RISMEDIA, August 3, 2006—Dave Liniger, the eminent and distinguished founder of RE/MAX, recently spoke about the Internet and how it affected his company at a trade gathering in San Francisco. “The Internet has not affected RE/MAX growth, profitability share or whatever,” Mr. Liniger said. “Despite six presidencies, four major recessions and all the technological changes that have occurred, it has not upset the applecart.”
The Internet may not have upset the applecart but it sure has changed the paradigm for how buyers find the homes they end up purchasing, and the agents they purchase them through.
With 77% of home purchases beginning on the Internet, consciously or not, every real estate agent is affected. Yet, surprisingly, one of the major reasons that the benefits of this amazing network are not shared throughout the real estate agent community is because too many of those agents still have no idea about how to make the Internet work for them.
Too many think that simply placing their page on Realtor.com or another huge site is “Internet Marketing.” It’s not, and—in fact—I repeat an often quoted challenge to anyone reading this article who is listed on Realtor.com: Go there and try to find yourself without using your name or the name of your company or franchise. I can find a job in Saudi Arabia faster than I can find you on Realtor.com if I don’t already know who you are.
And the purpose of the Internet is not for those who already know you to find you (although driving those people to your site is a good thing), the purpose of the Internet is for people who do not know you, your company, your franchise or your number of living relatives to find what you are selling when they go looking for a home.
Now, none of this is meant as slight to Realtor.com or any other gargantuan, monolithic site that has a huge constituency to serve; it is simply a fact that huge databases can make finding YOU very hard.
There are many RE/MAX agents who swear their business is dependent on the Internet and who point to it as the major reason for their success. Most of these agents have their own website, in addition to belonging to an affinity group, and that’s where the sales come from: their own website. But, whether it’s RE/MAX or anyone else, the vast majority of agents 1) Cannot be easily found; 2) Don’t have a clue as to what they are missing. When you properly utilize the Internet, the results can be truly amazing. If you’d like to see what ONE RE/MAX agent says the Internet does for her, click here: http://coracleinc.com/online-marketing-services-pdf/Manning-real-estate.pdf
|
Author:Beth Bresnhan and commentary by Mike Parker |
|
The Reality of it All
How true this article is. It shows how important selecting the right realtor is. Marketing is no longer just about putting an ad in the paper and doing a couple of open houses. In an expanding buyers market, the buyer must be sought out! Keller Williams empowers all their agents with their own branded web sites unique to them. Victoria Lorusso, together with the Lorraine Leonard Team in Stamford Ct., utilizes many different web sites to capture buyers. Each site appeals to different buyers and comes up differently in searches. Victoria and the Team recieve an inquiry on one of their properties every day via the internet and an average of 5 or more people a day sign up to their distribution list. That does not count the people who actually pick up the phone when they see a property they like. Some of their web sites are; www.homesoffairfieldcounty.com, www.homesofstamford.com, www.lorraineleonard.com, www.victorialorusso.com and various other stealth sites.
