Real Estate Marketing: Integrating the Internet

Real estate has always been about Location and the number one location for reaching home buyers today is the Internet. Studies from the NAHB and NAR attribute as much as 86% of all new home buyers using the Internet as a primary resource when searching for a new home or builder. Less than 10% of the marketing budgets today are spent on the Internet. Integrating the Internet with traditional marketing continues to be a challenge even the largest builders or real estate companies find daunting.

Browse through any local newspaper or magazine and you will find a real estate agent with a full page ad featuring a huge self portrait, small images of homes for sale, a phone number and maybe a tiny line of text with a website address. Read a few more pages to find an ad for a beautiful new home community listing the Community Name in large print across the top, photos of the area, prices and a phone number but no readily available website address. Advertising offline needs to focus on driving buyers online to your 24 hour 7 day a week Internet Sales Center.

Most Internet Users will use a Search Line to type a community, builder or location name (i.e. Kansas City New Homes). If the Search Results do not display your website then you just lost the opportunity to sell that buyer a home. The Internet is being used to exclude as much as include you based upon locating your website and delivering it properly to the buyer. Home Buyers are searching for information online that is quickly displayed, organized, cosmetically appealing and consistent. Websites should be attractive but understand attractive does not mean effective on the Internet. Nationally only 42% of Internet Users have high-speed Internet leaving 58% with slow dial-up connections to view websites.

A pretty website designed with FLASH movies, music and large high-quality photos will never reach 58% of the people using the Internet. Internet Buyers have ADD typically waiting less than 20 seconds for content before moving on. There is nothing more annoying than to finally locate a website only to be presented with the ‘Loading’ (please wait a few minutes to see our website) screen.

Consider next the home buyer who has high-speed Internet who decided to look for new homes before bed on their laptop. With their husband or wife sleeping beside them a website blaring loud music awakens their spouse so they immediately close the website moving on to another. Many marketing or advertising methods are used simply because it is the way things have always been done not because they produce results. Billboards deliver a split second visual message which is effective for branding but difficult to deliver a message.* Home buyers were using the Internet twice as much as a newspaper by 2003 while the money spent on newspaper advertising was over ten times what was spent online. **

Old habits are hard to break; our industry will not change marketing habits overnight although you can start small and work your way into the Digital Age. Place your website address prominently on all advertising, business cards, company vehicles, signs, letterhead, community handouts and floorplans and every email you send out.

Integrating websites with offline marketing is extremely important keeping in mind that online buyers are not looking for entertainment; they are looking for a place to call home.

Robert 'Dot Com' Jackson
www.BuilderConsulting.com
913-814-8844

Sources:
*NFIB 3/14/2002 “Should You Advertise on Billboards”** NAR 2003 “Profile of Home Buyers and Sellers”