It’s official. Internet marketing as you know it died today. One of the internet’s largest social network sites finally killed one of the internet’s largest search engines as the “eyeball attractor” for display ad views. Although it got little news, this mighty accomplishment may be the herald of a major shakeup for online commerce.
Consider yourself forewarned: Everything you thought about internet marketing to-date is now old news.
Just how close is the real estate industry to duplicating the disaster achieved by the airline industry? Contrary to popular belief, neither industry has been challenged by serious technology developments that have created “alternatives” to their essential model. People still fly on planes. Most consumers work with agents. Yet anyone who has had to deal with either industry lately knows that REALTORS are coming dangerously close to recreating the airline industry’s sub-lawyer-sub-car-salesman reputation.
For REALTORS, it shouldn’t take much to avoid that fate. But we must act now.
Why do some agents make more sales than others? What makes some agents capable of creating sales when others struggle for a single lead? Contrary to popular belief, it’s not a cool web tool or a more expensive marketing plan. Almost always it comes down to a single, consistent factor, no matter what company or place in the country:
A great manager.
When I read this headline this morning, I immediately thought of that Britney Spears song, “Oops! I did it again!” Once again, another real estate company is reporting some “numbers” designed to get people – consumers, agents, Martians – to gasp. Seems like their website has generated some few millions of “leads” to their agents. You know, buyers who go on their website and ask for more information. It’s another orchestrated PR campaign to get the public to say, “Wow! That’s a lot! It must mean they are really good!”
Too bad, then, that it’s just another example of totally meaningless marketing. What’s worse: Generation X and Y know it.
Amongst the growing list of reasons some REALTOR firms are losing market share today, there’s no lack of ‘blaming the consumer’ causes. Brokers and agents who repeatedly target the “market” or the “economy” as the culprits are just substituting politically-correct keywords for “the consumer” as the problem. Buyers won’t come off the sidelines. Sellers are unreasonable and won’t price their homes to market conditions. Lenders won’t offer credit easily. The usual suspects of the downturn are either consumers or third parties working together in a full-blown conspiracy to destroy the real estate industry.
Perhaps we could find a few simpler reasons?
Here’s an idea to make any agent’s day: If you’re finally fed up with the poor results and high costs of postcard mailings, newspaper ads and cold calls, and you’ve come to the conclusion that blind mass-email marketing makes you more annoying than maybe it’s time to get LinkedIn.
Or MySpaced. Or RealTowned. Or Facebooked. Or a member of just about any of the hundred or so major social networking sites. No matter how you look at it, the opportunities just add up.
First, look at the research. No, not the online web blather: of course the social network sites are going to “claim” they are the next greatest thing to croutons (which recently replaced sliced bread as the next greatest thing). We mean the consumer research. It looks like this: Baby Boomers are quickly losing ground as the “largest” source of real estate business to the combined numbers of Gen X and Gen Y. With more than 100 million X and Y’ers still in the market – yes, they are, and going to be the driving force for the next 30-40 years – it’s time to start propsecting on their turf.
In the “olden days” prospecting for sellers and buyers meant going to the Boomers’ watering holes: television, radio, newspapers and mailboxes. Yet fully 40% of homes were sold to first-time buyers last year, and the majority fo those were Gen X and Y’ers. Who don’t read newspapers, watch television on their computers, listen to satellite radio or download commercial-free podcasts and don’t ever check their U.S. mailboxes (they receive and pay their bills online, not with stamps!).
Now, if you’re just getting around to social networking, you’re pretty late to the game – by about 3 years. That’s still par for the course for most REALTORS and technology, though, so if you do it after reading this blog post, you’ll likely be ahead of the curve for most of your competition anyway. If we really wanted to turn social networking into real estate’s next money-making frontier, however, we’d get managers to start mandating it for every agent. Yeah, pretty impossible; managers can’t even get them to show up at an office meeting.
No question about it: Social networking will be a key method for contacting future buyers and sellers. A large source of sellers in the next 5 years will be Gen X’ers who are about ready to move up. They only work within friends or vendors who are referred to them through their sphere of influence. They think all REALTOR marketing – and marketing in general – is baloney (and they are mostly right). So you’re only going to get their attention if you can leverage their sphere of influence. That means someone they know knows someone you know who can put in a good word for you. Like LinkedIn’s “Recommend Me” function. Maybe even just an email. But it’s certainly not going to be an air-brushed glam-shot on a postcard that catches their eye…
Making eye contact with Gen Y’ers is going to be even harder. That group of attention-deficit, multi-tasking, wireless networking socially shy first time buyers (and we do love them!) doesn’t pause long enough to read your e-newsletter (who gets email these days? send them an IM!) And since they’re co-dependent purchasers using Mommy and Daddy’s money (ie., Bank of Baby Boomers) you’re going to have a double-deficit to work from when creating relationships. So once again, they’ll want to get to know you – which doesn’t mean your ego-centric website of awards and typed testimonials. It means they’ll check out your “real-ness” on your social networking page, look at who’s connected to you (and do they trust them) and maybe throw a virtual martini at you. And then, maybe just then, they’ll write something on your virtual “wall” and accept a “friend connection” from you and bingo! You’re making friends in cyberspace.
Look, you don’t get to write the rules. So stop writing ads. No, you’re not going to need an avatar and some virtual dollars, or go walking through a 3-D fanstasy world to find future customers: That’s kids stuff and it’s going to remain that way as long as human beings don’t live in bubbles. But as long as the party stays online – and it’s only getting bigger – you’re going to need to work the room. No more going “to the club” to rub elbows with future customers. For the future – starting today – you’re going to have to social network online.
Now, get to it!
When an industry suffers from a problem for decades and still hasn’t figured it out, it’s likely focusing on the wrong issue. Real estate’s “recruiting and retention” problem has consumed millions, perhaps billions of dollars in wasted time, energy and effort. It’s apparent that all of the “symptom” solutions and snake oil in the universe won’t solve it. So let’s try something else: Challenge the premise.
What if there wasn’t a recruiting or retention problem in the future?
Today I was talking to a broker who uttered, yet again, the tired old cliche that sets my teeth on edge. The one phrase that makes me wish I’d taken the blue pill. That same old phrase that – regardless of the test of time, history, facts – it seems like everyone is doomed to utter it until we finally destroy the real estate industry for good:
“Well, it’s all about the agents.”
I feel bad for REALTOR.COM. Let me start by saying that I like REALTOR.COM – I really do. They’re a hard working bunch that puts lots of time, energy and effort into promoting other people’s products. They aren’t always perfect – yet they keep trying, and trying, and trying. And they do have the number one real estate destination on the web – so they are doing something right. But for long?
This week they announced their their latest round of new features for the website. Too bad it’s still fairly clear that REALTOR.COM is destined to fail.
Why? Because one group of people hates the site most of all:
The REALTORS themselves.
