Real Estate Forums

MyPreferredAgent.com · 10-29-2005, 12:10 AM

Hello Realtor Entrepreneurs,

We are a starter company located in California specializing in lead generation for the Real Estate Industry. Take a look at our site, www.MyPreferredAgent.com. The company has been in existence (on-line) for about 12 months and just received a boost from venture capitalist to begin an extensive marketing campaign to bring more hits (potential clients, i.e., buyers & sellers) to the site to begin January 1, 2006.

As part of marketing campaign strategy, we are looking for agents to promote in all 50 states in the U.S. At present, we have about 200 agents online in about 19 states. In order to captivate a larger market share and credibility, we understand the need to add more agents and fast!

We have decided to allow ONE YEAR OF FREE ON-LINE PROMOTION on our site for a limited time only. You must respond no later than DECEMBER 15, 2005. This will assist us in fulfilling our goal of having Real Estate professionals promoted in every state in the country.

Our research shows that 70% of those interested in buying and selling first search the internet for information. We have defined these people as our Target Audience. Our job is to promote our site and bring these potential clients to your bio page for review. It is then up to the Agent to define his or her goal and message to captivate the potential client to have them contact the by phone/email or your website.

Our normal annual fee of $59.00 is waived up to December 15, 2005. After this, anyone who is interested in being promoted must pay to be on. PLEASE DO NOT ASK TO BE PROMOTED FOR FREE AFTER DECEMBER 15, 2005. If you’re interested, just email us a note at info@MyPreferredAgent.com and will input your bio information free of charge for one year. We need your full name, company name, address, telephone #, fax #, email address and website address (if you have one). You can also attach a picture of yourself.

No selling here, just asking for agents looking for another way to promote themselves online for just the time it takes to type a letter about him/herself.

Offer is good up to Dec. 15, 2005 only. Thank you, Michael Goldman

HHI Golf Guy · 10-29-2005, 08:20 AM

Quote:

Our research shows that 70% of those interested in buying and selling first search the internet for information.

Realtor.com does well at luring potential homebuyers because of brand recognition. But 99% of all other national real estate sites and directories drive zero sales for agents and their listings.

How do you plan to bring potential homebuyers to your site?

While more and more homebuyers are searching the web for real estate, the overwhelming majority search for listings by typing "city name + real estate". Are you going to utilize PPC or search engine optimization for each of the cities represented by agents listing on your site? What other forms of advertising will you do to build your own brand recognition and bring in potential homebuyers?

Michael - I'm not trying to rip your company or your idea here. What I am trying to do is help educate the agents on this board as to how to invest their marketing dollars. Right now your site is not much different than 100,000 other agent directories on the internet. What makes it special and worth the investment?

The fact is that the value of most real estate directories is the backlink that they provide to the client web site. But in order for the backlink to be valuable it must be spiderable by search engines. The backlink - especially with the proper anchor text - can help in the agents own search engine rankings. As it stands, your dynamic agentdetail.php pages are not spiderable by search engines. You should look into using a MOD REWRITE to correct this.

Quote:

Originally Posted by MyPreferredAgent.com

The company has been in existence (on-line) for about 12 months

Online for 12 months and only 2 pages indexed with Google and zero Google BL's showing? Not good at all.

While your site does have a nice clean design, it lacks content. Here are a few ideas to punch up your content:

1. Allow agents to post articles about their service area. Have one main article page for each state, then link the proper regional/city articles from the appropriate state page. Allow only 1 article per page. The article should contain links to the agent profile and to the agents web site. Again, even if you use a database to store the articles make sure that the pages can be spidered and indexed by search engines.

2. Allow agents to place their listings on your site (a la Realtor.com).

The bottom line is that a national real estate web site must provide local/regional value to the agent - even if listing on that site is free. Your business model should be based upon how you can provide that value above and beyond other agent directories.

San Diego Real Estate · 10-29-2005, 08:59 AM

Great Points HHI...thanks for the overview and always welcomed suggestions!

Portland Real Estate · 10-30-2005, 09:53 PM

Thanks for getting all the points covered, Golf Guy!

Las Vegas Real Estate · 11-01-2005, 04:18 PM

Yes, HHI, great questions, but furthermore, if preferred agent can answer them, that would be even better! There is no problem with soliciting as long as you can provide answers to the questions in which we have

Las Vegas Homes · 11-01-2005, 04:20 PM

I am with you Las Vegas Real Estate. I think that we are all interested in hearing about new ideas, companies, and products, but we need to make sure that we can ask questions and get answers to them!

REMAX LV · 11-01-2005, 04:51 PM

Well, the product sounds great, if you could tell us a bit more about the questions that HHI asked. I would love to hear how you are different from other .com companies...

HHI Golf Guy · 11-01-2005, 07:48 PM

I just want to reiterate that I am not criticizing this site or similar sites.

Since real estate agents are independant contractors, every dollar that they spend on advertising takes money out of their own pocket. All advertising - regardless of the industry - should be highly targeted and should have a measurable return on investment (money, leads, publicity, etc.).

There are plenty of places - especially on the internet - for agents to advertise. So, how do you shoose where to spend your hard earned dollars? Begin by asking the question, "What's in it for me?"

No matter where you choose to spend your advertising dollars, the sales person should always be able to tell you their marketing plan and how that plan will benefit your business.

San Diego Real Estate · 11-06-2005, 06:24 PM

HHI...

Thanks again for your input...we always appreciate your words of wisdom!