Web 2.0 marketing research, tactics, strategy for the real estate professional
eMarketer issued a report that blogs are big business (or have the potential to be). According to the article, advertising opportunities abound for traditional advertisers in the blogosphere as the number of blogs grow and readership increases.
And this research paper from MicroSoft adCenterLabs discusses intriguing concepts in tracking blog information flows with an eye towards charging an appropriate fee for a PPC advertisement placed on a blog.
Epitaph of printed classified advertisements:
And this commentary corroborates the physical evidence.
For newspapers, these are the end times, or something very much like them. Every week provides a new marker on the road to apocalypse: hundreds of layoffs in Los Angeles, circulation scandals in Dallas…
… and …
The rise of the Craigslist model has devastated classified advertising in newspapers, once the only place in a city to sell a used car or list a job opening…why should you spend $100 putting something up for sale in the paper when you can post it on Craigslist for free? Why list a job for $200 when you can list it for $10?
The NYTimes also agrees. And apparently it’s profitable to give consumers–and advertisers–a simple and easy to access, use, and understand forum.
Accordingly, unless you’re really targeting a niche demographic, go with an online vertical advertising venue rather than traditional print classifieds; this saves you money over the long-term, allows you to target your audience more effectively, and measure the performance of your advertising spend.
Go2Web20 is a great place to view what’s available in Web 2.0 tools and services. To make sense of the madness, read their blog. TransparentRE also lists some great Web2.0 tools.
TouchGraph is an excellent tool that gives you “visual insight” into a site’s external linking structure and relationships, which is a good starting point for website competitive analysis. Let’s compare Redfin, Zillow, and REALTOR.com.
Redfin’s linking relationships
Zillow’s linking relationships
REALTOR.com’s linking relationships
The visual representation of these relationships allows you to quickly explore the link structure of the “affiliated” sites much faster than conducting such an analysis using Google or Yahoo tools. Thus, you can better assess your weaknesses, strengths, and opportunities in cultivating or disabling the same or similar relationships.
This new application is similar to Intero’s Terabitz application.
Another excellent post by Jeremiah Owyang: Social media brand-jacking. The post highlights some interesting brand mishaps in the social media space. Make sure to read to the comments too.
This post generated 159 comments, and landed in Trulia’s lap on Tuesday, April 29th, 2008, 10:36 am MST. The subject hit at the heart of Trulia’s astounding SEO success. Trulia’s response to this issue is an excellent case study in online reputation management that began with a blog-flame and ended with this MarketWatch interview.
On April 29th, Trulia’s first response was to see how high the flames would go. BHB is a very popular real estate industry blog. If the issue dies on BHB, then it’s likely dead everywhere else too. However, if the issue lives and progresses from birth to adolescence to adulthood in record time, it’s time to respond. And on BHB, “adulthood” was reached in record time. Thus, Trulia responded.
Trulia’s first public response on BHB was April 30th, 2008 9:58 am from Rudy at Trulia. His post did not seem to stem the tide of negative commentary. Thus, Pete Flint, Trulia’s founder and CEO, got in on the action that afternoon. Rudy’s and Pete’s posts were debated, derided, and defended throughout the day and over the next several days, with the issue basically fizzling out on the eighth day–an eternity in the blogosphere. Additionally, in the midst of this, Trulia responded on its own blog; an appropriate tactic and response vehicle in addition to their comments mentioned above.
In analyzing their response tactics in view of a possible PR crisis, Trulia did an excellent job–they jumped into the controversy, debated and tried to clarify points they felt were inaccurate (i.e., through their comments they got their side of the story posted on the BHB blog), and responded in their own forum. This latter tactic get’s their blog post about the controversy a nifty Google search result. For example, the search phrase trulia pagerank debate gives them a higher position on Google than the original BHB posting, and the phrase trulia seo debate gives them a similar great position. Trulia’s final act in the midst of this blog-debate was to issue a press release about their foreclosure survey, which was also picked up by newswires like PR Newswire Eur at 15:47:00 on 5/7/08 and AP Alert - HiTech at 15:49:22 on 5/7/08.
From a PR perspective, what’s masterful about this latter tactic? PR channel management: managing the blog-tech channel as opposed to the traditional press-consumer channel.
Essentially, Trulia ceded the fact that they would not win the blog-tech battle, and appears fine with having their side of the story told. Yet, Trulia appears absolutely focused on maintaining its dominate position in the eyes of the traditional press as the authority on real estate. To this point, what’s some evidence that Trulia has maintained it’s dominance in the eyes of the traditional press? The MarketWatch interview seen above.
Storytelling is one of the most important marketing concepts in our Web 2.0 world, argues this TrendWatching briefing paper. The key is helping consumers tell other consumers a version of the story that stays true to tenets of the brand.
As more brands (have to) go niche and therefore tell stories that aren’t known to the masses, and as experiences and non-consumption-related expenditures take over from physical (and more visible) status symbols, consumers will increasingly have to tell each other stories to achieve a status dividend from their purchases. Expect a shift from brands telling a story, to brands helping consumers tell status-yielding stories to other consumers.
The briefing paper argues that as niche marketing pressures increase, creating brands that are truly unique is a necessity; yet, these brands must increasingly rely on consumers to “market” the products (ala the Godin Purple Cow argument). Thus, experience marketing is a must have, with “status storytelling” acting as the catalyst, driving towards having consumers create and nurture status spheres:
Other salient tidbits from the status storytelling paper are finding conversation starter icons (like t-shirt designs, weird pins, funky Kleenex boxes, etc) and “life caching” and “life casting” concepts (aligning your product with platforms like uStreamTV).
Here’s an example of ustream.tv, BJ Fogg’s Stanford class called “Psychology of Facebook.
An e-Marketer recent report shows that moms are a major power on the Internet.
Notice how FrontDoor.com leverages this fact. And this research article points out that women adopt e-Service loyalty programs at a higher rate if their enjoyment and perceived social presence of the site is high. Notably, the researchers point out that
In particular, online vendors that cater to females may experience more pronounced and positive impacts of conveying a sense of warmth and sociability on their websites.
Notice that on the FrontDoor.com site that “warmth” and “community” is high. Thus, I’d not be surprised if they have a high loyalty rate.
T.S.O.L. (True Sounds of Liberty), a 1979 Cali punk band, reached out to their fan base, paid off a legal debt, and is touring again (all according to their website). Punk Social Network = (Passion * Fan base * Clear call-to-action).
The semantic nature of social networking has hit, head-first, the issue of phishing. A research paper by Peter Mika, discusses the semantic and colloquial nature of social networks, the findings of which offer savvy marketers unprecedented opportunities to understand how to incorporate social network folksonomies into their brand strategies. Yet this fundamental tenet–i.e., semantic relationships–that underpins social networks is vulnerable to phishing. Indiana University follows this phishing expedition via this website, which also has this great slide presentation.
Indeed, on Facebook I’ve been poked by phishing’s less sophisticated step-cousin, spam. Spam can occur in several different forms within a social network’s “gated community.” The form that’s arguably the most prevalent is an unsolicited message from a “friend”. In my case, I confirmed a “friend” who referenced a friend whom I trusted. Immediately, my new “friend” sent me an unsolicited offer to buy a new product that he/she was selling. Not a big deal in the scheme of life’s more important moments, but irritating nevertheless.
On the other hand, I welcome messages from Rohit Bhargava promoting his new book Personality Not Included. On Facebook, I joined Rohit’s
Personality Not Included - The Official Reader’s Group and expected to receive such messages, given the fact that he set up the group as a quasi-commercial network. Further, by following Rohit, I’m gaining tips on how to use Facebook groups responsibly so as not to offend anyone who decides to join any groups I create.
How do you launch a Web 2.0 media campaign? You don’t. If you’re thinking of “launching” “campaigns” in the Web 2.0 media space, you’ve broken your legs out of the starting gate.
How does a corporate brand manager “launch” a Web 2.0 “campaign” to counter (or embrace) a consumer-generated product review like Dirt Devil vs Electrolux found via the “dirt devil mvp comparison to electrolux” Google search (clicking the page 1, position 1 result takes you to the video product review). Let me repeat this: for the search phrase “dirt devil mvp comparison to electrolux”, the first organic result on Google is a consumer-generated YouTube video. How does one forecast for this eventuality, and account for this within the deliberative, plodding, and corporate-controlled product development and roll-out plan? All the push-marketing tactics cannot totally devalue the kitschy product review from a real consumer who’s having a good time making a video. Will “I” trust the brand, or the consumer?
Here are some considerations while pondering the the concept that brands are no longer in control:
Step 1: Educate yourself on new ways of thinking about business (notice I did not suggest topics confined to “Web 2.0″, which is a simple moniker to encapsulate a new way of thinking about business). Here’s a list of books to read to get going: The Black Swan, The Art of the Start, The Four Hour Work Week, Competing on Analytics, Crossing the Chasm, The Innovator’s Dilemma. If you have other books to add, suggest them an I’ll start a formal book list.
Step 2: Step into the abyss. Yes…join a social network. I started with FaceBook. To follow the progress of building a community from the ground up on FaceBook, follow/join the Mighty Tour de Nez FaceBook Group I started about one of the country’s most exciting, innovative, and competitive cycling events. The key take-away with respect to the TDN is that even though this event has been going for over a decade, draws record crowds and record pro cyclists, building a community on the Web does not happen overnight. To see the power of an established Group, look at the Ironman FaceBook Group. Also, while you’re on FaceBook, add me as a friend and I’ll add you back.
Step 3: Go create a mission statement and have a good laugh.
Step 4: Trust yourself to make mistakes and not care that you’ve done so.
Test of which service gives a more relevant result for typical real estate searches (of course, relevancy is subjective). For this test, I am defining relevancy as routing me to the local market expert real estate firm or agent in the most expeditious manner.
With social networking sites surpassing search engines in terms of popularity, will the marketing value of search engine optimization diminish over time? This article makes a great case that the usefulness of organic search for consumers may eventually wane.
Interesting question: when a social network community provides answers–as opposed to an algorithm–can anyone really “optimize” their website for social networks? In fact, in this context, one can argue that the concept of “optimization” is a legacy marketing principle more akin to “push” marketing concepts as opposed to “engagement” or “Web 2.0″ marketing concepts.
Let’s consider this phrase “semantic social network”. Via Google, I get this result, and via Wikia Search I get this result; as of this post, I am awaiting help from my FaceBook community.
Obviously, Google and Wikia will return a faster result than the community, and arguably the time I am waiting for the community to respond to my request (if it responds) I can peruse the myriad results via the two search engines. What I am hoping for, though, is that the community will point me in a direction that’s more pointed and vetted via its collective consciousness.
Summary of Self Replicating Awesomeness: The Marketing of No Marketing:
Panelists:
Tara Hunt www.horsepigcow.com
Chris Heuer www.theconversationgroup.com
Jeremiah Owyang www.web-strategist.com
Deborah Schultz www.deborahschultz.com
Hugh MacLeod www.gapingvoid.com
David Parmet www.marketingbeginsathome.com
Key take-aways:
Passion for people. Put passion into product.
Let go to gain more.
Social objects are the future marketing.
Technology changes, human behavior does not; nothing replaces listening, nothing.
A story without love is not worth telling
Hunt (horsepigcow.com): Way of looking at customers rather than product; process not not product (MY COMMENT: product is the message). Conversations are about marketing, customer service, product development. Dont be afraid, it’s an open opportunity. Art more than a science. Get out of the ivory tower, don’t push, weave (network weaving). Look for customers that love you. Put up a FAQ, marketing, customer service. Go local, keep it local, use global reach to distribute locally. Short term strategy: tell the story. Cultural DNA shift, tactics are great; we are in a relationship economy (exchange of free and sometimes exchange currency); marketing is now a mosaic or a puzzle…the payback is long time in coming.
Heuer (theconversationgroup.com): Idea of community (traditional marketing is now saying “Build me a community I want one tomorrow”; this is not the way to think of this). Interpersonal connections make the community, not the tool. Social media is not new marketing, it simply changes how we relate; i.e., company to customer relationship. Attitudinal shift, stop trying to sell, help me want to buy. Make the service the product when there is an expensive product to market and cannot give away for free (e.g., Audi has WiFi, cleaning services). Share knowledge and facilitate interpersonal communications. SHORT TERM: depends on the quality story; “the brands with the best storytellers win” (said by iProspect guy). How do we give an experience of our product away for free. You are giving away a connection, cultivate a feeling, get away from selling a message.
Owyang (Web-strategist.com): conducts research on this market; online community best practices, clear that companies that let go and let customers take charge have thriving communities, for example, grant private access to an brand “embassy”, let them (evangelists) have access to private data, advocates in the embassy go out and evangelize. HOW DID THEY SELECT THE PASSIONATE ADVOCATES? Blog roles, Technorati rankings, who’s talking most about product, can also use brand monitoring companies, buzz metrics, symphony, buzz logic; the main point is that you can find your “brand lovers”. While at Hitachi, created industry-wide Wiki, let anyone in the community to add to it; became starting points to searches for data storage devices; still in use today.
Schultz (deborahschultz.com) the more one gives away the more business one gets. Social capital is basically the value of the relationships and reputation. But how much do you give away without going broke? Traditional marketing aims to promote a generic spread of a message; whereas Hugh saw great opp in the market of bloggers and geek friends to promote wine; read book BLUE OCEAN STRATEGIES.
Macleod (gapingvoid.com): let them say what they want, no preconditions on reviews, gave out the product (wine) with no conditions aside from asking for FLIKR photos; contextual conversations around the wine (ie., product), create Kula, social object within this group; make social gestures, which beget social objects, which begets social markers (demarking the territory); iPhone is a social marker (i.e., SAMSUNG blackjack is not a marker); come “FLY THE FRIENDLY SKIES” is not a marker (MY COMMENT: the tagline is a lie the first time a flight attendant is rude). What matters is not the iPhone but that we’re friends and that we have objects (iPhone) as a way for social communications; the object is our conversation binding; technology is only a facilitator of communications; go in Apple store, they’ve done lots of little things well; little things inform the big things. Create social objects that are cheap if you have an expensive product.
Parmet (marketingbeginsathome.com): It’s not the message, it’s not the logo, using such is missing the human, and missing the opp to service our fellow humans. “YOU DONT GO VIRAL; THE PRODUCT GOES VIRAL”. You’re not going through an intermediary, why not go to the customers themselves? Put it in the hands of the people who actually use it.
SXSW update: Since this is my first SXSW since 1990, I’ve had to re-orient myself to the pace and orgiastic creativity of the scene. Thus, no long posts on the relevancy of this year’s SXSW to the real estate industry until I’ve had a chance to digest properly. Nevertheless, here are the salient take-aways, as I see it:
10 Things We’ve Learned at 37signals: make tiny decisions, tiny decisions are easy to roll-back, easy to make forward progress. Break down problems to their “atomic” levels, which allows one to tackle a whole set of issues in a rational manner. Focus on non-consumers; that is, find the consumers that are not using a specific product but need the salient points of that product (why do I need MS Project, when BaseCamp works just fine, b/c I interested in quick iteration, team collaboration, and forward progress, not a status update using a GANTT chart).
The Science of Designing Interactions: Great conversation between an entrepreneur Ming Yeow Ng and Andreas Weigend, Stanford professor. Quote from Mr. Ng “Discovery is the new cocaine.” Brilliant. As social media hounds, many of us have a bit of Lewis & Clark in us. Discussion focused on how to set up metrics to gauge engagement and use metrics to determine what motivates behavior and how to motivate behavior. Glad I read Owyang here and here as well as Peterson here before this session. Here’s a quick search result from my site for more info.
Core Conversation: 10 Easy Ways To Piss Off A Blogger (And Other Mistakes Marketers Make): Go to Jonny Goldstein’s post on this session, he not only summarized the top 10, he adds relevancy.
Designing for Freedom: Anil Dash added great perspective that “freedom” in a vacuum is not “freedom”; sometimes constraints on user “freedom” actually promotes freedom (e.g., he analogized that the constraints of marriage freed him from the pressure to pursue women). My thoughts: Although the pace and iterative necessities dictated by Silicon Valley pressures force most early-stage companies to focus on product features over customer behavior analytics; it’s the analytics side of the equation that will really allow a company like Ning to create a better product than it already is.
Scoop the Story on Your Blog: This was the most interactive session I attended. What was a brilliant move by the panelists is that all five broke into separate groups and had hallway conversations, which delved deep into the many business applications of Utterz. Owyang challenged my group to focus on weaknesses of the product.
SEO 3.0: Optimizing Search & Social for 2008 and Beyond: For a competitor to beat Google, Google will have to 1) faceplant and 2) the product will have to be better than Google. Not likely to happen anytime soon. Google’s the search engine of choice in much of the world, except for China. Well-written content is the key over the next one to two years, as Google is beginning to “understand” contextual attributes in the penumbra of a site’s content. Online reputation management is important to focus on from a brand perspective (i.e., blogger digs and accolades, trademark infringement, etc).
Contemplating a social media campaign? Don’t go about it in the “traditional” media planning sense. BuzzMarketing has a titillating thought on this concept. And this social media slide show gives an entertaining and educating primer on why traditional media planning will not work well in a social media context.
John Kao, author of Innovation Nation, offers a great perspective on innovation (one hour interview). His analogy to jazz performance and composition is especially compelling. With respect to new product development initiatives, he challenges us to embrace a dexterous and daring approach rather than an artless and timid one; a paradigm especially relevant in a Web 2.0 marketing environment.
Social networks will change the way real estate professionals interact with their clients. Terms like engagement, conversation, and community underpin social networks. And in “off-line” environments real estate professionals have likely “engaged” in meaningful and relevant “conversations” while building a “community” of long-term clients.
Yet many real estate professionals are reluctant to embrace social networks as a new marketing channel. One refrain I often hear is “it’s hard to get going and sustain my ‘involvement’”. Aside from asking the question, “So when has it ever been easy to earn a client’s trust and payment?”, one also senses a certain fear of not making a mistake, or in not taking the time to fully grasp the profound change that’s occuring.
As to the former issue, fear is, indeed, a legitimate emotion to overcome, but can be overcome with a step-by-step approach to getting involved; and the Social Community section of this Web2.0 map is a great place to begin. With respect to the latter issue, Charlene Li of Forrester Research presents an informative road map of the future of social networks.
There will be no online real estate revolution. No tipping point. No tidal wave of change. Just a slow rising tide that swells almost imperceptibly, carrying upon it those who seek, in time, the higher ground. citation
This viewpoint has some synergy to Yale finance professor Robert Shiller’s comments Feb 25, 2008 that lower home prices operate as a net benefit for society. I also agree with Brian that there really is no “killer app”.
But researchers and entrepreneurs are doing great work in creating applications to exploit Web 2.0 communication mediums. For example, this lecture proposes a system for automatically defining communities in social networks, and this lecture details how messaging and surveys could be analyzed to define communities.
Why are these studies important to real estate professionals? Because in about 18 to 24 months the viable models derived from this type of research will see market application. In turn, this means you can then use those models to communicate more effectively with a Web 2.0 audience when the housing market rebounds and consumers–who’ve been feasting on Facebook, MySpace, etc, in the interim–will expect you to communicate with them in a “Web 2.0 savvy” manner.
You either have high home prices or lower home prices and lower home prices are what we want, and people shouldn’t be afraid of that,” said Robert Shiller, Yale finance professor, in a Reuters interview. Most of us care about our children and grandchildren, and these people have to buy houses so why would we want high home prices. We want economic growth, we don’t want high home prices.
So, as the slow ride down continues, what’s happening in the realm of social media that will help you when the ride hits bottom and the ascent begins anew? For starters, Business Week Online in its Feb 21, 2008 issue, is a great source for ideas.
Go ahead and bellyache about blogs. But you cannot afford to close your eyes to them, because they’re simply the most explosive outbreak in the information world since the Internet itself. And they’re going to shake up just about every business—including yours. It doesn’t matter whether you’re shipping paper clips, pork bellies, or videos of Britney in a bikini, blogs are a phenomenon that you cannot ignore, postpone, or delegate. Given the changes barreling down upon us, blogs are not a business elective. They’re a prerequisite. citation
Here’s a tip elite athletes adhere to: remember your competition is yourself and those out there who take the time to do one little extra thing, whether it’s one more hand-eye coordination exercise, or 55 more stairs to run, and it’s that one little extra thing that can separate a winner from a loser.
Ideas circulate as fast as scandal. Potential customers are out there, sniffing around for deals and partners. While you may be putting it off, you can bet that your competitors are exploring ways to harvest new ideas from blogs, sprinkle ads into them, and yes, find out what you and other competitors are up to. citation
Yes, social media will change the way real estate practices are conducted. One way–for the better–is simply to allow you to engage in a more meaningful discussions with clients and potential clients. As a real estate professional, blogs operate as your authority imprimatur. As mainstream media begins to gobble up the blog premise and “commoditize” this presence you will look out-of-date and “old school” if you similarly don’t innovate your mode(s) of communication.
Mainstream media companies will master blogs as an advertising tool and take over vast commercial stretches of the blogosphere. Over the next five years, this could well divide winners and losers in media. And in the process, mainstream media will start to look more and more like—you guessed it—blogs.” citation
Here’s a great example of multi-channel marketing: the Maximum Ride literary series. The first book in the series refers readers to this blog, which refers readers to this YouTube video.
Real estate professionals can use similar tactics. For example, on listing presentation collateral, refer prospective clients to your blog, from your blog refer clients to your listings. Why the blog first and not your listings?
Your blog operates as an authority imprimatur where your clients and prospective clients can read about your expertise; thus, your blog operates as a 24/7 testimonial as to WHY you’re an expert. Prospective clients want to know “why” they should retain you. Current clients want a reason “why” they should refer you. Past clients need a reason “why” they should reengage you.
This post argues that an online real estate search leader has not emerged since 2005, given that the recent Inman Connect attendees “still talked about them last week as if they were launched yesterday.” Interesting argument. But consider the Inman audience: real estate centric folks like sales associates, consultants, media, pundits, etc. Where were the consumers at Inman Connect? On Trulia it seems; they’re now one of the top 10 most visited real estate websites according to ComScore. Data and results tell a story better than anything spun at a conference. Consumer-focused product development processes combined with talented leadership combined with strategic decisions regarding raising equity combined with a positive entrepreneurial environment equates to proven success (pages nine and 28 of this paper delineates a correlation between optimism and success). Can any one entity knock off the big dog REALTOR.com? If I were betting, I’d double up on Trulia.
Many posts have been written on this paper, Using Prediction Markets to Track Information Flows: Evidence from Google. What’s interesting is the influence of proximity on predictive markets. According to the paper, sharing an office had the highest influence (as opposed, for instance, communicating exclusively via email) and part of cultivating an innovative culture is to optimize physical locations to promote idea sharing, collaboration, etc. Microsoft also experimented with predictive markets to anticipate product deliverables. Innovative real estate firms could employ similar tactics amongst their real estate agent base to predict market changes, buyer behavior respective to such, and use these insights to better manage operations.
When bloggers attack, has some great tips on how to respond to blogger swarm attacks. Many real estate firms are leery of bloggers and allowing their agents to blog; this post has some thought-provoking ideas on how to respond.
Interview with Jordan Behan explains how Web2.0 consumers are more informed in real estate search.
Another great post by MineThatData describes the difference basic differences between web analytics and multichannel analysis. The latter analysis lends itself to looking at the life time value of real estate consumers under the multi-generational marketing rubric rather than as one-off buyers that are forgotten as soon as a deal closes.
Here is a great post on how to build / support brands using Web 2.0 tools.
Engagement is the heart of any website. Occam’s Razor has an excellent post on the issues pertaining to creating a viable engagement metric or index.
(repost of 10/07/2007 entry)
In a real estate market that’s shifted poles (like if Earth’s south and north poles switched) what’s a well-known tactic for survival? Surf.
Youth, sometimes, needs to embrace history. Anyone remember DoubleClick’s privacy fiasco in 2000, the resulting state and federal government investigation, and the apex of it’s resolution? Seems like Facebook could have learned a few things from tech-bubble-run-up-history–at least with respect to how to manage a blow-up from a PR perspective (DoubleClick is still around, after all). And speaking of bubble-run-up, check out this vid.
UPDATE: Obviously FaceBook backed off on this approach. Personally, I’ve experienced less interruptive advertising lately on FaceBook.
At its core Trulia applies intense competitive pressure to traditional media firms that historically–in the collective sense–bilked real estate firms out of millions–if not billions–of dollars for essentially non-measureable advertising. Sure there’s the one-off case of a person who walks in the front door of a branch office clutching a Sunday advert who actually purchases a home. However, it’s much more likely that a buyer nowadays will visit a firm’s most important branch office–that firm’s website–when beginning a home search. Thus, with its launch, Trulia’s model filled a gaping advertising chasm essentially ignored by traditional media firms (i.e., sending targeted traffic to real estate websites), and these traditional media firms have since been scrambling to catch up (what’s wonderful to observe is that Trulia likely has around 100 employees and it’s seriously challenging traditional media firms for online advertising market-share dominance–REALTOR.com included–that collectively employ tens of thousands of employees. Such is the power of elegant code and focused leadership).
So where does Trulia reside in a modern media mix? As an advertising replacement to traditional media and / or REALTOR.com? For some firms absolutely. For other firms decidedly not. For some real estate firms the decision to go or not go with Trulia (or REALTOR.com, New York Times, etc) has been based on evidence. What evidence? Evidence derived from analyzing the quality of traffic / lead sources: in some cases it makes sense to stay with REALTOR.com, and in other cases to have Trulia replace both REALTOR.com and the New York Times as primary sources of traffic / leads. For the firms described, decisions were made based on data: traffic-source-to-agent-placement ratios, traffic-source-to-showing-appointment ratios, etc. In some cases Trulia won, in other cases it was REALTOR.com that won, and in still other cases it was the New York Times, etc. Nevertheless, it all netted down to what the data showed.
Accordingly, real estate firms looking for marketing solutions should find a set of tools that measures, quantifies, and interprets the data. What this means is that real estate firms need to wipe off the muck of data analytics myopia and embrace the basics: segment prospective consumers based on demographics and decide which set of demographics to serve (recite the old adage “You can’t be all things to all people” when doing this), apply the same analysis for each traffic / lead source (for example, Trulia may deliver higher quantities of urban young professionals, whereas REALTOR.com may deliver higher quantities of suburban soccer moms), determine what traffic / lead sources “convert” at the highest ratio per each segment targeted, apply these findings to the respective traffic / lead sources, and make an informed decision to stay with or abandon such as they apply to the targeted demographic.
UPDATE: Since I posted this in Dec ‘07, I’ve interviewed numerous brokers and agents who’ve said that Trulia’s delivered lots of real business to them (i.e., high quality traffic that resulted in leads that closed), and that their clients are extremely pleased with the exposure their listings get via the Trulia vertical. Further, several interviewees informed me that Trulia is their number one or number two source of traffic, with one interviewee telling me that Trulia beats all other sources including paid traffic sources.
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“Was anyone surprised with Trulia’s business model?,” wonders this post. For industry watchers? Not really. For real estate firms that shared listings content? Not really (at least the 30+ firms I’ve spoken with). But then again Trulia essentially repeats an earlier model: TV GUIDE.
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UPDATE: Many of firms interviewed informed me that the Trulia relationship allows them to manage their advertising costs more efficiently for more effective results.
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TV GUIDE used data provided by television programming companies to create a profitable company. It was the early years of broadcasting and broadcast companies were searching for new and creative ways to advertise their shows. TV GUIDE employed creative editing and advertising services (e.g., enhanced listings) to generate revenue and expand its reach (into broadcasting services); so much so Rupert Murdoch purchased it in 1988 (along with Seventeen Magazine and The Daily Racing Form) for $2.8 billion.
Here’s a reason why Microsoft invested over $200 million in Facebook. It’s all about the data Facebook has compiled on its user base and the time this user base spends on Facebook. What’s the “veracity index” for this data? One assumes it’s higher than other data sources, since users’ incentives to enter data honestly is relatively high (why lie to my friends?, why lie about what interests I share with my friends?, etc). Accordingly, some companies are stumbling into this space, and getting ripped because of their stumbles. On the other hand, some other companies are “getting it” (looks like Target’s winning).
Obviously, these companies want to tap Facebook’s rich data stores and its users’ apparent nonchalance concerning how marketers will use such data within the Facebook community (read the comments in this post). Real estate firms (or agents or agent teams) interested in establishing a viable Facebook presence should follow Target’s model, rather than the seeming corporate topdown foray employed by Coke. This is not to say there are no strategy considerations; rather Coke’s plight is a cautionary tale that militates against myopically stumbling into the social networking space.
For the past couple of years, pundits of “real estate data transparency” have loudly argued that real estate firms must “accept the inevitable” and allow property listing aggregators to scrape their firm’s real estate listings, or for these firms to post their property listings “everywhere” a consumer will search online.
The analogous situation, claimed by these pundits, is the benefits the travel and airline industries have enjoyed since data transparency largely eviscerated the travel agent livelihood–it’s now easier for consumers to find flights. And once the airline gets the traveler, they can focus on customer service.
Southwest Airlines, however, presents itself as a glaring–or galling–retort to this argument. Southwest does not participate in Expedia, Travelocity, etc. It “forces” consumers to look on Southwest.com for flight information. Has this hurt it’s business? Arguably not. According to this report, Southwest Airlines consistently has the lowest customer complaint rate in the industry. Further, by “forcing” consumers to actually visit Southwest.com to get schedules, Southwest controls it’s own brand experience. This gives Southwest the opportunity to introduce its service ethos to consumers on its own turf, following its own quirky, yet stunningly successful, business model.
Nevertheless, Southwest has crafted strategic partnerships as a way to expand it’s brand and it’s travel schedule. One example is its partnership with ATA. This implies that Southwest is crafting partnerships based around brand extension and synergy as opposed to just looking for leads.
What this short Southwest case study above calls into question is the whole model of lead acquisition strategies currently pursued by many real estate firms. Brand saturation does not always equate to leads with higher conversion rates. There is a break even point where the time spent triaging too many non-viable leads stresses infrastructure to the point where it cannot adequately service viable leads. Lead acquisition strategies should focus on capturing viable leads, i.e., leads sourced from credible sources and partnerships. Sure, Southwest has national brand penetration, but many real estate firms have similar brand penetration on the local level. Thus, these firms can model their out-of-market lead acquisition strategies on the Southwest model–quality partnerships, quality relationships, quality service, quality leads, and quality retention equates to a quality brand.
Consumers will now have the opportunity to rank doctors. Will real estate firms feel similar pressure in the near future to allow consumers to rank their real estate agents? The real estate industry will no longer be able to hide behind the argument that “professional services” is not a product and, thus, inherently “unrankable.” If doctors are subject to consumer whim and assessment, real estate agents certainly should be too.
A licensed M.D. attends four years of medical school and does at least two years post-graduation residency. A real estate agent attends a two month class, passes a test, gets licensed and similarly calls herself a “professional.” And some real estate agents deserve this moniker.
The real estate agent I used three times over the last five years certainly deserves to be called a professional. She’s always prepared, thorough, in control, a good negotiator, timely, engaged in the process, and embraces follow-through as a personal point of pride. She’s also an expert in my community, a trusted advisor when it comes to real estate decisions.
But not all agents are like her. And considering this fact, what does she have to worry about if consumers (like me) rate her service and professionalism? Or her past clients rate her service and professionalism? Likely, she would not have much to fear because she’s likely treated them similar to how she’s treated me. Thus, she could use these rankings to build her personal sphere of influence. Conversely, her competitor agents who are not as professional, not as engaged in ensuring above par client satisfaction would have lots to fear from transparent consumer ratings of their sub-par service.
On the negative side of this issue, a real estate firm would have to build in controls to ensure honesty and ensure that competitor agents could not sabotage the ratings system by bombarding it with a false negative evaluations. And such a system would add administrative overhead to already over-burdened staff. And there is a valid argument that consumers would inherently mistrust a rating system managed by a firm for its own agents.
These issues can be overcome. For instance, all clients who bought or sold a home with a firm’s agents could be contacted and asked to confidentially rate their experience with an agent. This, of course, is already done by many firms. Great. Firms just now have to ask clients to go to a webform, select their agent, and answer some questions. And instantly their feedback could be displayed on the firm’s website. And so long as not every agent gets an A+ rating on the firm’s website (i.e., there were some Cs and Ds and maybe some Fs) consumers would see that the firm’s rating system is honest. And to wrap this up, commentator from an earlier post also address important issues.
This paper, Inferring Social Network Structure using Mobile Phone Data, explores how to use social network analysis to predict individual behavior indicators.
Privacy considerations are explored in this paper, Wherefore Art Thou R3579X? Anonymized Social Networks, Hidden Patterns, and Structural Steganography.
Here are some Videos of social network data analysis, and here is a presentation on the same.
This paper, Social Network and Genre Emergence in Amateur Flash Multimedia, explores the concept of predicting emergent genres by mining social network data sets, which could be applied to trend-spotting.
The tightest definition of multichannel customer management I have yet found is:
Multichannel customer management refers to the design, deployment, coordination, and evaluation of channels through which firms and customers interact, with the goal of enhancing customer value through effective customer acquisition, retention, and development.
Neslin, et al. have authored a definitive research article that real estate firms can use to understand the challenges pertaining to “modern” real estate practices relating to client relationship, and agent relationship, issues. The research paper explores five primary challenges and analyzes the issues pertaining thereto.
Neslin begins by identifying the challenges:
[F]ive major challenges for managers: (1) data integration, (2) understanding consumer behavior, (3) channel evaluation, (4) allocation of resources across channels, and (5) coordination of channel strategies.
This post is first in a four or five part series that will explore Neslin’s position and extrapolate such to real estate marketing and client relationship best practices.
Neslin begins by identifying multitudinous ways by which consumers engage retail firms–from kiosks, call centers, catalogs, bricks-and-mortar stores, etc. Similar interaction vehicles are true for real estate firms–front-yard signs, websites, office walk-ins, etc. Next, Neslin defines “channel”
By “channel,” we mean a customer contact point, or a medium through which the firm and the customer interact.
He then sets the basis for his study: that the focuse of MCM is on the customer, as MCM is a customer-centric function. Neslin next identifies major phases of a client interaction
First, customer perceptions and preferences drive channel choices (e.g., the customer may prefer the Internet for search because it is easy to use). Second, the customer learns from and evaluates his or her experiences, which feed back into the perceptions and preferences that guide his or her next shopping task (e.g., the customer may learn that the Internet search did not answer all the important questions). Third, the customer chooses both channels and firms, so from the customer perspective, it is a two-dimensional choice.
The relevant question then is: to harness this consumer interaction data, what investments must a firm make regarding such? What Neslin argues is that firms do not necessarily have to invest in processes that involve “full data integration” in a quest to develop a “single view” of a customer. What this suggests, then, is that firms must make strategic investments in data acquisition a key points in a transaction.
Real estate firms can leverage key consumer data acquisition “channels” or points. First, any point where a consumer registers for information is a channel. This real estate site contains at least 15 registration opportunities for clients during key phases of a transaction: from beginning (click-to-chat) to contacting an agent to book a showing appointment. Of course, many firms already have this data. So what’s the next step?
Data overlays.
That is, real estate firms should consider augmenting this core consumer registration data with real time, or post-transaction data overlays, from data aggregation companies like Experian, Acxiom, Equifax, etc. These overlays take the form additional demographics, psychographics, household income levels, lifestage, etc, data elements.
Another form of consumer data can be supplied by real estate agents. Although somewhat rare, some agents actually keep client profiles (likes, desires, familial relationships). Why? Because thes agents know that understanding a client’s profile allows them to serve this client (and like clients) at a degree somewhat higher than the norm. These agents use these profiles as their competitive differentiator.
Creating client profiles (either at the per record level, or aggregate level) should be considered a first step for any real estate firm that’s serious about multi-channel management. By using such profiles firms can engage clients at a more relevant and informative level. Thus, maximizing the return on investment the customer is making by spending time on the real estate firm’s site. Similarly, a firm maximizes its own return on investment by allocating tight marketing resources in a more intelligent and cost-conscious manner.
It looks like this company is winning the Chicago real estate search engine optimization strategy and execution race. These representative results speak for themselves: 60647 homes for sale, and 60647 townhomes for sale, and 60647 condos for sale all have this website listed in Google’s top slot (at least as of the date of this post). But what really sends this site over the top in terms of customer service and Internet consumer convenience is its RSS feed.
As a real estate firm with a sophisticated website, what other websites are your top “competitors”? Obviously, your local market competitors are your competitors. Similarly, certain national aggregator sites are too. But what about non-industry sites? Like eBay, Amazon, Cabela’s, Home Depot, Facebook, etc? Arguably, they are too. Why?
Internet consumers experience a variety Website experiences on any given day. Their online search experience spans from generic to hyper-specific Google searches to specific item searches on sites like Amazon. Chances are that these consumers are more frequently interacting with these latter types of sites than any real estate firm’s site. Thus, these consumers’ expectations for search, interactivity, responsiveness, customer service, etc, are set by these non-real estate industry sites. If your site does not meet par, your site is irrelevant to these consumer (at worst) or an annoyance (at best).
Accordingly, real firms that are serious about meeting and exceeding Internet consumer expectations regarding website usability should study these outside-the-industry platforms, map their site’s current functionality against these other sites, and begin the process of adjusting their sites to step up. Use these other sites’ public-facing operations as tools to learn best practices and adopt relevant processes. Firms, thus, avoid sinking research and development dollars into usability analyses and, in effect, leverage the millions of dollars these other sites have invested in such.
Kevin Hillstrom, President of MineThatData has written an excellent whitepaper on conducting a multichannel forensics analysis. Why is this whitepaper an important resource to real estate firms? Because real estate firms are engaged in complex multichannel marketing endeavors. But only a handful of these firms analyze their data from a multichannel perspective.
How does a firm begin its forensics analysis? Hillstrom explains:
