HTML5 and the iPad will change the way we consume online media. But what’s it going to take to change how we create it? Over the past 18 months, suppliers have been on a pretty steep learning curve integrating HD video and still photography into one cost effective package.

It is pointless, however, to replicate the same images and deliver the same message in all collateral. Taking a still photograph of a room, and then slowly panning across the same room is just that.

Pointless.

We run the risk of (a) Insulting the audiences attention and (b) Boring them senseless. Cinematography and photography have unique qualities; you can’t shoot a panoramic ‘stitch’ of a city skyline in low light on video without going to awesome lengths in post production.

In the same instance, a still photograph cannot record the sound of a city street. Just like we need different copy for print and online ads, we need to think differently about how we apply this media in the new medium.

Watching somebody use an ipad for the first time is an enlightening experience; it is not just down to the tactile nature of these screens but the very vibrance of the display.

And these screens are only going to get better; Apple calls it Retina. By developing pixels 78 micrometers wide for the iphone4, Apple engineers were able to pack four times the number of pixels into the same screen size. (http://www.apple.com/iphone/features/retina-display.html)

With richer more tactile displays, there’s a need for a much richer experience.

I believe the focus now needs to turn to what form this content takes on, and how best Agents and Agencies can use it. In the world outside real estate, every TV ‘ad’ is driven by a Creative; an idea to shoot too. This idea compliments the print campaign. The message is the same. The approach, radically different. Today, we have new companions (tactile, smart, mobile devices). And on the horizon, there’s 3D.

As suppliers, we need to think outside the square and not just dish up the same old, same old stills and pans and dolly moves.

We need to think about creating richer, more immersive experiences. As Clients, Agencies and Agents need to demand we start bringing these creatives to the table. As the hardware changes around us, the creative has to evolve.

26 Comments »

.
For new subscribers to Business2 – here are the previous stages.

Diagnosing your online position (warts and all) – Stage One

Constructing your perfect online real estate media platform – Stage Two

Without a doubt from my experiences real estate agents have little to no – understanding about what exactly defines an online business. Today, they remain a tangled online entity boasting a website with very little traffic and Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) – the lights are on and nobody is home. Direct online communications are next to non – existent simply because they are reliant on consumers finding them, as against actually delivering then driving online customer communications. Easy to fix so long as you are prepared to lock – up this online market.

Not only are you providing purchasers the best online service – more importantly offering vendors a stand-out real estate media platform. One that you created and paid for (I say this because real estate agents struggle using their own monies to invest in technology) hopefully your online platform model of choice will now  exceed your competitors too! Stop following the market – time to lead it.

Allow me to elaborate on that –  have you read – “Digital Marketing – Strategies for Online Success”? A great and easy read by Godfrey Parkin – a must for your online library (it’s now in mine).

“There is little point in building a website or fine – tuning your e -marketing tactics unless your strategy is right in the first place. To build a competitive strategy to capture the loyalty of your online consumers requires re – thinking your vision for your business from the ground up. It also requires an intimate understanding of what this online environment is all about, from the perspective of your business, from your competitors’ point of view, and particularly in the eyes of your target customers as individuals. Without those insights, you cannot begin to put together a digital strategy that has any hope of succeeding.”

So let’s best sum up where your real estate agency presently sits.

“The answer is that most businesses have an increasingly fuzzy vision of what their future should be, so their tendency is to clutch tightly to the past. As the world around them changes faster and faster, the future becomes even more blurred and uncertain. Without a bright light to head toward, they feel safer not to move away from their fundamentals and put their efforts into shoring up their defences. Those companies that do stumble forward usually head in the direction that they have always followed, tactically groping their way through fog, turning to dodge obstacles and grasping at opportunities reactively as they fly by. Without a vision, they have no idea where they are headed. Without a vision, they cannot put together an effective strategy.” Sound familiar?

“So why, are the brilliant examples of how it should be done so few and far between?” I’m not suggesting that our online strategy is such an example – rather this is what we do – with success.

.
We have five non – negotiable online services that we adhere to on a daily basis. It is imperative that your online platform must strive to deliver so that you can claim this all very important point of difference over your competitors.

1. The largest online database within your demographic area – be proud that your online media platform connects to more buyers and vendors. Our proof is that we display on our homepage our subscriber sales to our online business which presently sits at $952,234,220.

2. Without using Google AdWords – use intelligent Search Engine Optimisation (SEO) methods where your agency appears at number one position organically on all Google keyword searches within your demographic areas.

3. Write a weekly e – newsletter, send out daily email alerts, provide weekly data on the sales that have been recorded within your demographic area. Each week send out your upcoming open for inspection lists. Provide subscribers the ability to choose exactly which online communication they want to receive. Keep branding your business online.

4. Get a blog going – move with the times. Each comment adds another page to your website as well as on Google which drives your SEO. TAG keywords that appear within your e – newsletter as we try to add at least – 100 new pages to our website on a weekly basis. When you sell or lease a property keep the link live as the more live links on a website the greater SEO. We are over 3,000 pages and rapidly chasing down 4,000 pages.

5. Be relevant – not irrelevant. Use technologies don’t refuse it. Religiously translate your enquiries and open for inspection lists to connect to your online model. There will come a time (and it is happening now) where vendors and purchasers are restricting online communications from agents – where research has identified no more than five (three is the average) and that includes property portals.

When a successful online agency advises a vendor let’s launch an online campaign with a two week marketing strategy before having to commit to a much more expensive print campaign – guess who will win every time?

As Godfrey Parkin said“there’s a very simple, powerful, burning light that all of us need to keep in focus: properly used, the internet frees customers and marketers from the constraints of time and space, which in turn unleashes personal communication and experience – sharing on a scale unprecedented in history.”

Our online communications are very up close and personal – how are yours? When you start digging at your online foundations make sure you use a developer that really knows what they are doing they are few and far between.

5 Comments »

Stage Two – (for those who missed Stage One)

.
A common theme within the real estate industry is when an agent speaks with a vendor who just completed a new home where they always say “we would do many things different with our next home” – the same too applies with agent websites.

Agents struggle to upgrade their own websites yet they boast the latest mobile phone technologies. Telephones are not the solution for generating market activity enquiries. Unless your online media platform is switched on and intelligently activated those telephone enquiries will diminish. In this new century agents/agencies are judged on what their respective online platform delivers where more importantly this involves the businesses driving the communication not vice versa. How many names, telephone numbers, email addresses do you presently have in “your” electronic database?

“You can run – but you can’t hide.” Don’t hide rather start seeking, delivering and then exceeding your online expectations. Move your business to the future given online technologies with aligned marketing strategies are moving at such a frenetic pace that even the most savvy of online real estate businesses are struggling to keep – up. The savvy real estate businesses are the first point of contact for new listings to prospective purchasers which are delivered via an email alert – your personal viewing invitation. Invite the call and invoke – The Law of Reciprocity.

We launched our online media platform back on September 15, 2000. Call it what you want just that at the end of the day we were actually chasing something that was yet to be recognised nor properly discovered for that matter. Five years later, Google entered the online world and the rest is history where today, it’s all about climbing that Google search engine optimisation (SEO) ladder. For all your individual demographic markets one has to explore so that you can then fast track your online SEO position. Just like market positions which are all about growing (not declining) so in which direction is your online strategy headed – better still, do you actually have one?

In life, we are all consumers where not a single day goes by that we don’t buy product(s). When you are buying something you are drawn to product presentation. Change hats – as a real estate agent ask yourself how you are presenting and communicating your properties on your real estate media platform. Are you tracking your online traffic on a daily and weekly basis – your property website as compared to the paid portals? Don’t rely on external forces rather concentrate on your internal deliveries to consumers. When you get the mix right your website must be the (primary) source and the property portals (back – up) secondary for your online communications. Drive your business not others that you invest with. Your online message to consumers has to be your number one priority.
.

Online guarantees a market – print suggests a circulation market. Just because you buy a newspaper does not suggest that you want to buy a property – the smartest online real estate agencies work from within not without. I take Unique Browsers (UB’s) well over circulation figures any day – given that UB’s are consumer activated who specifically go to your website in search of information. When consumers are not chasing your website then something is alarmingly amiss?

With Stage 2 – I want to focus on the four key ingredients that I believe assure you of the perfect building process for your online media platform. Much like building a home these four points are what I consider the “bricks and mortar”. You need to build on your foundations first.

• 1. Technology
• 2. Database
• 3. Communication
• 4. Future

All four are actually intertwined although the key processes are the identification, application and integration is to ensure that you are applying best practice for your real estate media platform. When the right technology is applied you can effectively contact your database and communicate your business activity online to your key demographic markets.

TECHNOLOGY

.

One word keeps resonating – WordPress which launched to the public on November 2005 a state – of – the – art publishing platform that is free. When I look at the leading websites globally they are all using WordPress. We have been running WordPress for just over twelve months now – and I am one of their greatest fans – the perfect online publisher. WordPress also, provides a fantastic database function that administers our daily database email alerts and also, the flight centre for our subscriber weekly newsletter.

In conjunction with WordPress we run Agentpoint which manages our website individual property presentations for all our listings (the back-end). The dashboard (control centre) required absolutely no training for our staff – a vital ingredient for business owners that struggle to understand online. The transition period to a smart online business must apply the Kiss Theory: Keep it Simple Stupid. If you understand it – you use it. If you don’t understand it you don’t use it!

DATABASE

.

The Achilles heel for most real estate businesses – agents own vendors not buyers. If a business is running multiple databases it is terminally ill, where in all probability no one is singing from the one hymn book. Your business is simply a one agency platform that is collectively united or a divorced communication process. United we stand – divided your business will fall. The leading real estate online businesses are running the one (and only) database platform.

COMMUNICATION

.

Remember the Telstra advertisement “Why didn’t you call?” Verbal communication is important – email alerts supersede memory loss provided you are managing your database correctly. Database entry = communication. For the cost of a postage stamp (not including an envelope) you can send out thousands of email alerts. Calibrate your business so that you can communicate with your online subscribers. Activate don’t detonate your online communication platform.

FUTURE

.

When was the last time you used the White Pages (print edition) to look up a telephone number? Consumers use search engines for over ninety per cent (and growing daily) of their respective enquiries. We still use print with online where the global financial crisis offered an amazing Litmus Test – that being significant declines in vendor paid advertising (VPA). As a consequence we moved our business to online – (refer points 1, 2 and 3) and outperformed all of our competitors ($63,000,000 – June 2009 month sales.)

Which takes me to point 4 – you can’t expect to remain relevant unless you embrace, adapt and activate your real estate media platform.

Online is a magnificent tool – just you have to work on it. We all know what happens when the tools (of trade) go down – your competitors build something bigger and better. Otherwise known (as work in progress) where online today, is very progressive, aggressive and obsessive. Just look at what Google did to Microsoft (whom had many years start on them).

Sit back – take three breathes, and design your perfect online strategy for 2010 and beyond.

All I ask is that where is your online business today – not tomorrow? Today, it happens and tomorrow it follows. (Hmm, I should claim that quote.)

19 Comments »

What separates great marketing from good marketing is simplicity and consistency. The easier you brand is to remember and recall the more people will be drawn to it and, ultimately, the more people will respond to it.

In real estate terms this simply means that if you tamper with your branding and advertising, even a little, fewer potential buyers will be attracted to your listings because there’s less chance that they’ll remember which brand your property is listed under, and there’s less chance they’ll be able to find the listing online.

Regardless of which product or service a company provides, smart, cut through and (most of all) consistent marketing is absolutely critical.

It’s no accident that some of the world’s best businesses not only have the best brands, but the most consistent and doggedly defended brands. It’s a rule that applies to the professional services sector as much as consumer goods. Think for a minute about which bank you use. I can guarantee that every letter, monthly statement or any marketing materials that you receive from your bank will be perfectly branded and reproduced to a very high, and highly consistent, standard.

Can you imagine an employee of a bank or a law firm sending you a letter (full of spelling mistakes) on photocopied paper instead of a perfect, original letterhead? It just wouldn’t happen, wouldn’t be allowed to happen, and for good reason.

Employees of banks, solicitors and law firms, just as much as retail outlets and consumer goods manufacturers, wouldn’t dream of taking their company’s brand into their own hands and changing it in any way, and this makes me wonder why so many real estate agents do!

I see a lot of real estate agents making the mistake of trying to differentiate themselves or, worse still, their listings from their brand. This is usually by just tweaking the layout and design of a press ad, a sign board or an online listing, changing a font here or an icon there, moving the logo. It might not seem like much, but it will eventually inflict a death by a thousand cuts to your brand and, therefore, your business and ultimately your own income stream.

The power of your brand is your best friend. Every agent should embrace the brand that they’re working under and leverage it to its full potential, not strive to differentiate from it.

17 Comments »

Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit. Sed sit amet felis sed neque placerat posuere. Mauris sit amet neque. Nam vitae quam. Pellentesque scelerisque, tellus ut viverra porttitor, massa metus mattis sapien, non malesuada purus metus et massa. Suspendisse malesuada arcu ac mi. Fusce lectus massa, fermentum et, bibendum sit amet, eleifend et, risus. Vestibulum eu eros. Mauris vehicula malesuada elit. Pellentesque non felis. Nam facilisis erat a metus. Read the rest of this article »

No Comments »