The Final Word On Syndication (Mine)

Check out this letter from a consumer on Inman today.  It somehow reminded me of something:

There is a difference between advertising and marketing.

Advertising is promotion without a plan, with no clear or realistic purpose, with little or no measurement of results.  Advertising is what most REALTORS do.  They promise the seller this advertising and that advertising, pretending all the while (wink, wink) that somehow the advertising is going to sell the house.

Help-U-Sell is a marketing company.  We create a powerful marketing plan with a crystal clear purpose:  to generate leads.  Leads, properly handled, sell houses.*

We syndicate our listings out to Trulia, Zillow and other aggregators because it’s good marketing.  It generates leads.  It doesn’t matter how the aggregators came into existence or how stupid we all were to let it happen. Since we are a marketing company, we go where the leads are, and today, they are on Zillow.

That’s it.
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*(Not every listing we take is a good lead generator.  That doesn’t mean that the house is a bad house.  It just means that other houses in our inventory are better lead generators.  So, part of being a marketing company is carefully selecting the properties that generate the largest number of leads.  Next time you find yourself promising a seller advertising, watch out:  you’re dangerously close to falling into the traditional REALTOR trap.)