Category: Marketing

Syndication Update

We had a good discussion about the whole syndication flap on yesterday’s Power Hour Rountable call.  Everyone agreed that the whole concept of the syndicators using our own data to attract leads they sell back to us was repugnant.  However, they saw it pretty much as something we did to ourselves (we being Realtors in general).  We failed to give consumers what Zillow, Trulia and others gave them, and today, that’s where consumers go to look for houses.

The group was quick to accept reality:  this is the way it is today.  Sellers expect to be seen on the syndication sites.  If you can’t give that to them, they will likely go elsewhere.  They don’t care what your syndication baggage is or how indignant you are about using your data to attract leads for other brokers.  They just expect to be there.  Plus there was general consensus that the aggregator sites work.  At one point in the call Ken Kopcho got on his mobile phone and counted:  31 leads from Zillow!

Speaking for the group, I’d say we agreed to go full bore into mining this rich source of leads,and nobody wants to stop syndicating.  However, there was agreement with what Kirk Eisele said in his comment:  consumers will go wherever their needs are best met, and this is not a closed case.  When someone comes along with a home search tool that out-Zillows Zillow, that’s where consumers will go.  There’s no reason why that can’t be us.  We own our own technology, aren’t dependent on outside vendors who have to please masses of clients, and can do whatever we want with our web presence.

Go back in time, oh, 7 years I guess.  Helpusell.com  had outrageous web traffic.  And it excreted leads, one after the other.  There was a good reason why we, at times, had better traffic than much larger organizations:  we embraced IDX and used it when most of the industry was afraid to give that information to consumers.  Consumers wanted to go to one website and look at all houses available for sale in the local market.  Using IDX to do that gave us a big leg-up on the competition.

But of course, in time the competition leveled the playing field by dropping their hysterical resistance to giving the public free access to information and adding IDX to their own sites.  We suffered a major blow when one large competitor went to our vendor and basically bought them out from under us.  We went from being the darling of Internet lead creation to . . . nowhere.  That’s why, today, we own our own tech.  We built it, it’s not available to anyone else and it does what we want it to do.

We have an opportunity today to take back some of what we gave up to the aggregators.  The shift will come when we give them everything they get from Zillow and MORE.  Today?  I have to run because I just got 5 new leads from my ad on Trulia.

Syndication Storm

First, let’s understand what syndication is.  When a real estate broker submits a listing to the MLS, he/she is given the choice whether to share the listing with various Internet property portals:  Trulia, Zillow, Realtor.com and many more.  At Help-U-Sell, with the broker’s agreement, we pull all property listings from the MLS via an IDX feed – that’s how we get the Help-U-Sell broker’s listings (along with all the others in the MLS) into helpusell.com.  We also share information with dozens of Internet portals and our brokers can opt in or out of that sharing for their individual listings.  That’s syndication.

These portals – let’s call them what they are:  aggregators – present the listing data on their own sites and use the traffic they generate to sell advertisements.  The advertisers are usually REALTORS who want to be seen as the knowledgable expert in their areas.

I remember Dale Strack railing on about this seven years ago.  ‘First they get you to share your data with them – For Free! – then they turn around and sell the leads your data generates back to you!’ he’d say.  And he was right:  we real estate pros often take the easiest path . . .  I mean:  we could have done the work the aggregators did to get our listings seen and preserve the leads not for advertisers but for the source of the data, but we didn’t.  We had a long and rich history of hoarding information from consumers and the thought of opening up our own treasure trove of data was repugnant to us!  We opted to let someone else do that.

Thank goodness we did.  Now the consumer has almost all the information we used to hoard from them!

But now there is this tempest brewing.  It started a few months ago in Minnesota, where the gigantic Independent firm, Edina, opted out of syndication on their listings.  A few firms followed over the following months and then, last week, Jim Abbott from San Diego pulled his firm out.  Abbott is not near the heavy weight that Edina is, but he understands media and created a very compelling video about his decision.  The video has gone viral in the real estate community and I’m sure will bring this issue to the forefront for many.  Here – give it a look:

Abbott’s frustration is that his listings are generating leads for other brokers.  And he is correct, it is almost impossible to find listing agent information on most of the portals.  The only agents easy to find are those who ponied up the cash for premium accounts – and there is no screening process for agents wanting to advertise in this way.  The consumer is as likely to find a Dud this way as a Star.

Imagine the frustration of a great agent who takes dozens of good property listings and sends them out to the syndicators.  Meanwhile a new agent or a failing one inks an agreement with a syndicator to become a ‘Preferred Agent’  and snares a quality lead on one of those listings.  Because they know nothing about the property (and little about the business), they lean heavily on the listing agent through the showing, offer and acceptance process.  The listing agent feels as if he/she carried the selling agent through the sale and is bothered by the low level of service the buyer client received from their agent.

I think pulling the plug on syndication is a noble thing.  I’m not sure it’s practical.  Truth is, I hear from my brokers every week that the preferred agent programs on Trulia and especially on Zillow work:  they produce leads. And today, it’s a rare broker who pulls the plug on anything producing leads.

Funny:  there’s been an alternative – actually a better program than that of any of the aggregators – out there for years:  ListingBook.  It’s free to agents and brokers, gives consumers real time access to the local MLS and the same listings the aggregators have, and preserves the lead for the agent who brings the prospect into ListingBook.  It’s the consumer centric alternative to the problems Abbott is talking about in his video.  I’ve been pushing ListingBook for years: it’s a wonderful way to give the very best infomation to your clients without giving up control.  If brokers understood its power there would be no need to syndicate to anybody.

I am very curious about where you weigh in on this and would welcome your comments.  We’re also going to spend a little time on the issue on our Wednesday Help-U-Sell Power Hour.  So please plan to attend.

Big Brother, Google and Print Media

Has it occurred to you yet that Google – at least the search engine part of Google – is, essentially, a monopoly?  They have achieved such penetration in the realm of Internet search that, what few competitors there are,  are insignificant.

I remember when I started surfing the net back in the 90’s.  None of us knew what we were doing and AOL gained a huge leg-up by organizing the Internet (today that seems so silly) and by giving us crude search capabilities.  I drifted from search engine to search engine and eventually settled into AltaVista.  In the mid-nineties AltaVista leaped ahead of its competitors by pioneering the use of web-crawlers that would go out, scan websites for information, and return data for indexing.  Today we call the crawlers ‘Spiders’ and they scamper a little faster.  AltaVista was eventually bought by Yahoo and, in May of last year, was shut down.  Now, when you try to search using AltaVista, you’re really searching using Yahoo.  As an interesting aside, it was AltaVista that brought us that wonderful translation tool, Babel-Fish.  Just as the search part of AV has been over taken by Google, so has Babel-Fish:  today we use Google Translate.

Which brings me back to the Google monopoly.  They didn’t gain that position by destroying or overtaking competitors; we gave it to them.  Google came out of the box so far ahead of their competitors that almost overnight other search engines were left in the dust.  Google made the Internet useful.  It brought order to chaos.  That’s the nice part.  But to monetize search, Google had to bring value to those of us with something to sell or something to say.  They realized (just as Don Taylor did in 1976) that the most effective marketing was highly targeted marketing.  The delivery of a highly targeted demographic to an advertiser proved to be very valuable and targeted pay-per-click ads became a dominant feature of the Internet.

So, how did Google get so good at segmenting and categorizing demographic groups to deliver to advertisers?  They kept track of us.  They recorded what we searched for and what we clicked on.  They watched how we behaved when we interacted with them and they stored that information, analyzed it, reduced it to numbers and predictive algorithms.  Today Google knows more about what interests me than just about anyone else!

We’d like to believe that Google is blind, like justice.  We’d like to believe that if I – a White male in his 60s living in Southern California – search for something, that you – a Hispanic female in your 30s living in the Northeast – also search for, we’d get the same results.  Not so. Google not only sells you as a potential target to advertisers, it also uses what it knows about your online behavior to filter search results so that your search outcome may be very different than mine.

I got a big reminder of this yesterday.  Ron McCoy, who lives 90 miles away in Riverside, just bough an IPad II.  The Apple version of PowerPoint on the IPad is something called Notebook.  Ron wanted to convert his PowerPoint Franchise Sales Presentation to Notebook and had no luck figuring it out.  While we were on the phone, I Googled it and quickly came up with a website devoted to Notebook with a long string of how-to’s about this very subject.  When Ron did the same search the website was buried. Google gave us different results because:  we live in different areas and we search for different stuff.  Google watches . . . Google knows.

Don’t get me wrong.  I love Google.  I’m more a Google person than a PC (Microsoft) person.  I have a Google T-Shirt.  I have an Android phone.  But sometimes all of this Google-looking-over-my-shoulder-while-I-browse creeps me out a bit.  Sure, their motives are purely Capitalistic:  they want great data on me to sell to advertisers.  But what if their information came under the control of an entity – a faction, a government, a policing unit – who maybe had other motives?  Makes me want to browse through an anonymizer!

I applaud Google for what its done to marketing.  That arena is fundamentally different and the difference is directly related to what Google did.  But it’s interesting:  after years of diss-ing print media as the nearly extinct dinosaur that it is, Google has taken to using traditional paper advertising to show its concern for our online safety.  They’ve earmarked tens of millions of dollars for a ‘Good to Know’ campaign running in newspapers and magazines.  The first ad ran in Britain recently and encouraged people to be a little more creative with their passwords.  It’s actually very good information, so good that I’ll reproduce the ad here and encourage you to do what Mother-Google is asking you to do!

 

Having gotten all of that rambling tangential junk out of the way, here’s my point for you today:  If Google – who owns the Internet – who invented online marketing – is getting into print advertising, isn’t’ it something you ought to consider for your business?   For five years we’ve preached that print is dead-dead-dead, and every time one of our brokers put a toe in the print-media waters he pulled it back in shock and horror.  But suddenly, Maurine Grisso takes a full page ad in her local paper for a song the week between Christmas and New Years and actually develops LEADS.  I know:  Maurine is a brash pioneer, sometimes so far on the cutting edge that she’s actually on the bleeding edge; but nobody can fault her for not taking risks and sometimes reaping big rewards.  And I’m not suggesting you sink thousands of dollars into print advertising this month or next.  What I am suggesting is that it might be time to put that toe back in the water.  Spend $50 or $100 and run a little ‘Sell Fast – Save Thousands’ ad or something similar.  Try putting a true ETM (with sold-and-saves, testimonials, and an Easy Way plus a few listings) on the back of a Homes magazine.  Pay very close attention to the results you get:  how many inquiries does this specific ad produce?  Then let me know if Google and Maurine are right or if it’s still too early.  Thanks!

Brilliant Marketing!

Remember Jason Smith?  He was a former Chicago area Help-U-Sell broker and a corporate employee for awhile.  He’s now a State Farm agent in Solana Beach, just north of San Diego.  This morning I got the following in my inbox:

LinkedIn

Jason Smith has sent you a message.

Date: 1/09/2012

Subject: Business proposition for our mutual benefit

I see we have some mutual connections. As an insurance specialist my clients often ask if I can refer them to quality realtors who specialize in particular types of properties and/or areas here in San Diego. Let’s see if we can help each other out. It will be great if we can be better connected and are more aware of each others strengths.

Feel free to call me, or share your contact information with me so that I can get in touch with you directly to set up a meeting.

Regards

Jason Smith
State Farm Agent
312 S Cedros Avenue Suite 140
Solana Beach, CA 92075
Ph: (858) 755-2106

View/reply to this message

Don’t want to receive e-mail notifications? Adjust your message settings.

© 2011, LinkedIn Corporation

Jason has more than 500 connections on LinkedIn.  I don’t know how many more because Linkedin quits counting at 500.  He’s gone through and ticked everyone with real estate in their profile and sent them this message.  Brilliant, huh?!  It’s personal, targeted and very straightforward:  a ‘Business proposition for our mutual benefit.’

Take a look at LinkedIn.com.  Once you have a profile, you can search ‘Groups’ for all kinds of things.  I searched for ‘San Diego,’ and came up with dozens of groups that I could join, thus gaining the ability to send a message to other members.  The San Diego Biotechnology Group has 5,618 members!  The San Diego Sales and Marketing Group has 4,314!

I am waiting to hear from those of you who pick up this nifty idea and run with it.

And Thank You! Jason.

 

Of Steve Jobs, the Music Business and Real Estate

Jose Perez of PCMS Consulting is on RISMedia today talking about Steve Jobs and the music industry.  What’s that got to do with us? you ask . . . quite a bit, I’d say.

Before we go there, however, let’s drop into Wall Street.  We often look at the history of the securities business in the last 15 years and draw parallels to real estate.  Remember?  Used to be, we had to contact a broker to trade a stock and we paid a percentage based commission for the privilege.  Stock trading was mysterious, complicated, beyond the grasp of most people and the commissions were, well, just the reasonable cost of entry.  Then along came Charles Schwab with $15 flat fee trades.  Consumers loved it and the industry took note.  The forward thinkers not only shifted to the new model, they enhanced it by putting powerful analytic information in the consumer’s hands on the Internet.

Sound like the real estate business?  You bet.

Perez is saying the same kind of change happened in the Music business.  Remember when we used to go to the music store to buy vinyl LP records, and then CDs?  That’s how music was distributed.  The whole industry was built around the idea of making and marketing these plastic objects called ‘records.’  But then, technology made it possible for people to take the records, digitize them and then share them (often illegally) over the Internet.  The industry reacted not by looking forward at how they might capitalize on this,  but by looking to the courts, suing the most prolific pirates.  Meanwhile, Steve Jobs – a music industry outsider – quietly invented the Ipod – nothing more than a solid state drive with a simple user interface – and the ITunes store for making digital music accessible to consumers.  For 99 cents you could buy a song . . . and, today, that’s what we do.

Just as in real estate, we had a music industry fighting to preserve the status quo . . . and losing; because you can never preserve the status quo.  It is impossible. In both cases we have industries struggling to keep information out of the consumer’s hands . . . and losing.

Want another example?  How about the Travel industry.  Not too many years  ago we used to call a travel agent to book a plane trip or a vacation.  They had all the information:  schedules and fares and so on; and they earned a nice commission for helping us navigate this mysterious process.  How many travel agents do you know today?  Really:  they have become largely extinct!  And how do we book travel today?  We go to the Internet where all the information is housed and make our decisions for ourselves.  Unfortunately, the pricing model for travel has not changed significantly . . . which makes me wonder:  whose getting that commission today?

And here we have real estate:  an industry that justified its percentage based commissions for decades largely by hoarding information.  Then along came Don Taylor (and by the way, he came along a good ten years before Charles Schwab had his epiphany).  He saw a way to do the real estate business not for a nonsensical percentage based commission, but for a Low Set Fee.  He saw all of this hoarding going on and decided that Information Without Obligation would be one of his new company’s core values.  The maturation of the Internet twenty years later put that value on steroids . . .

And how did the Industry react?  It ran in terror for the hills, dug foxholes, locked up the valuables (the information), put its fingers in its ears and refused to hear what consumers were saying.  Even today, with a real estate market undergoing complete upheaval, with change swooping down around us like a Tsunami, how many of the big national brands are talking about their pricing model?  Um . . . none.  Even today, when consumers can (with the click of a mouse) get all the information REALTORS used to hoard, how many are talking about how we can use that fact to streamline the process and make the experience better for the home buyers and sellers?  Um . . . none.

All I can say is:  get ready.  We’re about to witness a magnificent collision.  The vision of Don Taylor is about to come to full fruition as it collides with the reality of today’s consumer, the Internet and the upheaval in the marketplace.  Five years from now as brokers collect their Set Fee at closing, they’ll scratch their heads, look back and wonder:  ‘Did we ever really do business that old fashioned way?’

 

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