Using media in today's business environment.
It amazes me how some businesses resist change, and the business I am talking about specifically is the Real Estate Business.
For the last four or five years I have been pitching real estate companies to use the same "new media techniques" that other service companies and retail companies have been using -- and for the past four or five years for the most part all I've been told is "it won't work for us."
What "won't work" you ask? Well, the use of video to market real estate whether it be a home for sale or a condo for sale or even a business property for sale.
Real Estate agents -- more than any other business -- continue to do things the same old ways. In fact, many real estate agents today are still marketing homes for sale the same way real estate agents in the 1950s marketed homes -- with signs, and flyers, and doorhangers, and traditional "open houses."
Meanwhile, the rest of the world seems to have caught on to what new media can accomplish.
For example, instead of sitting in a house for six hours on a Sunday for an "open house" a real estate agent could do a "walk through presentation" of a house on video and put it on YouTube (the second largest search engine) and put it on their own website and put it on Facebook and Twitter and LinkedIn and let potential customers tour the home at anytime 24/7 without the problems of getting the carpet dirty or annoying the neighbors with parked cars up and down the street.
Real estate agents still depend on mailers -- what the rest of the world calls "junk mail" that most likely never gets read and ends up in landfills.
Real estate agents still depend on newspaper ads -- ignoring the fact that newspaper circulation has steadily been eroded over the years and there is no guarantee anyone who buys a paper will even look at the page where the real estate ad appears.
Real estate agents may have websites but they don't know how to make use of their websites. They don't include videos of the properties, they don't use photos and have text descriptions that would prompt higher rankings in search engines and results from a search.
Real estate agents -- it's time to wake up. All other businesses realized years ago that before shoppers go shopping they check the web first. They no longer let their fingers walk through phone books but instead use their fingers to scroll and click on computer pages.
If I had a home to sell, I wouldn't list it with any real estate agent unless they could show me a plan to market it with a 2013 marketing plan including web videos, web pages, online descriptions and marketing to match what consumers are doing when they are looking for homes themselves.
If a real estate agent came to me and said "I will put up a sign on your front lawn and hold two open houses" I would probably either storm out of their office or push them out the front door if they were in my home.
The reality is a sign on my front lawn will have a limited reach -- the small number of drivers who pass by. And the open houses? Well, everyone knows that most real estate agents use open houses to find buyers for their other properties on the market and they won't necessarily be pushing your home for a sale.
Furniture companies, window companies, garage door companies, kitchen remodeling companies, solar power companies and other companies selling home improvements all know about the strengths of video and TV advertising and marketing. But the people who are selling the actual homes -- the real estate agents -- still shun the idea of spending money on mass media and the Internet, where home buyers look first.
I have to ask why? What makes real estate people avoid the new media? Is it because their parent companies don't provide advertising and marketing support for the Internet and for TV? Or is it because no one ever said to them "it's okay to use video on the web and on TV"?
Once in a while, some real estate agent decides to do a cable TV show with exterior still photographs of their listings -- and it fails. Of course it fails. Who wants to look at still pictures of home exteriors when third graders can create entertaining videos on YouTube?
Unfortunately, when the "still picture shows" fail on cable TV the real estate agents become convinced that all TV and visual media will fail.
Meanwhile everybody else "gets it." Appliance companies have videos that demonstrate how the newest induction cook-tops work, and how toilets have sensors that can raise lids and seats. Furniture and bedding companies have videos that show the actual construction of their quality products. Computer companies use videos to show features and applications. Even colleges and trade schools use videos to showcase their courses and campus lifestyles.
But real estate agents? They are still stuck with signs, door hangers, and an open house -- while the rest of the world has embraced the new media and the advantages of inbound marketing which is putting videos and content online and allowing customers to find it, use it, and be sold by it 24/7.
