Thread: Free Promotion on our site!

Hello Realtor Entrepreneurs,

We are a starter company located in California specializing in lead generation for the Real Estate Industry. Take a look at our site, www.MyPreferredAgent.com. The company has been in existence (on-line) for about 12 months and just received a boost from venture capitalist to begin an extensive marketing campaign to bring more hits (potential clients, i.e., buyers & sellers) to the site to begin January 1, 2006.

As part of marketing campaign strategy, we are looking for agents to promote in all 50 states in the U.S. At present, we have about 200 agents online in about 19 states. In order to captivate a larger market share and credibility, we understand the need to add more agents and fast!

We have decided to allow ONE YEAR OF FREE ON-LINE PROMOTION on our site for a limited time only. You must respond no later than DECEMBER 15, 2005. This will assist us in fulfilling our goal of having Real Estate professionals promoted in every state in the country.

Our research shows that 70% of those interested in buying and selling first search the internet for information. We have defined these people as our Target Audience. Our job is to promote our site and bring these potential clients to your bio page for review. It is then up to the Agent to define his or her goal and message to captivate the potential client to have them contact the by phone/email or your website.

Our normal annual fee of $59.00 is waived up to December 15, 2005. After this, anyone who is interested in being promoted must pay to be on. PLEASE DO NOT ASK TO BE PROMOTED FOR FREE AFTER DECEMBER 15, 2005. If you

Our research shows that 70% of those interested in buying and selling first search the internet for information.

Realtor.com does well at luring potential homebuyers because of brand recognition. But 99% of all other national real estate sites and directories drive zero sales for agents and their listings.

How do you plan to bring potential homebuyers to your site?

While more and more homebuyers are searching the web for real estate, the overwhelming majority search for listings by typing "city name + real estate". Are you going to utilize PPC or search engine optimization for each of the cities represented by agents listing on your site? What other forms of advertising will you do to build your own brand recognition and bring in potential homebuyers?

Michael - I'm not trying to rip your company or your idea here. What I am trying to do is help educate the agents on this board as to how to invest their marketing dollars. Right now your site is not much different than 100,000 other agent directories on the internet. What makes it special and worth the investment?

The fact is that the value of most real estate directories is the backlink that they provide to the client web site. But in order for the backlink to be valuable it must be spiderable by search engines. The backlink - especially with the proper anchor text - can help in the agents own search engine rankings. As it stands, your dynamic agentdetail.php pages are not spiderable by search engines. You should look into using a MOD REWRITE to correct this.

Originally Posted by MyPreferredAgent.com

The company has been in existence (on-line) for about 12 months

Online for 12 months and only 2 pages indexed with Google and zero Google BL's showing? Not good at all.

While your site does have a nice clean design, it lacks content. Here are a few ideas to punch up your content:

1. Allow agents to post articles about their service area. Have one main article page for each state, then link the proper regional/city articles from the appropriate state page. Allow only 1 article per page. The article should contain links to the agent profile and to the agents web site. Again, even if you use a database to store the articles make sure that the pages can be spidered and indexed by search engines.

2. Allow agents to place their listings on your site (a la Realtor.com).

The bottom line is that a national real estate web site must provide local/regional value to the agent - even if listing on that site is free. Your business model should be based upon how you can provide that value above and beyond other agent directories.

Ill take the bait and report back the results.

Originally Posted by Cedar City Utah Realtor

Ill take the bait and report back the results.

I hope that everyone realizes that I meant no disrespect to this or any site of this type. I just want to point out that there are many of these sites - not necessarily this one - that only make money for the web site owner and rarely, if ever, lead to a sale.

Agents always need to ask, "What's in it for me?"

I'd like to see Michael's rebuttal. And thanks, Sean, for taking the time to check the site out for us. These sites try to act as if they're the next big thing for us and most agents just won't know any better.

It's been quite amusing watching all these "middle men" pop up in the industry lately...

I would speculate that as quickly as they've arrived, they will depart. When the volume of transactions in a particular market no longer supports the spike in agents and uber-high commission cutting competition, some of these (gateway) companies will dissappear. Or, by providing a central location for real estate on a national level and "screening" agents and l.o.'s, are they earning their keep? I personally don't think so...

I just wonder- does anyone who pays for leads from one of these providers benefit greatly? All the agents in my market (San Diego- where a small deal should easily offset these monthly costs) who have subscribed to a lead provider may do just a bit better than breaking even on the investment. Seems cheaper just to run your own ppc campaign. Maybe it is something you need to work for a very long time...1yr +. Don't know.

I would love to hear if their are any success stories with lead provider companies.

G&S

is it free anywhere u advertise

Originally Posted by HHI Golf Guy

But 99% of all other national real estate sites and directories drive zero sales for agents and their listings.

How do you plan to bring potential homebuyers to your site?

That's the problem with the hundreds of thousands of all the real estate directories. They don't attract home buyers because the wizards designing them never thought of the customers in the first place. How can anyone sort through the endless lists of people with no way to differentiate between them?

Customers hate them and every other guy still thinks they are the next money making tool of the century - don't forget to click on my Google ads while you're on my page, that's how we make money (wink, wink).

I've got wind of a new site that's being developed that has a massive drawing power for real estate professionals and consumers. It's more of a meeting place where consumers can research and compare real estate professionals (not just agents), and where real estate professionals can get in touch with their target markets directly.

Maybe then the rage about useless directories will finally be dead.

Originally Posted by AlexandraRE

I've got wind of a new site that's being developed that has a massive drawing power for real estate professionals and consumers. It's more of a meeting place where consumers can research and compare real estate professionals (not just agents), and where real estate professionals can get in touch with their target markets directly.

Maybe then the rage about useless directories will finally be dead.

You are 100% correct. Web site visitors (in any industry) are looking for some sort of interaction, not just an unwieldly list that they have to dig through manually. They want data and info that they can sort dynamicaly as they see fit. Welcome to web 2.0.

I agree with you guys. I think sites that allow interaction are far more likely to be around long term.