Last week Mitch Ribak, Founder of eHomesRealtyNetwork and MelboureHomeSearch.com, visited our team here in Denver, Colorado for a training and knowledge transfer exercise. Mitch and I have been keeping in touch since November 2006 after I met Mitch resulting from one of HomeGain’s Winning Agent Calls.

When I first met Mitch I was just a team of one trying to figure out this whole Internet Marking thing. I was reasonably comfortable with the website development, however I was struggling with how do I bring customers to my website and then convert them to leads then to clients and closings. A friend of mine had connected me to HomeGain’s BuyerLink product so there I was.

I had a website and some good marketing but now what do I do with it?

The same month after listening to Mitch’s presentation I had my first Internet client under contract. Yippee! I was on the running to making my first million, NOT.

With much continued effort I continued to find limited success, touching base with Mitch once every 3-4 months when I would find myself struggling the most. He would help me get over the hump then I would hit the ground running again. Continue reading this post

On Wednesday, August 20, Barry Cunningham and Barry Johnson of Real Estate Radio USAspoke with Louis Cammarosano about AgentView—its key features, how it works and why it is a valuable marketing product for real estate agents who want to have a strong online presence.

Listen to the program!:

Continue reading this post

I recently read an excellent article published by Baylor University, “Lead Generation: What Really Works”, which articulately discusses lead generation. The three categories the writers included in this article were lead generation, conversion of the lead to an appointment, and closure of the appointment to a transaction.

One of the studies I found particularly interesting was finding out the extent that real estate agents and brokers take to keep records of their lead generation efforts. And for those who keep records, how detailed the records are that they keep.

For “conversion to appointment” only 23% of the respondents reported their records as Moderately Detailed or Extremely Detailed. With a mere 32% reporting moderately or extremely detailed for “closure to a transaction”.
With a reported 17% of the respondents marketing budget allocated on the Internet or Website activities, unfortunately, or fortunately for us, the online world remains this big black hole. And, without keeping detailed records, it shall likely remain this ominous, monstrosity, money pit for many but it doesn’t need to be this way.

HomeGain’s BuyerLink does a great job of tracking your advertising budget. I’ve been using BuyerLink for years now. The concept is that it’s up to you to keep on tracking your results from the initial lead generation, to conversion through close.

Regardless of your preferred marketing method, they discuss how are you attracting your leads? Are you “seeking” or “attracting” your leads? In today’s tough market the survey results reflected that more seek oriented (60/40) for highest lead conversion in a tough market.

Of the leads generated 58% were buyers and 42% sellers. Many brokers, including myself, consider home buyers a premium in this Continue reading this post

Most real estate agents today are inundated with emails from other agents advertising their new listings. Some days I’ll get 20-30 of these emails and another 10 or so directly to my spam folder. I wish they would all go to my spam folder because that is exactly what they are – spam.

Just for reference, let’s take a look and remember what the definition of spam is when referring to email solicitations. I’m sure they believe these to be a great use of the “new technology” known as email, but, really it’s nothing more than spam.

As agents, we already have all of these listings available for home buyers in the MLS and that does nothing to mention that buyers can find these great new listings and reduced properties simply by searching through the MLS on agent websites, broker websites, realtor.com, and all of the other 3rd party aggregator websites where buyers are searching for homes.

If I receive them, I immediately unsubscribe myself from this innovative use of spam, er, technology. The biggest reason for this is the fact that they are non-targeted to me and my market and the sheer volume makes it impractical for me to try to keep them in my mind.

Since I’m receiving so many of these emails on a daily basis, how can any agent possibly believe that I am interested in looking at this unsolicited regurgitated information from the MLS listings posted in these emails?

On listing appointments, I specifically tell my potential clients that we do not communicate with agents via spam, er, new listing emails because they are ineffective and a tool only used by agents who don’t actually understand how to effectively utilize technology to market listings to agents and directly to buyers.

Let me offer some solutions to effectively utilize some of the real new technologies to help market homes for sale rather than sending bulk messages to people who don’t need the information. Continue reading this post

As most of you know, I have been offering my help to HomeGain members and others to help them accomplish their Real Estate goals by maximizing the Internet. It’s been very rewarding to me knowing that I have helped many of you who now are earning a nice income by using the Internet. This actually isn’t for those people.

About half the Agents and Brokers that have contacted me for help have actually done nothing to further their Internet programs. I can’t keep track of everyone, but I do keep track of many by going back to their websites to see if they have made the recommended changes. At least 50% haven’t made any changes and are continuing to follow the “Old School” Real Estate model.

You know the one; you hope that someone recommends someone to use you. Or maybe someone will call on one of the magazine ads you spend $500-$1000 per month to receive 5 – 10 calls. ($1,000 on the Internet is 150-200 leads or 3-4 or more sales) Those are some expensive calls…especially when they just wanted to know the price and hung up on you!

Yup, I know you know what I’m talking about!

Ok, so what is Paradigm Paralysis? Let’s tell you a little story so you understand. Continue reading this post

When showing a home, it’s often easiest to run through the particular set of features within the home, but, you may be missing the best opportunity to show off differences that can help a home sell.

Benefit marketing plays a fundamental role in separating the good from the great in sales and real estate is no different. Just about everyone can walk into a home and see the features, but, buyers are often trying to take everything in quickly when visiting a home so running down a list of features that they can already see does not help them discern why a particular feature may be important. This is where benefit marketing comes in to play.

As you walk through a home with a client, explaining the benefit of a feature can greatly improve the desirability of the home.

For example: a home has a tankless hot water heater. Many buyers today know that this is a new technology, but, not necessarily what it means to them. Taking a moment when highlighting the feature by explaining how that feature benefits the home buyer gives a meaning to that feature. In this case, it means lower monthly utility bills and endless hot water for a shower. For a family of 5, this would be a significant benefit and could be the difference maker between two similar homes.

Another example of benefit marketing might be explaining why new windows in an older home are important rather than simply stating that there are new windows. “Green” building is one area where benefit marketing is important, but, it encompasses just about all features within a home. Continue reading this post