Where Are The Real Estate Fan-sumers?
Facebook officially launched it’s advertising platform (see Techcrunch’s Liveblogging Facebook Advertising Announcement) and it’s a doozy. This builds substantially on its Flyers technology (see Marketing Yourself with Facebook Flyers) and offers marketers and technologists lots more to think about. I’m going to be chewing on this one for a while.
From their press release:
Facebook announced today that 44 websites are using Facebook Beacon to allow users to share information from other websites for distribution to their friends on Facebook. These sites are participating in the launch of Beacon, a new way to socially distribute information on Facebook. Beacon is a core element of the Facebook Ads system for connecting businesses with users and targeting advertising to the audiences they want.
Beacon makes sense for real estate web sites - and one can envision a number of different scenarios. Placing viewed listings into their mini-feed to share with friends and family. “I’ve just found this house on Coldwell Banker’s site - what do you think?” Alternatively, if someone were selling their home they could take their For Sale listing on Zillow and distribute it to everyone in their social graph. A Realtor could add their answered questions from Trulia into their mini-feed and share with them with their sphere.
Jeremiah Owyang has a great rundown of the new products and talks about Hyper Targeting, Social Ads and rise of the “Fan-Sumer” - a term he’s dubbed to reflect the ability in the new platform for Facebook members to self-identify themselves as fans of particular brands. Says Jeremiah:
Once a member has indicated they are a fan of a brand, that brand can choose to purchase SocialAds (from Facebook Sales or via a self-service platform). A unique endorsement of a product or brand will now appear on that individuals news feed or banner or skyscraper ads. Advertisers can purchase social ads target by profile demographics and profiles, as well as by activities done in Facebook. Payment is an auction-based system available to marketers via both CPM and CPC pricing.
Definitely makes sense from a marketing perspective - who wouldn’t want to reach out to their core fan base?
But the big question I have is this, are there even any brands in real estate that consumers would instantly identify themselves as a fan of? And if not, why not? What are we missing here?
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14 Comment(s)
2 Trackback(s)
- From Not Valuable Data | Bronte Media | Nov 7, 2007
- From Advertising Your Real Estate Business on Facebook | Future of Real Estate Marketing | Nov 9, 2007
Galen | Nov 6, 2007 | Reply
Joel, your final question is the one that everyone in this industry doesn’t get. People are fans of things they do with some frequency and they are not fans of things that are a means to an end.
There aren’t any birthing centers with fan clubs, nor are there any emergency rooms. There are some of each with good reputations, but no fan clubs because people go to those places out of necessity and they don’t go very often. Same for buying and selling homes; you hire a company as a means to an end. People drink coke / drive their car / etc. every day, so they identify via those things. They are also seen with those things by others. People sell their house (and rave about great agents / brokerages) every few years and, in spite of my previous comments on this topic, it’s a relatively private process.
Galen | Nov 6, 2007 | Reply
(Everyone in this industry = online real estate people who think technology saves. Not people like Erik Hersman)
Sol | Nov 6, 2007 | Reply
I’d say the only brand that consumers are fans of is the fast and
savings brand. The value brand has too much noise with too many subjective variables.
LeadCritic | Nov 6, 2007 | Reply
I agree completely with Galen. The Real Estate and Mortgage industry’s are very difficult to implement into a social network, especially when it comes to the concept of fan clubs, however if there was an opportunity, which there is, for company to create viral, social network application that connected seller to buyers, I could see that catching on.
Now with Google Open Social you now have the opportunity to apply it to multiple networks and then on top of that, you have Googles Android, an open source mobile platform.
Google is seriously amazing, the stuff they come up with.
Christian | Nov 7, 2007 | Reply
I say that FB could be crossing the line on this one. A friend that brings me daily advertising is a friend no more (at least online). Already, many of their core users are gone, and this new addition only adds to up and comers’ fire/ability to start building their own competing site. When they pushed the news feed capability for the first time, people stopped using the site, only most of these people came back knowing that it was the best place to manage their daily communication with friends. Now they are tampering with that core function, and I bet it bites them.
Chris Dowell | Nov 7, 2007 | Reply
Great idea in theory. The problem is that Facebook is used by mostly younger people. None of my peers or family older than 35 use Facebook. They need to work on ways to attract the older crowd.
retrove.com | Nov 7, 2007 | Reply
I think you can create “fans” of a technology a brand is using as people can focus on the “item” (for those at Inman Connect remember Hugh’s presentation) but it’s difficult to make them a fan of a real estate company brand. The company is associated with an “experiance”. A experiance that often they cannot control or replicate because there is so many people involved during the purchase / sell / mortgage process. Unlike say a Nordstrom, where they can control the entire purchase experiance from beginning to end because no-one else is involved. So I think it is possible assuming you can create an “item” that consumers can focus on, i.e. Z home values, T heat maps.
@Chris - remember that FB just opened up the platform to all users. What will happen is these 20-35 yr olds, will encourage their parents to sign up and use it for communication with them. Then the demographic will slowly change.
Freddie | Nov 7, 2007 | Reply
Seems to me the whole point of social networking is to build relationships and brand recognition. FB may have 20-35 year olds now but those 20-35 year old do leave home and often they look to their “network friends” for assistance. So either way, whether with the parents or the young adults a presence on a social network like FB is helpful.
Diane Cohn | Nov 7, 2007 | Reply
In my experience, people are fans of their Realtors more than any product or brokerage. We had a favorite Realtor for years in Silicon Valley, Judy Tucker, and we didn’t care who she worked for because she always swooped in and handled everything quickly and strategically to our best advantage. If we hadn’t moved out of the area, we’d be with her today. I still recommend her to people I know in Santa Clara County. The cult of personality drives the relationship and creates a fan base.
Mike Ela | Nov 7, 2007 | Reply
There are dynamics that continually change the face of the real estate markets, particularly in the way in which real estate is marketed. Some brokerages are better at it, some agents are better at it and in the end, the properties that get sold are the ones that are marketed better AND that are properly valued.
Real estate agents, mortgage brokers, title companies, escrow companies and many others make money every time a deal closes. They all have a vested interest in closing the deal to make their fees. The research they do for buyers and sellers is a means to their end which is a commission. There is no fault in that, but I also feel strongly that buyers and sellers should do independent research on the value of their property so they feel comfortable with the ultimate outcome of their specific transaction.
It’s a big deal for buyers and sellers to know values so they, in turn, get good value for their investment. We suggest you stay in touch with the market not only by viewing properties that interest you, but also by reviewing relevant data relating to market performance. This doesn’t mean just comparables, but also foreclosure statistics, flipping activity and the history of the property that interests you.
Good luck in your home transactions, but know that you can make some of your own luck by doing better research before you buy or sell.
Tom Wolf | Nov 7, 2007 | Reply
I’ve recently been trying to put together a profile of industries or situations that are perfectly suited for social networks. I liken this to a company trying to determine the profile of the “perfect” consumer of their product so they can target them effectively. At first, I was attempting to put together a list of common characteristics, including things like Galen mentioned such as frequency of use or purchase, but every time I came up with a good list there seemed to be a situation that didn’t fit.
I realized I was overcomplicating it and that really social networks are just replacements for those things which people would have extended conversations about if they were sitting face to face. Teens can and do talk in person or on the phone for hours about parties, gossip, and Paris Hilton, thus social networks and blogs do well with this type of content. Techies love to talk about killer apps, code, and gadgets, and therefore techie networks and blogs do great as well. It seems the less you hear people discussing an issue, industry, or brand in person, the less likely it is to succeed in the online social network setting. To Galen’s point, I simply never hear people talking about specific houses. I hear people talking about the housing market, but never anything like, “Wow, that house had great granite countertops and a step down tub.” I think that is a huge reason that social networks have struggled to find their way in this industry.
Robert Moreno | Nov 7, 2007 | Reply
In real estate just because you go with a brand name does not mean that you will get the same exact service everytime. It is not like drinking a can of coke. It taste the same everytime as long as you buy the same kind, classic, cherry etc.
However in Real Estate you deal with the agent who is on floor at the time they call. Just because I used XYZ Realty in one city does not eman that XYZ will give me the same results in another city.
In Real Estate you deal with the sales agent and depending on the sales agent you deal with will determine the quality of service you get. An agent from Mom&Dad’s Home Brokerage could give you superior service while a more commercialized name agent could possibly give you very bad service.
The name of the agent is the Brand not necessarily the name of the Brokerage. If the argument is that my big name brokerage provides superior training then I would say give me that name and I would be more than happy to share horror stories about agents in those brokerages that I dealt with.
Again the Brand is the name of the Realtor@.
nuff said…..
Sol | Nov 7, 2007 | Reply
Robert, it’s interesting that you bring up Coke. Before I became interested in online brokerage I wrote a piece in 2004 comparing real estate to fast food.
http://www.forsalebyweb.com/nodiscount/discussion/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=812&SearchTerms=coke
Taking it one step further, each and every agent in a real estate office is a competitor of another. So this idea of brand value really confuses consumers.
Tom Wolf is right on about social networks. I’ve seen several open house blogs but have never seen social networks used to sell or discuss a specific house.
Brian Columbus | Feb 24, 2008 | Reply
This is some of the best discussion I’ve seen on the topic of RE Social Networks. Despite getting to this pretty late, there are a few items I need to comment on.
Today, social networking is about “friend” based dialogue. Not many consumers have real friendships with their RE Pros. Social Networks need to be relevant beyond friendship and create a sense of place where industry specific topics are the dominant theme. In contrast, overcoming the purchase-cycle (frequency) challenges can be achieved by developing ways to engage consumers beyond transactions. Some examples are community leadership, philanthropy, education workshops, etc. This holds true regardless of venue real world or web. Loyalty is one of the greatest challenges our industry faces and the reason we started HomePerks.com . It can be achieved by both brands and individuals, but it requires a real commitment in terms of time, money and effort. But when you consider that other industries have successfully created tremendous loyalty (Hotels, Airlines, Credit Cards, Grocery Stores, etc), it’s worthy pursuit that delivers substantial ROI.
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