Clients who trust you won't run away

“Hello?

Is this Marina?

I’m calling because we’d like you to be our Realtor… “

This phone call marks the beginning of my dream come true…

My dream is about changing the world of internet leads as we know it.  More specifically, my dream is about changing the way Real Estate agents interact with internet leads (i.e. potential clients that find agents through the Internet).

My dream is about rising above the Cat and Mouse game

If you are in real estate, you might be familiar with the cat and mouse game of “Internet leads”.  This cat and mouse game is about agents pursuing potential clients (i.e.  internet leads) while the potential clients do their best to run away from the agents.

And I don’t blame them for wanting to run away.  Internet leads (or “actively looking buyers” as the Big Real Estate Websites call them) want to run away because to them, it seems that on the other side of the safety of the computer screen there are pushy sales people that will try to sell them on something they are not ready to buy.

Potential buyers want to run away even when they are ready to buy

Internet leads (i.e. potential buyers) want to run away even when they are ready to buy and have found a home online that they’d like to see.

When they want more info about a house they saw online,  they don’t have much choice but to connect with an agent to get more information about it.  But they are still worried about getting pushed around by a sales person that they don’t know or trust.

So when the potential buyer connects with an agent, she is defensive, untrusting and just plain annoyed with the entire “agent tries to catch client” process.

Some agents feel annoyed by the process too

Well, what do you know?  Agents who pay for or otherwise receive internet leads from the Big Real Estate Websites are just as annoyed with the “catch a client” process.  At least I am.

But it doesn’t have to be that way.  We seem to be in that Cat and Mouse game because the information about what we sell (i.e. houses) is practically public information.  Every website, and every agent has access to the exact same inventory.    The result is that home-buyers simply don’t see or understand the value that a good agent can bring to their home transaction.  To them, all agents are the same.

This is where my dream comes in:

Several months ago, I set out on a quest to change the Cat and Mouse Game

I was tired of being at the mercy of Big Websites with deep pockets who attract homebuyers and then have agents pay for the option of being contacted by an “actively looking homebuyer in my area” – yes, the same skittish potential clients that I was talking about earlier.

Well, today, I can say that my dream is becoming a reality

Earlier this year I released the first version of my website: www.HomebySchool.com

Throughout this year, Home by School has provided me with some side benefits, such as:

• Connecting with other agents for client referrals, and
• Increased transactions from the people who know me

The increased transactions were a bit of a pleasant surprise, since the goal of HomebySchool.com isn’t explicitly targeting them, however, those sales were quite welcome.

My main goal is to attract homebuyers from Internet-land

My dream’s main goal is to attract complete strangers, homebuyers from Internet-land who bypass the Cat and Mouse game.  My goal is to have homebuyers call me directly not just for more information on a house, but to ask to be represented by me on their transaction.

Well, last week, it happened

Last week, I got a phone call. And it went just like this:

“Hello?  Is this Marina? I’m calling the number on your website because we’d like you to be our Realtor… ”

I didn’t realize it at first, but a few hours later it sunk in: my dream was becoming a reality!

With this phone call, we avoided the Cat and Mouse game

At this point, I had changed the path of ONE person who started their search online and had connected with me asking for representation.  No Cat and Mouse game, no icky feeling. Instead, there was a mutual feeling of:

“Lets work together to find your dream home”

With ONE phone call.

This phone call is proof that my system works

I’m so happy!   These months of hard, hard work are starting to pay off.  I never had any doubt that my new system would work, but without any proof, it was still just a dream.  Now the dream is coming true, and momentum is building.

“Thank yous” are in order

I’d like to send a shout out to my hubby, Greg, to Mon, Poc, and Darkgoyle, for their patience, help, and support; to Tom for believing in me, to Sean at Psychotactics for the knowledge that he has shared with me (which has become the basis of my No More Cat and Mouse system); and to my dear Mastermind friends who have supported me and encouraged me along the way:

Thanks, Guys and Gals!

What’s next?

I am still working on HomebySchool and I am making it really, really cool.  Once it’s ready,  I will start sharing it with a few fellow agents so that together, we can change the Cat and Mouse world of Internet Leads – and get lots of more productive phone calls.

Don’t miss out on future updates on how the dream is coming along – Subscribe!

Park your ice cream truck where there are hungry clients

On a hot summer day, where would you park your ice cream truck to sell ice cream? Probably in front of a busy park full of kids and their parents, right?

In contrast, if you were selling winter items (say, scarves), you would do better setting up a temporary stand inside the Mall right before the holidays.  - You probably wouldn’t do well selling scarves out the ice cream truck in the middle of summer…

It is the same with your real estate blog. To promote it, you have to go where your potential clients are – or else, you won’t have much luck finding readers (i.e. potential clients).

So where do potential clients hang out online (and offline)?

It depends on a couple of things:

1. Who do you want to engage with?
2. Can you ask a real person?
Let’s take them one at a time:

1. Who do you want to engage with?

This is a very important question to know the answer to.  If we were to say “I want to engage with everybody” or “with anybody who listens” then we wouldn’t know where to start looking.

You could also post anywhere and hope for any result. This would be the Shotgun Approach.  But with the Shotgun Approach, the results are usually not too impressive.

Or, you could start by clarifying the kind of person that you want to attract to your conversation. For example:

Local Sellers
If you are trying to connect with sellers in a certain neighborhood, then you can have a better idea of where to find them.   Your best bet is to find them through a local approach – either through their Property Owners’ Association or at a local event, through farming (using postcards), or even by placing signs on the street.

Your message on the postcards or the signs would be also local in nature – especially if you invite them to visit your blog with local information.

Another example are out-of-town buyers.

Out-of-town Buyers
Finding local sellers is in contrast, for example, with wanting to engage with out-of-town buyers who are relocating their families to the DC area.   In this case,  you wouldn’t want to focus locally. Instead, the focus could be to find these buyers wherever they are in the world.

But where in the world are they?

This takes me to point #2:  Can you ask a real person?

2. Can you ask a real person?

The easiest way to focus your efforts is to go directly to the source: simply ask a real person who is a good example of the people who you want to find.

Going back to the example of connecting with out-of-town buyers, you can ask a relocating mom where she hangs out online.  You could start by asking where she goes to find real estate information about the area where she’s moving to, but you don’t have to stop there.

You can also ask where else she hangs out online – in general. It can be that she spends a ton of time on Facebook (or Google+) connecting with her family & friends.

Or maybe she spends time on Twitter catching up on baby trends. Or maybe there is a “mommy” forum that she visits where other frequent relocators support each other.

You know where to find her – now what?

Once you know where your relocating mom hangs out online, you can come up with a strategy for sharing valuable info on the online venue that she frequents (without selling anything), and attracting people like her to your blog – which should also have information tailored specifically for her needs.

Let’s see how asking a real person would apply to the local sellers example.

About the local sellers example

Going back to the local sellers, you could also ask a seller who lives in the neighborhood that you are interested in where she hangs out (online or offline).

Online, maybe it’s also Facebook, but then you could create a page with news about that neighborhood, or ”Like” an existing neighborhood page and contribute regularly to it.

Offline, it could be that she likes going to the nearby Starbucks – and you could plan to do something related to that Starbucks – maybe a free “sell your home seminar” (and throw in a free coffee).

But – what if you don’t want to limit yourself to engaging with one kind of person (just local sellers or just out-of-town buyers)?

What if you don’t want to limit your audiences?

Then, you can choose another real person who fits a second (or third, or fourth) profile (such as “first-time home-buyer”) and ask him/her. Once you have your second profile, you tailor your content strategy to that 2nd person’s needs.   Sure, you can probably reuse some of the same content, but it’s best to make it as appropriate to your audience as possible.

Now, you won’t want to be too quick to have multiple kinds of people because you’ll find yourself spread too thin.  It’s better to start with one kind of person, work on that project for a while, then see how it goes.

If you do a good job, I think that you’ll find that you have great results and won’t want to rush to start with a new audience from scratch.

In short, finding potential readers for your blog comes down to two things:

1. Decide who you want to engage with, and
2. Ask a real person where s/he hangs out

Once you have answers to those questions,  you can come up with a strategy as to what you will be talking about on your blog and where you will be focusing your efforts to find people to read your blog.

Next step

Please leave a comment below with your thoughts – or questions – about where you think your potential clients hang out online. Maybe we can come up with a good exchange of ideas.  :)

Can flying an airplane be easier than promoting my blog?

Flying a plane seemed so simple. It seemed simple because I was given a step-by-step system to follow.

Then I started blogging

Fast forward to a few months ago, when I jumped on the blogging bandwagon – specifically on the “blogging for business” bandwagon.

My intention with blogging for business is to write about useful stuff that potential clients like to read, so that I can earn their trust and – eventually- their business.

Luckily, blogging didn’t sound very difficult at first:

1. Get myself a blog – check
2. Write good stuff – check (I hope!)
3. Get a decent number of quality followers – not so check.

To remediate the lack of a decent number of followers, I did a bunch of research. And now I understand the basics of what needs to be done to build a following:

Write good stuff AND promote it

It all sounds so easy – in theory – but in practice, I struggle with promoting my blog. The experts say that the first thing to do is to have a regular posting schedule.

First, a regular posting schedule

First of all, to be able to promote good stuff, one must keep to a regular and, ideally, an often-enough schedule of posting.

My solution to posting regularly is to commit to a schedule, and treat it like a customer meeting (I wouldn’t leave a customer hanging!).

But in order to post content to the blog, it first needs to be written.

The struggle to find the time to write

I struggle to find the time to write content for my blog. After all, I have a full-time real estate job. Sometimes I feel that promoting my business through a blog and social networking is my second full-time job!

The issue with the second full-time job is that I don’t usually get to it during daytime (i.e. awake and profitable) hours, so I don’t get to it as often as I’d like.

How I’m making time to write

My solution for finding time to write on my blog is to prioritize, schedule, and do it early in the day for it to actually happen.

And what if I can only write a little bit each day? The next thing that I had to do was to make peace with what I can actually produce blogging-wise.

Make peace with what I can produce

Once I have a realistic plan for posting content regularly, if it means producing content once a week or just once every two weeks, so be it. I have to remember than I’m not competing with all those wonderful, prolific pro-bloggers who are able to blog 4 or more times a week.

Let’s summarize my solutions for writing regularly for my blog:

These are my solutions for writing regularly for my business blog:

1. Commit to a regular posting schedule,
2. Prioritize, schedule, and write early in the day, and
3. Make peace with my own plan of what I can produce

Now, once I’ve created content on a regular basis, what good does it do if it sits there all lonely in some corner of the blogosphere? After all that work, it deserves to be shared (i.e. PROMOTED)!

I need a system for promoting my blog

Promoting my blog is where I need to come up with a system. I’ve learned about how to use Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, and about participating on other blogs to promote my blog.

In theory, it seems doable, but obviously I’m not doing too well because it all seems so time-consuming. I need a system to get it done without it feeling like a second full-time job.

Perhaps I don’t have the right tools, and clearly, I lack a system. I need a system like the one I used for flying a plane.

Any of you successful blog pilots out there willing to share your successful promotion system?

Here are some questions to get you started:

1. What tools/software to do use?
2. Do you have a system for promoting your posts?
   (i.e. Do you do it throughout the day, or at set times? Do you have checklists?)

I look forward to your responses below so that I can get on with “flying” with my blog.

Do you have a follow-up system?

Me: “Jack, how was your aunt Jenny’s house hunting trip?”
Jack: “Oh, it was successful, she found a house, made an offer and she’s closing at the end of the month”
Me: “Great!”
Jack: ” …but we didn’t buy it through the agent that you referred us to because we didn’t end up connecting…”
Me: “WHAT?”

*****
A few weeks ago, my friend Jack asked me for an agent recommendation for her aunt Jenny who was moving to my State (Virginia). Since Jenny wanted to buy a house outside of my area of expertise, I arranged for a referral with an agent whom I knew.

I got Jenny’s info, called the agent about the referral, and made sure that they both connected.

Jenny’s home buying was fairly straight forward

She knew what she wanted, she had made a one week trip to find it, and she had planned to pay cash for the home.

And sure enough, she came, she met with an agent, saw about 4 or 5 houses, made a cash offer above list price and settled within 4 weeks.

There was just one big problem

The problem was – Jenny didn’t meet with the agent that I referred to her. Why?

Because the referral agent didn’t follow up with her …

The referral agent didn’t follow up with Jenny

How much did the agent lose by not making one phone call?
In this case, about $4,000.

And how much did it cost me?

A small referral fee and the embarrassment with my friend Jack who will most certainly hesitate to ask for help from me in the future. Plus, possibly any future business from Jenny.

Boy, did I learn a valuable lesson

How much money have I left on the table through the years because I didn’t consistently follow up with a potential client? Sometimes we focus so much on acquiring new clients that when we get the opportunity to increase our ROI (return on investment) – we’re too busy to actually do the one thing that will get us closer to making money: consistently following up.

To be fair, most of us are prompt to return the first phone call and then we agree to “talk again next week”. And poof! Off goes that good intention.

So, what’s the solution? Well, consistently following up of course!

How can we follow up consistently?

A follow up system is essential to consistently following up. And I don’t mean a fancy, expensive piece of software. I simply mean a written guideline with steps to follow EVERY SINGLE time. It could be as simple as:

“After every phone or email conversation about or with a potential client, make an appointment in my calendar to get back to them. Repeat.”

Summary

Having a system that we follow EVERY SINGLE time avoids having to remember loosey-goosey promises of “we’ll touch base next week” (In which “next week” turns into “maybe never unless I happen to remember at some point”).

And I’m sure that when we do this simple thing of following up consistently, we’ll start seeing better returns from our marketing efforts.

Next Step

Do you have a system for following up consistently? Please share it with us in the comments below.

Friends don't let friends make big mistakes

Would we let a child burn her fingers on the stove because we left her unattended?  Of course not.  When we are caring for a child, we check in periodically to make sure that they are safe.  We also make sure to be nearby to offer our help when needed.

Similarly, we should extend this same level of care and guidance to our clients, family, and friends.  We should stay close to keep them safe and to be of help when they need us.

But our clients, friends and family aren’t children, so what kind of help would they need?

As Real Estate professionals, we have valuable knowledge

In our case, it’s about Real Estate and related fields.  For example, we have contacts to help Cousin Emma with a credit issue;  we have tools to help our best friend calculate whether buying is a better alternative to renting;  and we have the knowledge to help a client find the right home based on the right school for their needs.

Yes, Real Estate is how we make a living, but many of us also believe that we can make a difference and improve someone else’s life one house at a time.

However,  we can’t make a difference if we don’t reach out and offer our help

In order to help, we need to be tuned-in to other people’s lives and we need to be available to lend a hand when the opportunity comes up.  It is our responsibility to stay in touch if we truly care and want to help others.

Recently, I had an unfortunate experience that made me feel abandoned

This experience made me feel lost and wishing that I had gotten some guidance before I made a mistake:  

I was planning a new venture and worked out the details all by myself.  I did some research, and jumped in hoping for the best.   I spent valuable time and money coming up with a solution.  This solution turned out to be “just ok” and not really what I needed, but it was the best that I could do on my own.

Later, I found out that someone very close to me had the knowledge and the tools to help me.  But because we didn’t stay in touch, I didn’t know to ask for help.  And I had wasted valuable time and money. 

At that point, I wished that I had received a little supervision and guidance before I made the mistake.   Most of all, I felt hurt because I really could have used the help, and the lack of guidance was the result of not staying in touch in the first place.

But… could I be doing the same to my friends and family?

This experience opened my eyes and made me realize that I was probably doing the same thing to many friends, family, and clients by not staying in touch.  Was I leaving them out in the cold to figure things out on their own?  Was I allowing them to make mistakes, and to burn their fingers on the stove?   All because I didn’t stay in touch…

Staying in touch is not about selling

Before this experience, I always thought that offering help and Real Estate advice would be annoying to people. I thought that they’d think that I was trying to sell to them. So I stayed away until they came to me.  But I was wrong.  I think that if we have the right intentions, people will appreciate us being in touch and will reach out when they need our help.

Staying in touch is not about selling; it’s about our responsibility to keep our clients, friends, and family safe from making a big mistake.  It’s about caring for them, and being available to help.

Summary

• When we care for a child our job is to keep them safe
• We should extend the same level of protection toward our clients, family, and friends
• Because we have specialized Real Estate knowledge, we have a responsibility to guide the people around us and to help them avoid making a big mistake in that area
• To be able to help, we must stay in touch and be available to lend a hand when required.
• Staying in touch is not about selling – it’s about caring and being available to help

Next step: Stay in touch

1. Make a point of touching base with clients, friends, and family through phone calls, visits, and hand-written notes.

2. Online, when you make your Facebook and Twitter rounds, keep an eye out for friends and followers who could use your help.  Remember that it’s not about selling to them – it’s about genuinely caring and offering to be there for them.

Photo

Social media is like a cocktail party

Most of us have heard that Social Media is like being at a giant cocktail party. When one arrives at a cocktail party, the right thing to do is to listen in on some conversations, then add a polite comment to it, introduce oneself to others and definitely respond promptly to comments directed at us.

Some things not to do at a party are:
To immediately start handing out business cards, or to interrupt conversations with our sales pitches. That would be dorky, annoying and unnatural.

This advice sounds like common sense, right? Well, the same cocktail party rules apply online with social media.

But, how are we supposed to make money by “mingling” at a cocktail party?
After all, we’re busy business people and we are hoping to join the social media craze to capitalize on it, not to simply socialize.

The missing link that allows for businesses to enter the social conversation is: valuable content
I find that there is a critical piece of the cocktail analogy which has not been addressed much by the social media gurus. Let’s call it: having a “topic of conversation” (or as it’s being called now in online marketing circles: “valuable content”).

What do I mean by a “topic of conversation”?
At a cocktail party, perhaps we get lucky and are introduced as “the Real Estate expert”. Inevitably, we’ll get questions asked related to Real Estate such as:

1. How’s the market?
2. Are foreclosures really a good deal right now?
3. I heard that legislation xyz is coming and it will hurt my chances of selling.

And, at a cocktail party, we are keen to answer the questions
Being the experts, we answer something short but to the point and gauge their interest. If they seem like they want to know more, we can talk for quite a while about the topic at hand: we add examples, express our opinion, and happily give away the inside scoop. In essence, we turn that question into a juicy topic of conversation that may even attract other bystanders. Maybe at the end of the conversation we can invite them to give us a call or to get together to explore a specific situation further.

So how can we transfer these cocktail party questions and answers to social media situations?
On social media websites there is plenty of the social mingling happening – just like at a cocktail party. And once in a while, we might see a status update or comment with a question just like the ones we might get at the cocktail party such as “I’m relocating to Springfield” or “Does anyone know how the schools rank in the Fairfax School District?”

Those questions and status updates are perfect opportunities to offer a quick, friendly, and helpful response (but be careful to not overdo it – nobody likes a “know-it-all”).

If a few of those responses could benefit from a link to an article that you have written, for example, that might be the right time to share it.

As you can see, answering questions and commenting on others’ conversations are one way of using social media to help others.   But you can also start your own conversations.  There’s no need for you to be a wallflower!

Now it’s your turn to start a conversation – with valuable content
Another good way to take advantage of social media for our marketing is to actively start conversations with topics of interest. We do that by sharing interesting and relevant content in our area of expertise: articles, blog posts, videos, etc. on some of our own status updates and tweets.

That means, of course, that you must maintain a good blog or set of videos with quality content
Ideally, those articles, blog posts, videos, etc. are yours and not simply post a stock article or someone else’s video. Remember what people would want at a cocktail party: passion, opinion, juicy details. If you were to share someone else’s video or article, add your opinion and infuse your personality into it – just like you would do in real life.

Publish your valuable content on your own website
Be sure to publish your blog, articles, videos and any other good “topic of conversation” on your website. This way, you can have this “valuable content” available for your website visitors, which will help them know your point of view, experience your approach, start trusting you, and eventually, they’ll want to give you a call to explore their specific situation further.

Now, I know that some people will say that having listings on their site is what visitors want
These people cite “the gurus” who have said that visitors to real estate websites are looking for listings, listings, and more listings. Sure, having listings is a good thing to have too. But, in my experience, visitors jump around many websites looking for listings.

Valuable content keeps your visitors around longer
When you have valuable content on your website – in addition to the listings – it helps to slow your visitors down, stick around longer, and hopefully remember where they saw that really cool house – and call you to see it.

Summary:

• Social Media is like being at a cocktail party: First, listen. Then, make polite comments. Finally, join the conversation.
• Remember that passing out business cards right at the start is not very cool at a cocktail party. It’s not cool to blatantly promote one’s business on a social site either. You have to wait for the right time.
• Start relevant conversations based on other people’s questions in your area of expertise.
• Be sure to create videos and write blog posts based on questions.  This is your “valuable content”.  Post it on your website and share it.

Next Step:

If you would like to learn more about what kind of content would be considered valuable to discuss on your website and social networks – check out How to find out what your visitors really want and How to write interesting things on your Real Estate blog

Image source: photostock / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

"In fashion one day you're in and the next day, you're out" - Heidi Klum

Heidi Klum, the Supermodel and TV Producer, is famous for saying: “In fashion, one day you’re in and the next day you’re out”.

Marketing is very much like fashion, and what’s “in” right now, according to the experts, is New Media.

Right now, new media is all the rage. The experts say: if you are not in it, you are missing out.

One of the things that the experts recommend doing within the new media umbrella is blogging. But not just any blogging. They recommend “blogging for business” (i.e. having a business blog).

What exactly is a business blog?

A business blog is a blog in which you write about business topics. In our case as Realtors, we’d be writing about real estate matters (as opposed to writing about our trip to the beach or about the latest cookies that we baked).

But a business blog doesn’t have to be boring, it just has to be professional and stay on topic. In essence, a business blog is good way to provide valuable content for your readers (your current and future clients).

Having a business blog is a good idea because:

* It helps your website be found because of the unique content on your blog

For example if you have a post on your blog about a neighborhood and someone searches for that info, your website would come up as a result of their search.

* It helps potential clients trust you

Clients will get an idea of how you can help them; and what makes you unique.
Using the above example, if you are the expert in a neighborhood, and you blog about it, clients who are interested in that neighborhood will trust you as a good source of information, and they’ll be in a better position to trust you with a transaction.

But not all information that you could have on a blog leads to being found or trusted.

The trick to being found or trusted is to write about topics which your readers find valuable and interesting

How do you find what to write that would be interesting to your readers?

1. Visit forums and create an answer to real-life questions

One of my favorite ways to create blog posts is to go to the forums which your readers frequent and see what kinds of questions they are asking.

The idea is to take one of the hot questions, and answer it in detail in a blog post- ideally complete with pictures and anything else that would be helpful to complete the post.

2. Expand on current events

Another way to create an interesting blog post is to write about current events, such as mortgage changes, or legislation which affects real estate transactions. Simply copying the news item isn’t going to cut it. Your readers will want your editorial telling them how this event affects them and how to make the most out of it.

3. Revisit past comments

When you have a blog going for a little while, you will have comments on your posts. These comments are a conversation between the readers and you. From these conversations, you could extract a few new ideas which could be the beginning of a new, fresh and interesting post.

It all seems pretty straight forward, but I’m sure that you’ll briefly consider a couple of shortcuts to make your writing faster and easier.

Here are two of the shortcuts to avoid:

* Copying someone else’s content. Even if it is free, public content, it won’t have your usual style. You’re better off quoting the source and adding your own opinion/comment to it. Much like you would do if you blogged about current events. This way, it will have additional value which your readers will appreciate.

* Blogging exclusively about your listings. Avoid posting a listing just for the sake of it. Blogging about a listing could be done gracefully, and made interesting for everbody. Write an post like the way that newspapers write an article about a fancy home for sale; with lots of juicy details that are not found on the MLS listing, info on the neighborhood, things to do around, where to go shopping, etc. Make it a story interesting to read for anybody who lands on the site.

Summary

* New media experts recommend blogging for business
* Blogging for business means writing business-related articles on a blog
* A business blog can help your website be found and can help you gain trust among your readers (i.e. potential clients)
* Three ways to find inspiration on what to write about: Forums, Current Events, Past Comments
* Two shortcuts to avoid: Copying content, blogging about listings

Next step

Do you have a blog? What is your favorite source of inspiration for writing your posts?

Accuracy of calculations allowed Apollo 11 to land on the Moon

Note: I cross-posted this article from my real estate blog at Right School Right Home, because I think that it offers an interesting point for my fellow Realtor friends.

On July 20th, 1969, the Apollo 11 landed on the Moon. This feat was extraordinary for many reasons, one of which is the accuracy of the calculations which allowed the spacecraft to reach its intended target.

What would have happened if the calculations weren’t exact, but rather a close approximation? Would a 1% margin of error made a big difference? How about a 10% or even a 25% margin of error?

Selling or buying a house isn’t as complicated as landing on the Moon

But… wouldn’t you want to have the most accurate information regarding the value of a house? What if the value that is being quoted is off by 10% or even 25%?
Let’s see – if the average home price in Fairfax, VA is around $400,000 , a 10% margin of error would be equivalent to $40,000. A margin of error of $40,000 isn’t insignificant…

Do you know how accurate are Zillow’s Zestimates?

Per their website, the Zestimate margin of error for the United States is 12.3%. The Further, their tables report that only 23% of the time are their Zestimates within 5% of the actual house price.

Wow.

That means that each house has a little over a 1/5 chance of being accurately “Zestimated” within 5% of their true value. If we use an average home price of about $400,000, five percent is $20,000… That’s twenty thousand above OR below the actual sales price.

What is the issue with Zillow’s Zestimates?

Is it a problem with their algorithm? Zillow’s “secret formula” (as they call it) is…well, secret. So only they know how it works and what stuff goes in it. But they do employ fancy math wizes called “statisticians” who are constantly fine-tuning their formula. I, personally, don’t think that their secret formula is faulty.

So what is it then, that causes such margin of error?

1. The data is delayed
2. The data is only partial
3. The formula-only approach

1. The data is delayed

One issue with Zillow’s formula is that it uses data is that its based on closed transactions (meaning homes that already sold and in the public records). The issue with public records is that it can take quite a while for them to be updated. In certain cases, when the real estate market moves rapidly, a delay of a few months can mean that the data is quite a bit outdated.

2. The data is only partial

The other issue with using closed transactions exclusively is that one ends up Zestimating the current value of a property with transactions that ocurred, at best, a few months ago. In many markets, this can mean a significant margin of error.

3. The formula-only approach

The third issue that causes the Zestimates’ margin of error is their formula-only approach. The formula itself is most likely quite accurate, but calculating the value of a property is a little bit of science and a little bit of art. The formula can’t make use of the art part to fine-tune its equation.

What do I mean by art? Well, for example, what if the house being Zestimated has a fabulous kitchen, or a great view of the neighborhood pool? The formula has no way of including these very important factors into its calculation.

So how can you get a more accurate value?

You can get a more accurate value by getting a Competitive Marketing Analysis (CMA). A Realtor, while preparing a CMA not only uses closed sales, but also pending and active sales to estimate the value of a property.

Also, when a Realtor estimates the value, it can add that little bit of art needed to arrive at a more accurate estimation. The little bit of art includes elements which directly affect the value off a property (such as a fabulous kitchen, or a view to the neighborhood pool); as well as how the property compares today to its competition.

Zillow knows the limitations of their formula

Zillow knows the limitations of their formula-only based approach and recommends getting a CMA to find out a closer approximation to the value of a home.

As you can see, using Zillow to get an idea of the value of a property will provide, at best, a value with a margin of error of about 7%. For homes in Fairfax County, VA whose average price is around $400,000, this margin of error translates to about plus or minus $28,000.

This margin of error is due to the nature of the data that Zillow uses for its secret formula called a Zestimate – and its formula-based approach to calculating home values. The formula-based approach doesn’t take into consideration factors such as a fabulous kitchen or a wonderful view.

If you want the most accurate value, get a Comparative Marketing Analysis (CMA)

To get a closer approximation to the value of a home, ask a Realtor to provide you with a CMA. The CMA will include more recent data, as well as other features of the home to give you a much better idea of how much a property is worth.

If you are interested in getting a CMA for a home with the unique perspective of its school boundary, contact us at Right School Right Home We’ll be happy to help.

Kids aren't scared of going to school anymore

Going into the unknown is scary. It reminds me of when I first started in a new school. I didn’t know the school, I didn’t know the teacher and I didn’t know the other kids. I was scared.

Luckily, nowadays, most schools have an open house the week before school starts. This way, the kids and their parents go see their new classroom, tour the school, meet the teacher, and maybe meet a few classmates. That makes the first day of school a lot less scary.

Just like on the first day of school, picking one thing to specialize in is scary because we don’t know what lies ahead or how the future is going to turn out.

Some people think that specializing their business is scary because:

* they might lose clients who don’t fit in with the new specialty
* they could make a mistake and go after a specialty which isn’t profitable
* they worry that they might get bored with a specialty
… among other things.

So they don’t want to commit to it and get stuck…

I understand, choosing ONE specialty and committing to it can be very scary, especially when nobody else around us is doing it this way and we need to figure out if this is the right thing to do for our business.

But you know that some people have successfully specialized

Some people have specialized in other businesses and they have been very successful. And, deep down, you know that specializing is the right thing to do. But you just can’t get yourself to jump in and do it.

Or maybe you want to jump in and do it but you don’t know where to start

How about this?

Create your own “school open house” and get a peek of what could lie ahead. Start by specializing just your marketing message.

If the word specializing still scares you, let’s call it “focusing”

Start by focusing your marketing message. No, don’t do it for all of your marketing. Your current marketing plan stays the same. You just do it for a new, smaller, marketing plan with a very focused purpose.

What do I mean by a focused marketing message?

Well, simply put, I invite you to choose a segment of your market and focus your message to reach those specific people. People whom you probably weren’t specifically targetting, so this is an opportunity to reach even more people.

And don’t worry about affecting your current message, you can still keep executing your original marketing plan, and you don’t have to change anything about it. By adding a focused plan, you’re giving yourself an opportunity to test and see how focusing your message could work for you.

Let’s see how this could work with an example -

Jason is a real estate agent who works with buyers, sellers, investors, first-time buyers, relocations, foreclosures, short-sales, luxury homes, etc. Also, his territory is an entire city plus its metropolitan area.

In this scenario, Jason could start by choosing one type of client

Or he could select one area to target with his focused targetted message. Let’s say that he chooses to focus on targetting sellers within the city limits who need to sell their house through a short-sale.

Once he has chosen a focus for his message, he can create a plan and execute it

Jason’s marketing plan would involve putting up a quick website page with info just for these short-sale sellers, perhaps offering a report just for them, finding them on forums and answering questions, etc.

In the meantime, Jason can keep executing his original marketing plan

And, after a few months of executing both plans, he could evaluate whether his focused message is working or if it needs tweaking.

Maybe his focused plan works so well, that he decides to add a second area of focus with a completely separate marketing plan.

And maybe, he is so successful with his focused message that he decides to drop the generalized marketing and simply focus on this one message. At this point, guess what happens?

He has specialized his business!

Now back to you -

If you find yourself feeling uneasy, like Jason, about specializing your business, try focusing a marketing message toward attracting a specific kind of client, and compare the results with your current marketing results.

You might find out that picking one thing to specialize your business in isn’t as scary as the first day of school used to be.

What do you think?

Please post your comments below.

What's on your visitors' wish list?

Have you ever put together a wish list for items that you would like to receive for your birthday? Then the big day comes, and everybody comes to the party with all kinds of boxes filled with presents.   Sure, some of them will be surprises, and that’s fun. But you also have high hopes to receive some gifts from your wish list.

Instead, you find that you got a few good surprises, plus several repeat items which you already owned and don’t have a use for them.  And you got nothing from your wish list. Bummer.

This is the disappointment that visitors feel when they get to a website where they were hoping to find answers and instead, they found mostly stuff that they had already found elsewhere.   And off they go somewhere else to try to find fulfillment to their wish list.

The way around disappointing visitors is to build a visitor-friendly site
If you have read my previous post on Why website visitors are so hard to catch, you know that one way to build a visitor-friendly website is to give your visitors answers to the questions that they have.

The reason why it’s important to give your visitors the answers that they want is to make your site about them and about what they need instead of giving them stuff that they don’t need or have already found elsewhere.  Through the right answers, we give them something of value and ultimately build up trust and earn their respect, which later translates into sales.

But, how do we know what answers are our visitors looking for?
Well, that depends on what kind of questions they have.  To find out the exact questions, you’ll have to ask them directly.  But, you could start by thinking about what kinds of questions YOU would have.

For example, if you were relocating to a place where you’ve never been before, where would you start? What would you want to know?  When you figure these questions out, you’ll have a good first idea of where to start.

Once you have a first inkling of what questions your visitor might want answered, it’s time to ask one of your real-life visitors and see how close you got to what she really wants.

Chances are you are close enough, but not quite there

To get there, you need to ask.

First, who do you ask?
You ask one of your real-life clients who fits the profile of the visitor that you want to help out. So if you want to focus on helping seniors, find a senior that you know; if it’s relocations, find someone who just went through it.  Or, if your focus is on a neighborhood, find someone who recently moved there.

Then, you ask her, for example:

1. Why were you moving?
2. What parts of choosing a new home were difficult to figure out?
3. What parts were easy to figure out?
4. What kind of information did you wish was easier to find?
5. In an ideal world, if you had a website which would answer all your questions – what would it have in it?

You’ll want to record and transcribe the talk
It’s important that you have a written version of it which you can analyze and study later on.  This is your visitor’s wish list. Make sure that you’re paying attention to what she wants!

Once you have the transcribed talk, what do you do with that info?
In your website copy, use the exact words that she used during the talk and directly answer the questions that she had.  More than likely, your other visitors will find that this is exactly the information that they were looking for.

But is it a good idea to just ask one person instead of sending out a survey to hundreds of people?
First of all, compiling hundreds of answers is a lot of work. Secondly, you’ll find that there will be many similar answers and that you didn’t have to survey all those people to get that basic insight.

Finally, if you don’t use the exact wording of ONE person, and instead average out what everybody said in the survey, you’ll be generalizing and speaking directly to no one.

Bottom line, it’s best to stick with one person who accurately represents what your visitors want – because that’s what’s going to keep them on your site.

What I learned from interviewing the ideal visitor to my website
When I started building the Right School, Right Home website, I thought that offering a search of homes by school was a good idea.  After that initial idea, I asked my ideal client what she thought about it and what she had gone through when her family got transferred and she had to relocate to our area.  I also asked her what she felt was missing during her search.

What I found is that she wanted something somewhat different than what I had in mind for the website.  So I listened, and ultimately created the site aiming at fulfilling her needs.

Let’s recap

Next step
If you want to keep more visitors on your website, I strongly encourage you to find an ideal visitor and set up a quick interview. You’ll see that this is the best way to find out what your visitors really want.