Weighing Online Options – How to Choose the Right Home for Your Listings

By Maria Patterson

RISMEDIA, Oct. 21, 2008-Are you part of the mad rush to distribute your listings online? Looking for ways to stand out with the online audience? If you’re not caught up in the movement yet, odds are you’re close to joining the masses. With the increasing number of listing portals at your service, however, how can you figure out the best bang for your buck? Should you choose one site? All? A couple? Should you also advertise on these sites to expand your presence? After all, look, feel, functionality and effectiveness vary greatly. In this interview, Greg Schwartz, vice president of advertising sales for Seattle-based Zillow, offers some sound advice on what to look for-and what to expect-from a listing portal.

Real Estate magazine: Is now the time to cut back on marketing and advertising?
Greg Schwartz: For those agents looking to maintain and grow their business, it’s exactly the time to invest. If you look at the countercyclical nature of the advertising business, shrewd marketers up their spending in down markets as there is less competition for advertising space. It’s actually a cost-effective time to build a brand and gain market share. But you need to put a very close lens on effectiveness and measurability of your advertising. It’s imperative that your advertising is accountable and can deliver high returns.

RE: Can you really measure advertising, especially online?
GS: Given the complex nature of the real estate transaction, I don’t know if pure measurability exists, but there are a number of tools that can help. When it comes to the Web advertising movement, it’s all about “Are you getting in front of a large, qualified audience?” In Internet advertising, you must have the opportunity to stand out and build an advantage. You have to know exactly what you’re buying and it has to be measurable. You just can’t pay some odd, flat fee for an inexact ad package. You have to know whether you’re buying a percentage of views in a certain geographic area or how many clicks you’re buying.

RE: Where should brokers and agents focus their attention and their dollars when it comes to marketing and advertising?
GS: If brokers and agents look at the advertising options available to them, there’s a great deal of value in online advertising and direct mail. The key thing on the Web is the ability to deliver targeted ad impressions in specific neighborhoods and towns. The Web also offers immediacy-your listing will be there the moment you upload it.

RE: What do consumers expect in terms of real estate advertising?
GS: The new generation of sellers is more Web savvy, as their search for homes is driven by the Internet. They expect agents and brokers to market aggressively online. They want to see their home for sale on these sites, along with anything that can be done to help their home stand out from the crowd, like Featured Listings. This is where advertising comes into play.

RE: Why are so many brokers and agents looking to syndicate their listings as a necessary strategy for today’s market?
GS: Right now, there’s an 11-month supply of housing on the market. It’s imperative that agents and brokers maximize exposure for all their listings. They have to get listings out in front of all potential buyers. This is a crowded market with a lot of inventory and the majority of home purchasers start their search online. If your product isn’t widely distributed, you’re doing a disservice to the owner and the sales effort.

RE: So is it enough, then, to simply distribute your listings across as many portals as possible?
GS: No. The question now is, “How do I stand out?” Sellers are requiring agents to provide a paid view count of their listings. Sellers want to know what kind of attention their home is getting online. At the top of every home listing on Zillow, for example, you can see the page-view count. Homeowners demanded it. We have both for-sale and not-for-sale homes in our database. If my home is getting a lot of visitation and it’s not for sale, that’s a great pre-market measure of the interest in my home. If I’ve got a lot of page views for my for-sale property, then I know I’ve got a hot property and that my agent is doing something right.

RE: What’s your advice when it comes to syndicating listings?
GS: There’s nothing wrong with a broad distribution of listings as long as sites are ethical and follow up on their commitments to their brokerage partners. The key is that your listings appear as full listings. Think twice before syndicating to sites that will charge you to add photos or contact information. We allow brokers and agents to post 50 photos on Zillow at no cost. We also encourage agents to post their detailed contact information, including their e-mail address, phone number and a link to their website, for free. We know that if consumers don’t get this information, they will spend less time looking at the house online, which means fewer potential buyers for you.

Equally, if not more, important is that your partners share the SEO benefits with you.

RE: How can brokers and agents get their listings-and their firms-to stand out from the crowd?
GS: Two key ways. One is free and one is paid. First-photos, photos, photos. Traffic to listings when they include rich, high-quality photos goes up several hundred percent. Consumers go to a website to see photos-if they see an empty listing, they won’t follow through to the broker’s website. In fact, adding at least one photo to your listing increases your traffic by 41%.

Second, a number of portals, including Zillow, that have Featured Listing programs or other types of localized advertising (for us, it’s Showcase Ads), see traffic to those listings go up more than 450%-that’s a tried-and-true number. It’s a very cost-effective solution as these ads match the consumer’s search area.

RE: What matters to consumers when searching online listings?
GS: Aside from photos, two things really impact consumer interest. First, disclosing the address. Listings that don’t disclose the address suffer terribly. Second, virtual tours. We allow agents and brokers to post links to virtual tours for free. Many brokers and agents don’t take advantage of that, however, and they should.

RE: What are some of the most common mistakes agents make when marketing themselves and their listings online?
GS: Only advertise your brand where you can truly stand out. If you’re not going to have a high share of voice or share of the exposures, it’s unreasonable to expect that your advertising will be effective. We recently revamped our local advertising product to do just this. Showcase Ads are purchased at a minimum of 25% of the ad views within a given ZIP code, ensuring your ad is seen by those searching for homes in your area.

RE: How does Zillow fare in the online listings arena?
GS: Ninety percent of Zillow visitors own a home and two-thirds are currently or will be soon starting the buying or selling process. Over 5 million visitors come to the site each month and 54% of buyers responding to a recent CAR (California Association of Realtors) study use Zillow in their process. And, we offer agents and brokerages the ability to list homes for sale at no cost-including 50 photos.

In addition, a recent independent study commissioned by Threewide Corporation concluded that Zillow refers consumers who are more serious about buying or selling a home than other real estate websites. An independent study by the WAV group analyzed the results of syndicating real estate listings on behalf of broker members of the Northern Nevada Regional MLS.

RE: What makes Zillow so successful?
GS: Our secret sauce is advocating for the consumer-giving them every element of data and content that we can and connecting them with a real estate professional and allowing those dialogues to happen for free…and allowing those dialogues to happen around millions of listings and photos. Creating that flourishing community is key for us, and is what keeps consumers coming back month after month.

For more information, please visit www.zillow.com.