In previous installments we wrote about realtors having a mobile presence, the continued existence of video and virtual tours, low cost websites being offered to realtors in the US, and the use of local information on realtors’ sites.

In this installment, we will look at the rise of intermediaries who syndicate a realtor’s listings to 20 or so different sites.

It doesn’t matter where you are in the world, leveraging your listings to gain more leads is the best way for a realtor to grow their business. Now there are several ways to leverage your listings.

• Firstly, there is your own website. We have already discussed the importance of a realtor’s website in a previous episode of this series.
• Secondly, there is ensuring that your listings are on your franchise or broker site.
• Finally, there is ensuring that your listings are prominently displayed on ALL portal sites.

Now I can hear the screams of incredulousness from realtors saying that it is too expensive to advertise their listings on all sites. However, the real question is can you afford not to advertise your listings far and wide?

In the US for example, a realtor’s listings will automatically be in the MLS database and therefore automatically turn up on the MLS site and realtor.com. However, we are talking about promoting the listings to a wider audience.

Therefore, before dismissing the advertising of listings on sites such as trulia.com, zillow.com, Craigslist, dothomes, cyberhomes, myrealty.com etc, it is important to understand the ROI from using these sites. To do this, you are probably going to have to take a leap of faith and actually try them out. Only then will you know how effective they are.

For a realtor to manage the distribution of their listings to a broad number of sites is not easy. You need to know who the sites are and then you have to make sure that you are sending the listings in the right format to those sites. This is not an easy task and realistically beyond most realtors (both in complexity and the amount of time required to make it happen).

A number of services have arisen to help distribute an agent’s listings to a broad number of sites. These services interrogate an MLS and extract the listings that a realtor wants to syndicate. The business then sends those listings to the target sites. The more sophisticated service providers will then track the performance of those listings and provide a summary back to the agent or broker thus allowing them to make better decisions about their marketing investment.

Often these services are an add-on component to web design companies or even virtual tour companies. It also seems that many of these businesses are free for the realtor to use. Therefore I am not 100 percent sure where they are making their money from.

One company worth checking out is ListHub.

If you are a realtor and have listings, then you should be investigating the use of these types of services to promote your listings far and wide. The more people see your listings, the more chance you have to gain leads and thus grow your business.

By recording multimedia information about a potential buyer’s reaction to properties during a tour, including photos, notes and audio, TourNarrator aims to stop clients becoming confused about which property features they liked or disliked and jogs their memory on important aspects of the property they might otherwise forget.

These details are then converted into a personalised PDF that can be accessed online. a la mode sums it up by saying:

“With easy to reference property summaries, you’ll eliminate unneeded second showings and have buyer’s thoughts well organised. Confident buyers are committed, quick closers, and that’s what everybody needs in today’s shifting markets.”

UK based company AudioAgent has released two advertising options it says will increase the chances of turning an online property search into a real life viewing.

AudioAgent takes listing information and images uploaded by an agent and creates online property tours with voiceover, images, copy writing and music within 48 hours.

Their basic property tour option costs £55, while prestige tours are £95.

According to AudioAgent, the tours are already being uploaded to property portals such as rightmove.co.uk and propertyfinder.com, and can also be found via search engines. The tours are agent or portal branded, can be translated into multiple languages, and AudioAgent says it has focused on load time to ensure the tours play “within seconds”.

AudioAgent states that these tours were developed in collaboration with agents over a period of two years, and claims over 100 agents have started using the tours since the product was launched one month ago.

US based real estate technology company planetRE has launched a new “convergence portal” for mobile phones it says will give agents an advantage in influencing consumers.

The new portal, available first on the iPhone, allows users to access agent or broker mobile websites via a single URL and search for property in a variety of ways. Searches by radius, GPS location, monthly payments and address are included. Search results display property information along with picture carousels using data from local multiple listings services.

The portal also gives users access to information on schools, demographics, crime statistics, WalkScores, local reviews from yelp.com, zillow.com’s Zestimates, listings from major search engines and other data as specified by an agent. Users can then email or phone the agent from their smart phone or share their search results with friends via social networks.

“Modern day consumers find little information of value on agent sites and hence drift to other places to check out what they want,” planetRE CEO Subrao Shenoy explained. “This mobile convergence portal puts the power back in to the hands of the agent to influence the consumer. It creates ‘stickiness’ to come back again and again to an agent’s mobile portal, to find comprehensive information around home, search in one place and communicate with the agent without latency.”

While we think all listings should always be best they can be, it’s a competitive world out there and sometimes you want your listings to really shine, and give them a good dose of “web appeal” – the new curb appeal.

So here are propertyadguru.com’s Top 10 Tips for making your listings stand out.

1. Photos photos and more photos. Need we say more? A picture tells a thousand words, so make them clear, quality and appealing. Read more in our article Photos Are King.

2. Think about including some special extras like floor plans, local neighbourhood shots, or maps.

3. Does it warrant a virtual tour? Or some kind of video showcase of the property?

4. Sell, sell, sell. Use compelling sales language and make your description the best it can be. This means making it accurate too, right down to spelling and grammar. Don’t leave anything out, highlight the features, and lay it out in a logical fashion. Consider writing a small piece of introductory text, a succinct sales pitch, that will begin the listing.

5. If in doubt, add more information. People are hungry for details and will spend more time on your listing if it contains more information. Is the property animal friendly? Are good schools nearby? Is it a renovators delight? What’s the price guide?

6. Aim for the top. Ensure you are on the top advertising package available. Most portals offer a premium option that allows for better positioning for your properties so they attract buyer’s eyes more readily.

7. Exploit all the features you can. If the portal offers paid for positioning, audio, mapping, or attachments like info sheets and neighbourhood data – use them all.

8. Dare to be different. Does it warrant a special open house, or something unusual?

9. Choose the right portal for the property. Not all portals are the same, and not all buyers look on all portals. It pays to get it right.

10. Flaunt it. Tell everyone you can about this property – email it, blog it, tweet it, facebook it, talk about it, make phone calls about it, link to it, whatever it takes.

And finally, make sure your listing is kept 100% up-to-date, and this includes saying when it’s been sold.

Read more about “web appeal” – the new curb appeal – here.

[image: flickr/I See Modern Britain]

Jill Simmons, PR Manager at zillow.com, writes:

“In the past, it was all about curb appeal – a manicured lawn, a brick walkway, a fresh coat of paint. But today, with 90 percent of home buyers looking online, it’s all about Web appeal. You want to attract visitors to your listing, and impress them once they’re there.”

We tend to agree with Jill – most buyers will search online at some point and many make judgements and big decisions based on what they see in an online listing (on a property portal or on an agent or broker’s website).

Spencer Rascoff, CEO of zillow.com said in an interview with ABC News: “A seller needs to worry about Web appeal: When a buyer is browsing on the Web, what is their first impression?”

So how can you give your listings web appeal?

In its blog post, zillow.com offers two key ways to give a home web appeal – the first is to actually list it online in the first place and harness the power of the internet (eg: email your friends and contacts, use social media), and the second is to make the listing as enticing as it can possibly be.

We think web appeal can be created by:

• ensuring that the basics are right, and the listing is accurate in tems of spelling and vital contact information and is updated with open house and relevant info asap.
• making sure the property is listed on the best portals to expose it to the most relevant market – if it is a niche property, think niche portals, but if you’re not on the market leading portal as well, then why not? Read our Top Ten Tips for Choosing a Property Portal here.
• using lots of photos – good quality ones – in a listing. Read our Top Ten Tips for Property Photos here.
• including a floor plan, map and local area information where possible. Read our article on Walk Scores here or more about capturing neighbourhood info here.
• writing a fantastic marketing description about the property, but not going over the top. Read our article Embellishment and Discrimination: The Great Unravellers.
• making sure the description doesn’t leave out any vital selling points or attributes the home might have (eg: period features, pool, etc). Read our article on Writer’s Block here.
• if you plan on including video or slideshows, make sure it’s professional quality. Read our article on using video here.

Outside of these tips, there’s one other thing sellers and agents can do to generate web appeal, according to Spencer Rascoff: “A home that is priced aggressively is going to generate a lot more buyer interest”.

Finally, you can read Simon Baker’s article, What Makes a Good Property Ad.

[image: flickr/okarol]

In part one of this article about how agents can maximise leads from portal sites we looked at the importance of the quality of the advertisement. In part two, we’re going to look at how you can maximise the placement of your listing and the benefit of tracking your listings.

Placement of the Listing Advertisement

The placement of the listing advertisement is also very important in maximising the number of leads from a particular listing. Anyone who has searched on Google knows that if you do not appear on the first or second page, then you are very unlikely to be clicked upon.

Property portals are a little different in that people will search through a number of pages to find what they are interested in. However, the closer to the top a listing is, the more click throughs that listings will receive to the property details page.

To get towards the top of the search, and therefore stand out from the crowd, it is important to look at the options offered by the portal site being advertised on. Here are some examples that should be adopted if available:

• Many portal sites offer the ability to go to the top of the search (guaranteed top spot). This means that a listing is guaranteed to be displayed before anyone else.
• Featured or premium listings are also often offered by portal sites. These often have slightly bigger pictures and are displayed before the standard listings.
• Keeping a listing up to date can often push the listing up the search results list – sometimes to the top. It is important that an agent understands how the site handles the presentation of the listings and uses this to their advantage.
• Complete all the fielded information (e.g. beds, baths). This is important as not all people search by suburb only. Some people will search for 3 bedrooms in a particular area and if this information has not been entered, the listing may not be displayed in the search results page.

Tracking Performance

For those who take their online advertising very seriously, it is important to put in place performance tracking of the advertisements. It is important to understand just how well each advertisement is performing and if the changes you are making to quality or placement are having an impact on the number of leads generated.

The information that should be tracked is:

• Number of searches conducted in each suburb that an agent has listings.
• Number of times the listing is displayed on the search results page.
• Number of times the property details page is displayed.
• Number of leads generated for each listing.

While all this may not be available, having access to this will help an agent understand how well their advertisements are performing and if the changes they are making are improving the number of leads they are generating.

There are no silver bullets to online advertising. It is all about a series of small, incremental steps that agents around the world should be taking to maximise the number of leads they generate from their online advertising.

[flower image: flickr/Clearly Ambigous]

When an agent advertises on a portal site, they want to maximise the leads that they are generating from that site. Agents tend to upload all their listings onto a site and sometimes, when the responses from that site is lower than they expect, they blame the site claiming that it “doesn’t work”.

Few agents think about the process a consumer is going through and therefore they don’t tailor their listings to maximise the leads they generate. This article looks at how agents can maximise the number of leads they can generate for a particular listing from a portal site.

To maximise leads, agents need to think about two things – the quality of the advertisement and the positioning of that advertisement on the portal site. In part one of this article we’re going to look at the quality of the advertisement.

Quality of Listing Advertisements

Firstly, let’s look at the process a visitor to a web site goes through. Users conduct a search and are presented with the search results page – a list of properties that meet their request. They usually see one picture, a brief description, the price and some basic information – eg: number of bedrooms, bathrooms etc. Once they see a house that may be interesting to them, they click through to the full property details page.

Many agents upload multiple pictures, quality text, floor plans etc in the hope of providing enough information for a visitor to enquire about the property. What they tend to forget is how their property will be presented on the search results page. If the property is not presented at its best on this page, the visitor won’t click on the listing and is therefore unlikely to see all the other information the agent has uploaded.

To stand out on the search results page, agents can follow these tips:

• Make sure that there is a catchy title for the property as many sites display this at the top of the advertisement on the search results page.
• Make sure the first picture uploaded is the best picture of the property. It should be a quality picture and should show the house in the best light. This picture is displayed on the search results page.
• The first paragraph of the description needs to stand alone and be tailored to the length of the description on the search results page.
• Finally, the price and basic information about the listing (beds, baths, garages etc) need to be completed as they are usually presented on the search results page.

Assuming that the quality of the advertisement on the search results page has been optimised for click through to the property details page, the next step for an agent is to make sure that there is enough information on the details page to qualify the visitor and to generate a lead.

Now there are a number of schools of thought at this stage. Some people like the minimalist approach and do not give too much away as they want to generate leads. In theory, this could work well. However, visitors to sites now days are more sophisticated and less trusting of agents, and therefore more likely to skip a listing than to enquire about it if the level of information is scant.

The approach I would be taking is to do the following:

• Ensure that there are at least seven photos.
• Ensure that there is a floor plan attached to the listing.
• The longer version of the description on this page should talk factually about the features of the property – keep the marketing language to a minimum.
• Additional suburb information should also be included if it exists as it provides the out of area buyer with good information on what it is like to live there.
• Make sure the fielded information (e.g. beds, baths) – is all completed, as this will help ensure the listing is displayed in searches that are more refined.
• Virtual tours and videos are not necessary.

In part two of this article we’ll go on to look at how you can maximise the placement of your listing and the benefit of tracking your listings.

[flower image: flickr/matze_ott]

Well, enough of the theory, here is one practical example of how you can implement an early relationship building exercise with potential sellers.

I’ve mentioned it before briefly in other articles and that is offering a product like a “A Guide to Selling Your Home”. Sounds easy, simple and basic but it really is how you position it and what you do with it.

For this to work we need to agree on a number of principles.

1. This is not about branding per se but more about positioning as a leader in your market and building credibility and a relationship.
2. It should be informational based and look to be impartial.
3. It is not primarily aimed at gaining an immediate instruction or presentation (necessarily) – however if you obtain this, it is a bonus.
4. You need to restrain your sales people and to an extent and drive this by marketing process to the point where personal contact is made.
5. This is all about giving prospects an opportunity to make contact with you early on in the research phase.

What should a guide include?

The content presented should be all about providing information and less so about promoting you. You should even put in a section about “How to select the right estate agent”.

Contents can include areas such as:

• Types of agreements
• The role of an estate agency
• Presenting you property for sale
• When should I sell
• Marketing options
• Budget for selling your property
• Negotiating the sale
• Moving checklist
• Looking to buy your next property

Where and how should I promote this Guide?

Promote it everywhere:

• On your website
• In your online newsletters
• Property Portal display advertising
• Community websites
• Use it for PR and to build your company as a leading authority on property in your area
• You can promote this directly to those potential buyers leads who come through the property portals as they may be selling their home locally

Follow – up

After you email the Guide:

1. Follow-up by email along the lines of following up to ensure they received the guide and did they have any further questions.
2. Provide your contact details should they wish to speak to you direct.
3. Suggest they sign up to your newsletter to keep them informed.
4. Invite them to special seminars on “How to Sell your Property without Stress”
5. Keep in touch and keep them informed.
6. Keep the hard sell to a minimum but ensure you leave the door open for them to move forward with you if they wish to.
7. Encourage ways to set up a face to face or for them to supply further contact details – when they are ready to do this, it is a good sign they wish to do business with you.

This approach can build over months a good solid pipeline of prospective sellers and subliminally build your profile in the local area.

[Image: Flickr/John-Morgan]

The advantage of this, is that you have an opportunity to develop a relationship with a potential customer before they are even exposed to your competitors and, if successful, when they are ready to sell, you are the natural choice and you have utilised the time to condition them.

One of the differences in Internet users over those prospects utilising more traditional sources of property advertising, is the fact that they tend to do a great deal more research before contacting an estate agent.

Whether buying or selling, they are going to have a fairly good idea of what or who they want before contacting an estate agent.

Those Internet users who directly contact your agency via telephone or walk in to your office as opposed to general enquiry by email are quite often hot prospects so it is vital that you qualify the source of enquiry at that point.

And remember, as an online user, they will be judging you as a prospective agent to sell their property, based on the way you dealt them as a potential buyer lead and what you have to offer them in the way of online promotion.

From the point of view of obtaining instructions, it is important that you position yourself as an authority in the area and become an integral part of that research early on in the process.

Internet users are looking for good solid impartial information to assist them make sound decisions and help them reduce the stress of selling their home.

The internet offers one fantastic advantage to potential customers initially – anonymity, particularly initially in the research phase.

So what can you do to assist them, build your credibility and position yourself as a service leader in your area? How can you give them a reason to make contact with you early in the process before any of your competitors?

Once contact is made, you can then work hard to gain their trust and build a relationship to the point they feel comfortable offering their direct contact details.

The way you present yourself on property portals, your own web presence and the way you go about handling leads is a vital part of winning instructions or at the least obtaining the opportunity to present yourself over your competitors.

Part 2 of this article looks at a specific example of how you can practically go about this.

[Image: Flickr/John-Morgan]