Written by: Kristal Kraft
Real Estate Broker
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Tuesday, February 26, 2008
Prospecting for new business is much easier when you have value added tools to help attract consumers. Market Snapshot is a prospecting tool for agents who do business online and have an organized follow up system to stay in touch.
The program is truly meant to be used in conjunction with a marketing plan to attract and retain customers. The beauty of the system is how it delivers, almost immediately desired information that is not easily obtained in such a simple format. Yes, all the data can be found by visiting numerous sites, but nowhere that I know can it be found as attractive and timely as in this product.
Consumers as we know don’t look for information during business hours alone. They frequently do their research when we agents are snug in our jammies! 
Positioning Market Snapshot to work while we sleep is probably a wise consumer service.
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6 out of 10 |
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Avg. 6.0 |
Written by: Linda Davis
Broker, RE/MAX Realty Group
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Saturday, January 19, 2008
HomeGain’s Buyer Link is not cheap but you will receive a steady flow of leads. It is your job to convert them into buyers.
If you’ve recently attended a real estate conference or read a book or a blog about success in real estate, then you know that lead generation is a hot topic. There is little debate that the ability to generate and capture leads can be what separates a successful agent from a mediocre one. BUT start a discussion about paying for leads and the debate can get downright ugly. You’re likely to hear the words ripoff and parasite used to describe lead generation companies like HomeGain and HouseValues.
HomeGain, who’s been around since 1999, seems to generate the most wrath in the real estate community. So what is it about HomeGain that gets real estate agents so angry? Many agents feel that sites like HomeGain use an agent’s listings to attract buyers and then refers those same buyers back to the agent for a fee. If sites like HomeGain didn’t exist, they say, leads would go directly to the agent without the cost of the middleman.
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7 out of 10 |
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Written by: Teresa Boardman
Broker, StPaulRealEstateBlog.com
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Monday, June 25, 2007
Connecting Neighbors is a neighborhood web site. The Connecting Neighbors program provides exclusive sponsorship of a specific neighborhood to a local real estate professional. The sponsor provides the service to the neighborhood at no cost and through that offering establishes them as the Neighborhood Expert in that area. The Connecting Neighbors program includes an interactive web site with a unique web address and a newsletter created from the content of the web site. Neighborhood web sites can include links to job searches, recipes, financial news, neighborhood classified, businesses, artists, real estate listings, links to home searches and more. Generic content like recipes is provided through ConnectingNeighbors.com, and site owners can provide additional content, as can neighbors. Neighbors visiting the web sites can add announcements and classified ads which are moderated and approved by the site sponsor.
Pricing is based on the number of households in the selected neighborhood. A neighborhood site for a neighborhood with 400 homes will have a one time set up fee of about $500.00 and a monthly hosting fee of $60.00. additional money should be budgeted for post card, newsletter and other types of print advertising to promote the site. Connecting Neighbors also provides training and support. Site sponsors are encouraged to sell advertising to area businesses on the web sites for additional revenue.
Site owners need to market their sites in the neighborhood and are encouraged to use paper flyers, post cards, and newsletters to promote the site and build traffic. When asked if these web sites help real estate professionals win business the sales representative I talked to said that they do and that in some neighborhoods 95% of the houses holds use the web site.
Possible benefits of the site include access to national content, a site that can be refreshed with new information, and access to a connecting neighbors marketing specialist. The philosophy behind the site is a soft sell where the real estate professional gives to the community and in return gets business.
Some draw backs to the sites include the need to spend time and money marketing the site. A quick google search did not yield any results other than the Connecting neighbors web sites. Since the sites are for the neighborhood they are directly marketed in the neighborhood but in doing that hey may not attract home buyers who want to relocate to the nieghborhood or be found by other people interested in the area like many traditional real estate web sites do.
The site does not provide an RSS, (Real simple syndication) feed. Web sites with RSS feeds may have an advantage over those that do not. Modern browsers have RSS readers built into them as does the the new Windows Vista computer operating system. The sales rep I talked to did not know what an RSS feed is.
Getting information about the product is difficult. Persons interested in learning more or in purchasing the product must leave their contact information on a web site or call the sales staff. There are no examples of a neighborhood we site on the connectingneighbors.com web site. The sites I looked at had fairly low page ranks and did not appear to be getting a huge amount of traffic. It is possible that the sites were for smaller neighborhoods.
The sites are not an example of cutting edge technology or ideas but if a site owner were to spend the necessary time and money to market the site and to keep it updated with fresh content neighbors will read it. There are less expensive competing products like real estate blogs that could have a domain name for a neighborhood, come with an RSS feed and could be marketed with print advertising, include the same categories, and reach a larger audience.
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4 out of 10 |
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Andy Denton
Linda Davis
Kristal Kraft
Les Sulgrove