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Category: Marketing (page 172 of 191)

September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #80: Attracting and retaining traffic by being visually interesting . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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From SEOmoz blog, a definitive resource, how to use art and graphics to attract readers to your real estate weblog:

Ingredients: A useful site, a talented CSS designer and a list of design portal sites (this one and this one come in handy).

Process: Re-design your existing site to the best of your ability. Use pure CSS, graphics, color and layout that mesh well and make it not only easy to use your site, but aesthetically remarkable, too. If you’re struggling for inspiration, look at the sites that make it to the front page of this site.

Results: The design portals themselves can send 1-2 thousand uniques per day if you make their front pages, but the additional value you’ll get from other bloggers and sites picking you up once you make it there is also worthwhile.

The work they’re talking about costs serious money, but that’s not an excuse to limp along with a site that looks like a circus poster or the classified pages. This is something you can always keep on your radar, how to make your pages more interesting graphically…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #79: Win customers with the power of convenience . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the Problogger ‘How To…’ Group Writing Project, Return Customer teaches us how to “Win Customers with the Power of Convenience”:

Identify barriers or obstacles that stand between your customer’s wallet and your business. This should be done from the customers’ perspective. You’re probably too biased to clearly identify all these barriers by yourself.

Eliminate unnecessary steps in the purchase process. For example, just because your computer system needs some data doesn’t mean your customer should have to jump through those hoops.

Reduce the customer effort needed to buy. Can the customer purchase from her office? Over the web? Can you deliver? How long will this whole process take?

Explain your product so everyone can understand. Tailor your marketing copy to your audience. If you’re using industry jargon you may just confuse and lose potential customers.

Give customers alternatives that all lead to a completed sale.

Sell a product that is so compelling that the reward of purchasing greatly outweighs any effort exerted by the customer.

I think this is excellent general advice for traditional, full-service real estate professionals.

We believe that convenience and off-loading of tasks are key products. We haven’t marketed this, but we plan to: The Drive-By Listing: Leave me a key and I will go in and do everything necessary to list your home while you’re at work. We’ll meet to sign the paperwork or do it by fax, and we’re ready to rock ‘n’ roll. That’s service, and service is worth money…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #78: ‘Homey’ feel is a lure for attracting women . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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This is from my Arizona Republic column:

Here’s a cautionary tale for all home sellers: In most cases, a woman will not buy a home if she cannot picture herself taking the Thanksgiving turkey out of the oven — with her mother-in-law hovering over her shoulder.

What does this mean? For a home to sell to a woman buyer or a couple, it must be as clean, as inviting — as “homey” — as possible. Most often, single men will buy any house that satisfies their checklist of required features and amenities. In general, men are much more interested in getting the home-shopping job done quickly.

But a woman has to feel herself at home. More than features and amenities, she wants to be able to experience her future in that home. If she can’t, she won’t buy that house.

If you think about it, this might seem silly to you, but I’ve watched it happen again and again. But consider the contrary proposition:

I once represented the buyers in the purchase of a home that had languished on the market for months. It was in pretty good shape overall, but one member of the family liked to cook on the patio. The grill was greasy, as was the surrounding concrete. There were piles of dirty plates and skillets lying around. Family after family would have toured that home, and each one of them left as soon as Mom saw that mess on the patio. Whatever appeal the home might have had, until then, would have been colored by a visceral revulsion.

My own buyers were made of sterner stuff. The mother of the family said, “Oh, my. That’s going to take at least two hours to clean up.”

We deliberately bid low on the house. It appraised for $20,000 more than we paid. Two hours of cleanup paid my buyers — and could have and should have paid the sellers — $10,000 an hour.

That mess on the patio had been there the whole time the house was languishing on the market. Anyone else could have reached the same conclusion as my buyer. The seller could have reflected Read more

September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #77: Weblog Review: moco real estate news . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

Todd Tarson’s moco real estate news is a great read, particularly for people who live and work in Arizona. Todd is right in the middle of the debate over what to do about Mohave County’s growing pains — as it becomes a de facto suburb of Las Vegas — so his weblog reports history as it is happening.

For a Blogger.com site, the look is very clean, but, as is to be expected, comments are a pain in the butt.

One of the things I enjoy about the site is that Todd uses a lot of good local photography. Mohave County is a different world from Greater Phoenix, and the photos are luscious…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #76: Ask the Broker: Is it too early for Anthem . . . ?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

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A local question with broad implications:

In 2004 I fell in love with Anthem, and was actually thinking of moving there. Last year the housing market went so crazy that I decided to wait. And the way things are looking today, I’m afraid now to move there. I still love the area and the houses up there. And the commute won’t hurt me because I can telecommute. But I’m afraid that my house won’t hold its value. Do you have any opinion about the outlook of Anthem?

Anthem is a beautiful master-planned community built by Del Webb. Parks, playgrounds, golf courses, a huge waterpark, a kiddie railroad — in many ways it’s heaven on earth. Heaven may be nearer, though: Anthem is a long drive from Downtown Phoenix. Still worse, there is only one road in and out. When that road is blocked by an accident, nobody comes or goes.

For this reason, Anthem was the first area to betray signs of weakness in last Summer’s buying frenzy. It is also very likely to the be last market area to recover as we get back to normal.

Does that mean you shouldn’t buy there?

Anthem may not do as well in gross appreciation as other, similar communities — for example Estrella Mountain Ranch in Goodyear.

It comes down to this: Does the investment value of your home matter more to you, or the community and amenities you love in Anthem? Your answer to that question will tell you what to do…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #75: The power of an online tool . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From SEOmoz blog, a definitive resource, how to use a unique web-based tool or service to attract readers to your real estate weblog:

Ingredients: A service that you can code into a tool to save someone time, effort, money or, alternatively, provide entertainment (plus a solid developer, preferably skilled in AJAX).

Process: Tools aren’t always able to attract visitors independently, so much like mashups, you’ll need to do some promotion. Fortunately, there are dozens of online tool lists and plenty of folks blogging about their creation (like the aforementioned Ajaxian). The tool itself needs to serve a real purpose (or make people laugh) and it needs to be unique. If you’re in the retail industry, imagine a tool that could be used to help visitors custom create a product, or organize a set of products in a useful, humorous or fun way. For B2B, cost calculators for customers can be useful, but are often un-exciting. Imagine how you can expand the use of your services to fit a wide audience, then make it fun and interactive.

Results: Tools can generate traffic slowly over time, or they can have huge bursts. Often, they spread virally through email and social networks if they’re built right (and look great — so pay attention to #4, too).

I gave one of these to my dingleberry son, but he hasn’t done anything with it. It was an idea I had over the summer, and I didn’t have time to write it myself.

It’s not difficult: What I envisioned was a PHP utility that would take a marked-up text and return it without the mark-up, but with each marked-up term or phrase having been recoded as a Wikipedia look-up. For general webloggery, Wikipedia is fiercely useful, but coding a lot of links is a pain in the butt. This, by definition is what software is for.

If you want, you can bug the little booger to get busy on this project…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #74: Five ways to piss off an entrepreneur . . . ?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the Problogger ‘How To…’ Group Writing Project, blogtrepreneur brings us “5 Ways To Piss Off An Entrepreneur”:

1) Cut off the broadband: I can’t think of anything worse than not being able to access the internet. Without it, I wouldn’t be able to have any international networking and therefore I would have to start a proper offline business. And let’s face it, these can be irritating at the best of times, and can be costly. And don’t mention dial-up to any internet savvy person (just speaking about it sends shivers up my spine!)

2) Give ’em a 9 to 5: Oh no what will they do without their morning lie in? Unlike the majority of the working population, entrepreneurs are able to have a reasonably flexible working schedule. So when they have to set an alarm to wake up early, tempers will be lost!

3) The dreaded boss: One of the main entrepreneurial benefits is the BMOB (Be My Own Boss). Once you take that away, the entrepreneur is left working under a gruelling dictator who sets your own lunch breaks and gives you special doggy treat bonus packages if you work extra hard.

4) Cell phone destruction: The cell phone (that’s a mobile for those who speak proper English!) is used by an active entrepreneur nearly 24/7. Whether they’re involving themselves in a business deal, chatting to their designer about new prospects, or giving their mothers laundry instructions, without a mobile telecommunicator an entrepreneur becomes a standard Joe who has no communication with anyone but those within a 100 metre radius. And that can’t be too good if you’re wanting global recognition?

5) Noise, noise, noise: Finally, the surest way to piss me off is to continually talk around me or have noises in the background whenever Im trying to do an important piece of work. As a general rule of thumb, I never have music on when I work, and I try and close all doors to shield out the family. Blasting heavy beats in my face, sister-brother bickering and non-peace will be sure to drive me over the edge.

One of my clients Read more

September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #73: Using Web to buy home a bad idea . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is a sweet one from my Arizona Republic column:

“Save thousands buying surgery online!”

It may be a while before you see this headline. But you can’t open a magazine or a Web site lately without hearing that Realtors are about to be “disintermediated” by the Internet.

“Disintermediation” is a 50-cent word that means cutting out the middleman. It has happened at the low end of the travel agency and the stock brokerage businesses, among others. Some Internet start-ups plan to automate or streamline the functions performed by Realtors, in anticipation of the glorious day when you will sell one home and buy another online.

There are problems with this idea. For example, although the book-selling business allegedly has been disintermediated, you will have plenty of time to read about that as you bide your time in the checkout line at Borders or Barnes & Noble.

Then there are these considerations: Would you say that a Realtor is more like a sales clerk at Target or Wal-Mart or more like a surgeon?

Is your home, or the one you hope to buy, more like a DVD at Best Buy or Fry’s Electronics or more like a unique work of art?

I’m not sure this column is holding up that well. I can’t imagine buying a house as though it were buying a book at Amazon, but I have sold plenty of houses that the buyers have never seen.

In the first instance, we are taking note of the consultative expertise of Realtors, full-time professionals who know how to market homes and how to effect transactions against a sea of troubles. Surely some Realtors are better than others, but it would take a pretty lousy surgeon to be worse at surgery than an amateur.

In the second instance, we are talking about the idea of fungibility — substituting one item for another with no concern for differences in value. DVDs are highly fungible, as are books, items of apparel, travel arrangements or shares of stock.

I’ve read that radiological diagnostic work is being farmed out by broadband to India. This is a very interesting time to be in the real estate Read more

September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #72: Weblog Review: The Real Estate Bloggers . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I had a tough time wrapping my head around The Real Estate Bloggers weblog at first. It’s not an agent site. Not a vendor site. Not a lender or appraisal site. Not a bubble blog or a splog. What the heck is it?

What it will be if it’s not already is an advertising-supported information site that happens to cover real estate. Rich in content, drawn from diverse sources, it nicely fills a gap in my feed reader.

The quantity of posting is good, as you might expect where traffic is — or will be — someone’s dinner. Better still, the posts are bright, readable, and informative.

The site just moved to a new host, and acquired a new weblog template at the same time. WordPress, of course, and very nicely put together.

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #71: Ask the Broker: So what about the big, swanky Realtor’s house . . . ?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is me, confessing:

So you drive a crappy little car. Your real secret is that you live in a McMansion, right?

Wrong. Our home would be described as modest — if only it were bigger. We bought it for the dogs, more than anyone. It has many wonderful features that we love, but the best feature of all is that it backs to the Arizona Canal, a kind of linear river park with a fake river, so the dogs have a great place to go for walks.

But, to be completely honest, we have twice been tempted by big expensive houses. Bloodhaven is still my ideal home/office. And Houndswick breaks my heart every time I drive past it.

Unlike a car, a house is an investment, and much of what we loved about these two homes was to be found in their profit potential. But, luckily for us, we were prevented by poverty from buying either house.

Now you know all my secrets…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #69: The language of differentiation . . . ?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From the Problogger ‘How To…’ Group Writing Project, Kevin Price writes on “The language of differentiation”:

Only if we are correctly positioned can a difference have the desired effect. That is, a customer must perceive our position as being relevant to his or her needs, and different from that of our competitors. The desired effect of advertising is to bring our brand and a customer together and unite them; make a connection. This requires the twofold action of separating your customer from your competitor and separating you from your competitor. Says the good book: “one must separate things in order to unite them.”

Differentiation occurs in the attributes of a product or brand, not in the benefits. A difference is a character trait of the brand that is not applicable to a competitor’s brand. It occurs because you choose to do something different from your competitors, or to do the same things competitors do but do them differently. But there are a few catches.

The difference must to be able to be translated into a benefit that is desired by prospects. There’s not a lot of point in being different if no one wants what you’re offering and the difference is meaningless. The difference has to be able to be perceived so that it can be labelled. Correct positioning depends on this combination of perception and labelling. The difference has to have life, or at the very least the potential of life. The simple fact is you cannot have drama without life, and because customers expect your advertising to tell a story that is meaningful over a period of time. The difference has to be relative to competition, even if that competition is your own brand.

Good advertising comes from understanding exactly what forces drive your prospects; what the force of your differentiation is and exactly what the right positioning is. Positioning derives from the benefit that arises out of the differentiation. Differentiation is the effect of what it is you’re doing that is different. It is the effect because it results in an attribute that can be claimed or labelled. Positioning on the other Read more

September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #68: Many factors affect home’s value . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

This is from my Arizona Republic column:

Buyers will try to compare homes on a price-per-square-foot basis, but this is useful only for highly comparable homes – similar square footage on similar lots in similar neighborhoods.

Same subdivision is good. Same builder is better. Same exact floor plan is best.

The more differences there are between the homes, the less comparable they are and the less useful it is to compare their price per square foot.

There are a lot of reasons for this, the three most important being location, location and location.

The desirability of the underlying dirt is the overriding consideration. Even within the same subdivision, it matters where the lots are located, how big they are and what value-added features (or value-subtracting detractions) they are near.

We go on to consider some other factors that can influence the value of a home: single versus multi-story and the amount of variety in the shape of the exterior perimeter.

But wait. There’s more.

Ultimately, though, price per square foot can be misleading because it tends to treat all space equally.

The costliest space in a home is the kitchen. After that come the bathrooms and any space with running water. Mere bedrooms, dining rooms, family rooms, game rooms, dens, etc., are very cheap by comparison.

The exterior walls of the home are expensive because they have all the framing, the heavy insulation and the wiring. Interior walls are wood framing wrapped in sheetrock.

True value-added features matter a lot: Extra bathrooms, soft-water loops, security or home-theater pre-wiring, central vacuum systems, fireplaces, etc. Relatively unimproved extra space matters a lot less in pricing a home.

This is why 1,200-square-foot homes can sell for a lot more per square foot than 2,400-square-foot homes.

And, to think! — all that comes into play before we even get to the unzillowables…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #67: Weblog Review: Charlottesville Area Real Estate Blog . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

I have a great affection for Daniel Rothamel of the Charlottesville Area Real Estate Blog. He’s my kind of serious Realtor, devoted to doing the right thing no matter what the price.

Plus which, he writes a lot, which scores very highly with me. Local real estate, national real estate, basketball, linguam latinam, real estate reality-TV — nothing escapes his purview.

The site is Typepad with its goofy trackbacks, but you can’t have everything. The pages are clean and readable.

Here’s Daniel in action:

When I’m not practicing real estate, one of the things that I do is officiate basketball (I mentioned this once before). The letters from my officiating supervisors have been coming in, the rules clinics are coming up, and the season is on the horizon. All this got me thinking about the similarities between being a REALTOR and being a referee. Officiating has helped me tremendously when it comes to business, and vice versa. Here are some things I find similar about being a referee and being a REALTOR:

1) Referees adhere to a code of ethics, too.

2) For REALTORS, a well-managed transaction brings satisfaction. For the referee, it is the well-managed game.

3) REALTORS must build trust with their clients, referees must do the same with coaches and players.

4) Referees and REALTORS must possess and constantly improve upon their skills of interpersonal relations.

5) The technology of the Internet is changing the way REALTORS conduct business, Internet and video technology is changing the officiating landscape.

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #66: Ask the Broker: Homeownership and the poor . . . ?

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From my sister-in-law:

Why isn’t there more opportunity for poor people to own their homes?

If you were to substitute the word “horses” for “homes”, the question would answer itself, wouldn’t it? Poor people rent rather than own because their income is too low, their credit scores are too low, or their debt-to-income ratios are too high. That much is not rocket science, and it would apply to any other expensive financed possession we might name.

People very enamored of coercive charity can imagine circumstances in which financially unqualified people are given homes — or are given heavy subsidies toward buying homes. But this can only happen by taking wealth away from other people — people who have earned that wealth and deserve every penny of it. Poor people might get more home than they have earned, but only because other people are getting less home than they deserve. This kind of redistribution of purported injustice is made possible only by force — and, by my reckoning, that force is the most vicious injustice of all.

But, even so, there are two persistent problems. First, people tend not to respect what they did not have to earn and deserve. This is nicely illustrated by the awful condition of free or subsidized housing all over the Earth.

Moreover, unless the problem is to repeat itself, the poor recipients of subsidized housing would have to be forbidden from selling it at its true appreciated value — lest it become unobtainable by other poor people in the future.

The poor do not buy homes because for whatever reason they don’t develop the attributes of mind, character and behavior that lead to homeownership. And, even if they were to be given free or heavily-subsidized homes, the restrictions that would have to be placed on the sale of those homes would prevent those poor people from profitably developing those same attributes of mind, character and behavior even after they have become homeowners — in name only…

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September 26, 2006

Blogoff Post #65: A good hot fire sheds light, too . . .

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Suburban Phoenix Real Estate Broker

Author website

From SEOmoz blog, a definitive resource, how to use controversy to attract readers to your real estate weblog:

Ingredients: A passionate audience or community with strong (and hopefully misguided) feelings about a subject, person, company, etc.

Process: Create content through a blog, article, report or statistics that challenges commonly-held beliefs or assumptions or specifically challenges the views of a very popular person or organization. Be prepared to defend your positions, write about them in comments on blogs, in forums, chatrooms, online groups and wherever appropriate. Sometimes, you can even leverage the editorial section of a newspaper and re-print online.

Results: Heavy traffic levels come through multiple channels, but your biggest source is often the direct response of the disagreeing party. Be sure you’re handling the dispute in a professional and even-handed manner and you can earn a respectable following. It’s all dependent on industry and size, but a between a few hundred and a few thousand RSS subscriptions are usually on the table.

Note however, that you don’t have to do this as an SEO tactic. It could be that you just like taking a stand. I’ve heard about people like that…

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Welcome to BloodhoundBlog, the national real estate industry marketing and technology weblog written by, for and about real estate professionals. Better yet, welcome to the wired world of real estate. We are busily inventing Real Estate 2.0 – technology, marketing, service and salesmanship. Like all Bloodhounds, we are smart, frisky and fiercely independent. We've built a spot on the earth – beloved over all – where each one of us can be who we are, no matter who that might be. We are committed to an idea of excellence that will flush the bums, the con-men and the crybabies out of the real estate industry. If you yearn to have your failures excused, your moral lapses absolved or your boo-boos kissed, seek elsewhere. But if you are sick to death of mediocrity – welcome home. Read all about us, subscribe to our feed and steel yourself for the hunt. We work hard, we play hard, we learn everything we can – and we bow to no one.

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