Friday, February 11, 2011

All the world over, so easy to see
People everywhere just wanna be free
Listen, please listen, that’s the way it should be
Deep in the valley, people got to be free.

Shout it from the mountain on out to the sea
No two ways about it, people have to be free
Ask me my opinion, my opinion will be
Nat’ral situation for a man to be free.

–Felix Cavaliere

The Internet Revolution: Updated

Below is a link to an interview with the young Google executive who was kidnapped and held hostage by the Egyptian government for two weeks as the protests began.  He and others mobilized the power for the Internet, Facebook and Twitter in the wake of the killing of an unarmed man in Alexandria about a month ago.  That event and the instant spreading of the word in its aftermath became a lightning rod for the protests.

I believe this is the face of the revolution.  He is smart.  He understands technology.  I believe what he’s started is irresistible, unstoppable, inevitable.  As you watch the fall of Mubarek on CNN, I hope you will marvel at the power of the Internet to quickly disseminate information, to put people in motion.  For me, that is what this all about.

Help-U-Sell Marketing

I’ve been stewing over Help-U-Sell Marketing and how to present it powerfully to a potential Seller.

By nature it is already powerful compared to what goes on in ordinary offices, where marketing/advertising has largely become the responsibility of individual agents.   It didn’t use to be that way.  A long time ago, real estate companies created, orchestrated and paid for marketing to benefit their agents.  But back then, agents were usually paid 50% – 60% of the earned commission.  Today, most ordinary brokers start newbies out at more than that and 75%-80% splits are not uncommon.  When ordinary companies gave in to the pressure to pay more to their agents, they had to cut somewhere to make up the difference, and marketing budgets took the biggest hit.

So at brand X down the street, you have dozens of little agents whizzing around willy-nilly ‘advertising’ on Craig’s List here and a homes magazine there, and dropping an open house ad in the local rag when the seller gets antsy.  There’s no coordination, no maximization of the power of INVENTORY, no grand design to marketing, and the results are negligible.

At Help-U-Sell, marketing is the purview  of the Broker.  It is an office responsibility.  Our brokers do deep research into the local marketplace so that they can make informed decisions about where, when and how to market.  They design, implement, monitor and constantly refine a coordinated marketing plan that generates a strong flow of buyer leads into the office.  New listings are simply plugged in to the marketing program and marketing featuring any of the office listings will benefit all of the office listings.   It is the strong flow of leads that causes our listings to sell.

We used to talk with potential sellers about the components of the marketing plan:  ETMs, Brags, Weekly Lists, Bootlegs et.al.  and while I’m sure those things are important today, I think sellers want to hear more and more about the Internet.  Since everyone knows that buyers are all over the Internet looking for houses, sellers want to know what you’re doing to get their property noticed in that arena.

I think saying you syndicate to 28 websites and sharing a graphic of what those websites are is helpful.  But it’s not a differentiator.  Most main line real estate companies are syndicating in similar fashion.  (By the way:  this does not mean you shouldn’t talk about it and show the graphic.  You should.  It’s still impressive.)  I think what’s more important is to show how you’ve maximized your web presence to be most attractive to the Internet buyer.

Here:  have some fun with this:  Open Google and type in ‘ Sell Real Estate’.  The top few responses are paid ads.  But after that, Help-U-Sell is often the first main-line real estate company that shows up.  Every time I’ve ever done it we are in the middle or near the top of the first page.  Of course there’s a reason:  our name is Help-U-Sell real estate!

But if you’ve done your homework, if you localized and optimized your website, if you’ve bought good domain names to point to your website, if you’ve created new pages of localized content for your website and so on, there should be search strings that have your office appearing near the top of the first page.  Why not spend a little time trying to discover what they are?  Then start sharing those search string results with sellers when you sit down for a listing consultation.

Want to see someone doing a very good job of this?  Go to Google and search for ‘Santa Rosa Homes.’  See who the first several results are.  Now try ‘Santa Rosa Real Estate.’  Maurine Grisso has created several websites, each targeted at a different kind of consumer in her marketplace, each optimized and localized;  and she’s further boosted their effectiveness with a little pay-per-click.  She goes onto to the Internet and casts a net made up of all the places a home buyer might find her, and comes back with leads.  This is great stuff.  And it’s the kind of thing sellers want to see today.

The Internet Revolution

It’s going on right now, today, in Egypt.

Egypt is right at the top among Arab Nations in Internet use.  Facebook has huge penetration there compared to neighboring Arab States.  Twitter, too.  The Internet and Social Networking are driving the uprising that’s going on right there, right now.

I realize that the revolt is being led by the Muslim Brotherhood, a group that believes Islam is more than a religion and who may turn Egypt into an Islamic State if they prevail.  Notwithstanding the difficulties we’ve had with Islamic States, the Egyptian version of this group seems more moderate.  Regardless of their ideology, it’s clear that the Internet has played a key role in this little bit of history.

It’s no wonder the Egyptian government shut down virtually all Internet access last night.  It’s their last ghasp attempt to control the situation.

Reminds me of the old days of Radio Free Europe:  we were trying to create a revolution with information.  I’m not sure how successful that was, but clearly, when people have access to information on a global scale, when they can see what they have and what they might become, they grow very impatient with their own oppression.

I’m not surprised at China’s attempt to filter the Internet and I’m delighted that Google made the decision to pull out of that market rather than buckle to their demands.   I mean:  it’s kinda hard to keep people under your thumb when they can see alternatives at the click of a mouse.  Can you imagine what will happen when the citizens of China, Iran, North Korea, and any number of other repressive nations gain free access to the information we all take for granted?

To quote Shirley Bassey, it could ‘all be just a little bit of history repeating . . . ‘  Like the fall of the Berlin Wall.

(ok, get ready:  here comes the tie-in)

It’s not unlike the struggle of home buyers and sellers over the past 30 years.   They were at the mercy of Realtors who held information hostage – information about houses for sale, prices, trends.  The only way consumers got the information they needed to make intelligent choices was through a Realtor.

Though the Realtor community fought tooth and nail to keep all that delicious information under lock and key, the courts and the consumers won out in the end.  Today consumers can get almost all of the information real estate people once hoarded and held from them.  Suddenly, the value of the Realtor had to shift.  Value could no longer simply be access to information.  Now the Agent or Broker had to actually bring some skill to the table.

To all this, we at Help-U-Sell say Bravo!  Information without obligation has always been one of our core values.  We’ve always believed in giving the consumer all the information they might need to make intelligent decisions.  Our value is in marketing, advising, coordinating, selling, negotiating.

So, Viva Internet!  Viva Egypt!  Viva free access to information!  and Viva Help-U-Sell!

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