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2 commentsHow to Crushit in 2010 using Social Media – Trulia Podcast with Gary Vaynerchuk – @garyvee – 1/11/10
Are you ready to Crush It in 2010?
Update 2:
The podcast is back on!
Date: 1/15/10
Time: 1pm EST
Please register below.
Update:
Today’s Trulia Social Media Podcast with Garyvee was postponed due to mother nature. Garyvee’s sister was giving birth and Gary went over to the hospital with the rest of the family to be a part of it. We wish Gary, his sister and their family all the best and will reschedule the podcast soon.
If you registered for the podcast already, we will send you the updated date and time for the podcast. If you haven’t registered, please do so below.
The new year is upon us and everyone is looking for a fresh start. Resolutions have been made. Business and marketing plans have been tweaked. Many are starting with a clean slate altogether. But how many will follow through? How many will see results?
Trulia wants to help our ever growing Trulia Voices real estate community of over 400,000 real estate professionals start off on the right foot when it comes to integrating social media into their 2010 business plans. We invite everyone to join us for a LIVE podcast with Gary Vaynerchuk, a.k.a. @garyvee, author of the best selling book Crush It! who has grown his business from $4M a year to over $50M by using technology and social media. We’ll talk about Social Media strategies and etiquette that can help grow your business and sphere of influence in 2010.
Date: January 11th, 2010
Time: 3pm EST
Register for Trulia’s LIVE Social Media Podcast
If you plan on attending, please visit our Trulia Facebook event page too. Have questions you want me to ask Gary? Are you crushing it already? Just leave them in a comment below or on our Trulia Facebook page.
Gary wants to know:
Which social media strategy worked the best and/or the worst for you in 2009? Please let us know so we can address them and help you out as much as possible to crush the competition!
Register for Trulia’s LIVE Social Media Podcast
Dan Polimino and the 53 Hour Open House
Real Estate Agent Dan Polimino, from Fuller Sotheby’s in Colorado, found himself contemplating ways to stimulate some activity in this economy. This is a question many agents and brokers are asking themselves right now. Dan set an internal goal, then turned to his wife and said – “I am going to try one creative business idea, every quarter” well – here is his first, the 53 hour Open house. He had a perfect home to do this with, a $2.8M 5BR, almost 10K square foot home in Lone Tree, Colorado. He wrangled up an impressive mix of technology and niche marketing tactics to put on the event which was scheduled for April 3rd-5th 2009.
So, why did I decide to spotlight Dan, well here is what he lined up:
1) 53 hour live streaming open house, with 5 cameras!
2) $1,000 raffle for coming through the home
3) Mercedes Benz vehicles for test drives and drool factor
4) Full Social Media integration
5) And more…
To learn more about this event, and to see how someone is really thinking out of the box, I decided to give Dan a call and chat. Here is our discussion:
What compelled you to create this event?
Dan: “Clearly there is a paradigm shift in the way people sell homes, happening in large part to the economic stress in our country. From Washington, to Main street, every portion of our business is being rattled by outside forces. So therefore Realtors need to change the way that they sell homes, we have to be more creative and get out of the box, and draw attention to their clients listings than they used to before. This is what was the basis for asking myself to come up with at least one new, exciting thing to do each quarter.”
Why the 53 hour Open House?
Dan: “First, It is my personality, I am not the standard Realtor – I love to ask why? Why do we have to do things the same? How can I differentiate myself? Can’t we build a better mousetrap – can this be improved? Looking at the market I felt that something needed to be done and that there are many stones still unturned in our industry. I was convinced that there is a better, different, creative way to market and sell a home.”
Is this a plan for every home?
Dan: “This is not for every home, but it is a potential business plan… If there is success with the 53 hour open house we will do it again. Our Goals were two-fold:
1) Clearly – Sell the home!
2) Draw 4-600 people to the location
It is often said “Real estate agents sell homes” – but we don’t, that is just part of our job. We ensure that there is a successful transaction and that the home reaches maximum eyeballs to ensure a maximum price. Without a successful transaction, our job is not done.”
So if any brokers out there want to do a similar event, what tips can you give them to creating an event like this?
1) Clear your schedule! It took 2 months to plan
2) Have a lot of help, you need help in a variety of ways
- Flyers, Marketing pieces
- Phone calls
- People to manage the event
- Gather technology and those who know how to use the technology, such as Live Streaming etc.
3) Need to know internet marketing
So who are your contributing sponsors, and how did you get them together?
Dan:“I could not pull this off without my sponsors”:
a. brokeriptv.com
b. Mercedes Benz of Littleton
c. Platt Park Mortgage
d. Spotlight home tours
e. ATBS
Most important, question – What were the results?
Dan: “The results were great! I thought we would get 600 with perfect weather – and we still got 400 people to come in person – with a Winter Storm Warning and BLIZZARD! Online we had 1,500 unique visitors in 7 days for just http://www.53houropenhouse.com . And we have activity that would precede an offer – actually waiting for a call today. We did get an agent through the house, who came back twice more and had a few more serious conversations as well. So it looks very promising. All of the vendors and people involved were very pleased, the turn-out was excellent and it worked. The two things that amazed me most was the level of the visitor – it was a very affluent group that attracted high quality buyers. There were 3 specific things that worked, the local paper, the online portion (e-mail, blogging) worked, and a text message blast worked as well”
Well, this interviewer is impressed. It takes a lot of focus and energy to take something from thin air and make it happen. I think that more than anything Dan has a happy seller. We can all learn a few things from Dan and his 53 Hour Open House.
1) There are still many ideas out there that people have not tried
2) There is more than way to do an open house, what else can you re-invent?
3) Balloons aren’t enough!
Best of luck Dan and thanks for the interview! Have any of you done anything creative and out of the box to help your listings sell? Please share them below or contact me via linkedin, or Trulia voices.
-Pierre
Remember the Pepsi Challenge? Making comparisons to see what you like is important for everything you do, and that’s especially true when it comes to marketing. Sticking with the same program every year is the fastest way to guarantee irrelevance – you have to stay on top of growing trends, target new buyers and maintain a lean budget. And that’s exactly why we bring you the Trulia Challenge.
More and more brokers call me every day while they are putting together their 2009 budgets. One of the most common questions I get: “What can you do for me that Realtor.com can’t?” Well, we can give you a lot more, and for a lot less. Take the first step of the Trulia Challenge, and see which column looks best for your brokerage. We think Trulia’s innovative features and flexibility (plus the multitude of FREE) leads to a pretty conclusive winner.
Getting the most bang for your buck is more important now than ever. The Trulia Challenge isn’t exactly a taste test, but we think you’ll find the results to be delicious. Watch what these real estate pro’s had to say when they took the Trulia Challenge at the 2009 Inman Real Estate Connect in New York City. Then contact us for step two.
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Charleston, SC – This week’s most viewed question on Trulia Voices comes from Randall Sandin, a real estate professional and Trulia PRO from Charleston, SC. He asks,
“Anyone have great ideas for free or inexpensive marketing? We use Craigslist a lot, giving Trulia a run and use Constant Contact for cheap email blasts, looking for any other ideas to help market in today’s challenging times.”
Our Trulia Community has some great ideas!
Chris Montague, a real estate agent from Rancho Cucamonga, CA:
I use a website called SharperAgent.com. Its not free but a small fee of $29.95/Month and you get TONS of marketing material. Plus you get a free 30 day trial to see if it’ll work for you and your business. They have TONS of templates on flyers, postcards, newsletters, prospecting, thank you cards etc… and you can print any of them straight from the website. OR upload your email contact list into SharperAgent and start sending out email blasts to your entire sphere of influence.
Diana Giardina, a real estate pro from Mercer, WI, is new to Trulia Voices and posted her first answer in response to a colleague’s request for help:
We use http://agent.point2.com/ They usually offer the first 6 months free. They have many templates, color and graphic to chose from. When listings get entered they get syndicated to over 26 search engines. Really easy website to use. After first 6 months then the website is only 99.95 a year. Plus you can get a domain for 12.95 a year. Check it out. My website is http://www.dianagiardina.com
Susie Shately, a real estate agent from the Lone Star State:
There are a lot of free advertising sites. Some examples other than Craigslist and Trulia are: Postlets, Realbird, SawItOnline, fFyinside, Google, Oodle, Propbot, Spotmixer, ShowingFeedback, Realivent, OpenHouse. All of these are dot coms. Try them. You might like them.
The Appraiser Lady from Atlanta:
http://agent.point2.com/ – actually has a free website, (I’ve had for over six months) You can add listings to it also. (It also syndicates listings to other websites.)
http://www.alamode.com- has a free agent website (free domain name for a year) —Type in Anita Hale and See what top ranking I get on Google for FREE!! — this the best free website I have, check it out when you google me. It also has a place where people can look up foreclosure listings and they have to input their contact information.
http://charleston.backpage.com/online/classifieds/index
http://smallbusiness.officelive.com/?xid=c2logo–free website with domain name ( I think it’s free)
http://www.nationalrelocation.com/real-estate/Georgia/Atlant… I get alot of leads from here ( you just have to put a link on your website back too them)
http://www.oodle.com/housing/sale/ — filters to myspace classifieds and other sites
One other thing. If you are registered to sell HUD homes you can list those on your website or make flyers as long as you follow their advertising guidelines. ( please note**you cannot put a sign up at the actually house)
You may not actually want to sell these homes, but they will definitely get you leads.Hope this helps!!!
Kevin Polite, a real estate professional from Atlanta:
icontact.com is another website for customer relationship management. You can use a DRIP campaign for as little as $9.99/mo. It’s not real estate specific, but you should be able to find plenty of templates to use especially for e-mail marketing. I’m sure you know it’s easier to get new customer from your old customers then to get complete new ones. I became a Realtor when I never heard back from the real estate agent (note the difference) and was ready to buy my second. E-mail marketing is the most inexpensive way to advertise, however, keep in mind you must make sure when you market to NOT overload them e-mails and that you only do so at the most 1 per month, maybe just quarterly.
Beth Ann Mott, a real estate professional in Denver:
If you are a REALTOR, you have access to a great FREE marketing benefit through NAR and Lowe’s. You can send out an enewsletter or seller or buyer cards. You can brand them with your information and Lowe’s will send them out at no cost to you and they include a 10% off coupon to Lowe’s. This is a great way to touch your sphere or new prospects and reel them in as clients. All it takes is your time in inputing their information. Good Luck!
My Thoughts
Randall, You are already on the right track …. taking advantage of a suite of Web 2.0 tools right here at Trulia! A link to your blog post about staging a home appeared recently on Trulia’s ”Surviving the Housing Crisis” page under Featured Tips – Buying and Selling.
I have some other favorite FREE tools:
- I like to use http://jott.com for sending messages by phone … they arrive in recipient’s e-mail totally transcribed with a link of the recording!
- FREE virtual tour creator at http://microsoft.com/photostory
- FREE real estate tools and widgets from Trulia add BLING to your web site.
I’ve increasingly heard questions from our various industry clients and partners like, “How can I reach out to International buyers?” or “Are you planning to do something internationally?” Not only that, my European friends have started bombarding me with questions like, “Can you help me understand the local real estate market in the U.S.? and “Where should I buy now?” That is not only because I happen to have strong European roots, but the weak dollar and obvious real estate bargains have increased fellow Europeans’ appetite to buy U.S. real estate.
The good news for U.S. based brokers and agents is that the Internet has made it easy for even the smallest local company to promote themselves internationally. As an example, Trulia is a 100% U.S. focused online real estate search site, but it attracts a large number of international home buyers and investors. We’ve previously posted some testimonials from agents who have found international buyers through Trulia. Inspired by the recent flux of questions from local companies and international buyers, I decided to dig a little deeper and share our numbers for everyone’s benefit.
What States are International Home Buyers looking at on Trulia?
Here are the TOP 6 states with the largest international audience (% of all visits from outside of U.S.)
It may come as no surprise that the sun state is the most searched location for international buyers. Considering Trulia’s more than 5 Million unique users each month, these percentages speak huge volumes.
How about at a city level?
Miami, Florida still tops the list, but what is most surprising is that at a city level the international audience is more than 10% for the Top 5 U.S. Cities – Miami, L.A., Orlando, NYC/Manhattan and Las Vegas.
And to translate the percentages into something more tangible, for example in Manhattan, we had more than 20,000 unique international buyers searching during last quarter.
Where are these international buyers coming from?
Here’s an example for Manhattan – U.K. topping the list: (percentage of international visitors coming from each country):
How do we know all this?
We simply track where the users are coming from and match that with what they are looking for on Trulia. As a result we are also able to offer our advertisers hyper targeted advertising campaigns, for example: “Display this advertisement specifically for European buyers who are searching in Manhattan” or “Display this Chinese ad for those Asians who are searching for homes in San Francisco”.
Good luck with finding international buyers! They are out there in large volumes now! If you want to create some hyper targeted advertising campaigns, please contact our sales team.
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Courtesy ABC Action News
Ok. We’ve all heard of home sellers and home builders offering incentives, but nothing like this. Deven Traboscia, is a single mom and real estate agent from Palm Beach Gardens, Florida. She is in the market – for a home buyer and a husband. She has put together quite the package deal. Buy her home and you get her for free.
On ABC Action News, Deven said, “”If you want to live the never ending dream and experience the real love, life and the romance you have always felt was a fairytale then this is the vibrant outstanding woman of your dreams! To sweep this European Loving Lady off her feet send in your application right now.”
Check out her Craigslist ad here.
Here is her listing as found on Trulia:
The story has over 1,400 diggs – Home For Sale Includes a Hot Wife.
What do you think: Outta-the-box marketing or outta-control?
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Trulia just unveiled some new – and FREE! – real estate agent marketing tools. Brand Your Listings will help you build your brand and connect directly with the serious home buyers and sellers on Trulia!
Here’s what you get:
• Increased online visibility: Your photo and contact info on all of your listings.
• Connections with serious consumers: Emails from active home buyers & sellers sent directly to you
• Stats to share with sellers: Tell your clients how many people view their listings every week
• Open house advertising: Market your open house to thousands of local buyers
Great features to introduce yourself to the over 5 million users on Trulia each month, over 70% of whom plan to buy or sell in the next year and 70% of whom don’t yet have an agent. And the price is right – FREE!
In addition to these benefits, when you Brand Your Listings, you’ll pump up the SEO benefits that you already enjoy from your Trulia Voices profile. But more on that later, so stay tuned…
Check out the Brand Your Listings release here.
(ps – Did I mention it’s all FREE?)
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The Newspaper Association of America released some data last week on the decline in advertising revenue in Newspapers. At Trulia we monitor these trends closely as our business model is in a large part based on capturing a portion of the advertising dollars as they shift from less efficient offline media to online media, which the consumers are now using.
While there was lots of commentary across the web, I thought I’d do a little analysis myself to track the trends in real estate classified advertising.
Here are some thoughts on what the data is telling us.
While total newspaper advertising dollars fell a dramatic 9.4% last year, Real Estate classified advertising revenue fell a staggering 22.6% from $5.16Bn in 2006 to $3.99Bn in 2007.
This is clearly driven by several major forces:
- The real estate audience is no longer reading newspapers, having shifted its attention to the Internet, which is now the primary research tool for real estate research. This makes it more difficult for newspapers to sell ads to their customers. The NAR reported that 84% of buyers used the Internet in 2007 compared to less than half which used print media.
- The traditional classified advertising products are in many cases not cost-effective compared to their digital alternatives. With free Internet real estate listing services, why would one buy newspaper classified advertising? Also, as rates have been going up over the years and these products are often sold via expensive telesales operations, it is extremely hard to compete on price with internet advertising
- The change in the housing market means that agents and brokers are feeling poorer and spending less marketing money. In addition we have seen the dramatic decline of the home building industry. When they are spending, they are actively looking for cheaper alternatives as they shift their ad budgets to online sites.
So how far are we from the bottom of this decline in offline real estate spend?
Not close at all. From looking at the quarterly decline in advertising dollars you can see it accelerating. Q4 annual ad spend fell almost 30% in a single 12-month period to a little over $1Bn in Q4! The bottom is nowhere in sight. We saw declines in the ad spend start at the end of 2006; showing a clear lag between the start of the downturn in late 2005 and a shift in ad spend today. So we’ll see the spend decline further before it bottoms out.
So what does the future hold for newspaper advertising of real estate?
Ad spend in newspapers in the real estate industry has held up for longer than other industries such as autos and recruitment, but today’s market is forcing a change of behavior in how brokers and agents allocate their budgets. This will lead to a positive impact to the real estate advertising Industry as a whole as it emerges from the current decline. But there is no doubt it will take a few years.
We know that the ad spend is more complex in the real estate industry and not purely driven by the transaction. It is also driven in a large part to appease sellers to get the listings and for brokerages to advertise to retain agents. These marketing decisions are not made on a strong financial basis and until the Industry can work to change the mindset of sellers and agents there will be lots of inefficient spend in the future.
So where does this leave the newspapers?
While the news for print real estate advertising is not good – let’s face it, it was inevitable. The triple whammy of the housing market, audience migration and recession slowing economy is making a tough job even tougher for the newspaper industry. While there have been numerous efforts from the newspapers to build online services these have yet to prove themselves universally successful and definitely don’t make up for the decline in overall advertising dollars. But these institutions have been around for decades, and have enormous revenue streams – they’re not going away anytime soon. But when I have my next coffee at Peet’s Starbucks, I certainly won’t be surrounded by as many print real estate advertising sections as in the past.
Source: WellcomeMat
Trulia Voices is a great place to connect with buyers, sellers, and other agents. Looking to do a bit of market research? Perhaps you would be interested in learning more about questions being asked in your area?
Agents using Trulia Voices are connecting with buyers and sellers online and offline, meeting and networking with other agents, and taking advantage of the marketing benefits of having a My Trulia profile.
Watch this video to learn more about Trulia voices and how you can take advantage of this free online community.
2 commentsGet social with us.
