Background info
I’ve taken the liberty to do a little research for all the real estate agents out there taking advantage of online marketing. There’s paid online marketing and organic/natural online marketing, but both forms need to know what’s the best real estate keywords to target. “Real estate” is the highest searched term. Recent estimates say it’s searched over 500,000 times a month. So, competing for such a phrase would be almost impossible to win with the big budgets of the Move.com Network (owners of Realtor.com, Moving.com, WelcomeWagon.com & much more) or the new up and comers like Zillow.com and Trulia. (more…)
With the realities in the marketplace, I leveraged my understanding with my website and other forms of online marketing.
My website
This was probably the most critical aspect of doing well in Real Estate. This was my online resume. This was the potential place for a client to learn everything and anything about me. It could also give them the tools to educate themself before speaking to me. It could also provide them knowledge in how to make an informed decision. It could also help them look to other markets and I would get paid from some of those referrals. It was a powerful tool.
I started by using my name as the domain. I would be creating a brand out of my name “Brandon Na” — which coincidentally had “brand” inside my name. There are a few approaches to creating the new website for the business. Agents could use their name, they could use their area they want to specialize in or they could create a niche that they hope to be good at. Well, I did all of them. Websites are cheap these days. It costs a whopping $5-10 a year to buy your domain name. The problem is that just like physical real estate, online real estate is going through the roof & names that people would use to search for their information are being bought by the thousands every day. Once gone, it’s really hard to get that domain without paying more than the annual fee.
There are domain names like diamond.com which went for $7.5 million. Seniors.com went for $1.8 million. In terms of the Real Estate business, RealEstate.net went for $300,000 in a private sale in February of this year. HotProperty.com went for $120k, (more…)
Before jumping into Real Estate, I worked at Doubleclick.net (acquired by Google), Amazon.com and Expedia.com in middle management technical positions. I was exposed to a decent amount of Large Business Search Engine Marketing (SEM), Affiliate Marketing and Online Marketing (in general) in some of the top Internet companies in the world.
During my stints at each organization, I didn’t examine or understand SEM or other online marketing tools/techniques fully since I never applied the things we were doing at those companies on a larger scale in my own business. However, after jumping into the business of Real Estate, I realized that I could use some of that experience in my own business - and I did.
The Internet has changed the world of Real Estate in many ways.
Consumers are much more educated before they start working with their agents. They also do a bit of research on their agents with online recommendations or other tools & websites that may help them become more familiar with the person who is going to take a 3% cut out of their transaction. Consumers all over the world are more prepared and knowledgable about the experience they are about to encounter.
Prospective buyers use the Internet now to learn more about their markets. They want to make sure they are not being swindled into buying into a bad market like one of the “markets NOT to buy” according to Business 2.0 or other publications. They also want to know what sort of service they should expect in someone who may make thousands of dollars and for the elite, tens and hundreds of thousands of dollars per transaction. It’s no longer easy for an agent to just help a client with their contracts and get the big check a few days after closing.
Sellers are wanting to make sure they are represented by agents that are NOT fresh out of Real Estate school. Sellers of homes and condominiums are wanting to make sure they get the most out of their homes and will look online for recent sales around their property. In general, most consumers are more ready before making the plunge into buying or selling their largest purchase in life.
Welcome to BehindRealEstate.com!
My name is Brandon Na and I was a “Realtor”, a real estate agent, a Real Estate Consultant (according to my company Keller Williams) and honestly, a sales person for the first time in my life. I’ll be writing to you about the “inside information” and details I picked up while working in the Real Estate industry from 2004 to 2006.
The real estate business is an interesting one to say the least. There are people from the consumers to the agents to vendors who serve the agents to the companies who manage the brokers who manage the agents. There are laws and there are squirrely ways to get around them. There are times when you wonder when you’re getting “slimed” and then there are really hard working people in the field who try to make this very critical decision or decisions a very pleasant one despite all the complexities involved in most transactions.
The real estate industry is metamorphosizing into something very interesting with the Internet. I’ll help you understand the tools that are now available and how they relate to the ways that we “used to do it.” I’ll educate as beset as possible from my limited, yet very comprehensive experience. By the way, I went from a $0 producer in the first 4 months to the 2nd highest producing agent in my office which was the main office of Bellevue, Washington — a somewhat ritzy town next to the hometown of the richest…oops, sorry, the 2nd richest man in the world: Bill Gates.
I hope you enjoy. Feel free to leave comments & I’ll do my best to get back as soon as possible. I have to admit I am doing several projects right now…so it may take me a little more time than normal. Cheers!
Jul 11 2007 05:37 am |
Background info |
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