How to Land Internet Buyers despite Interference from ?Your Team’

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Five common dangers and five common-sense fixes

By Mike Parker

RISMEDIA, March 15, 2007-The market is down, new homes sales are down, pessimism is proliferating, and the bills still need to be met. The wolf is not at the door, perhaps, but we can hear him baying in the woods. It is against this framework that the utility and importance of online marketing becomes obvious to everyone who lists and sells homes for a living.

Last month, you read the article comparing Internet buyers to traditional buyers; an eye-opening collection of facts courtesy of the California Association of Realtors® and Leslie Appleton-Young, vice president and chief economist of that organization. So many wrote to tell that they understood what that article presented: if you are in the real estate business, you must also be in the online marketing business. The article said, "Print is dead to this generation of home buyers," recommending that every Realtor redirect about 75% of the print media budget to online marketing services. Of course, a few took exception. It is easy for people to feel threatened by this new reality, especially when others manipulate data to deny that reality. Check out this text from an online ad:

"The National Association of Realtors® "Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers" reveals that 74% of all clients are generated from direct knowledge of the agent or a referral from a trusted source. That's nearly three-quarters of all clients! They don't come through the Internet or a Web site (less than 7% do). Or from some fancy "high image" ad, post card or brochure (3%)."

The ad says that 74% of all sales come from "referrals." Search engines and Web sites are "referrals" and "trusted sources." Being directed to your site by organic search engines is a valid referral, just as a phone call is. People consult Google, Yahoo, MSN and AOL with their most delicate questions over a billion times a week. Internet referrals constitute a "trusted source." The ad then wrongly says that "less than 7% of all sales come through the Internet" and attributes that phrase to the NAR®, when their stats show about 80% of all real estate transactions employ the Internet. For this to exclude Internet referrals from "referrals" in an attempt to bolster his method of training is certainly misleading, but it happens all the time.

Is it any wonder agents and brokers are confused? On one side is irrefutable data from your own associations showing that the Internet is the way, on the other, people telling you that it isn't. What else is there to look out for?

It occurred to me that just as many real estate professionals are new to online marketing, so are they unfamiliar with five common obstacles to success in online marketing; obstacles that often come from those trying to help us. But none of these concerns come to bear unless you are active now in online marketing. If you don't have your own site, you may be being held back with one or more of these issues. If you have your own site, most of them won't apply, but even having your own site is not enough if it cannot be found by people looking for homes in your neighborhood. Once you have your site and you're sure that it can be found by people searching for properties in your neighborhood, then you will have taken a huge step to being certain that these kinds of interference aren't holding you back. (Go to this link http://theblackwatercg.1landing.com/ and our team will examine your site and tell you if it is properly set up to be found by people searching for homes in your neighborhood, free).

1. Could your own IT department accidentally be hindering your ability to sell online?
Imagine that you saw a booklet in this publication that you thought you might put to good use. You filled out the form, and you sent away, but never got your information and never heard from the company. That company must not think you are important, right? Maybe not; if you are a Keller Williams agent, that happens all the time if you use your @kw.com e-mail address! That's right, imagine your franchise blocking you from receiving information you request because they deem it "UCE"-Unsolicited Commercial E-mail (I wonder if they also block e-mails to you from prospects, too?

After all, if information you request is labeled "spam," why wouldn't inquiries from unknown potential buyers also be labeled as "spam"?). Surprisingly, the referenced IT department never responded to notification of this situation and did not fix it. This is not effective online marketing, but similar policies are implemented daily by IT people trying to strike a balance between accessibility and keeping out unwanted spam. If the boss calls down that she's getting too much spam, well…….the baby can get thrown out with the bathwater, as the old cliché goes.

How to fix it: First, always maintain a personal e-mail address for information requests and personal communications. Then, inquire about your e-mail and spam filters on your franchise address: are they too tight? Do they cut off legitimate attempts to communicate with you? If so, get them changed! Test them: send yourself an e-mail from another address (a friend's computer) from another physical location with a large attachment; something like…."Here's a picture of the house I want to sell. Can you handle it for me?" Send that e-mail to your franchise e-mail address. If it does not arrive, your filters are too tight.

2. Is your own broker accidentally hindering your ability to sell online?
Are you stuck on a "Mothership" site by order of your broker? Are you forced to subscribe to a page on MOTHERSHIP.com where you probably can't find yourself, let alone have prospects find you? Or, does your broker encourage you to have your own site? [Note: a "Mothership" site is one where a gigantic facility site has one address and thousands of people in single pages attached to that site. A Mothership may work well on Star Trek, but they do not work well in making it possible for anyone who does not know your name to find you.]

How to fix it: Get your own site. Get all the leads and inquiries it generates. Make sure your personal site is well optimized so that searchers can find you when looking for homes in the marketplace you truly cover. You can obtain a very good site for free or you can spend whatever you want building one, but please…get your own site!

Is your broker stuck on print advertising, refusing to believe that the Internet is more important?

It's not hard to know why resistance to change away from print is so strong: seeing your ads in print is reassuring, whereas only relying on something you can't touch and can't see is a little bit scary. That is precisely why you must equip yourself with the tools that let you see what your Web site is doing for you and that propel that site to being effective. While the new technology can be daunting, it also provides you with information you never had access to before; information that lets you manage your marketing far better, because you now can see where it is being effective. As further support for the proposition that newspaper advertising is not as important as it used to be, consider these facts from the 2006 CAR® Economic Study:

In every age group, newspaper readership is way down. In the 30-45 age group, less than 35% of people read a newspaper. Even in the 45-55 age group, only slightly more than 45% of people read the newspaper.

That same study disclosed that only 21% of traditional buyers found their agent through brochures, flyers, or mailers to their home and that NO Internet buyers found their agent that way. The study said that 92 % of Internet buyers found their listing on a Web site and that 63% of Internet buyers found their agent through a search engine! What part of that don't you understand? Here's some breaking news: this trend will continue. Have you tried to get a teenager to read a book, lately? They are probably too busy IM-ing, texting friends on their cellphones or watching videos on Youtube. The next generation will be even less paper friendly and more Internet friendly.

How to fix it: Take at least 50% of the money you spend on newspaper ads, brochures, flyers, Yellow Pages® ads and yard signs and redirect it to online marketing services for Realtors. Then, your own Web site will start making money for you. Some print advertising is good, but much less than you used to buy, and with much less frequency. The Internet is a 24/7 proposition, and you would be amazed at what time of day people search for homes. In contrast, the morning newspaper is often in the trash by dinner time-even in the 35% of homes of your target home-buying audience who read one.
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A man wrote me and took issue with the Internet as being more important than print for real estate professionals. I told him of our client who measured her response from her full page newspaper ad with a tool at six visits for the $1,200 she spent. She spends less than $3,000 a year on all aspects of her online marketing, and averages 1,500 visits each month on her Web site. You can maintain your preference for print, but first, do the math: "Print fades, Internet rises" has been the theme of endless print media articles for the past five years! Even the New York Times is transitioning as fast as they can to Internet publication and advertising and they also fear for the future of newspapers in America. This doesn't mean that carefully targeted periodicals and some sales brochures are not a good idea; it's just that you should think of Internet as at least as important as newspapers and other print media and allocate resources accordingly. In respect for his position, however, there are parts of the U.S. and Canada that are so small that the Internet is not as important. One Realtor in a small Nova Scotia town can literally see every home in her town from her doorstep, and there are only 350 of them. In that town, the online presence is not as vital, perhaps, but it also could be: where everyone knows everyone else and their business, anonymity provided by the Internet is highly prized. I continue to assert that the Internet is more important than newspaper ads.

Does your company or IT department keep you up to date on useful things you can do to improve your site as a tool? Do they get all inquiries and parcel them out as they see fit?

If your company suddenly subscribed to a service that doubled+ traffic to the site, would they tell you about how you could obtain that service for your site? Would they even put out a memo or an e-mail telling you about it? Does your company require you to have a place on their site that is designed to drive leads to them, not you?

How to fix it: Don't pay for any required site or service that doesn't deliver fresh inquiries directly to your inbox. Remember, you can get a fully functional, handsome site loaded with features for free; so why should you pay for a site that develops leads for someone else that never get back to you? These are the type of things to discuss with your broker. Make suggestions and encourage new approaches. When a reasonable broker hears the same thing from many agents, change happens. You need to get your neighborhood staked out now on the Internet, because in another year or so, all neighborhoods will be staked out by people who are not hindering online marketing, but embracing it. If your broker is shut out of this move to the Internet, you will also be shut out, unless you have your own site. You are in this together, but you make your money by selling and listing homes personally. You need the Internet– today and in the future– to succeed.

Is your IT guy's priority keeping control of his empire or in helping you to further your business online?

When you contact him to ask him to cooperate with a new vendor you have decided to employ to provide online marketing services for you, does he say a)"I can do that for you, much cheaper"?; b) "Oh, that won't work!"; or c) "They don't know what they're talking about!" If he gives any one of those answers, don't listen. Online marketing is a special market niche and different companies are way ahead of others in their special niches. Your IT guy can't be up on everything, there are very few people who can be. Your IT guy's status is linked to his mastery of what is unfamiliar to you, even if his mastery is illusory. While chances are excellent that he knows lots more about IT than you ever will, being a real estate pro is not about being an expert in IT. It's about sales and marketing. You need to let him know that you are helping him by taking some of the load and responsibility for online marketing off his back.

How to fix it: Hire professionals who provide online marketing services for Realtors. Remember, this IT guy could be a big part of the reason you are not succeeding in your online marketing at this moment. Please do not allow a technical person to make your marketing decisions. You wouldn't let a techie tell you about how to sell homes, but that's just exactly the outcome when you let one talk you out of a decision you made based on your real estate marketing knowledge. It's not the Internet that is mysterious, it's the power that people keep over you by making you think that it is. True IT professionals embrace and expect change and new ideas, they don't try to discourage them and they don't see them as threats to their relationships. True professionals see them as chances to enhance their prestige and their status in your eyes by helping you do better in your business.

A closing word: There are more good ‘IT guys', brokers, and Webmasters than there are bad ones. But there are bad ones. It also seems that everyone knows some self-styled "expert" who chips in with their useless and often counterproductive advice. If you are not getting your fair share of the Internet now, why would you listen to someone who has demonstrated that they cannot help you obtain it? You must look at ALL the reasons you might not be prospering from this powerful tool. No offense is intended to any one. It's your business, and you need to manage this portion of it like you manage every other portion of it. The facts tell us that the dynamics of the business are changing rapidly.

If you are welcoming and ready to exploit that change you'll be more successful in your online marketing and that's where the money is!

The Great One, professional hockey's greatest scorer, Wayne Gretzky, once said:" Some people skate to where the puck is; I skate to where the puck will be." Folks, let others stay where they are comfortable; be the one who moves to where the business is and where it will increasingly be: online.

For more information, contact Mike at mparker@TheBlackwaterCG.com.

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