My first training in Real Estate was with one of the best natural salesmen I've ever met. We were talking about cold-call prospecting for listings (Realtor for "telemarketing") , when he asked just the right question, "How can we get to sellers before they list?" I knew I couldn't reach enough buyers and sellers over the telephone with the ever looming and glooming "Do Not Call List". I had taken several courses and knew the potential of marketing, blogging and the Internet. I knew there was a better way to get in front of buyers and sellers and that way was better Internet marketing. I needed to "become one" with Real Estate Search.
But how can you become the "top of the mind Realtor" when someone decides to buy or sell a home? How can you become the trusted advisor of most buyers and sellers, at that crucial moment? You have to be where the buyers and sellers are. You have to be the "go to" Real Estate Web site for all buyers and sellers. You have to "be one" with their home search.
The NAR's 2005 Buyers and Sellers Guide reports that over 75% of home buyers start their search on the Internet. Also, almost 75% of home sellers interview only one Realtor. In Rochester, NY, local Internet home search is dominated by our local Association of Realtors' (GRAR) site, HomeSteadNet.com, and the dominant local broker site, Nothnagle.com. The NAR's Realtor.com is a distant third.
Most MLS's and Realtor.com don't act in the best interest of home buyers and sellers and hide their listings from the Internet. Realtor listings become part of the Invisible Web, unavailable to the huge markets of search engines. Did you ever wonder why you can't search for a home directly on Google? Wouldn't it be better for all our home listings, if Google and all the other search engines could search them, find them, and show them? As Realtors, aren't we required under our due diligence to open up our home sellers' listings to the most buyers, through the most markets, in the most ways; particularly if those ways are free?
If we Realtors don't open up our listings, Zillow will do it; hopefully for us, and not to us. Zillow will soon have statistical value estimates on all the street addresses in the US. They sell Google ads next to their estimates, maps and aerial pictures. Zillow is quickly "becoming one" with every residential property and "the One" to go to for your initial property estmaite. When Zillow becomes "the Google of Real Estate Search", the ad space or virtual real estate on those Zillow sites will be the hotter than Al Gore in 20 years. As Real Estate's dominant Search Engine, Zillow will be a more important place for Realtors to advertise on than their local newspapers. But Zillow doesn't stop at selling Realtor ads. Zillow's ad space is open to all home-sale related businesses: lenders, inspectors, lawyers, movers, etc. Nice deal if you can get it.
Now, when people think of search, they think of Google, "Google" the verb. Google is "One with Search." There's another verb waiting for the first company to deliver free, quick and effective home search data. That company must "become one" with Real Estate Search.
Comments