Goodbye HomeGain, Hello BoomTown Part II
October 2, 2009
In my last post, I shared that the end destination of your online marketing campaign is just as important as the beginning source. I found that too many Realtors focused disproportionately on the quality of traffic and not even bat an eye in consideration of how outdated and realtor-centric their websites were. This was the main frustration of consulting real estate brokers and agents during my tenure at HomeGain, as most of my clients simply did not invest in the right technology necessary to execute a successful campaign.
However, when my colleague introduced me to the BoomTownROI platform, I felt that same jolt of excitement one experiences when stumbling upon a new technology that could actually make life easier…you know that feeling all too well – a reserved excitement; not wanting to fully invest yourself emotionally, just in case the technology fails to deliver and you end up with the bitter taste of failed expectations. So I began to investigate and scrutinize this BoomTown solution under the careful eye of consumer-centric bias, and what I found next was simply satisfying…to be continued
Online Reputation Management – Project HomeGain Buyerlink
Little progress report on my online reputation management efforts; this is the original intent of this blog series after all.
With just two blog posts I’ve managed to get on the first page of google for the search term “HomeGain Buyerlink” in the respectable 4th and 5th organic spot. My articles are still below the negative tirade that birthed this project, so I still got some writing to do!
In my last post, I ended with a reference to one of our most successful real estate brokers, Mitch Ribak of Tropical Realtyof Suntree in Melbourne, FL who is on track to sell more than 350 homes this year from his online lead generation efforts. He has been using HomeGain’s Buyerlink exclusively for the past 2 years, saving him time and money from managing his own pay per click campaign with Google Adwords and Yahoo PPC. Admittedly, his results are exemplary and much like the poster child who lost 60 lbs in 60 days on a weight loss supplement commercial, let’s delve a bit deeper into the nature of pay per click marketing and why Buyerlink is a cost and time effective solution.
Buyerlink addresses the age old tension of running a business with limited 
resources. In an ideal world, every realtor would hold a degree in marketing and computer science, and an MBA from Harvard business to top it off. These super agents could conceptualize, code, and design a search engine optimized website with the latest and greatest functionality integrated and could execute a return on investment positive google adwords campaign focused on a super targeted and lucrative basket of keywords. And more impressively, they would be able to whisk these serious all cash buyers around on a buyers tour and write offers the same day. Well, unfortunately we live but one life and everyone is subjected to the limitations of a 24 hour day.
So where do you want to focus the limited time you have? Sitting behind a computer screen with your face buried in a google adwords for dummies book trying to figure out what “quality score” and “negative keywords” mean or interacting and servicing home buyers and sellers in the real world?
I’m not questioning the aptitude and technical capacity of realtors. I’m sure that anyone who really wanted to learn how to run a successful pay per click strategy for his business could eventually achieve a moderate level of success with the plethora of do it yourself guides out there. But what I am questioning is the practicality and economics of such an endeavor. Can you afford to spend the hours a day conducting A/B tests of different combinations of ad copies and keywords? Can you afford the trial and error period of learning the nuances of google adwords? Lastly, can you compete against the traffic aggregators that utitlize proprietary pay per click management software that automatically analyzes data and shifts dollars according?
If you don’t, then utilizing HomeGain’s Buyerlink is a no-brainer decision. Consider these facts once again and determine if HomeGain is someone you want to partner with or compete against: Homegain manages a mulit-million dollar search engine marketing budget encompassing millions of keywords. HomeGain also has millions of indexed pages on the search engines, thousands of high quality and reputable inbound links, and industry experts dedicated to search engine optimization strategies to rank organically for the most prominent real estate keywords. More impressive than that is the 200+ affiliate partnerships that HomeGain has built over the 10 years it has been in operation to drive more traffic to its site. You combine just those three fundamental elements and you’ve got a company that can get you the kind of traffic you want to your individual website.
With HomeGain’s Buyerlink you can say goodbye to the days of managing keywords, start bid prices, ad copies, etc. All of that is done by HomeGain and the only thing you get is a visitor that wants to search for homes in your specific farming area.
I will be starting a new series entitled google adwords vs. homegain buyerlink where I will highlight the key differences to consider when it comes to these two formidable pay per click options. Stay tuned!
Social media platforms are proliferating at such a dizzying pace that even 
internet yuppies like myself are having trouble keeping up. Tweet this, Facebook that, LinkedIn this, Digg that, and the list goes on and on and on.
This world is so hyper connected that it’s almost impossible to be “unavailable”. Remember those days when you could just screen your calls on your cellphone and use a lame excuse like, “Oh, I had no reception in the area?” and you received immunity from annoyed friends and family? You try that tactic now and you’ll hear crazy
things like, “I called you twice, left you a message, texted you, instant messaged you, emailed, twittered, facebook poked you! Where were you?!” You could reply back, “well obviously you didn’t get the message that I was trying to send you by not replying back!” but you might lose some friends that way.
As with any technological advance in the social realm, the medium inevitably encroaches into the business sector and the lines between “social” and “business” become blurred in a hurry. An entire industry has arisen out of social media marketing, and I have to admit, at first I was quite skeptical.
I hated the idea of businesses on facebook creating profiles and fan pages, or companies twittering news about their products because it seemed to defeat 
the purpose of what these social mediums aimed to create: a way to stay connected with friends and family. But where there is a new concept of communication there is always a buck to be made, and if there is a buck to be made, there will be 1000 vendors trying to make that buck. So instead of folding my arms from the sidelines in stubborn resistance, I’ve decided to embrace the undeniable and wrap my head around this new social marketing beast.
I shouldn’t be so surprised after all. Things have always been this way. Radio and Television advertisements have become so embedded into our social 
lives that we don’t bat an eye when a Geico ad interrupts our favorite prime time episodes or morning commute talk radio segment. I can’t even watch Youtube clips of Susan Boyle’s jaw-dropping performance without seeing an advertisement pop up in the window. So the question isn’t whether Social Marketing platforms are a viable way for real estate agents to reach prospective clients in non-traditional ways, but rather, how can it be done in a fun, creative, personalized manner.
Realtors, please mark my words. Putting up a link to your MLS listing on your facebook status or twittering an announcement of an open house for your listing is not creative, definitely not fun, impersonal, and does not fall in line with the normal user experience of the people using the social medium.
If you walk away with anything from this post, just hone in on this one point
and commit it to memory. People use facebook to connect with friends and family by looking at photos, videos, reading little blurbs about their friend’s mental musings. Thus, your social marketing efforts must seamlessly interface with the most common user experiences of your facebook users or else they will be utterly ignored and in some cases harshly received.
In my next post, I will attempt to demonstrate a way of marketing yourself as a Realtor to your facebook-using prospects in the context of their social mingling norms, utilizing features that these uers have come to love and become addicted to. Stay tuned!
