Online Marketing - Is the Internet Really More Important Than Life Itself?

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By Mike Parker

RISMEDIA, January 14, 2009- As I was monitoring developments in the world of blogs recently, I came across an entry entitled “My Internet Advertising has been Validated!” made by Steve Eckhardt-”Florida’s Luxury Home Broker”-and Owner of Tampa’s Cornerstone Properties and Investments, Inc. (www.thefloridaauthority.com).

Eckhardt’s post really was about the death of the value of newspaper advertising and his transition into Internet-based advertising, but it did contain this amazing statistic-a new study sponsored by Intel Corporation and conducted by Harris Interactive reported that 65% of adults felt they “could not live without Internet Access.”

When you synch this data up with the NAR Profile of Buyers and Sellers for 2008-which reports that 90+% of home buyers aged 44 or under used the Internet as a source of information during the home buying process and that fully 87% of all buyers, regardless of age, did the same-the real question might be: “Why is anyone still wasting their advertising budget on newspaper ads when trying to sell homes?”

Eckhardt also noted that his brokerage has been “print-free” and “100% Internet-based” for two years now. That doesn’t mean he stopped newspaper ads and didn’t re-invest that money into Internet advertising. Eckhardt tells me he has invested heavily in all areas of the Internet; “from ads, to SEO…to featured homes slots on luxuryrealestate.com. (Note: an appropriate portal for a luxury home broker).”

Of the 94 folks who commented on his post when I last checked, many were calling him “brave” and other admiring terms. While about 90% of the comments were completely supportive, some could not apparently bring themselves to wean themselves off of using tomorrow’s parakeet cage flooring as their advertising leader. It seemed to me that the reasons those resisting the change did so were a variation of these two:

- Excuse number one: “The customers demand newspaper advertising!” Do they, now? When confronted by a consumer who does ‘demand’ such advertising, how difficult is it to educate them that newspapers are no longer where shoppers look for homes? Did the Detroit Free Press stop home delivery except on weekends because people can’t live without newspaper ads, or because no one was reading the newspaper ads? Did the Los Angeles Times drop the real estate section because no one is buying houses anymore or because no one is buying homes from newspaper ads anymore?

In the face of those astounding recent developments, doesn’t it seem that an agent who allows a client to dictate the marketing strategy by which that agent is charged with selling that client’s home is forgetting who the client is and who the professional real estate salesperson is? If clients demand newspaper advertising, why not try to collect a check from them for it? At least that way, you aren’t wasting YOUR money on that dead horse that is newspaper advertising.

- Excuse number two: “Our competitors will pounce on it as a sign that times are tough for us.” Gee, there’s a revelation! Times are tough-although sales are increasing and outlook is improving. Eliminating newspaper advertising should be viewed as proof you are a savvy marketer and that you know what you are doing. NAR’s own stats say what they unequivocally do: 87% of all home buyers use the Internet in their search for a home.

What alternatives do we have?

Did you know you can be where over 880 million real estate-related searches are conducted each month for $185 a month? That’s the number of real estate related searches on just Google’s search engine. Yahoo and MSN search engines add millions more Internet home shoppers. To reach them, you should have an organic search subscription. Even the highest quality organic search subscription can cost that little, today. (If you’d like to know more, just look at www.compassInternetsystems.com and learn about it.)

Or, Google, Yahoo and MSN also will gladly sign you up for pay-per-click, where you can spend as much as your heart desires–$50,000 a year or more is not uncommon, although many agents spend only $300-$500 a month to be on one search engine for the time they pay.

Dozens of real estate portals will also gladly take your money to put your listing on their portal. (Make sure you ask a true consumer if they’ve ever even heard of the portal you are considering, however, before signing over the money is my advice, because most consumers have not a foggy clue about any of these portals. Just about everyone has heard of Google.) Portals are, far too often, simply additional places to spend advertising dollars. If you are on all the major search engines, you probably don’t need these special interest niches, unless you really have a special interest niche property, like a home with 30 garage spaces or the like (That one should be listed with that very famous imaginary portal www.GetaHousewithaREALLYbiggarage.com .)

Can’t Live without the Internet?

I personally find it incredible that 65% of people said they “couldn’t live without” the Internet.

There is a powerful observation to be drawn here, however; the point of it all: serious surveys are returning results like described here and agents and brokers are still not putting their resources into the Internet? It’s time to match your advertising to where people are downright fanatical about the vehicle displaying it! Once you do so, you might also feel like this, as described by Malcolm Waring of www.bevwaring.com: “We just have to get them to our website to have a chance at doing business with them, and I don’t view the SEO that does that for us as advertising, I consider that SEO as necessary to our success as our license to sell real estate.” (Waring will also tell you that he has had more than a 30x return on his investment on his SEO subscription! I suppose giving up returns like would be hard to live without!)

Folks, the answer to the question: “How do I sell more houses on the Internet?” is “SEO”-search engine optimization. Once you’ve had REAL SEOTM, you won’t be willing to give it up for anything, but until you do have it, you’ll be missing out on where 87% of all home sales happen because you can’t succeed there unless people can find you easily by what you sell. Is this the year that you are finally going to get with the program? What does a survey have to show before you realize that people who use the Internet use it for everything-and that includes buying their home? Use that knowledge to your advantage.

It’s 2009. It is expected that 90% of all home purchases will involve the Internet this year. Please consider this your official invitation to participate in those sales.

© 2009 Mike Parker

Mike Parker (mparker@theblackwatercg.com) is a principal at the Blackwater Consulting Group/CompassSearch, and specializes in online marketing services for Realtors® and real estate professionals. Obtain a free copy of his recently updated booklet “15 Tips for Real Estate Professionals” by writing to 15tips@compassInternetsystems.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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