A while back I wrote a blog about my own personal experience in searching for property listing in another state in order to do a between the job interview, whirl wind tour of listings with my wife in a town we would be looking at moving to should she land a new job in that state. This is a follow up to that experience, as the owner of a Kansas business and property marketing company I have had to file away mistakes, problems, typo's, and a wide assortment of things I have learned over the years that did not have the desired result or down right made my company look bad to the customers I was seeking to gain or to my exsiting clients, so I could be darn sure it never happened again......Ever!
In my business if you make your client look bad you won't have clients very long, so it has always been very important to me that what ever we put our name on, it has to be the very best or it doesn't get released till it is 100% right, we don't want to make our clients' look bad or our company! Now that I have moved my company across the country and started rebuilding my company to be a Kansas 360 virtual home tours leader, I was approached by a friend to consider starting a new company with him in my new location, in order to do this new venture we would need to find between 40 and 80 acres of flat land in a prime location.
I was asked to search large acres of land in the area for sale, so I hit the internet and started searching for the right location and for the amount of acres we would be needing for this venture. As I soon found out today's acreage agents (some of them) are not up to speed on the use of internet sales and marketing. I had found the perfect parcel of land in a search, the listing info had a very poorly done black and white plot image taken from the space shuttle and it wasn't even oriented north or marked directionally. It had Google generated map with a pin marker placement of the property location. Well as I looked at the Google map, I knew the county roads out that way, it just so happens the property the listing agent had marked was the 40 acres of farm land that is right next door to one of my long time friends farm.
As I studied the map and plot image something just didn't jive right. So I opened up Google earth and took a look, none of the land marks would line up no matter how you moved around on Google earth. I tried to call the agent and ask if the land on his map was the right property I was looking at but no answer, I left a msg and called my buddy up and asked him if knew anything about it, he said no way that land was for sale he has been trying to buy it for 20 years. Well about and hour later my phone rang and it was the listing agent, so I opened up the map he had on the listing and tried to talk it over based on the roads shown on his map. This guy thought I was from mars or something as I described to him what I was looking at and after about a half hour and pointing out other known land marks such as "Lone Star Kansas" located a half mile north.
DING DING DING the light bulb lit up with this guy and he says "oh no my listing is two and a half mile to the north of there" well I was able to find the new location no problem, it was not what my business partner is looking for and I just wasted about two hours trying to research this listing using the wrong info posted by a listing agent. I would have been happy to add a link, but the listing is now gone and for 545.000 I doubt is was sold in this market, maybe? I lean more towards it expired and I wouldn't be surprised if the property owner had very little traffic.
Why would an agent not make sure they done their job right and double checked their online listings to see it's done right, why would an agent put their name on something so wrong? Why do such a disservice to your client? The day's of the old huge MLS book are long gone and they won't be back, so if your not up to speed in today's computer based world, then you should take advantage of the free or cheap classes offered by most B.O.R.'s or C.E. classes for computer. Now I know most of the people I'm talking about are not reading this because they can't even check out their listings, but hey it needed to be said. On the bright side all these poor performers sure do a good job of making those of you who do it right look good.
marketmedia,LLC DBA Kansas 360 Tours, Topeka Virtual Tours, Lawrence 360 Tours. Services for residential virtual home tours & commercial real estate tours, real estate photography, Aerial Photography. Is pleased to announce marketmedia,LLC has released it's youtube channel for enhancing it's Kansas virtual tours and providing our clients with more marketing power. Why? Well youtube is one of the larger search engines out there and a simple video home tour coupled with our proprietary SEO spider friendly tour code, it will have our clients, Kansas virtual tour getting more exposure in very little time, often less then 24 hours the video with the tour link will land on page one of a Google search for any of the keywords.
As the owner of marketmedia and having just moved my company to it's new location, I have property for sale and we did a virtual tour for that listing. My Realtor is not only one of marketmedia'sclients, she is a good friend too, so I needed to find out what all the youtube fuss was about. We did a test to see how well this idea would work for us based on what I had been reading, so I made a simple short video and uploaded it to youtube and attached the virtual tour link in the description of the video and I used my keywords wisely. Now I had talked my Realtor right after the upload around 6pm and she did a quick search of the address, city and zip, and nothing but the marketing that was already in place showed up, BUT I did a search again of just the address just before turning in for the night around midnite, and BAM there it was at the top of the page our test video with tour link!
That is pretty darn remarkable really, when you stop to think, how many Virginia Drives are there in the USA? Yet a simple search of my address by number and street only, NO city or zip code used in the search. My agents name also shows linked to the video and the tour we already had online. After this little test I ran it was decided that having our own marketmedia youtube channel was the way to go and we would offer this tool to our clients who wish to unleash the power of youtube without having to take the time to do all the work time & time again for each of their listings.
When we couple this youtube channel with our large Kansas virtual tour distribution portaland social bookmarks code, you'll find one of the best real estate marketing values for your money. Not only do we go to your listing and take your professional high quality images for your MLS & marketing needs, we build you the best SEO friendly virtual tour on the market and we can add your listing to our youtube channel along with the social network book marks, you'll have more coverage in one stop with a phone call and a click of your mouse your done and can focus on what you do best.....Sell real estate!
Hello active rain,
We have some exciting news to release to the public as well as our future clients in the northeast Kansas area of Topeka, Lawrence & Kansas City. marketmedia, LLC has moved is operation to Lawrence Kansas and is offering real virtual tours as Lawrence 360 tours.
Lawrence Kansas - January 23, 2009 - Kansas 360 tours a division of marketmedia,LLC has relocated corporate offices and service center to Lawrence Kansas. Kansas 360 tours, the newest addition to the marketmedia, LLC services, has partnered with RTV, inc. (RTV), the world's largest and fastest growing virtual tour software provider.
As a RTV full service Douglas County virtual tour provider, Kansas 360 tours offers state-of-the-art virtual tours and innovative online marketing solutions to local real estate agents and businesses throughout the northeast Kansas area of Lawrence, Topeka and Kansas City.
Read the full press release here for more information. We are very excited about this moved and to be offering our services to the local market as well as our national clients. Our products and service can't be beat by those impersonal national companies & "do it yourself" virtual tour companies that sell you software, charge you a monthly fee and make you do all the work. Our Virtual Tour Distribution network will get you the most bang for your marketing dollars. When you combine this with our tour reporting service and search engine friendly tours your be sure to stand out over your competitors who are still using poorly taken imagesand building slideshows with the same images a home buyer is seeing in the MLS and other marketing outlets.
Today it is more important than ever to incorporate social networking tools into your overall marketing strategy. Fortunately, marketmedia, LLC has just made your job much easier! Our social networking bookmarks on every tour, brings you marketing power by loading your Kansas virtual tour right to your favorite social networking sites such as, active rain, facebook, linkedin, digg, mixx and many other sites.
The software powering your Kansas virtual tours now includes a Social Networking Tool that allows viewers to bookmark your tours within their social networks with just a click of their mouse! All you do is simply select 'Social Bookmarks' from the 'Share Tour' menu and the icons will appear at the bottom of the tour instantly. Share the news about this new tool with your sellers at your next listing presentation!
Let's review all you get when place an order with us
You get all this with one phone call and never have to leave the office and worry about taking photos or uploading them and fooling around with substandard image software taking hours out of your day you could spend on selling houses.
Hello AR,
Well it's been awhile that I've posted a blog, that would be due to me TCB and not having the time and that is a good thing, it means business is good. As a real estate marketing company owner in the Dayton & Cincinnati Ohio area www.marketmediallc.com. I always see listings in another light as those of you who sell listings. Well the time has come for my wife and I to look into making a move across the country and in what spare time we have we search the local area we would like to move to and house hunt.
As usual I can't help but see some awful marketing going on out there in the market place. The most common thing I see is 1. No photos or only one image 2. Poorly taken images 3. really bad virtual tours that are more fancy zoom in pans & fades that don't show the rooms 4. websites that list all the local listings but then in order to see any information about the listing the end user has to sign up. So today I'm posting to you all as a end user and NOT as a real estate marketer.
This deal with asking people to sign up and give you personal info and email address so you now have a lead generator is understandable from a business point of view, however from the shoppers point of view it is very VERY annoying. As a person who is now in the market to buy a new home in the location we are going to, I can tell you that if your one of these Realtors who do any of the things I numbered above, you are losing business!
The first thing I do and any other buyer who is searching the web will do is click the big red X! Because you limit your website viewers to seeing the information about a listing by requiring them to provide you with personal info for your lead generator you come across as the "used car salesman" and consumers hate the used car salesman, it is one of the biggest reasons why home buyers in today's market turn first to the web..... To avoid dealing with sales people who are pushy or who spam you because you have to sign up on their website in order to see a listing in more detail.
I'm here today to tell all of you out there, that there are a number of agents who we will not be doing business with next week while my wife and I are in the area we plan to move to, WHY? because you have limited our ability to do our home work and research. Had you not not done so and you were the listing agent or I took the time to click on your website, GUESS WHAT< I would have called you to set up an appointment to see the property! Consumers don't want your spam and sales calls from your lead generators, we'll call you. So any guess who's phone will be ringing next week? That's right your competitors across town!
So those of you who do this type of lead generating and use really bad photos and virtual tours in your marketing, and there is a lot of you out there, not only are you losing out on sales leads and clients, your doing a really poor job for your clients listing.
So your out there in the real estate world and you work hard to land a listing and now that you have landed an account, it's time to market the listing, like many other agents you try to skimp and save a few bucks, so you go ahead and buy it one of those "do it yourself " virtual tour systems and take only a few minutes to learn how to use it.
So you rush out to that new listing and start snapping photos and once you have your images you run back to the office and start to build your tour on your DIY system, thinking you done a bang up job, you pat yourself on the back and post the tour to the internet for the whole world to see. Well guess what, you never know just where your work will show up or who will see it, so it might be a good idea if you take the time to make the best impression you can so you provide the best possible service that you can to your client the seller and don't do anything to embarrass yourself on a world wide stage, let alone on the local level.
Just think what your competing agents in town will have to say about you at their listing presentation while trying win the same account you are, when you do high quality work such as this little gem here.
Link: http://www.visualtour.com/shownp.asp?t=1349114&prt=63 (highlight and right click for new window)
So moral of the story is if your going to shoot your own in house virtual tours then at least get the place cleaned up before the photoshoot or you risk looking really bad and like a lazy agent or an agent who is clueless as to what makes buyers and investor want to take a look at your listings, instead of having a good laugh and moving on to the next listing that was marketed like a real, real estate professional!
You know some things are better left to a trained professional photographer and virtual tour provider!
marketmedia,LLC DBA Kansas 360 Tours, Topeka Virtual Tours, Lawrence 360 Tours. Services for residential virtual home tours & commercial real estate tours, real estate photography, Aerial Photography.
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