to your clients, but you can maintain the information advantage by becoming the expert on local markets. Focus on information your clients don’t have. Local market information gathered from your experience, your MLS, and your network of local contacts is unique and provides value to your clients that other sources can’t match.

Do the math. You don’t need to be an expert in statistics, but you should know what the key numbers mean and how to explain them clearly. Numbers like days on market, units closed, list-to-sales price and pending sales can provide great insight on where your local market is headed. It’s also impressive to clients when real estate pros know how local trends stack up against national numbers.

Show and tell. Using your MLS and marketing tools such as eNeighborhoods, you can provide personalized reports that show current neighborhood information and local demographic information such as schools, crime, employment and education. Provide branded leave-behind reports and materials homebuyers can reference later. When you become the local source who can explain market conditions with current statistics and visual summaries, you gain an advantage over less-prepared agents.

Bring the bad news. Yes, prices are falling through the floor in many areas, particularly where activities like sub-prime lending, overbuilding and investor speculation occurred. The media tends to focus on areas where these abuses occur, bringing the bad news into sharp focus. You can help clients understand that falling prices in these areas are part of a natural – and necessary – market correction. As prices continue to fall, the real estate market will begin to recover as part of its normal cyclical process.

Be sure to keep your prospects and clients engaged throughout the recovery process. Changes in local sales, home prices and inventory are good indicators of your local market’s health. The national real estate market will inevitably recover, and those buyers who are on the fence now may be ready to purchase in the near future as some sunlight begins to emerge from the market’s dark clouds.

Get eNeighborhoods’ Now's the Time to Buy Free Special Report today.

http://www.offer.eneighborhoods.com/time

2008-05-09T10:27:00.000-07:00

What if all the real estate headlines are wrong?

OK, time for a 30-second real estate market quiz. Quick…which is the more exciting scenario?

- A man slowly walks down a flight of stairs, sometimes pausing or retracing his steps until he reaches a floor. After trudging along for while, he notices another staircase and begins ascending, occasionally pausing or taking a step back before methodically proceeding upward.

- Ignoring the safety railing, a man hurtles down a terrifically high flight of stairs. He hurries recklessly downward, dodging obstacles in his path as he goes. He suddenly cries out as he loses his footing, sails through the air, tumbles down several flights and crashes through a banister. The badly injured man is bandaged from head to toe and attached to a variety of complex medical devices that monitor his vital signs. Experts debate his condition but agree that the situation is dire and prospects for recovery are uncertain.

…and that’s why more headlines say “Home values off the cliff in Phoenix, Miami and Las Vegas” than “Things aren’t bad in Seattle, Portland and Charlotte.” Most readers just find sensational headlines more interesting. And while they may help sell newspapers, they also scare buyers and sellers to the sidelines, though the news may be very positive for home buyers in particular.

Add public relations acumen to the long list of skills today’s real estate professionals need to be successful. Real estate is a long-term investment, but it’s easy to lose sight of that fact when current conditions and recovery prospects seem grim. As REAL Trends Editor Steve Murray* says:

“Rather than say ‘it is a good time to buy,’ sales professionals need to present facts, figures and charts that show it clearly. The time where housing consumers took our word for this has likely come to a close.”

The picture isn’t all doom and gloom. Real estate pros can make a convincing case that, for many homebuyers, now is a great time to buy. But you’re going to need some proof. Get listing data, neighborhood information and compile your own reports on market conditions. Be able to explain market conditions with visual summaries. Provide leave-behind reports and materials homebuyers can reference later.

So what’s needed in today’s market? In the form of a classified ad, it might look something like this:

Wanted: Real estate professional with public relations skills, local expertise and nerves of steel. Strong understanding of industry trends affecting buyers, sellers and homeowners. Must be able to recognize risks and opportunities inherent in shifting markets, provide candid assessments and expert guidance. Ability to troubleshoot and deliver creative solutions for skeptical consumers. Positive mindset and understanding of buyer and seller psychology required.

Who’s on board?

Author note: If you see Steve Murray on the agenda at an industry event, check him out. You can learn more about real estate market conditions in one session than reading real estate headlines for six months.

Charles Warnock is Marketing Director at eNeighborhoods and Homes.com. eNeighborhoods and Homes.com provide powerful marketing tools for real estate professionals, including listing tools, agent websites, online advertising, Neighborhood Reports, CMAs, Buyer Tours. Dominion Enterprises is a leading provider of real estate media and marketing services.

http://www.eneighborhoods.com/

http://www.homes.com/

Charles writes often on interactive marketing and real estate marketing.

2008-03-03T08:00:00.000-08:00

Real estate 2008: New media replaces
old advertising, traditional agents become guides

In 2008, we can look forward to more of the same – which in real estate means constant change. Although many observers expect the national housing market to remain flat for much of 2008, the pace of industry and technology innovation never slows.

One global trend impacting real estate is the declining effectiveness of traditional mass advertising. Years ago, advertisers could reach the majority of real estate consumers through just a few channels. Radio, television, print and outdoor display ads were all real estate pros needed to promote their practices. Today, it’s no longer enough to promote your services or listings through a single advertising channel and wait for the phone to ring.

In today’s Web 2.0 and social media world, people get real estate information from the Internet, email, podcasts, instant messaging, video feeds, networking sites, Blogs and more. It’s a challenge for real estate professionals to understand various marketing channels and be proficient in their use.

It’s also a great opportunity to develop deeper, one-on-one relationships that turn prospects into clients. The real estate information today’s buyers and sellers find on the Internet ranges from current and relevant to outdated and awful. This gives real estate professionals the opportunity to guide clients and provide them with the most current, relevant and local information available.

The ability to translate information overload into local market and transaction knowledge has become a required survival skill. Listing information is freely available, but that’s only part of what’s needed to make effective buying and selling decisions. Agents must supplement listing information with neighborhood information and understand current market conditions.

For example, in the South Florida market, agents must master the complex property tax and insurance issues that affect every real estate transaction. As industry groups push to preserve profitability and consumer interests strive to contain costs, state lawmakers struggle to come up with a viable solution. Unsure of what do to, many buyers and sellers wait on the sidelines until some type of legislative resolution is reached.

As a wise marketer once said, your personal brand is less about what you say, and more about what you do. Today’s real estate consumers are not looking for a salesperson to say something. They are looking for a trusted advisor to do something – successfully guide them through increasingly complex decisions and transactions.

The market is challenging, and opportunities will be limited for real estate salespeople. But opportunities always exist for savvy agents who understand how market trends and challenges affect individual transactions. If this skill set sounds like a combination of agent, futurist, economist, insurance expert and tax attorney, welcome to real estate 08!

For more about future real estate consumers, download Domininon Enterprises' complimentary Special Report.

2007-12-12T10:20:00.000-08:00

Paid Search Marketing Campaigns That Work

Find buyers searching for what you sell with Adwords, Google says.

Yahoo Search Marketing asks, Instead of looking for customers, what if they found you?

In the past few years, businesses of all sizes have rushed to capitalize on the benefits of paid search. The advantages are well known…low start-up costs, shorter lead times, opportunity for global reach or local targeting, and more accurate campaign tracking.

The potential benefits are clearly compelling, but what’s less obvious is how to create consistently effective paid search campaigns. Smaller and medium-sized businesses have found that do-it-yourself paid search can be difficult and time-consuming. Larger businesses that outsource have learned to be wary of search-marketing scoundrels who are better at promoting their own business than promoting yours.

That said, there’s a growing body of research and best practices for success in paid search marketing, and you shouldn't miss out because you don’t have an extensive knowledge of the of the online channel. Many of today’s most successful search marketing campaigns developed over months, not years. With that in mind here’s a brief checklist to keep paid search advertising pointed in a profitable direction. Make sure it’s:

Action-oriented: Clearly, your primary goal is to have prospects click your ad for more information, so it’s OK to be direct. Don’t make people think too much. Include a clear call to action like “click here” or “learn more” for better results.

Attention-getting: Your online ad has only a split second to gain attention. Use attention-getting headlines and bold images to make your ad stand out. If you use Google Adwords, you’ll have the ability to test and improve your copy with as many as three versions of your ad.

Brief: The most effective online ads contain a simple, easy to understand message. Keep your ads short and to the point. Use simple, high-impact words. The place to provide additional information is on your landing page or website, not a text or banner ad.

Offer-oriented: To drive site traffic, specific offers work better than general invitations. Offering a discount, time-sensitive offer or something that’s FREE are time-tested techniques. For example, free shipping or discounts for first-time customers can drive click-thrus.

Customer-focused: In getting your message across, it’s easy to forget that customers are scanning your ad to learn how they can benefit, not to learn how great your company is. Clearly explain how your product or service solves problems, makes things easier or improves profits.

Professional: If your ad includes graphics, use a professional designer to select appropriate colors and fonts to gain attention and ensure your ad is readable. Use only high-resolution, professional images in your online ad. Quality design suggests a quality company.

Relevant: Do visitors arrive at your ad by typing in a search term? Try repeating the term in your ad. For example, if you want to attract visitors using the search phrase "real estate websites" make sure "real estate websites" is prominently displayed in your ad – you’ll get higher click-thrus.

Going somewhere: The ad is only part of a chain that converts visitors to buyers. Make sure your ad clicks through to a page that’s relevant to your offer. If your ad offers a 10 percent discount, make it clear how visitors can get the discount instead of making them figure out what to do next. Landing pages pick up where the ad leaves off, providing specific information and next steps. Targeted landing pages generally outperform home pages when it comes to converting visitors to subscribers or buyers.

Tested: You may have heard the quip that “All opinions are useless, including this one.” The same might be said about search marketing advice. Don’t take opinions and second-hand research to heart. Learn and use the analysis tools included in your paid search account. It may be true that in general, Google skews male or Yahoo is better for consumer marketing than B2B, but you’ll never know until you test. You may even check out MIVA.com, a smaller search player that’s making a play for the #3 slot behind the big guys.

Regardless of which search marketing provider you choose, check out the conversion-tracking tools included in your account. It may take a little homework on your part, but there’s no substitute for knowing which search terms are effective, what visitors are searching for, and what each click and conversion costs. The information is worthwhile not only for search marketing, but the lessons learned can then be applied to other marketing channels and campaigns.

For more real estate marketing ideas, articles and free downloads, visit eNeighborhoods

2007-11-30T14:11:00.000-08:00

Does your website have a perception problem?

Months of inventory. Tighter mortgage money. Continuing sub-prime blues. Your real estate marketing message doesn't matter. Wait, what was that last one?

It sounds harsh, but it's completely true. One of the hardest principles for real estate professionals - and all advertisers - to accept is that their intended message is not really important compared to audience perception. You may spend countless hours carefully honing your brand image and value proposition, but you're just the sender.

First, your message passes through the Internet, a channel with its own challenges for online marketers. Then, the audience on the receiving end of the channel defines what your message means by the actions they take (or don't take). Your message is not what you intend, but what your audience perceives and acts upon.

So what can you do to make online marketing effective? One key is managing visitor perceptions. In fact, aligning three types of perceptions – personal, peer and credibility – provides a powerful formula to move prospects to take action. Think of these perceptions as a three-point strategy to improve response:

1. Personal perceptions

Personal perceptions are what website visitors think of you and your value proposition. Agents typically spend most of their time managing personal perceptions. The most important success factors include presenting information clearly, specifically, and in the right order. It sounds simple, but if you visit a dozen real estate websites, you will find lots of focus on wonderful agents and brokers, and considerably less information on benefits for prospects and clients.

- A clear value proposition should answer this important question for site visitors: Of all available agents, why should they choose to work with you?

- Use your Web presence to clarify the benefits of doing business with you. This goes back to your unique value proposition...can you do something for the website visitor better than everyone else? If so, make it clear. "Contact me for all your real estate needs" sounds vaguely positive, but it's a weak call-to-action if you want prospects to pick up the phone.

- Many agent websites also have no clear starting point to get visitors' attention, and no reason for them to become further engaged. Interactive marketing gurus Bryan and Jeffrey Eisenberg call the process of converting prospects to satisfied customers AIDAS - Attention, Interest, Desire, Action and Satisfaction. Jumping ahead to the Action without establishing Interest or Desire means trouble. In marketing, as they say, marriage is better than a one-night-stand.

2. Peer perceptions

Peers may include current and former clients, and other professionals involved in the real estate transaction. Peer reviews and testimonials can be critical to conversion success. A recent study by Deloitte Consumer Product Group found that 64 percent of online shoppers read reviews by other consumers in deciding whether to buy. More than 80 percent of the survey’s respondents said reviews affected their buying decision, and a remarkable 98 percent found consumer reviews “very” or “somewhat” credible.

Adding testimonials can make your website more effective, especially if for newer or lesser-known agents. Be sure your testimonials are current, brief, and mention specific benefits you provided. "Fred is wonderful" is not as good as "Fred helped me find an affordable home near an A-rated elementary school." Adding client photos can help personalize a testimonial, particularly if that person is well-known in the community. The moral? Don’t blow your own horn. Ask your loyal fans to do it for you.

3. Credibility perceptions

Accreditations and association memberships are important sources of credibility. For real estate professionals, these may include the REALTOR® designation, as well as various accreditations such as Accredited Buyer Representative (ABR), or certified residential Specialist (CRS). Also, don't forget to include academic degrees and other licenses and certifications that may help.

To make the most of credibility indicators on your website, be sure to explain their significance. Don't just add an e-Pro logo to your website, explain how that training benefits clients who work with you. Have other academic degrees? Use these on your Web site and in your promotional materials. Prospects may not know what a GRI is, but they are familiar with a CPA or MBA, and may have one of these designations themselves.

Even in traditional mass marketing, when there were three fuzzy television stations and no Internet, consumers controlled their perceptions of marketing messages. Today, consumers have even more control and more options to manage their media experiences. Digital video recorders, SPAM filters, pop-up blockers and do-not call lists are all popular ways to fend off unwanted advertising. To make your marketing messages more successful, check them for perceived value and credibility before sending them out to the world.

For more real estate marketing ideas and insights, visit www.eneighborhoods.com

2007-11-28T17:59:00.000-08:00

Can You Get Rich with the Right Real Estate Niche?

Many agents are reluctant to position themselves as specialists, for fear of limiting their earning potential. A broad range of potential customers is both a blessing and a curse for real estate agents. If you're a generalist, nearly everyone you meet is a potential client. On the other, being all things to all people can lead to unfocused business plans and lackluster results.

In reality, there is little risk in foregoing commissions you don't have a reasonable chance to earn. Few agents have the time and resources to market to a very broad audience, so choosing a professional niche in which you can excel makes sense.

In addition to helping you differentiate your services from other real estate practitioners, you can build credibility and focused expertise. Better still, as you you develop a reputation for a specific area of expertise, you are actively reducing competition for your services.

Now all that's left is choosing a highly profitable niche. To help you get started, here are some suggestions for highly lucrative niches, and also some to avoid:

Good agent specializations:

- Homes near top-rated schools
- Equestrian properties
- Income-producing properties
- Waterfront or beachfront properties
- Townhomes
- Vacation homes
- Historic properties
- Green or energy-efficient homes
- Ranch or farm properties
- Upscale and luxury real estate
- Mountain views
- Active retirement communities

Bad agent specializations:

- Agent with obvious toupee
- Agent still using high school yearbooks photo
- Agent whose car always needs vacuuming
- The Bad Haircut agent
- The agent who repeats lines from Sienfeld episodes
- Agent who never wears socks
- The too-much-perfume agent
- The agent who talks about her cats
- The really irritable agent
- Agent who also sells Amway and Herbalife
- The agent who could use a shave
- Agent with a comb-over
- Agent who apparently doesn't own an iron

Obviously, some niches are better than others, and there are still plenty of real estate agents out there trying to please everyone.

The bottom line: Prospects today are not looking for a salesperson, they are looking for a trusted advisor to guide them through important financial decisions and complex transactions.

Does your professional niche brand you as a a real estate expert, or someone who sells real estate? As author and sales consultant John Graham says, it's better to be known for knowing something, not just selling something.

Charles Warnock is Marketing Director at eNeighborhoods in Boca Raton, Florida. eNeighborhoods provides powerful marketing tools for real estate professionals, including Neighborhood Reports, CMAs, Buyer Tours, NewsLetters, Maps / Aerials, and the InstaLead Marketing System. eNeighborhoods is part of Dominion Enterprises, a leading provider of real estate media and marketing services.

www.eneighborhoods.com
Charles writes often on interactive marketing, marketing strategy and real estate marketing.

2007-08-31T14:04:00.000-07:00

Looking for a profitable niche?
Try neighborhood schools specialist!

It’s hard to overstate the importance of neighborhood factors such as school quality on the home buying decision, yet few agents seem to be known as "schools specialists." Agents can gain a competitive advantage by becoming an expert on local schools. By providing objective information about the school's current programs, test scores, teachers and librarians, prospects can make better buying decisions.

Most real estate pros are well aware of fair housing issues and the dangers of providing unsubstantiated opinions about local schools. In the past, some real estate pros have run into trouble talking about "good" or "bad" schools based on opinion or other subjective criteria. One way around this issue is to provide consistent information from reputable sources to all your prospects regarding local schools.

In other words, provide objective information about the school's current programs, test scores, teachers and librarians and let prospects decide for themselves. Here are some great ways for real estate pros to help buyers size up local schools:

Student-to-teacher ratio – Unusually large class sizes may be cause for concern. Sources such as eNeighborhoods have this information as well as librarian-to-student ratio and facts such as expenditures per student and what percent of total school funds are spent on instruction. Again, this information may not show good or bad, but it provides a useful way to compare schools.

Standardized test scores - Standard scores such as SAT and National Merit Scholar awards can provide insights for current students’ academic performance.
Faith-based real estate – Have buyer prospects already expressed interest in a specific type of church, temple or other house of worship? This may be an important factor in their choice of schools.

Play to your strengths - Just as real estate agents promote their specialties, many schools are happy to tell you about distinguished programs in sports, science, technology or the arts. What are the school’s clubs and associations? Knowing how to match a prospect's children with a school where they can follow their dreams can quickly lead to a sale.

Show, don’t tell - Create a map showing the names and locations of local schools to use in your presentations and reports. If you have a mapping tool, you may add personal notations like “Here are the practice fields for future soccer stars!”

One effective tactic that's sometimes overlooked is a personal visit to neighborhood schools. Request a tour for yourself and take photos, make notes, shake hands and meet people. What buyer wouldn’t be impressed by photos and firsthand local school information in a marketing presentation or on an agent website?

Don't hesitate to call the administrative offices of local schools and ask if it’s possible to take clients for a personal visit. It will deepen your own knowledge of local schools and demonstrate your neighborhood expertise to school administrators. Local teachers, principals, school-board members can make excellent contacts for your business.

To learn more about incorporating school information into your marketing materials, take a complimentary eNeighborhoods online training class.

2007-08-18T13:36:00.000-07:00

Six tricks: Keep marketing content in context

For veteran copywriters and content providers, it's always gratifying to see research highlighting the effectiveness of text copy to attract online visitors, persuade them to take action, and ultimately drive sales. Text copy will always be a key driver in marketing and sales, but in the evolving online, multi-platform world, it's no longer sufficient to seek comfort in the "content is king" credo and write on.

Why? For all types of marketers, the true north of actionable content has always been to make it relevant and deliver it to the right audience at the right time. These same principles apply across platforms, whether content is distributed through Weblogs, streaming media or podcasts.

But as people become more sophisticated and diverse in the types of content they consume, the application of simple rules becomes more difficult. Is your content breaking news or old news? If you're not sure, here are six tricks to ensure your content retains its regal status:

1. Mind your medium: Today people have the opportunity to interact with more types of media than ever before. Your message could be delivered through an animated billboard, podcast or a branded desktop application. You probably wouldn't send the same content to a senior corporate executive and a 19-year-old gamer. But many organizations will try to reach both target audiences with the same marketing channel. While television may reach both parties, it may not be the most effective way to reach either one. It's said that more than $50 billion is spent annually on television advertising, but young males may spend more time playing video games.

2. In your eyepath: Eye-tracking is an increasingly popular way evaluate web pages because eye movements provide insights into the human thought processes that cannot be derived from surveys and self-reporting. On a very practical level, eye-tracking has confirmed things like scanning behavior and "banner blindness" in web users. Although studies have underscored the relative importance of text versus graphic content, they have also shown that people habitually scan rather than read, skipping large portions of text on every page they visit. Use color, bolding, bullets and subheads to break up copy so it can be easily scanned.

3. Target your list: Direct response diva Lois Geller champions a quick formula to identify the components of success in direct marketing campaigns: The offer and list are each responsible for 40 percent of campaign success, with creatives accounting for the remaining 20 percent. You may have extremely relevant and valuable content, but if it's sent to the wrong list, you won't make a connection. The best practices of direct response marketing have been developed for more than a century, and they still provide valuable direction in the 2.0 world.

4. Use the right offer: All the persuasive and elegantly written copy in the world can't make up for the wrong offer at the wrong time. If your campaign is underperforming, and you’re fairly certain you are sending the right creative to the right audience, then you probably have the wrong offer. There aren't that many moving parts... time to test some different offers to see what's most attractive. If this offer-list-creative trio is beginning to sound like the old CLUE board game (Mr. Mustard in the conservatory with the candlestick), it should. Put the three together in the right combination and you've found the killer (marketing campaign).

5. Keep it in order: It sounds basic, but a quick survey of print ads, emails or web pages will yield plenty of examples of putting the cart before the horse. The problem of ordering your message becomes more difficult as technology provides people with more and more control over how they consume media. In many cases, a solution is pitched before a compelling business problem is outlined. In others, the proposed solution may follow the problem too closely. Especially in more expensive or complex sales, let your content and campaign establish relationship with successive degrees of involvement. Print, broadcast or interactive, the right content in the wrong order is a recipe for mediocre results.

6. Consider the source: While telling your own story is an essential skill for marketers, sometimes it's better to let someone else take the podium. A great rule of thumb from Marketing Experiments is to back up your own claims with data, while leaving qualitative praise for your product to customer testimonials. The same can be said for online credibility indicators such as seals and certificates. Placing the Verisign logo or Better Business Bureau seal next to your checkout form is probably simpler and more effective than creating a long explanation of why prospects should trust you with their credit cards. And if you can get Steve Jobs, Seth Godin or Guy Kawasaki to say anything at all about your product, that would help too.

2007-07-02T19:26:00.000-07:00

Seven The Hard Way – Reasons
Real Estate Websites Don't Work

More and more, your first point of contact with prospects is your agent website.

Your first – and often only – chance to impress prospects is a valuable opportunity that’s often wasted. Avoiding a few common but critical mistakes can mean the difference between success and failure. If you’re looking to provide a compelling, interactive client experience instead of a tired online brochure, here are seven mistakes to avoid:

1. All about the agent. It seems counter-intuitive, but the focus of effective agent websites isn’t agents – it’s consumers. Your photo, sales awards, accreditations, nicknames, community activities family background are far less interesting to site visitors than they are to you, and they belong on “About us” section, not the home page. Instead, capture attention with local images and current, relevant content that’s not available on other real estate sites. To draw attention to your skills and achievements, it’s often more effective to get success stories and testimonials from clients and colleagues, rather than blatant self-promotion.

2. The three-second rule. Web researcher Joseph Carrabis suggests it takes visitors just 3-5 seconds to decide if website information is interesting enough to continue reading or click away. In this "attraction phase" visitors scan the page and quickly decide if they want to invest the time to explore further to see how content relates to them - in other words, what's in it for me? Try scanning your website as a first-time visitor would. Is the information you’ve provided to capture their attention up-front and prominent? The questions that site visitors have in mind – What’s on this website? What’s in it for me? What services does this real estate professional offer? – need to be answered very quickly.

3. The language of the dog. On the subject of effective website content, e-business author Jeff Eisenberg likes to say “Speak to the dog, about what matters to the dog, in the language of the dog.” In other words, use language and terms appropriate for your audience. For example, do you know what search terms people are using to find your website? You can get a quick idea at a website called www.digitalpoint.com. Click Webmaster tools on the left, scroll down and click the Keyword Suggestion Tool link. Then, enter search terms that people are likely to use when searching for your services. You may be surprised to see how small variations in phrasing affect the number of daily searches performed. To boost site visibility, try incorporating popular search terms in your page titles, descriptions and headlines.

4. A road to nowhere. Successful real estate practices have a clear path from prospecting, conversion and sales, to repeat sales and referrals. Yet, many real estate websites lead nowhere. There is a vague notion that site visitors will click around, find the information interesting and hopefully contact the agent or broker. If you have not defined measurable goals such as newsletter signups, phone calls, email requests for information or special report downloads, it’s difficult to say whether or not your site is successful. Design your website with clear pathways to your conversion goals, and measure them. If you’re driving paid search traffic to a road-to-nowhere site, consider applying that money toward creating a better web presence for your business.

5. All take, no give. The ethos of the Internet is something-for-something. You might give up your name and email address to receive a newsletter or special report, or take a survey in return for a chance to win prizes. Yet, many agent websites offer no incentive for visitors to take some desired action such as providing contact information. Do you offer a free home valuation, Neighborhood Report, newsletter, coupons, business directories or links to local resources? Since many visitors are in the just-looking stage and aren’t ready to pick up the phone and call you, you can provide different touch-points at various commitment levels to make it as easier to begin a dialog with you.

6. Content isn’t king. In an effort to attract as many prospects as possible, many agent websites try to be all things to all people. A laundry list of real estate services is not compelling content, and this type of “information overload” can give site visitors with the idea that you don’t offer any particular expertise that would benefit them. Old listings, typos and outdated articles can all make visitors click away in search of competing websites with better information. And remember, content doesn’t begin and end with text. Photos, animations, virtual tours, maps and charts should also be high-quality and up-to-date.

7. Fire your nephew. You don’t still have a website that was created in 2002 by someone’s nephew, do you? In three seconds, your website can give visitors the idea that you offer quality services or that you lack attention to detail…not a good quality for real estate professionals. You don’t need the latest blogs, podcasts and 3-D animation to be successful, but your site should be of comparable or better quality than your industry peers. Make it a point to visit the sites of local and national competitors to gather ideas and see how your site stacks up.

Charles Warnock, eNeighborhoods Marketing - A Dominion Enterprises Company

2006-09-15T11:25:00.000-07:00

Real estate - When it comes to leads, are you a leader or a follower?

Do you have a strategy to find prospects and turn them into clients and referrals? Regardless of their source, it's important to make the most of the leads that come your way. Here are seven eNeighborhoods-endorsed strategies to help you make the most of your lead management program and turn those prospects into customers and referrals!

1. Showcase your neighborhood knowledge

The Internet has whetted customer appetites for all types of real estate information. Educated buyers and sellers make the best customers, but the Web has also raised client expectations. Many consumers are proficient in finding information on their own and are no longer impressed by folders full of MLS and web page printouts.

Agents who provide relevant local information can quickly establish lasting client relationships. If you reinforce individual property information with neighborhood knowledge that interests buyers - including school, crime, housing prices and resident demographic information - you demonstrate a level of expertise few agents can match. By positioning yourself as a neighborhood expert, you avoid pinning your hopes of doing business on a single property.

2.Timing is everything

Most people end up doing business with the first real estate agent they speak to, so fast response is crucial. Research shows many people have come to expect a response from real estate agents within an hour of requesting information. Many brokerages now reward agents who respond quickly with additional leads or other incentives.
Your strategy should include a plan for both initial response and ongoing contact. For example, your goal may be to respond to phone calls within two hours and emails on the same business day.

3. Create a professional follow-up package

Many agents prefer to establish face-to-face contact as soon as possible with an introductory information package. Be sure to have both presentation and leave-behind materials ready to go. Your follow-up package may include:
- A cover letter / thank you letter recapping your initial contact
- Your resume, including professional accreditations such as REALTOR®
- Relevant reports, such as CMAs and Neighborhood Reports
- Sample marketing materials, including flyers and newsletters

4. Have a unique value proposition
All agents understand the importance of creating a unique impression, but it's more important to make prospects feel unique. After a brief introduction, top agents shift their focus to making prospects feel like the center of the universe. To convert leads to sales, personalize materials and presentations as much as possible. Put your customer's name on sample flyers and reports. For a knockout listing meeting, take a digital photo of the prospect's home beforehand and incorporate it into your presentation materials.

5. Making it mobile

Even if you don't know a Blackberry from a Bluetooth, it's important to maintain a "mobile office" for responsiveness. More than ever, it's important for brokers and agents to do their jobs - managing phone calls, customer contacts and accessing listing information - without being tethered to a desk.

It's easy for prospects on the Web to send out several requests for information, and the agent with the quickest response often wins the business. There may be a learning curve involved in adopting mobile technology, but agents who can instantly obtain current property information from a phone or PDA are a step ahead of those who need to call the office.

6. Divide and conquer

While some prospects are close to buying or selling, many are clearly in the research or evaluation stage. Some brokerages have developed separate strategies for hot leads and those with longer time horizons. Some have automated lead management systems or staff dedicated to prioritizing and distributing leads, but this task often falls to individual agents.
Regardless of who manages leads, an efficient sorting and distribution strategy can help raise conversion rates. Even in a smaller office, having a system in place can help you respond quicker and focus on more qualified leads. If you're shopping for a lead generation service, notice how lead management is handled and whether it fits the way you work.

7. Track lead quality and cost

The best lead solution for you will depend on your goals, business requirements, budget and your style of working. You may need to evaluate several lead sources and management strategies before hitting on one that's best for your individual needs.
It takes time to track the life cycle of individual leads, but it's the only way to make the most of your investment. It's certainly preferable to a lead generation strategy that underperforms your expectations. Be sure to schedule a reasonable amount of time for your evaluation period. A solution that does well initially may not perform consistently over time.
This article is an excerpt.

See the complete report, Seven secrets of turning real estate leads into clients , at http://www.58freeleads.com/report.asp

2006-06-06T18:50:00.000-07:00

Interactive marketing, revisited

Like their audiences, marketers themselves are fans of the new and improved. In recent years, cross-channel pragmatism has often given way to online mania as advertisers pour money into search, e-mail and video marketing campaigns.

Any marketing professional who prowls the Net for information has seen this pattern – an indictment of traditional marketing followed by a plea to embrace interactive channels and practices. In smug articles, print ads give way to podcasts, and hoary 30-second television spots succumb to splashy Internet video advertising.

But is there really such an important distinction between traditional and interactive marketing channels? It depends how you define interaction. I like to think all effective marketing builds on a series of successful interactions. After all, regardless of what channels you’re using, your marketing message is unavoidably interacting with a number of internal and external factors.

Savvy marketers design successful interactions between people, products, brands, services and ideas. And marketers can work to identify interactions that create more successful campaigns. As you plan, consider some of the interactions that can mean the difference between success and failure. Consider how your current campaign interacts with:

Other campaigns – every marketing message exists in the context of other campaigns, past and present and future. Does your campaign build on previous campaigns, or set the stage for later ones? Does it build on the buzz established by events, other products or other companies?

Available technology – Effective interactive marketing means understanding the channels that are available and choosing the best technology to deliver your message with maximum effectiveness. Emerging channels are exciting, but few of us have unlimited technical support at our command to support and execute our marketing ideas.

Internal stakeholders – At some point, all veteran marketers have had to face the campaign killers within. It could be your management, staff, or co-workers. It could be budget or resource constraints. One of the first interactions you might design is within your own organization to obtain the buy-in or resources needed to move forward.

Current environment – Working in real estate, I learned never to serve up corporate communications without checking the current environment. Were rates headed up, or down? Had some guru made a bold forecast for the coming year? Was an annual or quarterly report on tap? What about recent activities in the courts or legislature? Your communications interact with hundreds of other messages to which your audience is exposed each day.

Competitors – What’s your positioning regarding your competition? Are you creating a series of interactions that will encourage prospects to become customers, repeat customers and referrers? What’s your competitor’s positioning regarding your customers?

A lot to think about before your interaction with customers ever begins? Perhaps, but thinking through different types of interactions at the outset could help you generate ideas and make better decisions that ultimately improve results.

Finally, what about that traditional vs. interactive debate? According to Peppers and Rogers Group, nearly 70% of all consumers today move interchangeably across online and offline channels during the buying process. Customers know what they want. If they are not behaving in a way that seems to favor online or offline channels, should you?

2006-04-12T18:13:00.000-07:00

Paid search marketing campaigns that work

Find buyers searching for what you sell with Adwords, Google says.

Yahoo Search Marketing asks, Instead of looking for customers, what if they found you?

In the past few years, businesses of all sizes have rushed to capitalize on the benefits of paid search. The advantages are well known…low start-up costs, shorter lead times, opportunity for global reach or local targeting, and more accurate campaign tracking.

The potential benefits are clearly compelling, but what’s less obvious is how to create consistently effective paid search campaigns. Smaller and medium-sized businesses have found that do-it-yourself paid search can be difficult and time-consuming. Larger businesses that outsource have learned to be wary of search-marketing scoundrels who are better at promoting their own business than promoting yours.

That said, there’s a growing body of research and best practices for success in paid search marketing, and you shouldn’t miss out because you don’t have an extensive knowledge of the of the online channel. Many of today’s most successful search marketing campaigns developed over months, not years. With that in mind here’s a brief checklist to keep paid search advertising pointed in a profitable direction. Make sure it’s:

Action- oriented: Clearly, your primary goal is to have prospects click your ad for more information, so it’s OK to be direct. Don’t make people think too much. Include a clear call to action like “click here” or “learn more” for better results.

Attention-getting: Your online ad has only a split second to gain attention. Use attention-getting headlines and bold images to make your ad stand out. If you use Google Adwords, you’ll have the ability to test and improve your copy with as many as three versions of your ad.

Brief. The most effective online ads contain a simple, easy to understand message. Keep your ads short and to the point. Use simple, high-impact words. The place to provide additional information is on your landing page or website, not a text or banner ad.

Offer-oriented: To drive site traffic, specific offers work better than general invitations. Offering a discount, time-sensitive offer or something that’s FREE are time-tested techniques. For example, free shipping or discounts for first-time customers can drive click-thrus.

Customer-focused: In getting your message across, it’s easy to forget that customers are scanning your ad to learn how they can benefit, not to learn how great your company is. Clearly explain how your product or service solves problems, makes things easier or improves profits.

Professional: If your ad includes graphics, use a professional designer to select appropriate colors and fonts to gain attention and ensure your ad is readable. Use only high-resolution, professional images in your online ad. Quality design suggests a quality company.

Relevant: Do visitors arrive at your ad by typing in a search term? If so, try repeating the term in your ad. For example, if you want to attract visitors using the search phrase Aircraft Charters, make sure Aircraft Charters is prominently displayed in your ad – you’ll get higher click-thrus.

Going somewhere: The ad is only part of the equation that converts visitors to buyers. Make sure your ad clicks through to a page that’s relevant to your offer. If your ad offers a 10 percent discount, make it clear how visitors can get the discount instead of making them figure out what to do next. Landing pages pick up where the ad leaves off, providing specific information and next steps. Targeted landing pages generally outperform home pages when it comes to converting visitors to subscribers or buyers.

Tested. You may have heard the quip that “All opinions are useless, including this one.” The same might be said about search marketing advice. Don’t take opinions and second-hand research to heart. Learn and use the analysis tools included in your paid search account. It may be that Google skews male or Yahoo is better for consumer marketing than B2B, but you’ll never know until you test. You may even check out MIVA.com, a smaller search player that’s making a play for the #3 slot behind the big guys. Try out the conversion-tracking tools that are included in your account.

It may take a little homework on your part, but there’s no substitute for knowing which search terms are effective, what visitors are searching for, and what each click and conversion costs. The information is worthwhile not only for search marketing, but the lessons learned can then be applied to other marketing channels and campaigns.

2006-03-26T19:47:00.000-08:00

The marketing mix – will podcasting pay the rent?

In the world of interactive marketing, one never has to look too far for the next big thing. One promising channel that’s become buzzworthy in the past few months is podcasting – the Internet distribution of audio or video content, usually using an RSS feed. As usual, though, standing behind the early adopters gushing with praise about a new technology, someone will have to figure out how to turn podcasting from a promising technology into a trusted marketing tool.

There seems extraordinary growth potential for podcasts in the next few years, but that's just untapped potential until podcasting novelty is replaced by podcasting utility.

Even if there's no money exchanged, the content at a minimum has to be worth the trouble to download. If I have to actively search and download, I will listen to few of them. If I can automate the downloading of a few that I'm interested in, as with an RSS feed, I'll be more likely to check them out.

Podcasting may or may not develop into a marketing channel with broad
applications, but there certainly are opportunities to deliver targeted content. I have a stack of articles on my desk that I'll get to sometime – behavioral marketing, presenting effective web seminars, how to reinstall Windows XP – if someone came along and made these into mp3s for me so I can listen to them in the car, I would be most grateful. Perhaps even to the point where I would listen to a short ad. You might even put up with a commercial if it's wrapped in sports highlights (More March Madness coming up, but first a word from Gillette’s new XtremeTrac 5-blade, now with Unibrow Control).

One interesting facet is that as more and more marketing moves to interactive channels, podcasting is sort of a one-way, more passive medium. Maybe its' just a matter of time until players have some kind of feedback button you can push to indicate yes, download the next e-book chapter, that podcast was valuable to me, or send me more information.

Then next time I plug my player back into my laptop, my preferences are sent back to the podcasters. Or maybe there's no rush for that...

Overall I think it's very positive that this form of new media marketing is accessible to nearly anyone who wants to create a podcast. Certainly, consumer-controlled media is an exciting trend and there's a lot of home-grown content out there that's much richer and more original than what's generally available from commercial radio.

There is a possible downside if personalization is carried too far. One day soon, as you're motoring down the highway, you may hear a podcast from your spouse reminding you to pick up orange juice and warning you not to speed.

2006-03-20T19:31:00.000-08:00

Writing Web copy that counts

For some marketing communicators, making the transition from print to online media is like packing for a trip to destinations unknown. Before you venture, it's important to know what to bring, what to leave behind and something about the online culture. For example, long lines of text and certain typefaces don't belong online, but strong headlines and tight, benefit-oriented writing are always welcome. Here are some guidelines to help you create online copy that counts:

1. Know the reader's goals, your goals and how they successfully come together.

Looking at many corporate Web sites is like peering through the wrong end of a telescope. Content that's focused on the company's vision, history, or organizational structure is of little value to most readers. If you can't draw a direct connection between organizational goals and your readers' goals, your content is probably off the mark. It may help to outline the audience needs, your solutions and the successful outcome you're promising. Then write the story so your reader is the star and the company, products and services are supporting players.

2. Clearly define your success criteria.

Writers who begin with vague goals achieve marginal results. Your purpose may be general, such as building brand awareness, but it's likely that you want readers to take some action as a result. Broad goals such as building brand recognition can often be measured by more specific results - capturing 100 new e-mail addresses, 25 requests for additional information or 10 new orders.

3. People don't read online, they scan.

Keep in mind that many people won't read all of your copy, and some won't read it at all. Many will scan your pages to for something eye-catching and move on if it's not there. Take the time to craft an attention-getting headline and use subheads and bulleted lists to break up blocks of text and move readers onward. Think in terms of "chunking" information because people may begin reading at the beginning, middle or end.

4. Edit mercilessly.

Usability guru Jakob Nielson says that reading from a computer screen takes 25 percent longer than reading from a printed page. He recommends giving online readers about 50 percent less text than print readers. Listen to Jakob. Think of your words and sentences as individual workers, each with a specific role in creating successful copy. If it's not the best word or sentence or it's not bolstering your message's effectiveness, it's fired!

5. Let your words do the work.

Identify the strongest benefits of your product or service and present them in clear, convincing language. Don't try to grab attention with loud colors, excessive bolding, capitalization or punctuation. In addition to compromising your credibility, it makes for a spotty, unattractive page on the reader's computer screen. As F. Scott Fitzgerald said, overusing exclamation points is like laughing at your own jokes.

6. What is it? What's in it for me? What's my next step?

Readers should be able to answer these three questions about your product or service after reading your copy once. Answer these important questions quickly and clearly, without excess verbiage. Also answer another one if it's appropriate for your campaign - How much does it cost?

7. First the horse, then the cart.

Have you written to share ideas and insights, change behaviors and build relationships...or to close a single sale? In writing copy for Web sites and e-mail, many marketers make the mistake of trying to jump from introduction to sale too quickly. Building customer trust is a powerful, but fragile process. Asking for a sale before you have clearly established trust and demonstrated value is a sure way to alienate potential customers. Know where your readers are in the process, set realistic goals and target your words accordingly.

2006-03-20T19:19:00.000-08:00

Nine tips for first-time homebuyers

It seems that everyone loves a good real estate story. The media is filled with reports about soaring property values and home owners of modest means becoming instant millionaires when they sell. As a result, many first time home buyers, afraid of missing out, will rush into buying decisions and achieve less-than-spectacular results. As a first time buyer, your biggest challenge is to balance livability and profitability in a way that makes sense for you and your family. Remember, you are buying a home first and an investment second. Of course, there’s no foolproof formula for buyer success, but there are steps you can take to stack the odds in your favor:

Tip 1: Don’t bet on market timing

If you’re waiting for prices to drop in places like Southern California, Washington D.C. or Miami, you may be waiting a very long time. In regions that are built out with limited room to expand, it’s not realistic to assume property values will fall dramatically. Of course, prices in the nation’s super-heated residential markets (much of California, Nassau-Suffolk Counties in New York, South Florida) should cool down at some point, but there’s no guarantee that higher interest rates won’t eat up any savings from a price correction. If your personal circumstances say it’s time to buy, high prices alone shouldn’t keep you on the sidelines. Current interest rates are still historically low, so you may consider locking in a mortgage before rates head north. Even in booming markets, there are good deals for those willing to devote some time and energy to finding them.

Tip 2: Leverage free and low-cost resources

There’s an abundance of free and low-cost resources for homebuyers on the Web. A Web search can turn up helpful articles, buyer guides, online tools and purchase/ refinance calculators. Keep an eye out for helpful tools like step-by-step guides and checklists to help organize your search. Some Web sites now offer online tools to help you estimate home prices and search for undervalued properties. Many offers on the Web for free property valuations actually are come-ons from real estate brokers looking for seller listings, so check first to see what strings are attached.

Tip 3: Check out the new models

Real estate’s old guard seems to be under assault at every turn today as traditional brokers battle competition from discount and Web-based brokers. Today, buyers have more options than ever before. You can use a full-service broker, discount broker or buy without a broker. To make buying more affordable, consider the homebuyer rebate programs that are becoming more popular. Rebates can help offset closing costs, which are a real obstacle for many first-time buyers. Be aware that some states currently ban real estate rebates all together, and others limit rebates to credits applied to closing costs. Rebate fans around the nation are keeping a close eye on Kentucky, as the Justice Department recently sued the Kentucky Real Estate Commission for violating antitrust laws. Kentucky is one of 15 states that ban or limit real estate rebates.

Tip 4: Lock in a realistic budget

To save time and trouble, first time buyers should have a realistic budget in mind before they shop for homes. One way to determine how much house you can afford is to get “pre-approved” by a lender. Pre-approval means you know exactly how much of a loan you’ll qualify for, so you can limit your search to homes in the right price range. Pre-approval also boosts your credibility and negotiation position with sellers. Most lenders will offer pre-approval as a no-obligation free service, in hopes of winning your business.

Tip 5: Buying — personal decision, business transaction

The Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) advises home buyers to create a wish list to help focus priorities. That way, you’ll remember that a spectacular foyer is nice-to-have, but safety and services are essential. Having clear goals will help keep you from getting carried away with emotional factors. Sellers who love their homes tend to ask too much, and buyers who fall in love can end up overpaying. With a little research, you can get can get an objective estimate of property value to make sure the seller has set a fair asking price. There are tools and resources on the Web to help you better understand home valuations.

Tip 6: Don’t let closing costs surprise you

Once you understand the buying process, you should understand and budget for transaction costs. In addition to your down payment, buyers pay most of the closing costs when purchasing a home, including things like inspection fees, title insurance, taxes and more. Closing fees can add up to 5-7 percent of purchase price, and must be paid before you get the keys. Your lender can provide what’s called a “good faith” estimate of your closing costs. Most closing costs are not negotiable but some are. When you’re comparing lenders, don’t be shy…ask which fees are negotiable, then ask if any discounts are available. Finally, be cautious about “no-cost” closing promotions because the lender may be simply passing on the costs in the form of a higher interest rate.

Tip 7: Build a support team

Buying a home is a big investment and a big decision, but you don’t have to go it alone. Remember, at each step of the way, there are people and resources to help you. Use the Internet and ask friends for referrals. Don’t be afraid to pick up the phone and call real estate professionals, mortgage providers, title companies and insurers to ask questions. These professionals should be good resources to help you learn more about home buying, because they want to earn your business. If they are not helpful, then you have also learned something important…that they don’t deserve your business.

Tip 8: Clean up your credit

Low credit ratings mean that buyers won't qualify for the best available interest rates and fees, which could mean considerable extra expense each month for the life of the loan. Most financial institutions today offer risk-based lending – lower credit risk for lenders means better mortgage deals for customers. Credit reports frequently contain inaccurate information, which can hurt a buyer’s purchasing power. First-time buyers should check their credit scores and fix any problems before applying for financing.

Tip 9: Begin with the end in mind

Author Stephen Covey’s advice for effective living also applies to effective home buying. Resale may not your primary consideration, but it’s an important factor. Can you buy in an up-and-coming neighborhood or region? How is the “commutability” from your new home to local employers? How good are the local schools? A few queries to your favorite search engine will turn up free or inexpensive school rating services. Also be on the lookout for outdated features when you buy. If the those small closets and harvest gold appliances seem out of step now, you can bet that they won’t look any better to prospective buyers in a few years.

2006-03-20T19:10:00.000-08:00

Reinventing Real Estate, Part 1:

For decades, the real estate world turned in a predictable manner. The roles of buyers, sellers and real estate professionals were fairly well defined and transactions followed a predictable path of yard signs, newspaper ads, open houses and miles of paperwork.

Recently, online and empowered consumers have changed the game. Real estate professionals now face issues similar to the ones that have transformed the retail, personal finance and travel planning industries. As technology advances and new business models evolve, the real estate industry has begun to transform itself from providing traditional, carefully controlled “agent-centric” transactions to new “consumer-centric” practices. The following is a look at some of the recent industry trends and how buyers, sellers and investors can expect to benefit. The “Five Ds” that are driving change in real estate are:

1. Disruption – Over the past 10 years, the Internet has matured into a powerful platform for delivering real estate information, forever changing the interaction between buyers, sellers and real estate professionals.

2. Displacement – The popularity and acceptance of self-service and consumer-direct business models is being felt by real estate professionals, who are striving to develop attractive new offerings for Web-savvy consumers.

3. Demanding consumers – You now have more real estate knowledge, tools and resources at your fingertips than ever before. More savvy consumers tend to be more independent and demanding.

4. Downward pressure - Traditional real estate commissions of 5-6 percent of a property’s sales price are facing downward pressure.

5. Developing alternatives – The real estate industry is transforming itself to provide targeted services and exciting new options that add value for consumers. Disruption

“We are going to see our industry go through dramatic transformation via the Internet and consolidation of agents and companies.” – eRealty Times Columnist Dirk Zeller

Some industry observers have adopted Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christensen’s term “disruptive technology” to explain recent developments in real estate. Though it’s easy to point to the World Wide Web and advancing technology as the main changes in real estate, that’s only part of what’s shaking things up. Essentially, the real cause of disruption is not just technology, but technology-enabled real estate consumers.

Web-enabled consumers

According to the National Association of Realtors (NAR), more than 72 percent of homebuyers now begin their home search online. The popularity of online real estate ads surpassed newspaper property listings back in 2001, and the gap is widening. Less than one percent of buyers first learned about the home they purchased on the Internet in 1995, while in 2004, that number passed 20 percent.

According to a California Association of Realtors (CAR) survey, 97 percent of respondents said the Web helped them understand the buying process better and 100 percent said using the Web helped them understand home values better. Web-enabled homebuyers like you are taking a more active role in researching homes and neighborhoods. You also now spend less time with real estate professionals once you have completed your research. Internet homebuyers also used the Web effectively to filter out properties that did not interest them, visiting 6.1 homes on average versus 15.4 for traditional buyers.

Today, you can view photos and detailed information for hundreds of properties in the time it used to take to visit a single one. And the Web provides much more opportunity than simply moving print listings online. The growing availability of residential high-speed Internet connections has boosted the popularity of virtual tours and interactive maps, providing consumers with powerful and flexible visual search tools.

In addition to making home searches easier, automated valuation model (AVM) software is making a big impact in how properties are evaluated. AVMs, which generate valuation estimates by analyzing and comparing property information data, are becoming increasingly sophisticated and accurate. While not considered a substitute for human appraisals, AVMs are gaining popularity because they are inexpensive, easy to use and produce valuation estimates in minutes. Now AVMs, used extensively in electronic mortgage approval processing during the recent refinancing boom, are becoming available on real-estate Websites aimed at consumers. This is a significant development for independent sellers, who often find it challenging to price their properties correctly when selling on their own.

The MLS goes public

“In real estate, MLS data sits at the apex of the change, specifically the MLS information that is pushed to the Internet every minute of the day.” – Bradley Inman, Publisher of Inman News

Once an exclusive tool for real estate professionals, the multiple listing service (MLS) has in recent years become a very public platform for real estate listings. The MLS is the nation’s most comprehensive database of properties for sale – four out of five homes sold in the United States are listed on the MLS. MLS properties are available to agents and brokers worldwide, and are now accessible via consumer Web sites such as Realtor.com, WSJ.com, Excite, Netscape, AOL and MSN. MLS listings also appear on local, regional and national brokerage Websites through Internet Data Exchange (IDX) agreements that allow participating Realtors to share listings and display them to consumers. Even though only licensed realtors can list property on the MLS, the system has begun to figure prominently for the $110 billion independent seller (for-sale-by-owner or FSBO) market. About 13 percent of real estate sales are now FSBO, conducted without a broker’s assistance.

Type “flat fee MLS” into any major search engine, and you’ll see dozens of real estate professionals willing to list your property in the MLS for a fee. If you are willing to pay a commission of 2-3 percent, you can attract the attention of thousands of agents who will show your property to prospective buyers. You can then reduce the cost of the sale to about half a traditional 5-6 percent sales commission, plus the cost of the MLS listing. If you find an independent buyer working without an agent, you could make a sale with no commission at all and pay only an MLS listing flat fee. Displacement

Currently, about 2.4 million real estate licensees operate nationally, according to the Association of Real Estate License Law officials. The NAR has more than one million members, up from about 760,000 members five years ago. Many real estate professionals and industry observers expect a significant decline in this number because some tasks traditionally performed by agents and brokers can now be done more quickly and easily by Web-enabled consumers.

“Historically the fundamental driver of the real estate industry was the control of information. The real estate agent and the real estate office were the only sources of comprehensive information on which properties were for sale and those who might be interested in buying them. With this control revenues were practically guaranteed.

Moreover, because this exclusive control was akin to a monopoly by virtue of the multiple listing service (MLS) any firm of any size could serve the customer equally well. As a result, the number of real estate companies grew without regard to market efficiencies.

Simply put, the traditional model is too inflexible. Consumers are seriously questioning the value of a real estate agent. They frequently feel that many of the traditional tasks undertaken by the agents are now either no longer required or can be done by the consumer themselves.”

– Swanepoel & Tuccillo, Real Estate Confronts Profitability

The quotes above, from a popular report on emerging real estate business models and dwindling profit margins, highlight a number of issues traditional real estate professionals are now facing. And if the real estate industry has grown historically without regard to market efficiencies, the issue has only been compounded since 2001, as new agents signed on in droves, lured by low interest rates and skyrocketing home prices in many areas. It’s likely that the number of traditional real estate agents will decline, while new types of real estate jobs will be created to deliver value to Web-savvy customers.

NEXT in Part 2 of 2: - Demanding Consumers, Downward Pressure and Developing Alternatives

2006-03-20T19:07:00.000-08:00

Reinventing real estate, Part 2

Demanding consumers

“Internet buyers tend to be better informed on market conditions and better prepared to act on the home they want when they start working with a realtor. Luckily for realtors, these changes don’t necessarily hurt, as long as they are able to adjust to the new relationship and realize that the new-style buyers value speed and efficiency over guidance when finding a home.”

– E-marketer, Internet Home Buyers Changing the House Rules

Thanks to the Internet and other technological innovations, more real estate information is freely available than ever before. As a result, consumers are demanding new choices, improved services, faster transactions and lower prices. According to a recent NAR survey, the number of sellers stating that they didn’t want to pay a sales commission fee rose from 46 percent in 2003 to 61 percent in 2004. In 2004, 23 percent of Florida home sellers opted to sell independently without an agent, up from 14 percent in 2003 and nearly double the 14 percent national average, according to Planet Realtor.

And Web-enabled consumers are demanding a high digital IQ when working with real estate professionals. In addition to being well-versed on their own industry-specific technology, real estate professionals now are expected to utilize laptops, mobile phones, digital cameras, personal digital assistants and global positioning systems to keep pace with Internet buyers and sellers.

Downward pressure

“If consumers are going to do their own home-shopping online, they expect to save some money, just as they would for using the self-service lane. That's why they are susceptible to online discount brokers and the new affinity companies that are promoting lower commissions if only the consumers will use their agents. These business models promote the idea to consumers that they ought to be paying less money in commissions.”

Realty Times Columnist Blanche Evans

Traditional real estate commissions, typically around six percent of a home’s selling price, are facing downward pressure from consumers and competition. Some consumers claim traditional real estate commissions don’t reflect:

- Today’s home prices. Years ago, when median-priced homes sold for $25,000, real estate commissions were typically five percent, or $1,250. Today, with South Florida median home prices around $300,000, the cost of a six percent full-service real estate commission becomes $18,000. Some brokers even charge additional fees to cover administrative costs. When you consider that today’s average homeowner sells a home every five to seven years, real estate commissions can dramatically impact your personal savings and net worth.

- Owner equity. When selling properties, most homeowners calculate the cost of selling as a portion of sales price, though the commissions are paid out of owner equity. (Equity is the difference between the value of your property and amount of mortgages owed.) Consider this example: You decide to sell a property for $250,000 in which you hold 10 percent equity, or $25,000. After paying a six percent commission of $15,000, you are left with $10,000 before any applicable closing costs. In this example, the $15,000 commission is six percent of the selling price, but 60 percent of the $25,000 equity.

- Services performed. Under today’s commission structure, selling a $100,000 house at six percent typically costs $6,000, while selling a $500,000 house costs $30,000. Does selling the more expensive home really require five times more effort? Your cost is the same whether the agent spends one hour or 100 hours marketing your home. This is one reason many real estate consumers find fee-for-service real estate so appealing. Developing alternatives

“Consumers want what they want, when they want it and will gravitate to the most cost-effective source to obtain it. Why? Because our "one-size-fits-all" approach to working with sellers and buyers is archaic and won't allow consumers to access various segments of help they need in a timely fashion. That's why .com Web start-ups are finding a receptive audience in real estate consumers and why for-sale-by-owners are burgeoning.”

Julie Garton-Good, Author of “Real Estate a la Carte: Selecting the Services You Need, Paying What They’re Worth”

Until recently, you have had few practical alternatives to the traditional full-service, full-commission real estate transaction with a broker. Most sellers paid a single commission fee for a full range of real estate services, whether they needed them or not. Now traditional real estate agencies face the challenge of identifying new services that have value to today’s sophisticated online and empowered consumers.

One result is an “unbundling” of traditional one-size-fits-all real estate services for consumers who want more control over real estate transactions and their associated costs. If you’re willing to take on some tasks traditionally performed by agents and brokers, you could receive lower transaction costs. You might benefit from the following emerging alternatives:

Fee-for-services

“Consumers want assistance from real estate professionals, but don’t want to pay for it in the form of traditional commissions,” says a la Carte real estate Pioneer Julie Garton-Good. Garton-Good has been preaching the fee-for-services gospel for more than 20 years. As the name implies, you can choose which tasks you feel comfortable performing and hire qualified real estate professionals to do the rest. Many traditional real estate brokerages are beginning to offer a more menu-based service plan. For example, you may not mind listing your home and holding open houses, but you may want assistance with contracts and closings.

One-stop shopping

In response to dwindling margins and the rising costs of technology and lead generation, some real estate companies are attempting to combine traditional and Web-based services to provide consumers a single source for all their real estate needs. One-stop shopping sites generally provide or partner with lenders, insurers, title companies, real estate attorneys and others to facilitate all aspects of buying and selling. In addition, some sites are adding home-improvement and related services to stay in touch with consumers between buying and selling transactions.

Web-based discounters

Although many Web-based real estate companies flamed out in the dotcom era, scores of new companies have emerged to take their place. By offering targeted services such as flat-fee MLS listings, buyer rebates and AVM tools, these sites are appealing to independent buyers and sellers who prefer to take a more active role in transactions. In addition to listings, some sites also offer how-to articles and advice for those who choose to go it alone. Tradition + technology + turbulence = opportunities

So, given the trends, changes and ongoing industry evolution, what can independent buyers, sellers and investors expect in this new era of real estate?

• The Web and other technologies will continue to evolve and transform the $1.3 trillion real-estate industry. Technology will continue to reduce the time, expense and complexity of manual processes, and increasingly sophisticated search and valuation tools will play a more strategic role.

• Free and low-cost real estate resources will continue to be available and even multiply on the Web. In real estate, knowledge truly is power. Consumers will try to use their power to gain more control of the real estate process and subsequently expect to be compensated in the form of reduced and fee-for-service commissions.

• The role of traditional real estate brokerages will evolve as Web-enabled consumers become more knowledgeable. This likely will trigger some restructuring and consolidation of traditional brokerages, but will also drive the development of innovative new practices targeting online and empowered consumers. Real estate professionals will focus more on promoting their local knowledge and industry expertise, while consumers will perform some buying and selling tasks on their own.

• Traditional real estate commissions and profitability levels will continue to face downward pressure from various sources. The future will be profitable for brokerages that are able to extend their core expertise of neighborhood and industry knowledge into flexible new consumer-centric offerings.

• The traditional high-touch, full-service real estate agency is evolving, not disappearing. Real estate professionals who provide exceptional service and value to their customers will always be in demand.

You now can find more real estate knowledge, tools and resources on the Web than ever before, enabling you to buy and sell with increased confidence. For real estate professionals, reinventing the industry means making hard decisions, changing processes and managing new opportunities. But for consumers, reinvention in real estate is a winner, hands-down.

2006-03-20T18:55:00.001-08:00

You don't get what you deserve
… you get what you negotiate for.

A well-worn cliché? Perhaps. True, definitely -- especially in real estate transactions.

Many buyers and sellers put in countless hours carefully searching properties or preparing their homes for sale, only to see their sweet deals vanish at the negotiating table. Even if you’re not an experienced negotiator, there are steps you can take to improve results whether you’re buying or selling property. Negotiation doesn’t need to be a confrontational process if you set priorities, plan ahead and stay focused on issues, not personalities.

By far the largest expense related to traditional real estate transactions is the agent/brokers' commission, and independent buyers and sellers should take advantage of this fact. Without the “overhead” of a 5-6 percent commission, both buyer and seller have a little more flexibility to come to an agreement that’s acceptable to both parties. Here are some negotiation tips for independent buyers and sellers.

Seller negotiating tips:

Set realistic priorities before you start.

When selling, be sure to outline realistic goals before negotiations begin. If you’ve decided that you need to sell your home for at least $250,000, expect to have very different negotiations than if your goal is to sell within 30 days. If money is your primary concern, be prepared to turn down some offers as you wait for the right buyer. If time is more important to you than money, be sure to include some flexibility in your asking price.

Ultimately, the market sets the price.

Set your price too high and your house may sit on the market, becoming less attractive to buyers (some sources estimate a monthly decline of 1.5 percent). Price too low and you’ve got less room to negotiate and may be leaving money on the table. Homekeys.net Members can quickly obtain an objective estimate of property value using our online valuation tool before listing. Another option is to hire a professional property appraiser prior to listing. You may find the cost of either option to be modest compared to making an expensive mistake in your selling price.

Take inventory and take advantage.

Typically, property sales include anything that’s installed or built in to the home. If you’ve got appliances, furniture or fixtures you’re willing to part with, you may be able to entice prospective buyers by including them in the deal. Would buyers be interested in your BBQ grill or pool equipment? It can’t hurt to ask.

Buyer negotiating tips:

Clean up your credit

A great way to strengthen your case as a buyer is to demonstrate excellent credit. The time to check credit is well before negotiations begin so you can square away problems. Many credit issues are not difficult to fix and can be straightened out fairly quickly. Here’s how to check your credit.

Get pre-approved, not just pre-qualified

Pre-approval is another way to flex your buyer muscles because it lets you demonstrate to a prospective seller that your lender is prepared to give you a loan. Many sellers will choose a lower offer from a pre-approved buyer over a higher one from one who hasn’t been pre-approved. Pre-approval is free and can prevent that worst-of-all situation where a buyer successfully negotiates the purchase of his or her dream home and then cannot complete the purchase when financing falls through. Get pre-approved today.

Look for areas other than price.

Even though independent sellers can avoid some or all commission costs, there are still other fees that might apply: property and termite inspections, escrow or attorney's fees, a title search, insurance costs and applicable taxes. Even if sellers don’t offer much flexibility on asking price, they may be more willing to make a deal with buyers who offer to share the costs of necessary repairs or transaction expenses.

Be prepared to compromise.

Approaching negotiations with a confrontational “win-at-all-costs” attitude is unlikely to yield positive results. Many professionals who teach negotiation skills to executives say a more realistic goal is to find a mutually beneficial solution in which both parties can “win.” This means being aware that you may have to sacrifice something to reach agreement at some point. In this case, be sure to identify in advance what you will and will not give up to ensure you’re happy with the deal in the long term.

Back up your offer

When offering to buy a property, you don’t have to explain how you arrived at a particular dollar amount. But you may fare better in negotiations if you have some objective basis, such as examining comparable sales. If you're a Member, try Homekeys' ValueKey valuation tool for an objective estimate of value. If you’ve got a substantial down payment that you’re ready to put into escrow, now’s the time to mention it.

All participants in a negotiation should be prepared to walk away from unacceptable terms. You may be reluctant to give up after all the time you’ve invested in the buying or selling process, but emotionally tense negotiations can sometimes benefit from a cooling-off period. Walking away (or watching the other party walk away) may be uncomfortable, but it is always preferable to accepting terms you can’t live with.

Finally, remember that there’s often value in being direct. Don’t be afraid to ask questions to learn more about the other person’s concerns and objectives. “What do you need from me right now?” “What’s making you uncomfortable?” “It seems we are stuck on this particular issue. Can we set it aside for a moment and see if there is somewhere else we can gain agreement?” Questions like these can help signal your good faith and may help to restart negotiations that become bogged down in details.

2006-03-20T18:55:00.000-08:00

How Home Buyer Rebates Work

By : Charles Warnock

In today�s tight housing market, many buyers are looking for ways to stretch their dollars far enough to make that dream home a reality. One little-known strategy that�s gaining popularity with consumers is the home buyer rebate. At the same time, rebates have become a hot-button legal issue for the traditional real estate industry and the U.S. Justice Department�s Antitrust Division.

Buyer rebates are loved by consumers, at least those who know about them, because they can make getting into a home more affordable. More and more so-called non-traditional real estate companies �� those offering alternatives to full-service, full-commission brokers � are offering to share their paydays with buyers. At the same time, many traditional brokers around the nation are trying to block rebates because they threaten fat margins with price competition in the form of commission discounts.

Since buyers pay the lion�s share of closing costs in addition to down payments, many are interested in receiving rebates to ease the cash crunch of moving into a new home. This can be a real advantage for buyers who have a solid income and credit history, but little cash up front.

In this case, the term �rebate� is little confusing because home buyers are not getting a portion of their cash outlay back. The buyer representative (agent, broker or both) is rebating a portion of his or her commission back to the buyer.

The rebate process seems confusing to some buyers because it runs counter to the common belief that home buyers don�t pay real estate commissions. In fact, commission costs are passed on to buyers as part of the home�s sales price. Buyer-agents typically are paid half the standard 5-6 percent of sales price commission. That money doesn�t come from thin air�chances are that the sellers have factored commission into their price. When traditional listing agents tell sellers not to stress over commissions, because they can recover the costs through a higher sales price, someone is paying the freight.

So how do home buyer rebates work, and what�s in it for you?

- In traditional real estate transactions, buyer representatives and seller representatives typically share commissions of 5 to 6 percent. Selling brokers usually offer half this commission to a broker who brings them a buyer. As an incentive to drum up business, some brokers now offer to rebate a portion of their buyer-representative commission to home buyers. For example, suppose you buy a $400,000 home on which the seller pays a six percent commission. The buyer and seller representatives split the $24,000 commission evenly. In this case, a one percent rebate means that the buyer representative receives $12,000 from which they pocket $8,000 and �rebate� $4,000 back to the buyer.

- Buyer rebates generally depend on the home�s sales price, total amount of commission and the commission split. Some rebates may be advertised as a percentage of the buyer-representatives commission. In the example above, the rebate is $4,000, or about 33 percent of the $12,000 buyer-side commission. Other companies offer fixed-amount buyer rebates, such as $1,000 in cash or a $1,000 gift certificate.

Homebuyer rebates: To ban or not to ban?

At the same time consumers are looking to rebates to help relieve the high cost of home buying, traditional real estate brokers are trying � and succeeding in some cases � to prevent their use. Broker lobbying groups around the nation, concerned about price competition and downward pressure on commissions, have successfully lobbied lawmakers in 10 states to make home buyer rebates illegal. Four more states limit home buyer rebates to credits at closing. Fortunately for Florida buyers enduring record-setting home prices, rebates remain legal in the Sunshine State.

Industry watchers recently have looked to the state of Kentucky to see where the rebate debate might lead. In March, the U.S. Department of Justice sued that state�s Real Estate Commission, alleging that its rebate ban violated antitrust laws. The DOJ investigation alleged that Kentucky�s rebate ban may cost consumers �several thousand dollars� extra for each real estate transaction. In July, rebate fans received a victory when the DOJ and the Kentucky Real Estate Commission reached an agreement permitting rebates in that state.

If you�re shopping for a rebate, get the facts:

Some points to keep in mind if you are a home buyer looking to take advantage of rebates:

- Shop around. Some rebate programs included other buyer services, such as contract preparation or review, or escrow services. Even in a sellers� market, buyers have some leverage. After you have established the rebate amount, ask what else is in the package to help simplify your purchase and control transaction costs.

- Consider your tax picture. Getting a rebate in the form of funds applied to closing can be double-win because that money may go untaxed when applied to closing costs. If the rebate or a portion of the rebate is not available until after closing, it may need to be reported as taxable income. Of course, this isn�t an issue if you have plans for your rebate other than closing costs. Be sure to consult your tax advisor for this and other tax consequences of home buying.

- Rebates won�t be available on many homes, including sale-by-owner homes and some homes sold by discount brokers. That�s because in these cases, the traditional commission percentage and split � from which the rebate is derived � doesn�t apply. Some real estate companies don�t offer buyer-agent commissions, and owners selling their own homes probably are doing so to avoid commissions.

Finally, check to see if rebates are legal in your state. Money Magazine�s 2005 Real Estate Guide reported that rebates were banned in Alaska, New Jersey, Kansas, Oklahoma, Rhode Island, Louisiana, South Carolina, Mississippi, West Virginia and Missouri. Rebates were reported as restricted to credits at closing in Alabama, South Dakota, Oregon and Tennessee. If rebates aren�t available in your state, you might ask your buyer agent what incentives are available. After all, for being a smart buyer in today�s challenging real estate market, you deserve some type of reward.

2006-03-20T18:44:00.000-08:00

OK, here's an old one...

Tales of the Touareg and other adventures in branding

By: Charles Warnock

You’re not likely to see a Volkswagen in the winner’s circle at Daytona or Indianapolis. But if there were competition called the Brand-Building 500, you would find a Volkswagen in the winner’s circle, year after year. Everyone knows the touchstones of branding – creating value, consistency, visibility and loyalty. However, like auto racing, these fundamentals are easy to talk about, but a little more challenging to execute. Nearly anyone can steer a car around a track. But winning consistently against fierce competition in a variety of locations and conditions requires considerable skill.

Few companies are more skilled than Volkswagen at building customer loyalty. Owners become emotionally invested in their cars, invent pet names for them and treat them like extended family members. In addition to automobile devotees, the company has many more admirers who are fans of the brand. Their irreverent image and clever television ad campaigns speak to young buyers today with a message that’s consistent with the one used to sell Bugs to their parents 30 years ago. If you’re a hip, free-spirited kind of person who wants a car with personality, come join us. Among marketers, the company’s promotional prowess is legendary:

The last original VW Bug, forerunner of today’s modernized Beetle, rolled off the production line in 2003 – the last of 21,529,464 sold worldwide since the 1930s. In addition to dozens of Bug restoration and repair books, several compilations of VW’s popular print ads have been published.

A “Transparent Factory” in Dresden, Germany features glass walls that enable residents to witness the manufacture of VW luxury sedans. Finished vehicles are displayed in a glass tower before being delivered to their new owners.

In 1973-74, the company sold 30,000 VW “Things” – a re-badged German military vehicle that looks very much like the offspring of a jeep and a dumpster – to enthusiastic U.S. buyers.

In fact, even as Europe’s largest automaker, VW has been successful in defining a sort of exclusive club for younger, educated drivers. Many of these buyers start with a Jetta or a Beetle before moving on to the company’s more luxurious offerings.

And now comes the Touareg, VW’s entry into the luxury SUV market. Touareg is apparently a first-rate SUV with what USA Today calls “style, grace and growl.” But Touareg? Come on. Passat is an odd name, but “Touareg” sounds like something that needs calamine lotion.

Worship me or die

Perhaps Touareg has some poetic meaning in Slovakia, where it is built. Or perhaps the industry is simply running out of good car names. It’s a good bet that if you looked through enough sci-fi novels, you would encounter an evil warlord called Touareg the Terrible who aims to enslave a galaxy or kidnap a lovely Empress. What’s next? Ming the Mercury? The Plymouth Vader? On the other hand, a “Worship Me or Die!” ad campaign for the Touareg would be a refreshing change of pace from those friendly, self-deprecating Beetle commercials.

On the plus side, it’s a pretty safe bet that Touareg doesn’t mean “won’t go” in Spanish and won’t offend Wiccans, Jaycees or the Saharan nomads the vehicle is said to be named for. But VW could have accomplished that by calling it the Type 181, which is what the Thing was called during its hitch in the military. Perhaps Volkswagen thought that all the good rugged locale names, like Tahoe and the Santa Fe, were taken. The VW “Peoria” or “Levittowner” just wouldn’t have the same caché.

Likewise, many of the good predatory animal names are already taken. Some of the best mythical beasts, like the Thunderbird and Phoenix are also spoken for. Few people would be willing to take on a 60-month loan for a GMC Grackle, Mitsubishi Gerbil or Toyota Trout.

Perhaps automakers can enter brand partnerships with corporate sponsors, as some sports and entertainment facilities have done. The introduction of a Nissan Nike or Plymouth Viagra may not cause much of a stir at this point. With bland brands like Vitara, Spectra, Elantra and Optima becoming more common, one could assume that there are even worse nameplates yet to come. In just a few years, all the good brand names could be taken and we’ll begin to see automakers settling for second-tier names:

15: Volvo Vanilla
14.Nissan Eeyore
13. Oldsmobile Earlybird
12.Lincoln Pimpmobile
11. Chevrolet Groin
10.Kia Uvula
9. Pontiac Schmontiac
8. BMW Strudel
7. Subaru Musty
6.Honda Pretense
5. Isuzu Achoo
4. VW Vin Diesel
3. Mercury Mongrel
2. Plymouth Scrota
1. Hyundai Albundai (for drivers who are married with children)

Another possibility is for automakers to trade on the success of celebrities who have already built winning brands. I would expect that the Cadillac Sinatra would be popular with both older buyers and younger fans of the legendary singer. The Mazda Beyonce would be sleek, fun to drive, have a great sound system and a built-in celebrity endorsement. And it’s hard to imagine that a limited Elvis or Earnhardt edition of any pickup truck wouldn’t drive sales in the South.

Passat? Bless you!

Elvis and evil warlords aside, the bottom line is brand equity, and it doesn’t really matter whether Touareg is a successful sub-branding strategy. Even if individual VW models have names that sound like a sneeze or a rash, buyers seem to focus on the magic of the corporate brand.

Mere marketing mortals should probably assume that VW’s positioning, promotion and publicity formula for the Touareg is on target. The vehicle probably will garner its own cult following, and Touareg clubs, meetings and Web pages will follow. But it’s not because of the name. It’s because the company has consistently excelled in developing the awareness, recognition and loyalty necessary to build a premium brand. After all, any company that has taken the purchasing decision from “Which car should I buy?” to “Which VW should I buy?” deserves the checkered flag.