- Real Estate Search 1.0 vs Real Estate Search 2.0
- Traditional Real Estate Marketing vs Real Estate Search Marketing
- MLS-Friendly Real Estate Search vs Google/Zillow User-Friendly Real Estate Search
- Location, Location, Location vs Traffic, Traffic, Traffic
- Location, Location, Location vs Location, Location, Location, Location?
Real Estate 2.0 is all about the Internet and Real Estate Search Marketing. With unrelenting pressure from the Google and the other Search Engines using the Google Playbook. The early home search experience has moved from Newspaper Classifieds and Realtors' offices to the most user friendly home search sites on the Internet. The three most important things in Real Estate 2.0 have changed from Location, Location, Location to Traffic, Traffic, Traffic.
Google drove traffic before it had a business model or made money. Google just bought YouTube, a 20 month old company, with 65 employees, almost no revenue and no profits for $1.65 billion. But YouTube had 73 million monthly visitors. Traffic, Traffic, Traffic.
Google's business model and the business model of Search 2.0 and Real Estate 2.0 is: "Traffic First, Sales Second." Realtors may still be touting "Location, Location, Location". But the Real Estate Search Engines are shouting, "Traffic, Traffic, Traffic."
Zillow's Richard Barton, while developing Expedia, knew to drive traffic first, then sell services. Barton didn't wait to take Expedia public with an IPO. He sold Expedia to Barry Diller's InterActive Corp (IAC), owner of Ask.com, the 5th ranked Search Engine.
The Real estate 1.0 to Real Estate 2.0 transformation came from home searcher demands for Google-like User-Friendly Search. MLS-Friendly, Realtor.com Search, the kind of search we've come to know and loathe, has frustrated home searchers long enough. With apologies to Henry Ford; the days of "You can have any home search you want; as long as it's MLS"; are numbered.
Unfortunately for Realtors, the Department of Justice agrees with home searchers. The DOJ is pushing Realtors to open up their listing data and get all the free Search Engine advertising for their home buyers and sellers, to whom they owe agency and due diligence.
Why do Realtors make "Free" so expensive? What's 6% of Free? Didn't we take a course about agency to become a Real Estate Agent? Didn't we pass a state test, with a 70, to become a professional like doctors, lawyers and hairdressers? Weren't we made to take an ethics course, with no test, just like we tell consumers on our TV ads?
Yet, we Realtors still defend our hidden data stance just as we defended our Listing Books with "Confidential" stamped all over them. We can always try to "take our data and go home". We can try to beat off the Search Engines and the Department of Justice with our buggy whips. We even controlled the IRS into making all Real Estate Agents "Statutory Non-Employees". What if Realtors knew they were "Statutory Non-Employees"?
With the transition from Real Estate 1.0 to Real Estate 2.0 has come the transformation of the time honored answer to the question: "What are the 3 most important things in Real Estate?": "Location, Location, Location." This saying is still true, but the meaning has changed with Real Estate 2.0. The 3 most important things in Real Estate 1.0 have become the 4 most important things in Real Estate 2.0. "Location, Location, Location" has become "Location, Location, Location, Location":
- Location: Your Website's Organic Placement Real Estate on Search Engines.
- Location: Your Website's Search Engine Paid Ad Placement Real Estate for your keywords.
- Location: The Top of the Mind Real Estate of searchers, just as they decide to buy or sell a home by checking for information on the Internet.
- Location: The Ad Space Real Estate for paid ads around the street address, assessment info, (Z)estimate, satellite map, schematic map, aerial photos, etc provided by Zillow and the other Real Estate 2.0 Search Engines.
So now Real Estate has a new focus, a new saying and a new answer to the question: "What are the 3 most important things in Real Estate 2.0? Or was that 4 things?"
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