One of the biggest real estate auction events in the Southern Hemisphere is about to happen on the Gold Coast.

Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach are holding ‘The Edge’ on Saturday 17^th April 2010 at the Gold Coast Convention Centre.

Brett Clements from PropVid sent me the ‘Hot Off The Press’ promo video yesterday.

Now for such a big event I’m sure that there has already been a lot of promotion done by the Gold Coast Network in the lead up till now & it looks like there is going to be a whole lot more promotion done between now and ‘The Edge’.

But I thought I might throw my 2 cents worth in & share some ideas on how Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach could leverage Social Media & the web more effectively to help spread the word.

Here’s ‘The Edge’ video promo.

The video went live on the PlatinumHD.tv site a few days ago & was uploaded onto YouTube 3 days ago. Whilst I think the video is really powerful there are a couple of things that could be changed to improve its conversion.

Changes to the Video: Within the video I’d have the agents website address GoldCoastNetwork.com.au appearing underneath the Ray White Broadbeach, Ray White Commercial Broadbeach, Ray White Mermaid Beach slide (which appears at the 2 minute mark within the video).

Also, towards the end of the video a slide appears saying “Spaces Limited Book Now”

Whilst I think it’s great to include a call to action. It’s important to define what you want people to do. Are they wanting vendors to book their property in now for the auction? Or do they want buyers to book their seat now? Or both?

On the web there is no room for confusion. It’s important that people watching the video know how to Book Now.

Improve Online Conversion: One suggestion could be that if you include the agency website address within the video, then on the home page of the Ray White website they could embed ‘The Edge’ promo video into the top right hand corner (probably cutting out the end of the surf life saving flag or surfer image) and then have a button underneath to say Click Here to Book Now for ‘The Edge’.

I would then send them to a long copy sales page that features some of the benefits of why they should be involved in ‘The Edge’ and provide an opt-in section which identifies if they are a buyer or a seller.

This will allow Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach to leverage the traffic that they already get to their website from Google and their other marketing, plus improve conversion from the people who view their professionally produced ‘The Edge’ promo video.

Obviously, with only 6 weeks to go till ‘The Edge’, to allow for the 4 week cut-through marketing campaign that they mention in the video, all sellers would need to be contacted straight away to include their listing in ‘The Edge’ marketing campaign.

I can imagine that the agency will need to have all properties listed by 20^th March, but due to the size of the promotion & the incredible exposure there’s a possibility that they could include a few extra listings within a few days after this cut-off date. But, that’s obviously up to them.

Here’s a few other suggestions…

YouTube: One of the first things I noticed is that the video could also be optimised a lot better on YouTube. The wording used in the description & tagging has no chance of being found on Google by someone searching for real estate on the Gold Coast & I’m not sure that having it uploaded under the Entertainment category is going to help either?

Blogging: They should integrate a WordPress blog within their company website. This will not only help to market ‘The Edge’ but it will help with their SEO.

They should write a daily blog post about some of the build up towards ‘The Edge’ and ask all the staff to tweet or share each article with their followers on Twitter & their friends on Facebook.

When sharing the articles on these sites they could also ask people to click the like button when uploading onto Facebook and ask the followers to ‘Please RT’ their tweets on Twitter.

When posting daily updates on the blog it’s important to leave the comments section open on the articles because this may get people asking questions about how to be involved & could provide an additional lead generation strategy.

This could also provide an opportunity to set a deadline for the last day before properties will be allowed to be submitted & could create an extra sense of urgency for potential sellers and/or could encourage friends to tell friends to contact the agency so they don’t miss out on ‘The Edge’.

To protect the integrity of the event, Ray White Broadbeach-Mermaid Beach are the administrators of the blog so they have control to monitor comments too.

Facebook: I also noticed that Ray White Broadbeach-Mermaid Beach have a personal profile on Facebook. Whilst they currently have 67 friends, they should really have this as a Fan Page, because Facebook has a limit and once you get to 5,000 friends you have to change to a Fan Page.

Any company thinking about creating a presence on Facebook should start off with a Fan Page. They are better for business.

Celebrities, etc should also create a Fan Page. eg. One of my friends on facebook, Jack Canfield sent me an email the other day to ask me to join him at his fan page because he had reached his limit of friends.

Jack now has the task of getting all 5,000 of his friends that he has built up on his personal Facebook profile to go over & connect with him on his new Facebook Fan Page.

( Update: I found their company Facebook Fan Page – See Update at bottom of this article )

Twitter: With regards to Twitter I can’t seem to locate a company profile for them. At this point there appears to be no Twitter account linked to their site & no blog within their site.

Whilst ‘The Edge’ is an amazing concept, there are so many different things that Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach could do to make this the most incredible real estate event ever through Social Media.

(Update: I found their company Twitter account as well see Update at bottom of this article. I searched both facebook and Twitter for Ray White Broadbeach and Ray White Mermaid Beach. I finally found them under the Gold Coast Network.)

Print Media: Having seen the magnitude of the print media campaign from last years event, Ray White Broadbeach-Mermaid Beach should be advertising something like,

“For the daily inside scoop on ‘The Edge’ become a Fan on Facebook and/or follow us on Twitter” within their campaign.

This could help them to build a huge network of people connected to their company who live within their service.

It’s never too late: Even though ‘The Edge’ is only 6 weeks away, when you think about the real-time nature of Web 2.0, there is still a lot of time available for Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach to leverage the power of the internet & use this impressive Video Production from PropVid to generate the most amazing impression within their marketplace.

2 last things: A geo-targeted Pay Per Click campaign on Google could help overcome some SEO issues, plus a targeted Facebook Ads Campaign would help drive targeted traffic to their video campaign and/or their Facebook Fan Page.

The amount of ‘Free’ online PR that could be generated around ‘The Edge’ could be massive.

If Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach get this right, ‘The Edge’ could become so much bigger than they could have ever imagined.

And, if you tallied up every strategy that I’ve mentioned, they could make a huge difference to their whole campaign for around $500 – $1,000 plus time spent writing a daily update on their blog about ‘The Edge’.

PS: There’s a few more ideas I have about what they could do on realestate.com.au and other strategies, but at this point I just wanted to paint the picture of what is really possible, if a real estate agency embraces Social Media and uses the power of the internet the right way.

Please feel welcome to share your thoughts & ideas.

UPDATE: After writing this article I noticed that Ray White Broadbeach – Mermaid Beach do in fact have a Facebook Fan Page under ‘Gold Coast Network‘ and a Twitter account at Twitter.com/raywhitebroad with their username as ‘Gold Coast Network’. It’s great to see that they have established a fan page and a Twitter account.

At the time of posting this update, they have 97 fans on Facebook and 23 followers on Twitter, but unfortunately all the company seem to be posting is there sold listings & providing a link to the Open Homes that they have on each weekend.

Their Gold Coast Network Fan Page could become so much more engaging and simply because of its name, Gold Coast Network, it has the potential to become one of the biggest real estate fan pages on Facebook if they shared some other information about what’s happening on the Gold Coast as well.

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This article is ‘Part 3 of How to Get More From RealEstate.com.au Without Paying Extra Money.’

In Part 1 of this series, I covered how to get the best coverage for your agency within the Find An Agent Section settings and in Part 2 I discussed an important internet marketing strategy where you can improve the number of visits you can get to your listings.

In that article I also covered 3 simple internet marketing concepts, the first of which was ‘The Image Catches Their Eye’ which leads me to…

You Lost Me At ‘Hello’

Have you ever seen that part in the movie Jerry Maguire where Renee Zellweger says to Tom Cruise “You had me at Hello?” If not, here’s a quick snippet from the movie.

Well, with this phrase in mind, I can not stress how important it is to grab a buyer or sellers attention over the web, especially on realestate.com.au.

Ultimately, you want to aim to ‘Have them at hello too’ which means that they will continue to keep reading about your listing.

The ‘Hello’ part is so important over the web, because with a woman you have somewhere between 2 – 4 seconds to grab their attention, whereas for a male, it’s 5 – 7 seconds, yet unbelievably there are still a number of agents who are committing the cardinal sin on realestate.com.au.

What’s the cardinal sin on realestate.com.au?

I find it astounding in today’s world of digital photography, that some agents are still uploading their listings onto realestate.com.au without any images of the property at all.

What’s more, realestate.com.au don’t allow listings to be uploaded to their site unless their is an image & some agents actually go out of their way to upload a generic image instead, just to get the listing up onto the realestate.com.au site.

Some agents must be in such a hurry to get the property uploaded onto the web on a Friday afternoon, before the receptionist goes home, that they upload the listing without photos, without considering the damaging consequences.

Maybe the owner is super keen to have the property uploaded before the weekend, but uploading any listing onto realestate.com.au without photos of the property is a huge mistake.

The image is such a big attention grabber and having no image could actually put the ideal buyer off.

Plus, lots of potential sellers subscribe to email alerts and if they see a property that is poorly marketed by an agent then they could easily be put off from listing with that agent.

It’s the biggest database in Australian real estate – Use it.

REA has the biggest real estate database within Australia & they have hundreds of thousands of people who have subscribed to receive email alerts when new listings come onto the market within their chosen criteria.

Realestate.com.au include the first email notification via their email alert service at no extra cost to the agent. It’s part of the subscription fees & is a very affective part of an agent’s marketing strategy for matching properties to suitable buyers.

Now, if an agent uploads a listing without the property photos & wants to access the REA’s database to re-send the property details out with photos now uploaded, they have to pay (normally hundreds of dollars) to send out one of REA’s e-Brochures.

Even though you could always pay to re-send the property out to REA’s database via the e-Brochure in an attempt to try to rectify the initial mistake, you’ll never get a second chance to create that great first impression.

No matter what the circumstances, an agent should ‘never’ upload a listing onto realestate.com.au without photos of the property.

Quick Tip: To get the greatest exposure for your listing as it is emailed out as an email alert to the REA database, make sure you set your price guides within the admin section as far apart as you feel that you comfortably can without misrepresenting the price.

This will allow you to broaden your marketing out to potential buyers in a lower price range who may end up deciding to increase their spending range and/or market to buyers in a higher price bracket that may consider reducing the amount they want to spend on a property.

But, make sure you reset the price range within the system within the first week after the first email alert has been sent, as by this time you’ll probably have direct feedback from buyers and you should have an even better indication of the properties real price point in the market.

Obviously, use your common sense, sending an $800,000 listing to buyers with $300,000 to spend isn’t going to win you any friends.

6 Comments »

With talk of search, social media and mobile, real estate agencies are starting to invest in building an online presence. But whilst all of these strategies are important to any agency strategy, it is important to make sure you are getting the basics right. Our recent consumer research has confirmed our initial thoughts, and that is that agents need to focus on always providing the core information in a listing. By doing so agents will be able to attract more buyers to the properties they have listed on the market.

Content and information make the web go around, and it is detailed information that consumers are looking for when they are viewing property listings online. Consumers are using this information to make preliminary decisions about property from the comfort of their own home. The process of elimination starts here and it is your one opportunity to convert browsers to inspectors. So what do you need to provide in your listings to get people off the couch and at the inspection?

1) Floorplans; Equally as important as images, floor plans are one of the first elements consumers look for when viewing a listing. However some agents are still not providing what should be a core component of any property advertisement online.

2) Images; Making a property decision from your computer is a visual process. Consumers have a limited amount of time to go to open for inspections and as many overlap, your property may be making it onto the “no time to see list”. Images are the crucial factor swaying a users decision, and providing 2 or 3 images to look at is hardly going to entice buyers to the property. With property portals providing the capacity for up to showcase 26 images, agents need to make better use of this facility and increase the portfolio of photos for their properties.

3) Pricing; Many properties are still listed without a price guide associated with them. Whether a property sells for the price it is listed at on the day will of course depend on the market. However a price guide helps consumers to determine if a property possibly sits within their budget, and is worth a trip to the inspection.

4) A full valid address; When inputting data, it is important that agents ensure an accurate full address is provided. Without it, map functionality, on portals and your own site, are unable to accurately pinpoint the location of a property within a particular suburb. After understanding what the property looks like, consumers want to know where it is located and what it is close to, so make sure they don’t have to traipse around the web to find it. If you focus on getting these fundamentals right, and combine it with some investment in attracting users to your site through online channels such as search and social media you are well on the way to attracting more buyers for your listed properties.

18 Comments »

Google has recently developed Favourite Places on Google, which incorporates the use of QR Code technology to help customers get information about businesses via their mobile phones and drive visitors across to the reviews on their site.

Whilst the use of QR Codes hasn’t really taken off as yet, they should start to become more and more popular now that Google has jumped on board.

With Google’s Favourite Places, the reviews that appear on Google about a real estate agency will also continue to grow in importance.

Google have said that “We have not yet made a decision about plans for this program beyond the U.S.” but they have already expanded the service into Vancouver, so it looks like it could end up coming to Australia some time soon.

Businesses don’t have to pay anything to become a part of Google’s Favourite Places, but they must have signed up for a free account with the Google Local Business Centre.

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Will the recent launch of the Apple iPad mean the end of the Listing Presentation Folder or FlipChart style presentation? Will we see agents showing off their listings via the iPad? Or perhaps they’ll be using it to watch real estate training sessions or live streamed sales meetings? Either way, could it be a Game Changer? Read the rest of this article »

20 Comments »

Remember the iconic 1980s movie ‘Wall Street’ in which Michael Douglas walks along a beach watching the sun rise while talking into his mobile phone? The thing was about as big as his head (which was big), yet was the symbol of power, wealth, technology and cool. Looking back at it now, the device forces a smile, just like those beige box-like floppy drive PCs of the same era.

Fast forward nearly a quarter of a century, and the current generation of mobile phones are really pocket PCs, things that might have impressed Flash Gordon or Captain Kirk in earlier eras. We check our emails, surf the web, listen to music, take pictures, download and pay for apps – from anywhere. It slips into our pocket, we own it, it’s ours. With the iPhone, it’s stylish to be a geek, and if you’re a newcomer to all this, welcome to the party.

A year ago, mobile traffic to web sites, and real estate sites in particular, did not rate. Yet already 23% of Australians with mobiles use them to access the internet, even though total internet traffic is estimated to be less than 1% through a mobile device (ABS). Still early days.

Part of this could be the catch up of consumers, part of this could be the lack of mobile-ready websites and the small number of ‘real estate’ apps in the iphone App Store. A recent search of “real estate” apps turned up only 5 Australian ones (plenty of American), among these a couple of multi-office real estate agencies, and among the main portals only Domain are present.

In the States, Zillow.com were reported as saying up to 35% of their weekend traffic comes from mobile devices. Pete Flint, CEO of Trulia.com, claims (more believably) their mobile traffic is in the “5 to 10% range”, while a year ago “it was negligible”. Although iphones account for only 8% of our mobile devices, 50% of mobile traffic is coming from iphone apps. Realestate.com.au, in Australia, reported “exponential growth” to its mobile site in December (150,000 unique visitors), claiming this to be “additional” traffic.

Whatever the claims and stats being bandied about, it would appear that mobile is going to be the trend of 2010. Social media is “…like, so 2009”.

It makes intuitive sense that mobile traffic should figure more this year – the technology is here, you can be walking down that beach watching the sunrise and getting your real estate fix. There are apps being developed where you point your camera phone at a building and can see which properties are for sale, at what price and what has sold recently. Househunting is an activity that still takes us out and about, checking into home opens, trawling suburbs in our cars, walking down streets. With the mobile in our pocket, do we really need anything else?

So get ready for the upsurge of mobile web designers and iphone app developers. (There will be snake oil salesmen among them.) And with that, the question – do we “mobilise” our web site or get an iphone app developed, or both, or neither? The former allows your site to be accessible on most, if not all net-ready mobiles (much more fiddly to have coded than you might think). The latter allows people to download your app, have it in their menu making it easily accessible. Apps are sexy and cool, great PR spin, but are more expensive to develop. And how do you get YOUR app downloaded, especially when (in say a year or two’s time) there are hundreds of Australian real estate apps in the iStore, rather than 5? This is the brave new world we seem to be moving into.

Photo Credit – Jamie Riddell, http://www.flickr.com/photos/jamieriddell/2166586104/

6 Comments »

Before uploading your listings onto realestate.com.au, it’s important to look at what you are trying to achieve within each part of the site. Plus, it’s important to look at realestate.com.au from an internet marketing perspective, rather than simply uploading your listings and hoping.

With this in mind, this article takes a look at how agents could improve their results from the perspective of an internet marketer and achieve the best click-thru rate that they possibly can from realestate.com.au.

In the first article on ‘How to Get More From RealEstate.com.au Without Paying Extra Money’ I discussed the Find An Agent Section of the site, in today’s session we’ll look at how to get the best results out of the Search Results Pages of realestate.com.au

The Search Results Pages are that part of the site where someone does a search for property within your area and all your listings plus your competitors’ listings appear all together under an area search, price range search or both.

For example, here’s the Search Results Pages for a search on the suburb Balmain.  http://www.realestate.com.au/cgi-bin/rsearch?id=balmain&a=qfp&cu=fn-rea&t=res

Within the Search Results Pages of the realestate.com.au site, 10 listings are displayed per page, (except for the first page where the ‘Guaranteed Top Spot’ listing appears, to make it 11 listings).

When looking at how to market your listings effectively within the Search Results Pages, it’s important to learn 3 simple internet marketing concepts.

1.    The Image Catches Their Eye
2.    The Heading Grabs Their Attention
3.    The Text Makes The Sale

Now there are a lot of agents who write ads that may look alright on paper, but these ads don’t actually convert very well once they are uploaded onto the web.

Plus, normally the same ad that is placed in print is also used online, which means that typically the same AIDA method of advertising ends up being adopted onto the web.

A = Attention
I = Interest
D = Desire
A = Action

Whilst the AIDA method still works online, to get the most out of your advertising on realestate.com.au it’s important to use AIDA twice within the same advertisement.

You see, with a typical AIDA style advertisement the call to action is left at the very end of the copy, which ends up appearing on the Property Details Page.

On realestate.com.au it’s absolutely critical to capture Attention, create Interest, develop Desire and include a call to Action within the very first part of the advertisement, because this is what the majority of people will see within the Search Results Pages.

Now you may be thinking that’s too hard or even impossible. I can assure you it’s not, because when you look at what the first call to action really is, you’ll discover that your job as a marketer within the Search Results Pages is simply to ‘Sell The Click’.

That’s right! Your listing within these Search Results Pages of realestate.com.au is racked up side by side with 9 other listings (or 10 other listings in the first page ) and your strategy at this point should be simply to ‘Sell The Click’ because once the browser has clicked open your listing, that’s where all the magic happens.

At this point the browser has not only opened the Property Details Page but at this point…

• That’s when you get a visit registered against that listing

• It’s where the client can find out your contact details

• Where they can see how professionally you promote a property

• View videos, virtual tours, floor plans & see more photos, etc

• They can share the listing with their friends on Facebook

• Send you an email enquiry or email the listing to a friend

• Print out a brochure of your listing

• See how many visits the listing has had

• View a map, get local sales information & write a street review

• Gateway to them finding out more about you & your company

• And, if you use a strategy that I’ll be teaching in an upcoming article in this series, there’s a good chance that more people will end up clicking through to your company website as well.

But, none of this happens unless they click the red ‘View Property Details’ button in the Search Results Page & open up your listing.

Here’s How To ‘Sell The Click’

There are a number of ways that you can ‘Sell The Click’ from within the Search Results Pages.

Firstly, upload the best photo of the best part of the home as the main photo (or Hero Photo as some like to call it). The main photo should preferably be an interior photo or an enticing outdoor entertaining area photo.

By using internal images, you’ll stand a better chance of catching the browsers eye because people love looking inside other peoples places. Also, you’ll find that your listing will not only stand out from your competition, but browsers will also have a tendency to click open the listing to see what the front of the property looks like too.

Additionally, selecting the right main photo to use for your listings will also have an impact on the number of visits you generate from the new Gallery section within realestate.com.au.

In the new Gallery section 10 listings appear per page, displaying only an image, property address, price, icons for number of bed – bath – garage & a red “View Details” button.

Secondly, use a great headline, not the same old boring copy like ‘4 BR Home + Pool’ or ‘Don’t Miss This One’. Put some real thought into it.

Thirdly, remember what I said earlier, that “The Text Makes The Sale”. You’ve got approx. 300 characters to write some copy at the beginning of the advertisement that can help you to ‘Sell The Click’.

You’ll find that’s plenty of space to build Desire, Interest & include a call to Action.

Finally, you may not get this right the very first time & it may take some practice but that is the beauty of the internet, you can easily make changes as you go.

I hope this helps you to drive lots more traffic to your listings on realestate.com.au without costing you any extra money.

Back soon with the next instalment. Cheers. :)

PS: If you’re not great at writing short copy that converts well, try using Twitter where you only have 140 characters to ‘Sell The Click’ or seek out a professional copywriter for some help.

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If you enjoy a high profile it’s inevitable that, at some point, someone’s going to want to take you down. Do a Google search on the name of any celebrity or public figure along with the word “sucks” or “stupid” and you’ll find some pretty disturbing stuff.

In real estate circles Enzo Raimondo has a high profile. As the boss of the Real Estate Institute of Victoria he represents the interests of nearly 1900 real estate businesses. No doubt it’s a tough job.

As with many public identities Raimondo has his fans. He also has detractors. Notable among the latter are Neil Jenman and Peter Mericka. They appear to be obsessed with Raimondo posting regular invective on their websites aimed squarely at Raimondo.

Jenman and Mericka attack the person. They hurt feelings to create a reaction. They’re internet trolls.

The word troll conjures up images of a colourful lure being dragged slowly behind a boat to catch an unsuspecting fish. It also brings to mind a malevolent mythical Nordic monster. But whatever the imagery the association is one of cunning and mischievous deception aimed at provoking an instinctive or emotional response.

In typical troll fashion their attacks on Raimondo are usually personal and devoid of substance. For example, Mericka states : “Enzo Raimondo, CEO of the Real Estate Institute of Victoria (REIV) is a master of the partial-truth”. The statement is directed squarely at Raimondo describing him in a way that obliquely questions his integrity without taking a stand.

In a similar vein Mericka claims that “… real estate agents don’t want consumers to be independently informed about property valuations”. Just how he is able to know for certainty what is in the mind of all agents is unclear. He presents no corroborating evidence to substantiate his claim, instead demonising all agents by making a sweeping, unprovable assertion. It’s typical troll behaviour.

Many trolls hide their real life identities behind fictional characters and pseudonyms. Take the recently suspended fake Enzo Raimondo Twitter account as an example (a cached version is currently here). The unidentified troll took on Raimondo’s name as a pseudonym posting a number of tweets that linked to a Wordpress blog entitled Enzo Raimondo. In turn each of these posts linked to either Jenman’s Real Estate News or Twitter account or to Mericka’s The Australian Real Estate Blog. In both instances the troll made use of free services – Wordpress and Twitter – to attack Raimondo personally whilst avoiding any likelihood of being held accountable for their actions.

So just why do trolls work the way they do? The answer to that question would take up the contents of an entire PhD thesis. What really counts though is the end result, not their motivations.

If we take Mericka’s Twitter bio on face value he’s a “consumer advocate”. Jenman similarly claims “consumer advocacy” as something he does for love. Outside of these self-disclosures I can only speculate about their motivations. But what can be stated with certainty is that four of the top ten results on a Google search (as of December 23, 2009) using the term “Enzo Raimondo” are from either Jenman or Mericka. Two men with a passionate belief – trolls if you will – are winning this battle hands down. Their personal crusades are damaging the reputation of Raimondo and the Institute he represents.

It appears that Raimondo has made a few positive, and at least one defensive, move to advance his position. In the first instance he has a static web site that employs a number of SEO measures to help it rank number one and two in a search. He’s also joined LinkedIn, which gives him position four. A 2003 press release found on Real Estate View gives him position eight. Position three, a profile on wotnews.com.au is a lost battle as both Mericka and Jenman have almost the same number of mentions as does Raimondo.

What I find staggering is the complete absence of any mention of Raimondo on reiv.com.au in the above search. I went looking and could find no Raimondo profile page on REIV (perhaps I overlooked it) and the only textual mention of his name was a few pages buried deep within the site. It is as if the team at REIV have chosen to give Mericka and Jenman a free kick at Raimondo’s head!

Defensively Raimondo, or one of his team, may have taken steps to put a stop to the fake Twitter account as it appears that the account has been reported for misuse. This would help explain the account’s suspension.

So to the point of the article, what would you do if you were Enzo Raimondo?

There is much that could be done. I don’t intend to catalogue every move available to Raimondo. That’s a question for you to help answer within the comments. Rather I will leave the final word to Seth Godin.

Lots of things about work are hard. Dealing with trolls is one of them. Trolls are critics who gain perverse pleasure in relentlessly tearing you and your ideas down. Here’s the thing(s):

1. trolls will always be trolling
2. critics rarely create
3. they live in a tiny echo chamber, ignored by everyone except the trolled and the other trolls
4. professionals (that’s you) get paid to ignore them. It’s part of your job.

“Can’t please everyone,” isn’t just an aphorism, it’s the secret of being remarkable.

Godin here points to the stark contrast between creators and trolls. Trolls tear down while professionals create. And creating means producing content. Lots of it. It also means building a community of similarly creative people, to lift, to extend and to carry a message.

Is Raimondo doing enough? I doubt it but I’ll leave it to you.

If you were Enzo Raimondo what would you do?

24 Comments »

If I was starting a real estate agency within Australia, one of the first online subscription based services I’d probably sign up for would be realestate.com.au simply because I know that I would need to be able to offer this service out to potential Sellers, Landlords, Buyers & Tenants to compete in the marketplace.

Maybe, some agents or suppliers may disagree & think that there would be something more important to sign up for, but in the early stages I’d put REA ahead of even creating my own website (a very close 2nd), simply because that’s where I believe the majority of client’s would want their property advertised & it’s also where I could generate the fastest exposure, enquiry & revenue stream online.

So with this in mind, I went out on a fact finding mission & visited the team at REA in their Sydney office to learn more about using their site better.

Let’s face it if you have to pay for a subscription to realestate.com.au, wouldn’t you want to know how to get the best bang for your buck out of their site? I know I would.

And that’s why I’ve decided to share a series of tips that I hope will help agents use their site more effectively, without having to pay them any extra money.

Here goes with Tip #1

Tip # 1 – Find Agent Search.

As part of setting up your realestate.com.au account, each agent gets an allocation of 10 suburbs where the agent’s details can appear within the Find Agent Search part of the realestate.com.au site.

This is where the agents appear in alphabetical order with your logo & agency name under each selected suburb.

This is an extremely important part of the realestate.com.au site, because if someone is considering selling or renting their property, then there is a high possibility that they will use the Find Agent part of the site to locate an agent.

And, as I often say during my seminars, “if a client can’t find you online then they won’t be able to do business with you.”

So, with this in mind, it’s important to make sure your company name appears in as many suburbs as you can in the Find Agent Search for your service area & also for the suburbs immediately surrounding your service area.

It appears that some agents may not be aware of this, but when setting up your account, from what realestate.com.au have told me you don’t have to include the suburb your agency is in within the suburbs you nominate.

Apparently, your agency immediately appears within the Find Agent Search section under your suburb anyway.

I don’t have a current realestate.com.au account to test this on, but I have it on good authority from the powers that be back at realestate.com.au HQ that this is correct.

Which means that if you’re not already doing this, you can now cover 11 suburbs (that’s one whole extra suburb) within the Find Agent Search & maximize your reach out to potential sellers, landlords, etc who may be searching for an agent within that extra suburb in your Service Area at no extra cost.

I hope you’ve found this first tip helpful. I’ll be back soon with Tip # 2.

Action Step # 1: Login to your admin section of realestate.com.au & check what suburbs you have allocated for your account & if you have included the suburb that your office is located in, remove it & insert an extra suburb. Once you’ve made the changes, make sure you check your work by typing in all 11 suburbs (including your office suburb) into the Find Agent Search section of the realestate.com.au site to see that your office appears within every suburb that you have identified as well as the suburb that your office exists in.

If my information from REA is correct, you should be able to have 11 suburbs covered instead of the standard 10 that many agents may currently have.

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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.

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