Online Marketing: Three of the Biggest Online Marketing Myths Debunked

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By Mike Parker

RISMEDIA, Nov. 11, 2008-The National Association of Realtors® (NAR) tells us that about 84% of all residential real estate transactions start online. NAR also tells us that 93% of agents are unhappy with their Internet sales success attributable to their website. If 93% of agents aren’t sharing in the 84% of sales online, what is the reason? I believe the reason has its roots in basic misinformation portrayed as fact and simple knowledge unknown to many.

Myth 1: The most popular place consumers look for homes online is Realtor.com®
Fact: The most popular place consumers look for homes online is Google®

Realtor.com is the website owned by Move, Inc. and licensed by NAR to be their only authorized website. They claim to be the most popular Internet shopping site for homes. With an impressive 7 million page views monthly, Realtor.com claims to own the largest market share of Internet home buyers. According to my research, the fact, however, is that Google has 65% of all search traffic and 85 billion searches a month, of which an estimated 13% are real-estate related. According to my research, Google receives about 870 million real estate searches a month. Based on these figures, clearly, the most popular place for Internet buyers to look for homes online is Google. You need to tap in to Google and other major search engines.

Myth 2: You need to be on every portal that is real estate related.
Fact: You really only need to be able to be found by search engines.Advertising has always presented a tremendous challenge to those seeking to sell anything. There are unlimited places to advertise, but only limited monies to spend. Just about everyone knows that newspaper advertising has been eclipsed by online advertising in effectiveness today. Understandably, there is no shortage of specialty real estate-related sites seeking a piece of what used to be that print media dollar. The premise is that the Internet home buyer-instead of being among the 870 million Internet home shoppers who patronize Google (plus the other major search engines) each month when searching for a home-will instead first go to one of these dedicated sites and look for their home there. It’s a false premise. When it comes to Internet searching, are you going to Google first, or “FindAHouse.com?” Some Internet users may not know of “FindAHouse.com,” but is there an Internet user who hasn’t heard about Google? The consumer isn’t on any portal in anything like the numbers that consumers are on search engines. That’s fact, not marketing.

Myth 3: It’s impossible for ‘the little guy/gal’ to compete against the big guys/gals in online marketing.
Fact: It’s the opposite that is true; you can compete with anyone online.
This is the biggest myth of all. The Internet is precisely where ‘the little guy/gal’ can hold their own with anyone: corporate giant or the in-town competitor. You don’t need to buy any expensive coaching program. You don’t need to spend tens of thousands building the website to end all websites. You don’t even have to be “tech savvy.” You need to learn the rules of how to succeed online. We have learned through years of working with agents and brokers that faithful adherence to these simple principles does bring success: Get yourself a good template website with plenty of features (Make sure it has a welcoming homepage, full access to listings, good virtual tours and an optional working IDX feature); hire good SEO to make sure Internet buyers can easily find that website on the first pages of those search engines when they go looking for a home online (you are a real estate agent, not a search engine technician); employ proper lead capture with incentives to encourage visitors to sign in; have all registrations text-messaged and e-mailed to you instantly and contact them as soon as humanly possible. These things are not optional, they are mandatory. Omit any of them and prepare to fail.

Fact: If you don’t start succeeding online, your days as a successful agent are numbered.
In just a short few years, we are now at the point where 84% of all residential real estate transactions start online. Are you waiting till that percentage reaches 95% to do something? Surely, you aren’t letting the market pass you by on purpose?

Albert Einstein once said that the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Do you want to sell houses online? Stop doing things the same old way you have always done them. No one can afford to ignore 84% of consumers and expect to succeed in the marketplace and stay in business. The Internet is where the action is, and the search engines are what deliver Internet buyers. To expect success without targeting search engines as a part of any online strategy might not be “insane,” but such a strategy is factually unwise. Search engines are where the buyers are and you have to be found on the first page of them to even start to succeed at selling houses online.

About the Author: Mike Parker is a principal at the Blackwater Consulting Group, Inc., and specializes in online marketing services for Realtors® and real estate professionals. You can reach him by e-mail at mparker@theblackwatercg.com. Obtain a free copy of his popular booklet “SEO Secrets for Realtors” by writing realestate@theBlackwaterCG.com. It will be sent to you free and no one will call you. To request a free review of your website to determine if it can be found by internet buyers and if it is search engine friendly, click here and it will be evaluated free.

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