This cracks me up! Wanted to do a Friday fun post about it on St. Paul re blog, which is my good blog, but decided that it works on my bad blog just as well. Welcome to Friday on the weenie!
There are some Google ads on the right side bar of my good blog, the one with the pictures and real estate stuff all over it. Other bloggers have asked me why I allow competitors to advertise on my site. These advertisers are real estate agents but, are not competing with me on the Internet.
Today I clicked on one of the ad links because it said "Free Home Search", cracks me up, kind of like a link to Target stores on line that says "shop for free". Since when does anyone charge consumers to search the web for items, including homes that are for sale.
So I clicked on the link, and put in all of my search criteria, and clicked submit. No homes appeared on the screen because I did not fill in the form which had required fields including one for my email address.
No this real estate agent is not competing with me. All of my sites have a home search button on them. They don't state that they are free but anyone can search with out leaving their contact information and I don't have any way of billing them, so I guess it really is free.
I know agents who have sites that require people to sign in to search for homes. The idea is that they can "capture leads". I love the use of the word "capture" because that is what they are trying to do. These same agents hide behind trees and jump out and grab anyone walking by who might be talking about houses and wrestle them to the ground and beg for business.
Once the lead is "captured" then the agent starts dripping. I love the idea of dripping. Dripping is sending spam, which is unsolicited email, on a consistent basis. In real estate we call it a "drip email campaign" because it sounds classier when we explain it to our families than if we said, I spammed a few thousand people to day, how was your day honey?
Don't we all just love spam? Almost as much fun as getting calls from telemarketers. Just can't wait to open my email to see who might be dripping on me today! Who ever it is I am sure we will become the best of friends through the dripping process.
To home buyers I would like to say that no one will charge you money to use their on line home search. Home searches are free. If you find a search where you have to give up contact information to search, just go find another. There are zillions, and I do mean zillions of home search sites out there.
To real estate agents I say, your future clients are not leads that want to be captured or dripped upon. Instead they are people that may have a real estate need. In general you will need to build a relationship with them which will involve giving, if you expect to get. Give people information and advice first, then get their contact information and stay in touch with them. Add value, don't capture.
I second your weenie award!
Excellent advise and business model.
Thanks ladies. I was not sure if there were any readers. It has been kind of quiet in here. 🙂
QUIET!!! I would count my blessings after the rocky way your stand started!
I agree spammers deserve THE award.
This is pretty darn tame for an evil site.
I have never captured or dripped, but I have thought about how much easier it would be if I could have some kind of subliminal message on my sites that says, “You WILL buy a very expensive home from Maureen.” I bet it would work.
I often wonder if anybody actually fills out those forms and if so, why? They can go to another Realtors site and search without capture. Why bother with the form?
Maureen M – Bad is in the eye of the beholder. 🙂
Maureen F – you don’t have subliminal messages on your web sites yet? 🙂
Laurie – I used to work with an agent that had the form that had to be filled out. He got more sign up’s than I did but fewer of them became clients. He spent a lot of time following up but did not get any business through it.
Teresa,
In my mls there are hundreds if not thousands of web sites offering free RE home searches. The majority are exactly the same. Some have prettier wrappings but many are the same search engine.
I have the free ones on my web site as well. I also have 2 stand alone websites that are real estate search engines. They do require that you sign up to use them. Unlike the other search engines these provide the following.
(1)Price range increments broken down to $1,000 (2)defined area search down to a neigborhood of a few blocks if you choose. (3) substantial list of search criteria (4) results are emailed to you ( lots of folks do that ) Difference is that the results arive on a Intuitive map with streets and street names. (5) matches have a Photo,full listing description, and the Address of the Property.
In our area there are very few search engines that will deliver this type of info and most will not deliver the address. I average 2 sign ups a day. The feed back that I get from the Buyer,s is fabulous. There moods are generally positive.
Just my take on it.
Great post. I signed up for a drip system for about 2 months. I got more negative comments on it than positive ones so I stopped! It was doing me more harm than good. I want a relationship with people- not to upset them.
I just put in my email address and clicked on “remember personal info?” Does that mean I’m going to be getting regular emails from you now? I sure hope so, the irregular ones are beginning to bug me.
Jeff – either your spam blocker is blocking me out or mine is blocking you. I rarely get a response when I send an email so I just kind of gave up. So I guess I could say your irregular emails bug me too. 🙂 I can’t beleive we are having this conversation on the weenie. Heck I knew this blog would come in handy for something. Have a great Easter and don’t feed those kids of yours too much chocolate. 🙂