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OFFICIAL MAGAZINE OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF REALTORS®








 Marketing your brokerage
Planning Your Advertising


  

Setting Marketing Strategies

Analyzing the Business Climate

Creating Your Market Identity

Planning Your Advertising

Coordinating Company and Salesperson Marketing

Developing Public Relations Strategies

Enhancing Customer Service 		  Advanced: Bringing Speed and Simplicity to Your Web Site

It’s no longer a question of if your company has a Web site, but how to make it a more valuable marketing tool. Frederick Herot, vice president of Weichert Interactive, a division of Weichert, REALTORS®, in Morris Plains, N.J., shared some ideas on what he considers the paradigm for the next generation of real estate Web sites.

Q: How is real estate marketing on the Internet evolving?

Herot: I think that the focus in Internet marketing is changing for real estate companies. In the past, the industry focused on reports showing page view, hits, unique visitor—the criteria that most Web developers use to evaluate the success of site. But my direction from Jim Weichert has always been that we evaluate our Internet success by the number of houses we list and sell. For a real estate company, the real success of a site is measured in how well the customer is served, and if a sale doesn’t result from the contact, then something has broken down.

To help focus on the transaction, we’re making our new site as clear, direct, and fast to use as possible so a visitor can find a home or contact a salesperson easily. We think that this is going to be the goal of sites in the future.

Q: How will you accomplish this shift?

Herot: We’ll begin by putting our property search feature front and center. When prospective buyers or sellers reach the site, they’ll see a big U.S. map so that they can immediately click through to homes they’re interested in. Behind that will be the customary information about the company, education on how to buy, etc. But the immediate front page is going to be a direct plunge into the home search.

Q: Does this mean that your site won’t have that type of information any more?
Herot: It will all be there. There will be prominent ways to take visitors to Home Selling and One-Stop Gold ancillary services program. But we’re trying to keep the introduction of the services consistent with the transaction so that first you’ll do the home search and then be introduced to the information you need to purchase a home. Once a user views a home, he or she will be connected with a services manager for the community to learn more about mortgages and other necessary services.

Q: How else will your new Internet marketing approach be different?

Herot: The other problem we’ve encountered with current Internet marketing is speed. When customers look at houses online, they're at a breaking point. They want the information right that moment, or they begin to lose interest.

If prospects walked into an office wanting to find out about homes, we’d greet them immediately and start showing them properties. But on the Internet, we’ve asked prospects to send us a message and then taken our time getting back to them. Even if a salesperson gets back to the prospects in two or three hours, the prospects have lost some level of interest. They’re thinking about something else, not homes.

A major change we want to introduce in our new Web site is the ability to respond to prospects via e-mail and phone in real time, while they’re on the site. But it’s not a simple task. We’re building up a call center capable of employing more than 100 people to respond in-person to a customer. These employees will be licensed, just in case the caller has an immediate question that needs an answer. But their principal function will be to reach one of our sales associates and set up an appointment while the customer is still on the phone. The system will provide an online listing of associates who are knowledgeable about each property and have agreed to participate in the program and respond quickly. Knowing that the phone call to set up an appointment is probably going to occur sooner or later, we want to get our sales associates in touch with the customer immediately.

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