Local Search Will Affect Your Business - How You Can Win
yellowed pages by wizmo
Is there any doubt any longer than print advertising is a dying medium? A recent study by TMP finds:
33% of all consumers still consider print yellow pages as their primary source of local business info…
What that really means is 67 percent of people are looking for services online these days. Greg Sterling at Screenwerk calls this survey “the tipping point everyone has been talking about.”
Local search is hitting its stride and businesses (including real estate professionals) will need to keep up. It’s now more crucial than even to start a local Internet advertising campaign.
Overwhelming? Perhaps. Scary? Maybe. But here’s three things you can do right now to help you get a handle on this.
Be found. Start a blog. Join ActiveRain. Both will give you decent visibility in search results if you stick with it. More than enough has been written about this elsewhere… Check out Real Estate Weblogging 101 for pointers.
Use a service like MerchantCircle (see MerchantCircle Launches Social Networking for Business) to manage your identity. I got a note from MerchantCircle yesterday saying they had just passed 200,000 small business owners signing up for their service. Services like MerchantCircle are going to be increasingly useful as local search becomes even more prevalent and having a local advertising presence online becomes more critical - largely because it helps you control and syndicate your online identity. Check out this example of an Associate Broker in Mount Pleasant, Michigan who has put their business online with MerchantCircle.
Start Listening. Monitor the Web. Setup a Google Blog Search for your name - and subscribe to the alerts via email.
Start Engaging. Don’t fear the User Review sites. Pat Kitano at Transparent RE gives a pretty good run down of which sites you need to be paying attention to in his piece, Online Reputation Management for Realtors.
Like many others, Yelp is one of my favorite new sites to find new restaurants and local service providers. So, if you’re not in their database - why not? Add yourself. Closed a deal? Encourage your clients to review you on Yelp and hopefully stimulate new business. Put a link to your Yelp profile on your business card. You get the picture.
This was me last year, in The Rise of the User Review
Marketing has been traditionally about broadcasting your message - what I like to call the ‘Spray-and-Pray’ model. But that’s changing in the face of these new social patterns. The future of marketing is about listening to the community, tailoring your message and narrowcasting to your audience.
Even more important as time goes by, but the best part is - most of this can be done at little to no cost. Now that’s a real win for everyone.
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Tom at The Real Estate Bloggers | Aug 15, 2007 | Reply
Excellent post.
For agents using the web to go local on the web is going the be a huge differenciator for real estate agents in the coming years.
John Schroeder | Aug 15, 2007 | Reply
Great post…as always.
I think that it is important to mention that if you are on Merchant Circle fill out all of the info. If you do decide to start a blog make sure you consistently add new posts to it. Whatever you do online Do it Big.
With the cost of a lot of these tools being relatively low or non existant it is easy to fall into the trap of not using them to their fullest extent. This could leave your online work looking just like everyone elses. Working on your online presence isn’t a one time activity. It takes consistent time and effort to keep all of your info up to date.
I’m sure that you will receive many other ideas of online tools for REALTORS to use. Some useful, some not so useful. Thanks for starting the discussion on this. We all can learn from everyone elses input.
TitleRep | Aug 15, 2007 | Reply
I recently took advantage of Google’s “Local Business Center” to add my company to the local search results. I was suprised to find in about one week’s time that a search for “Portland title and escrow” brings up my company as the top 3 local results. Not bad for a quick 10 minutes of work, and it was free too!
Joe from VideoHomes | Aug 15, 2007 | Reply
Joel,
Nice to see a focus on Local. People wonder why VideoHomes has not spent all of our resources on Video! My answer is because first and foremost VideoHomes is about Local. Rest assured “video” is next on our radar but without solving “local”, relevancy becomes in jeopardy. That means whatever investment into web2.0 apps are made, it all stands to be lost if they are not transferable into a local environment.
One point worth mentioning is about media convergence. Sometimes things are too close to see. Forget convergence on a national level. Innovation is driven by people not institutions. In other words, things are going to(and already are) happen on a local level allot quicker than a national one. Most people just don’t see it. There will be no “big event”. Internet users will wake up one day and ‘Local’ will just be. Sort of like the over night rock star that slept in the van for 15 years. Again I ask the question: Is there a difference between an “Internet user” and a “traditional media user”? Those that answer yes are kidding themselves. People are people are people. And people are changing the Internet allot more than the Internet is changing people. That is why the Internet racing towards ‘local’ …because people are local.
On Monday VideoHomes officially launched. http://www.prnewswire.com/cgi-bin/stories.pl?ACCT=104&STORY=/www/story/08-13-2007/0004644214&EDATE=
We decided to move forward even though we have not fully completed our Video upload capabilities. Video is great but fundamentally http://www.VideoHomes.com is about offering agents and businesses a local environment to promote themselves. Starting with “Video” would have given us allot more fanfare than we received by starting with “local”, but as it turns out…I think it was the smartest thing we ever did. Video is not a proprietary concept but all ‘local’ entities are finite by definition. When going local, one must think of community above cyberspace. Does it work offline? If the answer is no…than it’s not a true local solution.
Steven Bailey /Director of Interactive Media Homes & Land | Aug 15, 2007 | Reply
In re: to your post of 14 August 2007
“Rumors of my death are greatly exaggerated.” -Mark Twain
It was great to finally meet you at the Inman Connect in SF. I have subscribed to your feed for over a year and enjoy your insight, knowledge and advocacy of social and interactive media. Although too lengthy for a comment, I wanted to share some thoughts on your post today and the above quote.
I agree that certain print media that is very broad in both its content and target audience is in fact coming to its demise in a niche and micro-niche world. However, targeted, local real estate magazines have not only continued to sell ad pages, but in fact have enjoyed record sales for those same reasons …LOCAL & TARGETED exposure and branding.
As you mentioned in The Rise of the User Review, tailoring your message and narrowcasting to your audience involves aiming media messages at specific segments of the public …to REALTORS® that means homebuyers and home sellers. A person who picks up a Homes & Land Magazine anywhere in over 30,000 communities throughout N. America is more than likely interested in buying or selling either a home or land. Keeps it simple ☺
National Magazine Stats:
• Over $23 billion spent in 2006
• 350 new titles launched in 2006
• 1997-2006: readership up 8%
• 20 cross-media studies found magazines most consistently successful part of the media mix
Even though I am not a great proponent of the Yellow Pages, that same study by TMP finds that: 90% of the 3000 online panelists still find print yellow pages a “valuable” resource. And that traditional advertising triggers branded online searches. Between 60-90% of searches for heavily advertised categories were branded. …As most will agree, real estate is a heavily advertised category!
Although I am an Interactive Media professional and recent real estate technology evangelist, I am also a typical Boomer and personally subscribe to 2 magazines WIRED and Business 2.0, both of which are rather tech based and both are full of national advertising every issue …trying to reach folks like me. So why are Web companies turning to magazines? Mostly because 89% of Boomers have visited a website after seeing a magazine ad …and Boomers have 70% of the assets. But it is indeed the integration of both online and off-line media that drives real results for our customers.
A 2006 American Advertising Federation (AAF) Survey of Industry Leaders on Advertising Industry and New Media Trends revealed that Print Magazines were the Number One source for driving people to the Internet.
I agree …it’s all about LOCAL, especially in the real estate space. Approaching our 35th year of service to REALTORS® we feel it is in our best interest to educate our clients. As I mentioned to several of the top bloggers I met at Connect SF, education is going to be key in assisting agents to latch on to the idea of blending traditional print advertising with a slew of new online opportunities to maximize their return on investment. (kicking and screaming if we have to) ☺
It is a difficult time for most marketers today due to the simple fact that the US consumer demographics are so evenly split, with 56% of the total population now over 42 years old and preferring print while also trying to effectively reach out to the GenX/Y’ers who prefer digital.
I will leave you with Rule #5 from Dan Gooder Richards’ book Real Estate Rainmaker/Guide to Online Marketing
• Old Rule: Online Advertising Will Surpass Offline Advertising.
• New Rule: Integrated Offline and Online Promotion Wins Every Time
Hawaii Life | Aug 15, 2007 | Reply
If you are a real estate agent, and you haven’t been taking advantage of the web, then you’re well behind the curve. With the current and future outlook of the market, it will be important to distinguish yourself. Stop wasting money on print. reallocate your funds to the internet. I also own an advertising agency and we have been taking money out of print since 2003!
jp at Flipping Homes | Aug 15, 2007 | Reply
EXCELLENT!
This is one of those things I’ve know, but I’ve been putting off. I probably do more than most, but I still need this kick in the rump to get me out there doing even more than I am now.
Local search rules — or it will soon. It’s gaining momentum at lightning speed.
Great article!
…jp
CA Real Estate and Homes Blogger | Aug 15, 2007 | Reply
Online media such as a blog is definitely a good way to get the internet crowd to read about whatever you want to promote. Despite my blog being relatively new, we seem to get quite a few readers coming to read it. We are therefore just limited to how much time and effort we devote to write the blog articles.
- Henry
http://www.movoto.com
study guide | Aug 17, 2007 | Reply
Very interesting article. IMO, people are really not taking this into consideration. SEOs don’t speak much/enough about this issue, well done.
shaun mclane | Aug 20, 2007 | Reply
The thing with this type of marketing is that you really need to stay on top of it. Being listed on one site could be great today, but non-existent the next.
Kansas City Real Estate Agent | Aug 31, 2007 | Reply
Most will not do the work necessary to keep up with online marketing. It is time consuming and the process is often changing. Although those ahead of the curve may not know what’s around the next curve, at least they have positioned themselves to more easily react to the next curveball thrown their way.
Kevin L. | Jun 25, 2008 | Reply
MerchantCircle recently crossed 500,000 members. We’re proud to help local businesses acquire customers by offering an alternative to over-priced, ineffective offline marketing channels. We’ve been interviewing our merchants in all 50 states – you can read about their MerchantCircle experience here: http://www.visualcv.com/merchantcircle.
We’re committed to providing every local business a web presence, easy-to-use marekting tools and a platform for connecting with other merchants, all for free. As always, please email any questions or concerns to support@merchantcircle.com and we will respond as soon as possible.