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Why Successfully Marketing a Home is So Hard

By
Real Estate Technology with HomePocket

For both FSBO homeowners and real estate agents, marketing to bring in buyers is very hard, very expensive and very time-consuming. Worse still? It usually has little measurable return on investment.  

The world has changed these days and with it so too has how people find things they need and want to buy.

 

Predominantly, most everyone now finds what they need online via Google search, from social media and and mobile apps - increasingly, while they're on their phones.

 

Real estate is no exception.

 

In fact, research shows that over 80% of home buyers ultimately find the exact homes they buy not from a yard sign or mailer or even from an agent, but via starting with online sites and services. So, if you want to sell a home, you'd think it would be as easy as getting your home listed in a local MLS and getting it online, right?

 

But that's where it all goes wrong. 

Your Website is Just Another Needle in a Million Haystacks

Today, most anything in the world can be had online. That's a good and a bad thing for buyers. The more availability, the more noise. Sometimes, it's kinda like trying to find a dress or shirt you want by calling random phone numbers and describing it to whoever answers and asking where you can buy it. 

 

For people with products to offer to truly be effective in reaching customers in our digital age takes increasingly more and more sophisticated technical and often invisible "behind the scenes" technology, engineering and data science.

 

Most Fortune 500 companies spend tens (even hundreds!) of millions of dollars each and every year on this kind of digital marketing to enable their sales forces. In fact, most eCommerce and consumer goods companies spend between 10% - 20% of their total revenue each year on marketing alone - many spend more.

 

That's because you can no longer just put out a sign and expect customers to pass by and find you. Why you ask? Well, just look at these stats:

 

  • There are over 7 billion people in the world and growing
  • There are almost 4 billion Google searches per day/1.5 billion Google searches per year
  • There are currently more than 1 billion websites on the internet 
  • In the U.S., there are about 100, 000 real estate brokerages (and even more web sites)
  • Over 90% of homebuyers use the internet for home or area research
  • Online home "search and buy" climbed 253% between 2009 and 2013 alone
  • In the 50 states, there are over 2500 MLS listing services 
  • Per state, on average about 1 in every 300 people is a realtor

 

As you can imagine, this all means the internet is a noisy, noisy place. Having all the information in the world means, well, it actually gets harder and harder for a consumer to to find your "needle" amongst all these "haystacks." To successfully market yourself in the digital world today means standing out to get found via a wide set of very strict (and ever-changing) technical rules - and having the right content when you do get found to truly offer better value to the consumer than the next guy or gal.

 

Homeowners and Real Estate Agents Are Not Pro Marketers - Nor Should They Be

The real estate industry is the single largest sales force in the world. They focus on their increasingly complex craft, selling and customer service. They are also extremely busy people.

 

Despite most every real estate agency having a web site or two, a mobile app and very well-used social media accounts, they are, well, just that:  just web sites, apps and social media accounts.

 

It's called sales AND marketing for a reason. 

 

Just putting up a website without being able to get viewers - and the right viewers at that - is kind of like trying to sell your car by going down the street corner and telling everyone you see that it's for sale.

 

Not very good odds. 

 

These days, it takes smartly getting through to as many of the right people you can who are most likely to be interested in what you're selling - and convincing them quickly (often in just 2-7 seconds) that you're the right choice over many others.

 

That means using advanced digital marketing techniques to know your customer's habits, their many likes and dislikes, where they find their news and information, their age groups, their income levels and a million more things about them in order to make sure your products and services get found by those people most interested or in need of them.

 

 

That also means, to market your home effectively, you either need a team of marketing professionals or to be a marketing director yourself.

 

 

Sure, there are millions of companies out there happy to take your cash to put up a marketing website for you. They'll also put up the same one for a dozen other people in your area. To do this at scale means they can't really focus on constantly tuning and optimizing your site for just your kind of customers or your value-adds. In essence, they sell you more needles for more haystacks.

 

Of course, there's also thousands of ad companies promising digital marketing and more leads.

 

 

But how do they make money? By running ads that get clicked up as fast as possible by whoever will click whether they're really interested or not. In this kind of business, activity is supposed to equal quality so they can ask for more cash to "pump up the volume" each month.

 

And, lastly, there's any number of companies that promise digital marketing and to get you "#1 search ranking" or "on the 1st page of Google."

 

 

The problem? Google changes their search techniques and algorithms very frequently to actually prevent those companies who are NOT doing value-add, quality marketing from gaming their system in these ways to actually get you on the 1st page. As with everything your parents taught you, there's no shortcuts to SEO and SEM and you simply have to have the knowledge, know-how, commitment, time and resources ($$$$) to build it and adapt it as Google changes their system every few months.

 

That means any money you're spending with companies that promise things like this is better spent elsewhere or being saved. 

 

It's simply unreasonable to think that most FSBO homeowners and busy real estate agents have the time, money, skill sets, education, work-force and experience to pull this off. It's simply unreasonable too for them to think they'll be able to do it at all with any good return on what they invest to do it themselves.

 

It's even more unreasonable for them to keep spending money on it these same ways just because "that's what you have to do."

 

Get Push-Button, Set-It-And-Forget-It Home Marketing for Agents, Teams, Brokers and Homeowners

So how do you market your home with real results in the digital age without an advanced degree or spending a small fortune?

 

Enter HomePocket.

 

Our company was created by a team of professional marketers and engineers who have spent their careers building sophisticated marketing machines to get a seller's products in front of just the right buyers across the web and Google, as well as social media such as Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, LinkedIn, Twitter and more. 

 

In effect, we do all the hard work for you, each and every day.

 

 

Through "big data" analytics, we identify the web and mobile viewers in your area interested in homes via their browsing habits and get your brand and listings in front of them. As successful leads come in, we copy their profiles ot target others that behave the same way to improve your chances.

 

 

We don't promise you "60 leads a month" or a "#1 ranking in Google," just that we'll get you the best chances to get in front of buyers and draw them your way. In effect, we're your "digital marketing team in a box."

 

List your Pocket Listing or MLS-listed home for sale today and start getting exposure. You can even send them in free automatically via Listhub.

 

 

Want the full power of our system finding you the right leads each week? Get HomePocket LeadWallet and consolidate all your marketing efforts into one very effective, less-costly system. Stop renting your marketing and start building the equity of owning it. 

Comments (2)

Kristin Johnston - REALTOR®
RE/MAX Platinum - Waukesha, WI
Giving Back With Each Home Sold!

Great information and you are spot on about the odds of doing things right/competition

Jan 14, 2017 06:48 AM
Home Pocket
HomePocket - Santa Rosa Beach, FL
Advanced digital marketing and lead generation

Thanks Kristin!

Jan 15, 2017 11:41 AM