How do you know how much to spend marketing real estate?

Some interesting survey data that just became available should be of help. A video marketing company in the US surveyed 1,304 real estate agents to see how much they spent. There isn’t a lot of info here, but what there is is gold.

One thing that jumped out at me: The agents surveyed said a significant portion of their listing budget was spent on newspapers, even though only 20.4 percent said they think this medium is “effective.”

Yet, 49 percent felt that online ads were “very effective.” The reason more agents aren’t putting their money where the results are is that they feel the vendors want print advertising.

Read the press release.

Read the eMarketer story.

Google Trends has allowed users to compare the the number of searches for specific keywords. You could compare how popular searches for “Sydney Real Estate For Sale” compared against “Sydney Property For Sale”. Just recently Google has added the ability to compare actual visitors to specific sites. Your site has to produced significant traffic to appear on their radar so virtually all individual agent websites don’t produce the traffic to show, but lots of sites do as per the examples.

These are some graphs I have created using the tool. The graphs speak for themselves but there are a couple of things worth specifically noting. Look at MyHome since the money got turned off. Shane definitely has some work ahead of him just to return it to is previous traffic levels.

Also, have a look at the domain and REA comparison. REA really lost ground very late 2007 however they bounced back. I remember commenting on this at the time but have never revisited it. In recent months, REA looks to be more effected by the slowdown in the industry although this could just be the resolution of the graph too.

I could not help put in the trading post versus ebay graph given my recent post on Sensis. How they think they can compare their numbers is crazy. Interesting to see that whitepages and yellowpages traffic is down substantially over the past year.

Anyway.. on to the graphs (please note.. if you want to have a play yourself to get the actual traffic numbers you have to have an account or else you get the trend lines only, I think)

I shrinked the graphs so they appear on the web page better but have linked them to our image host so you can view the slightly larger versions yourself or you could even visit Google Trends and run your own report at Google Trends.

One of my favourite websites is called TED. TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader. The annual conference now brings together the world’s most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes). There are some great talks and you really should indulge every now and then.

TED has now released the Top Ten Talks of all time, I am sure this will be updated in the future, but it brings together some great insights and I hope you enjoy watching these. There are hundreds of talks here but listed below are the TOP Ten as voted by readers. You will see a young guy  (Jeff Han) whose technology is now used in everything from Microsoft’s Surface Technology to the iPhone. Read more »

The search giant Google announced the beta of its FREE advertising planning tool for advertising companies that will simply crush the likes of Nielsen Netratings and ComScore (whose share price dropped 20% on this announcement) and sent executives panicking for a response.

“As we understand it, Google is getting data through the Google Toolbar; if they are, it may not be easy for other companies to replicate such a large install base,” says Sandeep Aggarwal, a Collins Stewart analyst.

Yahoo are also about to follow with their own platform, however they do not have the same traffic measurement as Google. Read more »

Fiasco : Humiliating Failure - a total failure, especially a humiliating or ludicrous one

This is to form a summary of what we do know to date, and what has been reported in the comments of the original post about www.realestate.com.au email delivery failure.

Realestate.com.au had a failure to “several of the email servers” and on Thursday they freed the stuck mail queues without any advice to agents which resulted in agencies around Australia being flooded with old email enquiries.

Because the enquiry emails give very little clue as to the date the buyer actually made the enquiry agents reported following up buyers as though they were fresh enquiries. Understandably buyers reactions ranged significantly. If REA had advised of the email problems immediately much of the embarrassment, humiliation and frustration encountered by agents could have been avoided.

Other than releasing the old email enquiries, not one initiative or announcement was undertaken by REA to advise agents of what had happened and to minimise the damage to agents. Read more »