Agent Applause, a terrific website which highlights creating or inspirational marketing ideas by Realtors throughout the country.  A great place to go for new ideas or "out of the box" marketing ideas for real estate!  Check it out at AgentApplause.com

This week one of my clients, Rudy Mayer, was featured due to his use of video, not just with property tours (he does those for every listing), but also to highlight his market area and why someone might want to consider moving to the Southern New Hampshire area.

As Agent Applause mentions, these videos are NOT selling real estate, and basically NOT selling the realtor!  In fact, the only mention of the Realtor is a logo in the corner and you wouldn't know it was done by an agent until the very end.  This "Slice of Life in New Hampshire" series is meant as a resource for new residents and buyers in the community, and as a way for the agent to showcase their knowledge of these communities.  

It does keep people on his site for a long time watching videos and learning about the area.  All of the videos are optimized for search engines, so they regularly pop up on Google searches.

A perfect example of how these types of videos can generate business:

A buyer was living in Los Angeles and searching for homes in Southern New Hampshire over the internet.  He found a nice home in the small town of Hollis, NH. When he went to find out about this small community, he came up short.  It's just a small town, no businesses per se, just a residential community.  BUT... he found this video on Rudy Mayer's website showing what Hollis was like. 

 

Guess who he chose to buy a house from?  (For over $1M by the way....)

There are many, many ways of incorporating video into your real estate marketing.  Lack of creativity is really the only obstacle!

 

I guess I don't get it.

I don't understand why on earth MLS systems go to great lengths to sabotage the sale of home, especially in this economy.

INNOVIA/ New Hampshire:

It's been proven for years that the quantity of photos and the quality of photos helps to sell homes.  Yet, Innovia offers only 12 photos.  Not only that, they're exactly 290 x 218 pixels, just a little bigger than a lousy postage stamp!  In addition, up until recently, descriptions were limited to a very small number of characters, forcing agents to abbreviate their brains out trying to fit everything in.  Of course, the result for the consumer was an intelligible mess of made up abbreviations!  Finally they got wise a few months ago and increased the size of the comment box.  Now how about those photos, Innovia? It's 2009!!!

MLSPin/ Massachusetts:

MLSPin at least offers 30 decent sized photos, but beginning in August, they now have REMOVED all descriptions of all properties... unless you register of course!

This is absurd.  This is 2009, and this is a blatant attempt at a closed system once again.  And if they think buyers are SO STUPID as to fall for this game, they need to think again. People are very sensitive about giving out their email addresses and the resulting stream of spam.  It's 2009.  This is the age of transparency, yet MLSPin seems to want to take a few steps backward.  Maybe we should just remove the IDX from the web altogether and start printing up MLS Books so everyone will be FORCED to call an agent if they want information?

The whole idea here (unless I'm mistaken) is to sell HOMES, not to put barriers up to keep that from happening.  I believe the MLS is supported by agents, yet I can't imagine most web savvy agents thinking that removing ALL descriptions helps them sell homes or helps their sellers get their homes sold.  

To make the online experience of buying a home less meaningful is doing a disservice to agents and to sellers, and hobbling the ability to sell a home in this market.

I've always believed the real estate industry was about 10 years behind regarding technology.  This just proves I'm still right.

I would strongly suggest agents in Massachusetts and New Hampshire let their feelings be known to THEIR MLS that this is not acceptable.  Information should be free and open to the public and every effort should be made to facilitate the sale of a home.

 

 

When most buyers and sellers are searching online - especially early in their search - the last thing they are interested in is a house salesperson!

What they are looking for is education, information, listings, and generally learning the process of home buying or selling as they casually sift through and absorb the seemingly endless amounts of information available online.

If you want to learn about cities such as Boston or Chicago or any other major city, it's very easy to find plenty of that online. But if you're interested in a small, residential community or a small neighborhood in a major city, it can be very difficult to find out ANYTHING about these small communities. (generally it's a short paragraph that came from the Chamber of Commerce site that every Realtor lifted for their site!)

One of the single best ways to make your website "sticky", to showcase a small neighborhood and it's quirky shops, neighborhoods and residents is to do a community video tour! Not only that, at the same time you are selling yourself... your knowledge of the community. Inotherwords, you're giving people what they want (information on the community) and at the same time, giving them an opportunity to meet and see you (what they don't want!).

The shelf life of a community video is essentially - forever! Over time, building a library of community videos can provide a rich addition to your website, separate you from virtually all of your competitors and at the same time showcase you as the community "expert".

It's a "win-win"!

 

FACT:
Nearly 90% + of buyers begin their search on the internet.  That's a pretty large majority!

Yet, most MLS systems have a maximum number of photos they allow.  The size of the photos are not much bigger than a large postage stamp in many cases.  And to make matters worse, their systems compress all of the life and color out of those photos when they put them on their system.

If that wasn't bad enough, they limit the number of characters in the description, which forces Realtors to get "creative" with their abbreviations and punctuation.  In most cases, those abbreviations are made up on the fly, giving 'regular people' absolutely no hope of understanding exactly what the heck they are talking about!

So, lets see... almost all buyers start looking on the web, yet what they see are a limited number of muddy, sometimes unidentifiable photos with descriptions that sound like they're written in another language.

Boy, I can't think of a bettter system than that!

"Curb Appeal" of yesterday is "Web Appeal" today

Your web presentation means everything.  Buyers are eliminating properties solely based on what they see on their computers.  It doesn't matter if you think it's right, wrong or unfair - it IS what buyers are doing. 

With a record number of properties on the market, and broadband connections and computers in every home why wouldn't you do that?  You can see photos of the exterior... then step right inside and look around and see the house!  Why wouldn't you make your decision based on what you see? 

Yet, the MLS seems to be stuck in the days of the old MLS books - offering poor quality and tiny photos and a brief description of the property.  Of course, back then you HAD to call a Realtor in order to have any clue as to what was on the market, right?

Well, those days are long gone.  At least Realtor.com has it together when it comes to presentations.  You can put up to 25 LARGE photographs, plus a video or virtual tour on your listing.  But not with most MLS IDX systems!

How to offer on the MLS what buyers want, even though you can't.

Even though your MLS may be living in the stone age, there is a way around this:  A virtual tour.

Of course, most Realtors use this virtual tour to link to a zooming slideshow of the bad photos that the buyer just looked at on the MLS!!!!!

Exactly what is the point here?  You're offering NO additional information to the buyer, and I hardly think buyers are fooled into thinking that those photos are any different or better because now there's zooming and music! You're just offering the same information in a slightly new package.

Done properly, with the click of the virtual tour link, you can present your buyer with a full screen presentation of large, beautiful, clear photos!  You can show a walk through video tour of the home.  ALL AVAILABLE ON YOUR LOCAL MLS.

This is an example of what can be shown to buyers directly from your local MLS

If you have a lot to say, a way around the short character limitation of the MLS descriptions is using a narrated video tour! You can give complete descriptions, and perhaps interesting tidbits, the history of the home, local amenities and more.

This is also an example of what can be shown directly from the local MLS with narration

Just because your local MLS is still living in the stone ages, if they offer a virtual tour link,
you have the opportunity to provide a killer presentation
that will entice that buyer put YOUR listing on their short list to visit in person!

Gmail has a little known tracking device built right in!  You can play "detective" in the hopes of tracking down the source of some of your spam!

Have you ever started to receive a lot of junk mail and wanted to know what company was selling or distributing your email address to others?

Do you do email blasts and want to make sure your mail list isn't being abused by a third party?

It's easy with Gmail!

When you send an email to someone that you may want to track, append that email address with a plus sign (+) and a description.

Say you go to a trade show and register for services with Active Rain.  If your email address is JohnJones@gmail.com, give them an email address of JohnJones+ActiveRain@gmail.com

You want to append your Gmail username with a plus symbol (+) and the tracking information.  

The email will go through as normal, but you will be able to see WHERE that email address was obtained from.  If you receive email from the Publisher's Clearing House addressed to JohnJones+ActiveRain@gmail.com, you know Active Rain sold or gave your email address to Ed McMahon!

There are many benefits to using Gmail - this is just another one!