Notorious R.O.B.

Today, we will cover Twitter techniques of the 21st century Europe

One of the most interesting threads of 2009 sort of blew up this past week over at Marc Davison’s place when he posted a heartfelt mea culpa about his past cynicism about social media.  Various heavy-hitter commenters came by and a full blown debate erupted.  Oh, it’s good stuff!

But there was one topic within those dozens of comments that I think deserves a bit more examination, and as I don’t want to hijack Marc’s thread, I thought I’d talk about it here on Notorious.

I’ll admit to starting it, since I asked in the comments:

I’m extremely torn on this “reason to provide courses and education” on Social Media… since the core essence of social media is to be yourself. You need lessons for that?

And Bill Lublin of SMMI (who incidentally personifies the word mensch) responded:

@Rob: People can always benefit from training that teaches them how to more clearly communicate – too many messages don’t have the intended impact or result – and that’s part of what our training does. We spend a really long time on some theory because we believe that while McLuhan was right about the medium being the message, the medium is not the purpose – the message is, and working on how to deliver the message better is important. You’re an amazingly articulate man, and perhaps from that perspective its hard to realize how much goes unsaid, or is misspoken by well intentioned people. Because of the differences in the “psychological bandwidth” of the various SM tools, it gets even a little more complicated and frankly there are a huge number of people that create unintended consequences. I agree with you that a lot of SM information is not applicable to every situation but that doesn’t dismiss the need for people to reach a level of ‘conscious competency’ in their SM interactions so that the response they actually engender is the response they intended. But so far, our students have responded really well to the course material and presentation – and as I said earlier in this too lengthy response, I think it makes them better at communicating outside SM as well. [Emphasis mine]

Bill always makes me think, which may be a dangerous thing actually…, but it’s a good thing. And here’s where my thinking leads me.

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At the recent REBarCamp Orange County, I found myself staring at the board listing the sessions and enjoying the wonder of discovery.  The discovery was that apparently, I was supposed to be leading a session with Stacey Harmon on “Social Media and Branding”.  As they say, anything and everything could happen at a BarCamp.  That joy of discovery was followed by the joy of improvisation, as I learned that Stacey had to stay behind to finish up a session on using Twitter, and I had been planning on being Vanna to Stacey’s Pat Sajak.

So I got up and did a bunch of verbal tapdancing.  For those in attendance, I promise to refund your registration fees.  [ED: Rob, BarCamp is free, you idjit.  Yeah, well, it's the thought that counts.]  To my surprise, the session ended up being one of the better ones for me, in part due to the awesome people who didn’t seem to mind that I was speaking completely off the cuff, and in part due to the warm rays of the incredible southern Californian sun.

I wanted to expand on some of the concepts we discussed, however, because we didn’t really get into how social media and brand interact.  It also appears that we need to discuss things further because prevailing misconceptions on how social media fits in to an overall marketing scheme.

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Benn Rosales (@agentgenius) is one of the smartest guys working in real estate and social media today, and as the proprietor (?? – maybe czar? emperor?) of AgentGenius, one of the best real-estate industry sites out there, he brings a great deal of credibility to everything he says.

A few months ago, he and I had a tremendously exciting and stimulating debate on the telephone about measuring ROI from social media.  I think we ended up disagreeing on some points, but the whole conversation was so enriching and so enlightening that I have been looking forward to the next chapter.

That next chapter has been opened:

I’ve had this conversation with many people over the past 6 months about tracking ROI and at the time, no study, nor documentation really existed, however, in recent months this all changed with Dell, when they bragged about their $1 Million in sales from Twitter.

Interestingly enough, it was done through channels with channel specific deals which leads me to Trulia, Zillow, and local MLS Boards, as well as FSBO, REO, and other property aggregates and large Brokers themselves as a means to move volume inventory.

Benn goes on to hypothesize that “real-estate channels” may be

the beginning of the answer to real estate and social media above and beyond the agent but allow the agent the opportunity to participate with their particular social spheres.

All in all an interesting opening, and one well-positioned to move the discussion forward.

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This is NOT for a Thrift play...

In part 1, I started to talk about marketing in a consumer environment when the middle is disappearing.  My basic hyopthesis is that the American consumer today operates in one of two modes: Thrift and Aspiration.  Thrift mode means a focus on price above all; Aspiration means a focus on luxury, lifestyle, or something more than “mere product”.

To apply these thoughts to the marketing of real estate, I asked a few questions, of which the first one is the topic for this post:

If the Middle is disappearing, and the two dominant modes of consumers are Thrift and Aspirational… have you considered how you are positioning properties not only to demographics, but also to psychographic profiles?

Let me attempt to tackle this question and explore what real estate marketing of a property in a post-middle era might look like.

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Last night’s Lucky Strike Social Media Club (LSSMC) dinner featured a presentation by Phil Thomas DiGiulio (@holaphil) of Wellcomemat on “Video and Social Media”.  I thought it was an interesting topic in and of itself, and am grateful to Phil for coming by to have the conversation with us.

During the dinner — as is normal for LSSMC — a topic came up that I thought needed more elaboration and discussion.  One of the sub-themes of social media and its impact on marketing is how professional it ought to be.  Should companies, for example, have an “official” corporate Twitter handle, like @onboard?  What topics are appropriate for a corporate blog?  And so on.

Video, as it turns out, is directly implicated in this sub-theme.

Professional vs. Confessional

One of the biggest barriers to implementing video as a marketing strategy is cost.  I have priced out what it would cost to have a professional video made for my employer, and the ease with which one can spend $15K on a 3 minute video is staggering.

Video is inherently a more difficult medium for an amateur.  Video editing — even as it is made easier with technology — remains a more technical, a more difficult, and a more expensive proposition than editing text.  Simply consider the fact that you may need to buy a piece of software to edit video.  And that’s assuming that you have the visual aesthetic sense, a talent for crafting narrative using motion pictures, and skill with blending sound and image and motion — all of which are somewhat specialized skills.

Phil usually recommends that you hire a professional to do a well-crafted video, and for good reasons.

On the flipside, however, there has been a growing trend in the world of video towards a more intimate, more amateur, and more “raw” approach.  Perhaps the explosive popularity of reality TV is reprogramming our cultural expectations.  Perhaps the wide availability of cheap equipment and editing software is bringing “moviemaking” to the masses.  The popularization of sites like YouTube certainly helps to spread video works that wouldn’t have seen the light of day in earlier times.

For example, Nigahiga is one of the top subscribed channels on YouTube.  This is a typical video:

While Nigahiga videos are hilarious, with decent editing, a story, and some really funny actors, part of the appeal is its extremely amateurish production values.  The exact same script, exact same actors, exact same everything, but done professionally by a TV production crew would be horrible.  Audiences would be making fun of the terrible script, the bad acting, and the not-so-funny jokes.

Why is that?

Audience Expectations: Artifice

I think the reason is that the modern audience grew up in the era of mass media.  Few of us remember a time before movies, a time before television.  The Millenials don’t remember a time before the Internet.  Few Gen-Xers remember a time before VCR’s.

Movies and TV are a part and parcel of our culture, our memories, and even our identities to some extent.  As we grew up surrounded by filmed entertainment, our knowledge of and expectations of motion pictures have also grown.  We are no longer fascinated, as the first viewers of movies were, by grainy black and white footage of a train pulling into the station, over and over and over again.

As filmmakers advance their art, as TV producers get savvier, as actors and directors and lightning and sound engineers and editors and the rest of the production industry continue to improve their art and technology, our expectations of professionals continue to rise as well.

Just last decade, CGI was a big deal special effects wise.  We audience members oooh’ed and aahh’ed at movies like Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park.  Today, we take CGI for granted, and harshly criticize crappy CGI work.

The result of all this improvement and sophistication on the part of the audience — as a direct response to the continual improvement by industry-leaders in film and television — is that we hold professionals to a far higher standard.  We are so jaded by movies, by TV, by big explosions, by car chases, and special effects that to break through our awareness and make an impact requires something extraordinary.

For example, this Sprint ad:

From a marketer’s perspective, having worked at an ad agency, the level of execution on that video/ad is incredibly high.  The amount of thought that went into it, the CGI-work, the models, the video shoots, the ad copy, the script, the voiceover work… all of it likely required thousands upon thousands of manhours of work by some of the best and brightest in the advertising industry — namely, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners, the winner of the 2008 Ad Agency of the Year by AdWeek.

That is the level of skill, of art, needed to break through with professional video.

In contrast, when the audience is confronted by video that is clearly not professional, and is intended not to be professional, then the expectation changes.

Audience Expectations: Humanity

The Nigahiga video on YouTube embedded above is a perfect example of changed expectations.  The martial arts fighting sequence in the Nigahiga video is hilarious precisely because it is so amateurish, and intentionally so.  What the viewer is responding to isn’t the technical perfection of the fight scene, but the humor and the personality of the actors (and the filmmaker) as evidenced by their staged “fight scene”.

What the audience expects in an amateur production is humanity, not artifice.  They want authenticity and personality, rather than perfect execution.

In that situation, I believe that the bad lighting, the bad acting, and low production values are a bonus rather than a detriment.  They help to create authenticity.

The Nigahiga videos would not be improved by professional lighting, or a soundstage.  They would be hurt by it.  Getting professional actors to act out the skits would not make the videos more interesting or more entertaining; I rather think professional acting would make the videos less entertaining.

This is, frankly, the connection to “social media”.  Video, I think, has a unique ability to help viewers assess the honesty and authenticity of the person on camera.  Visual cues, speech patterns, the facial expression, gestures — all of these things help a viewer decide whether the person they are viewing is “keepin’ it real” or faking it.

If you understand social media properly — that is, as an expression of the Cluetrain concept of authentic human connection, rather than as a collection of technology tools — then you will implicitly grasp that video is just another tool for that expression.  Based on that, you can make decisions on whether and how to use video to maximum effect.

Danger, Will Robinson, Danger!

There is, however, real danger with video, and one that I don’t think is well enough understood.

The danger is not the unprofessional video with shaky cameras and bad lighting.  No, the real danger is the mediocre professional video.

Because the audience expectation is so high when it comes to professional work, in order to avoid looking like an idiot, your execution must be extraordinary.  This is both prohibitively expensive and incredibly difficult.  The difficulty is easily illustrated with this video from Cyberhomes (which is a good company of good, smart people):

The cheesy stock photography, the horrible music, the “professional” voiceover, all combine to make what is a deadly boring corporate video.  This is not to say that the team at Cyberhomes didn’t do a good job — it did.  But the video is not extraordinary, and it couldn’t possibly be — it isn’t a Goodby Silverstein campaign costing millions of dollars.

Once the decision was made to go the “professional” route, Cyberhomes could not help but fall into the “crappy corporate video” hellhole, not because of anything its team or videographer or editor did, but because what they could not possibly do given the likely budget for something like this.

There is a price for artifice.  A rather significant one in the current media environment.

If you are unwilling or unable to pay that price, then your video project is doomed from the start.  It may be a better strategy to go the other way and go for an amateurish, human connection driven video play instead.

I think Jim Duncan‘s “hey, I’m talking on camera while I’m driving somewhere in my car” videos are absolutely fascinating.  Unfortunately, I can’t embed them on a WP.com blog, so go view a sample here.  An embeddable sample is from Robin Greenbaum, of Prudential Douglas Elliman, in New York:

The parts where Robin’s real voice comes through, when she’s giving her opinions and views rather than when she’s reading off some description of the Windermere, are fantastic.  She sounds like a human being, like an interesting person with strong views, with whom one might be able to have a conversation.

And that, my friends, is social media.

-rsh

I had a roommate in college who was an architecture major as an undergrad.  He was such an insufferable snob — for example, in the entire year we lived together, he never watched any movie that wasn’t by Fellini — that my view of architecture and architects may have been unfairly colored.

Thankfully, I recently learned just how fascinating architects are, especially in the post-Green era.  So I started to dig around just a bit.

And I must ask… why aren’t architects blogging more?

I asked this question on Twitter and LinkedIn and got some interesting responses, but thought to expand on them here.

Seriously Compelling Content

Blogs are, of course, for those who work with the written word.  At the same time, there’s no denying that pictures and graphics liven up what would otherwise be a wall of text.  Architecture is inherently a visual medium, but one that requires quite a bit of explanation (via words) to appreciate it fully.

For example, look at The Visionaire, a new building by the Albanese Organization, designed by Rafael Pelli.

The Visionaire, by Rafael Pelli

That’s a beautiful building.  And a beautiful image.  There are more stunning images of gorgeous buildings in the world of architects.  Look at this image from Centerbrook:

Discovery Research Center, Dekalb Plant Genetics Corp.

Unlike artists, however, architects have to create buildings that people work in, shop in, play in, and live in.  There are layers upon layers of things going on that I had no idea even existed.

For example, solar path.  It makes perfect sense once it’s explained, but until it is, it’s one of those things that a normal person rarely (if ever) thinks about.

Solar path diagram

Architects routinely think about stuff like this, as well as all of the engineering that goes into a project.  I heard Stephan Kieran of KieranTimberlake spend a good 5 minutes talking about a wall.  With cross-section diagrams, showing heatmaps.  I rather think he could have gone on for a good half-hour just about a wall.  Maybe more.

And all of it is fascinating, because so much of it is simply a brilliant exercise of human ingenuity.  Intelligence, applied.

Plus, architects write.  Centerbrook has published a freakin’ book.  And here’s the whole list of their publications.

And last, but not least, non-architects are genuinely interested in architecture.  It is an art form, after all, and one that impacts the average person’s life in subtle and not-so-subtle ways.  Every New Yorker knows that a part of his identity is tied up with the skyline, the buidings, the iconic ones like Empire State, and the forgettable brownstones lining 11th street.  Every homeowner lives every day with the result of decisions made by some architect or three.  People are interested in architecture.

The whole heady mixture says to me, “Blog!”

Thankfully, some architects are starting to get into the blogosphere.

KieranTimberlake has a blog.  Unfortunately, KT seems to use it mostly as a repository for press releases, which makes it basically useless.  I learned through LinkedIn that Modative has a blog, and it’s quite good.  (I’ve linked to it in a new blogroll category.)  Most of the other architecture blogs appear to be written by critics, academics, journalists, and so on, rather than by practicing architects.  If you know of blogs by architects, please send along the link, or post it in the comments.

Effective Marketing?

Turning to the topic as a marketer, rather than a new kid-in-candy-store enthusiast, I confess that I am puzzled why more architects wouldn’t blog.  It strikes me as almost the ideal marketing vehicle for the profession.

Perhaps the bigtime developers who hire architects for the most part grow up in the industry and know all the architects they’ll ever want to know.  Maybe the plethora of design and architecture magazines makes it unnecessary for architects to market themselves.

If you’re Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, maybe blogging just isn’t something you need to do.

But what about all those who aren’t already world-famous architects?  How would a potential client know to hire you?  What does he judge you on?

I ask because I genuinely do not know, never having hired an architect, nor having been one.  But since architecture is still a services-based profession, where one’s intelligence, wisdom, judgement, aesthetics, philosophy, and temperament all come into play, it seems to me that letting people know who you are, how you think, what interests you, and what your design philosophies are would be an excellent way to let like-minded clients find you.

Sharing knowledge, sharing insight, and being a genuine, authentic person are proving to be the most important method of marketing in the post-Cluetrain world.  Architects have knowledge, have insight, and are human beings — get on the cluetrain!  Let the world know your views on things.  Talk about projects as an insider.  Let us see that you’ve put in hours of thought into just how sunlight should strike the window at a precise angle at 3PM on a Friday in April.

Let us behind the curtain.  We may have no idea what you’re talking about, but we will recognize that you do.

So architects of the world, unite in blogging and social media!  You have nothing to lose but your aura of mystery.

-rsh

The second post ever on Notorious R.O.B. was entitled, “More Silliness from Real Estate Connect” and contained this passage:

The Real Estate industry has gone tech-crazy.

Here’s a wakeup call: all that technology does is make your existing processes more efficient. If what you do is crap, it makes crap more efficient. If what you do is valuable, then it makes that more efficient. Microsoft Word is an amazing piece of technology, but it can’t write the next Great American Novel for you. You have to actually write the damn thing yourself, and if you suck as a writer, then Word isn’t going to solve that problem for you.

If only sloganeering created reality...

By the way, I would like to note that I have broken through some sort of dork continuum by quoting myself from a year ago.  The only thing I could think of that might be dorkier is singing She Bangs on American Idol.  (Click on that link at your own peril; I will take no responsibility for brain meltdown and queasy feelings.)

A couple of recent experiences reminded me that plus ca change, plus c’est la meme chose.

Evidence: Oh, Canada!

First, we get this announcement from Coldwell Banker Canada:

Coldwell Banker Canada Operations ULC today announced the launch of the brand’s customized real estate application developed for Microsoft Surface™.  The dynamic new real estate interface was unveiled during a live interactive demo at the Coldwell Banker® Canadian Broker Meeting and Awards Gala being held today in Toronto. The new Microsoft Surface home search application allows users to interact with thousands of home listings, real estate maps and other www.coldwellbanker.com features in a way that is familiar, by using simple hand gestures. Similar to the intuitive technology featured in the futuristic film, “Minority Report”, this exploration on the use of Microsoft Surface represents yet another way in which Coldwell Banker is working to harness innovative technologies to benefit home buyers and sellers.

Um.  Okay guys.

So the Canadian real estate market was down17.1% i n2008, and the Canadian Real Estate Association is predicting a 16.9% drop in 2009, but one of the largest brokerage companies in Canada is excited about Microsoft Surface?

Is this really the thing that’s going to turn things around for CB Canada?

Maybe.  But I submit that the real estate industry has gone tech-crazy if folks really believe that Surface is where dollars need to be invested.

By the way, compare what CB Canada put together with this from Perceptive Pixel, the company founded by Jeff Han who pioneered multi-touch interfaces:

If you’re going to do multi-touch, then by golly do it right.  Putting a website that we’re all familiar with on Surface and calling that a “dynamic new real estate interface” doesn’t pass the laugh test.

Evidence: Ubiquity of Social Media

I don’t hate social media.  Nor do I think it’s useless.  If anything, I believe the opposite: it’s damn useful, and quite likely groundbreaking in lots of ways.  But I do think the industry is focusing on absolutely the wrong thing as it comes to social media.

People are focusing on the technology of social media, rather than on the meaning of social media.

Past two weeks, I’ve been on the road, first at RE Tech South and then at the Leading Real Estate Companies of the World Conference.  I’ve sat through hours of seminars and panel discussions and lectures on how real estate professionals and companies can survive, thrive and even improve in the current market conditions.  And it seemed that every other word being uttered was “Twitter” or “FaceBook” or “Blog”.

The emphasis on technology leads to realtors using the technology in all sorts of unsuitable ways: spamming their friends, endless twitterstreams of listing after listing, advertising after advertising, and blogs that are nothing more than digitized billboards.

All that technology does is make your existing processes more efficient.

When your existing mode of engagement is “NOW IS A GREAT TIME TO BUY OR SELL!” (And by the way, how does that work, exactly?) then the technology is just going to make you be more efficiently annoying.

To be sure, there are people like Jeff Turner who are trying to preach the meaning of social media, rather than the technology.  We need more of him, and less obsession about how to create a dozen groups on TweetDeck to keep track of all of your social networks.

It Ain’t the Technology

If I believe in nothing else, I believe that marketing post-Cluetrain is authentic, open communication between human beings.  Technology assists in the transformation, makes some of the interaction possible even, but it is not the interaction.

I firmly believe that a realtor who doesn’t know how to use a computer, but send personal, authentic, and no-bullshit handwritten notes will beat the pants off of the realtor who has thousands of Facebook Friends and barrages them with digital versions of “Just Sold” postcards.  I really do.

Because it ain’t the technology; it’s the person behind the technology.

I'm still Jenny from the block.

What realtors need isn’t a newfangled technology to be a thousand times more annoying than they are today, but a transformation into the kind of trusted advisor that so many claim and so few achieve.  Companies need to be investing in technology (and processes!) that help realtors become true experts in their local market, the real estate transaction, the financial elements, and client service, rather than in gadgets that win cool points then fade away.

Show people that you care about them as people; that you will work hard for them; that you are a professional with pride in your training, knowledge, and expertise; that you won’t lie to them or bullshit them; that you will advise them to the best of your abilities for their benefit and not your own; that you are neither a huckster nor a servant; that you too are human… and people won’t care if you message them through Facebook or through smoke signals.

They will trust you.

-rsh

Matt Dollinger, of @Properties in Chicago, raised a very interesting question at the Leading RE conference that just concluded.  He then raised it again over Twitter (Matt is @mattdollinger) and the discussion threatened to overwhelm the 140-char limit.  It’s time for bloggery.

Matt’s question was this (in essence):

In 2015, with companies like Trulia, Zillow, Roost and others really advancing the technology of real estate search, should brokers have their own search site?

Since the panel was titled “Real Estate 3.0″, it naturally lends itself to these kinds of speculative questions.

This is an important question.  Money is not unlimited.  Brokers have to make decisions today to align their strategy going forward.  And as Matt himself pointed out during session, brokerages are not technology companies at heart.

The answer seemed to be from the panelists that brokers have to do both: create a top-notch brokerage website that is optimized for SEO, has great user experience, and captures leads all over the place, but also send listings to all of the aggregators to drive additional leads, because the big guys have national (global) reach and can grab so many more eyeballs than a single brokerage site could.

Trouble is… that just doesn’t jive logically.

Internet is Not Local

Fact is, while a brokerage may be local, and real estate may be local, the Internet is most assuredly not local.  There is no reason why someone searching for “chicago real estate” from New Jersey would not find a local website.

Google Search on "Chicago Real Estate"

Granted, @Properties apparently needs some SEO consultancy love, seeing as how it doesn’t appear on page one, two, or three, but other local brokerage sites are right there: Baird & Warner, Rubloff, Dreamtown Realty, etc. all show up.

And Trulia also shows up.

As a consumer, if I go into a local brokerage site like Dreamtown’s, then go into Trulia, there is a world of difference there from a user experience standpoint.

Dreamtown Homepage

Trulia Chicago

The one has all manner of busy advertising, bullshit marketing messages that I would immediately ignore, and so on.  The other has a clean interface, a nice Google map mashup, and easy to use search filters right there on the page.

For Dreamtown to come up to par with Trulia, it would need to spend a pretty serious amount of money and time.  And the Dreamtown website is actually pretty darn good as far as local brokerage sites go.  Having worked on corporate brokerage sites, I think it is no stretch to say that a top-notch custom-coded website with developers, designers, UI design, SEO, and the like can easily top $250K in cost.

That isn’t even taking into consideration what it would cost to develop something actually new and innovative.  A new kind of search, a totally new way to interface with listings data, etc. could mean literally millions of dollars in R&D costs.

In theory, the aggregators and web portals like Trulia are technology companies first and foremost, and have core competencies in design and development.  They should always be ahead of the brokers in terms of technology and user interface.  (And in theory, they should dominate the brokers in SERPS… though often, they do not.)

Branding & CRM

Matt would argue — and correctly — that a brokerage company still needs a website for branding and CRM purposes.

For instance, you have to have a site where your existing seller clients can go, login, view all activity reports on their listings, see where the transaction is, download paperwork, upload paperwork, etc.  (You all do have this, right?)

And it would be difficult to brand your brokerage and your agents as local experts (since real estate is local, even if the Internet is not) without providing some heavy duty in-depth information and data about your local market.

But neither of these things need a SEARCH experience.

In theory, @Properties could have an awesome local website, filled with information about the area, a series of hyperlocal blogs written by their agents, and so on.  But rather than a search experience, just offer a “Search Our Chicago Listings on Trulia” or some such.

Either/Or?

Of course, most folks would assume that like in all debates, the real answer is a “bit of both” rather than an “either/or”.

So a broker would go invest a few thousand bucks to get a templated site from some low-cost website creator, or frame in a search solution from some IDX search provider, and still spend thousands more to feature listings on Realtor, or on Trulia, or pay for leads from some aggregator.

This is, however, a case of “either/or”. One of the following is true:

1. The money spent on putting in a search into the local broker site is wasted, since consumers would naturally prefer (and only find by year 2015) the tech-sites that emphasize the whole search user experience and functionality, and leads would be sent directly to the broker.  Instead, spend that money on enhancing local info, the brand presence, and the CRM applications.
2. The money spent buying traffic/leads from Third Parties is wasted, since all searches begin with Google anyhow.  The name of the game is to rank higher in Google, and not having search and all those results pages kills you.  Plus, you don’t need super-duper search; you just need good clean intuitive search that connects the consumer to your agent as quickly as possible.

Both cannot be true as a matter of logic.

Traffic vs. Lead

An important distinction here is between ‘traffic’ and ‘leads’.  Louis Cammarosano of HomeGain is fond of pointhing this out.  A broker or agent, in his view, could care less about a site sending him a billion visitors if all of them are bored-ass tirekickers who wouldn’t convert to a customer anyhow.  They would rather that HomeGain (or whoever) send them ten people who are solid ready-to-buy or ready-to-sell consumers.

In theory, the third-party sites can send enormous amounts of traffic to the spiffy brokerage site with a great search experience.  Since these are just random visitors, the brokerage site would need to do a lot more — including offering a search experience — in order to convert them to actual leads.  And it is possible that these sites could send millions of visitors, not one of whom will ever hit “Request More Info” or “Request a Showing” or pick up the phone.

That traffic, however, is sourced more or less from Google, which brings us right back to “SERPS are what matters, not SEARCH”.

Or, the third party sites are sending enormous amount of leads, which are consumers asking to be contacted.  In which case, they’re past the whole “search for a home” deal and into the “I need more information” deal.  And the brokerage’s spiffy new search technology is completely bypassed.

Real Estate in 2015

So let’s fast forward.  2015.  Hard to make assumptions based on technology today, with our rapid speed of change.  But let’s go with it.  Let’s assume that search technology is so advanced by 2015, and computing has totally changed, with multi-touch computing the norm.

What happens to search-based broker/agent website then?  The answer is directly related to what happens to the big aggregators by then.  And where search technology is by then.

As the fast and furious twitterstream on this topic indicates, this is a bigger issue than one might think initially, with implications across the entire spectrum of online real estate.

I’m looking forward to the discussion and exploration.

-rsh

Just a brief note from the Leading RE Show going on right now in Scottsdale, AZ.

I got to sit in on a great session earlier today with a speaker who I gather was a luxury marketing consultant.  He actually had some great points to make and great things to say.

However, a theme he sounded throughout the session grated with me.  It goes something like this:

Companies should invest heavily in CRM, and segment their clients to identify their “best customers” and then cater to them in order to drive customer satisfaction, which drives referrals, new business, and loyalty.

Now I happen to agree with the general thrust here.  I’ve already written that I think CRM is the killer app for real estate, and that real estate companies need to do a better job with segmentation and targeted marketing.

But applying principles of luxury marketing from the worlds of hospitality and retail and whatever else to real estate doesn’t readily jive with me.  Because of the Seven Year Cycle.

I just think it’s borderline irresponsible for marketers to talk about CRM or whatever without addressing this fundamental fact about real estate: consumers go seven years in between transactions on average.

I don’t know if that frequency changes with luxury buyers — maybe they can and do buy the $20m estate in Beverly Hills, then buy a $10m condo in NYC, and then a $15m villa in Lake Como, Italy.  So it makes sense to treat them as one might treat any luxury buyer of luxury consumer goods.

But if that isn’t the case, and even luxury buyers don’t go dropping $20m plus on a house every other year… then any discussion of CRM has to take this fundamental cycle into account.

That real estate is unique, and the practice of real estate marketing is as a result unique as well, are things I’m learning and relearning every day.  Absolutely non-commoditizable product (real estate) married to hugely commoditized service (brokerage services) with a seven year cycle and independent contractors operating in a significantly regulated industry constitute a truly unique set of factors and challenges for the marketer.

Yes, there are lessons to be learned from other industries.  There are best practices that can and should be adopted.  But adoption requires adaptation to the unique fundamentals of this industry.

Call it a pet peeve, but it sure would be nice if more consultants and speakers and panelists considered not only what is similar between real estate and other industries, but also what is unique and different.

-rsh

I have come to hunt the antitribu!

At the recent RE Tech South conference, I had the opportunity to meet Eric Stegemann — a self-described 25-year old going on 40 — who is the founder and CEO of a company called Tribus as well as the “Head Honcho” of River City Real Estate, a brokerage in St. Louis.

Eric is really one of the brightest guys in the next generation — the Millenials — with a singleminded focus on real estate, technology, and improving the former with the latter.  That he makes terrible drinks (some sort of Cherry-Nyquil tasting concoction with a bitter aftertaste) really can’t be held against him.  He’s 25-going-on-40; he’ll learn by 30 to savor the mysteries of fine cognac and single malt scotch.

In any event, Eric and I got into conversation and it turned out to be tres interessant.  It appears that Tribus is the “un-Franchise” that aims to eradicate the big real estate brands from the industry.  The idea essentially is to offer brokers and agents everything they need to operate a real estate brokerage, except for the brand itself and any rules associated with the brand.  So, for example, Tribus will give its “affiliates” a CRM system, a listings distribution system, a website, social media tools, accounting package, and so on.  But there won’t be a brand like “Century 21″ or “Keller Williams”, and no brand identity guidelines.  Nor will there be service standards at the Tribus level or any such thing.

Eric believes that the value of these franchises lies in the backend systems and tools, and not in the brand.  In fact, he believes that entrepreneurial broker-owners want the freedom to run their business as they see fit, without the baggage that national brand franchises impose on them.  They, however, want the support of a national entity for technology and backend processing.  So Tribus will provide everything the broker-owners want, and nothing they don’t want, and charge anywhere from 3% – 6% of GCI for those services.

<Geek Detour>

In the World of Darkness fantasy setting, published by White Wolf, an antitribu is a vampire (or Kindred, or Cainite) who has turned against his clan.  Since Eric’s company’s name is Tribus, the notion of Anti-Tribus comes naturally to mind if one wishes to poke holes in the concept.  But then, that leads to the thought that either Tribus will bring about the end of real estate as we know it (Gehenna = end of the world) or that Tribus is just another rebellion against the existing power structures (another Anarch Revolt).

</Geek Detour>

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