Getting the Most From Your Advertising in a Challenging Marketplace

(Note from Dave: This is the outline of a presentation I was invited to give to a number of realtors, at a seminar sponsored by Friendly Mortgage, here in Philadelphia...)

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Advertising real estate in a down market reveals a set of contradictions which make the job of a marketing professional doubly challenging. At the same time that there are fewer interested buyers for your properties, there are often restrictions placed on marketing budgets, owing to shortages in cash flow. In a recession, marketers are asked to work harder, often with lower budgets.

With those concerns in mind, we usually advise our clients to step back and do some “big picture” auditing of their product and brand. Get them back to basics.

We begin by asking the question, “How much of our slow sales are due to the economy, weaknesses in our product or brand, or shortcomings in our advertising strategy?” A thorough audit addressing all aspects of your product and marketing strategy often yields results which can bring a clearer marketing message, with fewer financial outlays. We’ll talk about the economy later; for now let’s address the latter two topics...

Analyze Your Brand’s Strength

Back in the heady years of 2004 and 2005, real estate inventory was flying off the shelf. On top of the availability of easy money and a speculative spirit, Center City real estate was impacted by a genuine demographic shift which had more and more suburbanites taking a renewed interest in downtown living. Product at this time sold easily, owing almost exclusively to market conditions.

In a more challenging real estate sales environment, only superior product draws the smaller pool of buyers to your doorstep. In this climate, marketers and developers must ask themselves, “Is my real estate distinctly branded and does this brand have a unique voice in the marketplace?” Specific points to assess include:

• What are the real advantages my property has in the marketplace? Is it location? Price? Features and amenities?
• Is my brand making empty promises? Beware of the hollow, overly adjectivized copy that most real estate advertising uses. You should be especially mindful of tossing around words like “luxury” and “exclusive” unless you’re sure your product walks the walk. We’re not always sure what luxury is in the new construction real estate market, but sheet goods, Formica and wall-to-wall carpeting don’t qualify.
• Are these distinct selling virtues expressed in thematically consistent ways in all your advertising, i.e., does your brand speak in a consistent voice?
• Have you acknowledged the value of “lifestyle marketing” in your advertising, i.e., does your advertising tell a consistent narrative of the benefits of your product, rather than just listing a matrix of features? Concentrate on creating the image of a lifestyle which is greater than the sum of a list of features.

If, after analyzing your product, you determine there is a lack of distinction in the product itself, this needs to be corrected in one of two ways. Either the product itself needs changing or pricing needs to give...

Analyze the State of Your Marketing and Advertising

One good thing a recession does is that it forces you to reconsider spending decisions you’ve probably taken for granted for years. As part of the “wholistic audit” I earlier alluded to, we ask our clients to make a list of all their marketing expenditures. By figuring out how you’re spending your current marketing, you might think of cheaper, nearly-as-effective alternatives...

Below are some customary “big ticket” items developers spend money on, with some suggestions for increasing ROI and decreasing overall cost...

Print Advertising. Probably still the most expensive advertising developers do (unless they’re doing broadcast or radio,) print advertising is essential but pricey. Only you can know how well your print is performing but there are things you can do to either enhance the value of your print ads or validate their worth. Constantly scrutinizing for the basics is one way to do a quick “audit” on your print ads. Is there a call to action? Is it clear and obvious where the project is located? Is a central “value proposition” communicated in the ad? Finally, is there a lifestyle narrative or message? Finally, are you developing messaging which speaks to the unique circumstances (increased choices and lower pricing) which a recession presents?
Project Web Site. The central task of your project’s web site is to get the phone to ring and for prospects to make appointments to see your offering. As a sales tool, it has the unique ability to satisfy both the left and right brain goals of your advertising, namely, communicating specifics and details related to your project, as well as communicating -- through layout, photos and renderings, sound and animation -- the mood and lifestyle your project evokes. From a critical standpoint, the web site can be evaluated from the criteria offered earlier in my presentation. Over the long haul, your project’s web site is actually one of the least expensive of your marketing costs (exclusive of any search engine marketing you might undertake...)
Online Marketing and Communications. One thing we find our clients are increasingly interested in is leveraging the power of their web site and internet communications. Email blasts are inexpensive and can offer alternatives to a heavy reliance on print advertising. Develop a mailing list of every broker in the area in which your project is located. Hire us to design templates for you, so you can speak to this audience on a regular basis. Watch the value of your broker communications go up and your expenses go down.... Another tool our clients use increasingly is by using their web site or a special micro-site we design to augment your print advertising. Running a promotion in the paper this week? Direct your customers to a sub-page within your web site. That way, all traffic from the ad will be logged, giving you immediate feedback on your advertising return-on-investment...

Do Some Thinking About Economic Issues

We’re not financial guys, but we do have some thoughts about pricing and incentives strategies you might develop, in direct response to the overall sluggishness of the economy. Some of these are:

• Pricing. If your brand is all about luxury, be very careful about responding to market conditions by dropping pricing, and, if you do it, do it quietly. Part of the mystique of luxury brands is that they don’t go on sale. Besides compromising brand integrity, sales on luxury properties make buyers suspicious and cynical. “If the developer can cut his pricing 35% on this 2.5 million dollar condo, what does that say about the profits he was making prior to his sale?”

• Try upgrades over price reductions. Nobody likes to know their neighbor just paid twenty percent less than they did for the same condo. Rather than taking money right off the top of a new construction sale, try sweetening the deal with more amenities or incentivized financing.

The Franklin Institute, De-Institutionalized

Love it or hate it, The Franklin Institute has a new public face, even a new (shorter name): The Franklin. Founded in 1824, the Philadelphia science museum has been a popular tourist attraction, despite its on-again-off-again reputation as a dusty and dated destination for reluctant field-trippers. Hoping to attract larger audiences and improve its public appearance, the museum has booked blockbuster traveling exhibits, including the recent King Tut, Titanic and Body Worlds exhibits, which in my opinion are more spectacle than science.

The re-branding of the museum underlies the shift in The Franklin's public programming. What was once a dated and dusty science museum is now a major touring venue of glitzy 'edutainment.' Removing "Institute" from its name, The Franklin now positions itself as a contemporary, hip, and accessible attraction. Karen Heller of the Philadelphia Inquirer considers this shift to be a "dumbing down of science," which I think is a harsh judgment. Having worked for years at a competing museum in the Philadelphia area, I think their intentions are admirable; it's difficult to convince hundreds of people to take a risk, especially when everyone in the room is a PhD expert of something.

The execution of the rebranding, however, is a bit disappointing. Swayed by viral marketing trends (read: "cheap," in the non-profit world), The Franklin chose to spread the word about its facelift via Flash mobs bearing signs that say "curious?" accompanied by a cryptic URL. The URL, is pure fluff: random video clips with no explanation, all positioned beneath The Franklin's logo. I'm all for non-traditional advertising and innovating methods of communication, but only if there's some actual substance being conveyed. Go to http://www.curioustf.org/ and judge for yourself.

The lesson to be learned here is that content is key. You've got their attention now, but what do you do with it?

Sure, start a blog, put your company on Facebook, post low-budget videos on YouTube, but do it with a clear intention, not simpy for novelty's sake. Say something (something relevant), give your audience a reason to come back, initiate an dialogue with your audience. Don't do it just because everyone else, and don't do it because your competitor ISN'T. Do it because you have something to say that is said best via non-traditional methods.

Pumping Up Housing Hysteria in the Press

I’m sometimes not sympathetic when homebuilders complain to the press that they unfair press coverage, but consider this:

Yesterday, MSNBC ran a story that new home sales were down 2.6 percent in the month of June. Today’s front page headline story about housing is entitled “Still slumping: New-home Sales Drop Again.” If you actually read that article, you’ll discover that the figures quoted yesterday were actually revised significantly downward, from 2.6% to .6%! Yet, still the article depicts an environment of gloom and doom. Finally, if you read the last paragraph of the article, they break the figures down by geography and, lo and behold, the Northeast actually experienced a 5.3% new sales increase. (Good news for those of us in Philadelphia...)

It just goes to show that trusting national news outlets to gain a snapshot of regional real estate markets is risky business…

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/25848138/

More Thoughts on Online Marketing

(I've been reading alot about online marketing strategies lately. Turns out it is really complicated stuff! I can say that with authority because, after all, I'm an industry professional...)

Seriously, though. We've been advising our clients for quite some time that getting noticed on the web takes a trifle more than hiring us to design a site for you and calling it a day. Bearing this in mind here is (yet another) two item list of important dos and don'ts fer gettin' yourself noticed on the web.

1. Don't ask us to design a web site for you all in Flash and then, months later, ask us to optimize it for SEO.

This seems like a simple one for folks in the industry, but the scenario has recurred so many times in our client histories that we can't seem to mention it often enough. Many times we're asked to design a site for a project where a real-world example that the client likes is referenced. Often that site is a beautifully executed Flash web site with soundtracks, animation, video, etc. At this point, we usually sit down with our clients and explain that the site they're in love with was entirely authored in Flash. Flash is a web authoring application which can create visually lavish work but which, historically, has not allowed the site to index well on Google's search engines. (All this, however, is changing, as Google recently announced that it has started to index Flash content. See this post...)

Now -- don't get me wrong -- we LOVE Flash in our office. Most of our sexiest sites were designed in Flash. However, they do have their drawbacks from an SEO perspective. Despite our best efforts at apprising our clients of these drawbacks, though, it has happened three times in the last year that we've been asked, after the fact, to offer SEO advice on web sites we've designed entirely in Flash. If SEO is a principal concern of a client's, then that client is probably best to stay away from an all-Flash web site.

So, again, before you hire us to design your site, think about what your SEO goals might be for the site, not just now but several months from now....

2. Do understand that designing a site is only the first step in getting noticed online. And SEO is great, too, but it's only part of an online web presence strategy...

I've talked about this in previous posts, but again, these are such critical issues for our clients these days, that I'll harp on a few issues again. First, let me begin by saying that we believe in SEO at Splat Productions. And, although we leave hardcore SEO services to the experts we partner with, we do offer an "SEO Pre-Flight" package for all our web clients, which ensures that your site has been prepared, submitted and cataloged according to Google's protocol for webmasters. (Ask us about this and we'll tell you more...)

Having said all this, though, we think SEO is only part of the solution to getting your site noticed on the web. As mentioned in previous posts, site owners really need to be thinking of a comprehensive marketing strategy, in order to increase the chances of more (and better) prospects getting to their site. Remember, the ultimate goal is to push people to your site from as many places as possible. So, then, besides hiring an SEO guy, web clients should also consider the following:

• Increase traffic through reciprocal linking. Suppose you have a document transcription service for lawyers. And suppose you use a courier service to pick those documents up from your clients. Get that professional associate to link to your site from theirs and you do the same for them. Got a business blog? The blogosphere is built on the concept of reciprocal linking. Just look along the lefthand side of this or many other blogs.
• Develop an opt-in email list and blast to it. Regularly. Direct marketing on the web isn't so different from print. Developing an electronic mailing list and reaching out to your customers and prospects with well-written news and promotions is a surefire way to increase hits to your site.
• Make a video and post it on YouTube. Get a MySpace page. Social networking sites like MySpace offer cheap ways to publicize your business without spending much cashola. As always, though, content is king. People won't talk about your business if you don't have something interesting to say...
• Do some cheap PR. Or hire a pro to do PR for you... Did you know that there are PR services which businesses can employ to distribute web-based press releases really inexpensively? We've written a couple in-house and, whenever we do it, we see our site traffic go up. Pricing for online press release distribution is quite reasonable. We've used PrimeZone in the past...

So, there you have it: a short list of dos and don'ts for internet publicity hounds. I'm sure we'll be talking about these issues some more in future posts...

Our monthly sweepstakes is paying big bucks...

I'm not sure if all our Sitegeist readers have joined our mailing list but, in case you haven't, I urge you to check out www.splatworld.tv and sign up. Every month, we draw a new list member's name at random and give away a $75 gift certificate to Amazon. If you're not on our list already, now is the time to join us. Frankly, the odds have been pretty decent you'll win, as the promotion just began running a couple of months back and we haven't promoted it enough. June's winner, by the way, was Michelle Galindez, of the engineering firm Flack + Kurtz in New York. Congratulations, Michelle.

Another Architectural Illustration...

We're very proud of the architectural rendering we do for our clients at Splat Productions. A couple of months back, we added a very talented artist to our staff. Mike Johnson is completely self-taught as a visualization artist. When he first applied to work with us, his work was so stunning and his professional preparation so untraditional that we wondered whether he had actually produced some of the great work he showed us. Within days of interning for us, though, we came to realize that he's the real deal. Mike produced both the image above and the previously blogged skyscraper image.

You can see a larger sized version of this image here...

If you build it, they probably won’t come… (Unless you tell them about it...)

An interesting client meeting of a few weeks back got me thinking about the differences between web site design services, interactive strategy and the confusion both clients and firms have about where one stops and one begins.

This particular client is a web-based business start up. Their business model involves gathering timely information from around the world about issues relating to consumer products. This information is then distributed in articles and RSS feeds and is accompanied by a significant amount of original editorial content. The web site has a serious, but conversational “magazine” style format.

Several months into their venture, the client is faced with readership levels which were not as high as originally hoped for. As a result, they’re having difficulty attracting paid sponsors and advertisers. We sat down with the client to review the site and we both agreed that a few content and functionality tweaks should be made to the site. However, both parties also agreed that the site did have valuable content and its overall functionality made sense. In other words, the web site "works."

Why, then, was the site not attracting more visitors?

These days, the interactive marketing world is abuzz with “Web 2.0” tools. The idea behind Web 2.0 is that, if you build interactive features such as blogs or social networking components into your web site, the web site is more likely to grow organically. Blog entries will spawn page references on search engines. Word of mouth marketing will result from the social networking components. Your web site will be a fabulous success, without having to spend a dime on traditional advertising.

There are, however, factors at work here which don’t ensure the instant success. There are also fundamental shortcomings to this approach which can only be overcome by using some very un-Web 2.0 strategies.

Some of the shortcomings relate directly to content. Businesses these days are being talked into blogs by every marketing consultant on the block. However, Blogs take work. They really only succeed when the content is fresh and updated continually. It’s one thing to advise your clients to start a blog. But the rubber hits the road when that same client must muster the resources to maintain the dialogue which blogs necessarily begin.

The larger issues at work relate back to the design vs. strategy discussion I mentioned in the beginning of the post.

It used to be that, when a product was introduced to the consumer public, a raft of activities accompanied the roll out. PR consultants were retained to get press placement and generate press releases. Ad agencies were hired to create campaigns designed to introduce the product and its brand. In short, there was a coordinated effort intended to generate awareness of the new product and get people to buy.

The rise of the internet also gave rise to the myth that traditional strategies have no place in this web-driven world. Somehow or another, we’ve been duped into believing that a well-designed web site will draw its own audience. The world has changed. Build a good web site and the customers will come.

But, really, the internet hasn’t changed the fundamentals of advertising and PR much at all. Effective advertising and PR had always been about getting your message out to as many folks as possible and trying to get them to listen to it. When the web site (in our client’s case) is the product, that product still needs a launch. Old School methods like strategic PR, ad campaigns and direct (electronic, maybe) mail, still give a new product the necessary boosts it needs to generate an initial critical mass of users. Once this critical mass is reached, then all the other bells and whistles you’ve built into the web site – the blogs, the RSS feeds, the editorial content, etc – can help sustain the site and make it vibrant.

Sure, the methods we advertisers have to get the word out about our clients’ products do change. But the idea that anything about the internet has changed the essential need to publicize a new product or to do many of the same tasks advertisers and PR firms have been doing for decades is, well, silly…

Unconventional selling strategies for unconventional times...

I recently lead a round table discussion on viral marketing strategies and that brought to mind two recent, seemingly unorthodox real estate marketing tactics – ‘Buy One (House) Get One Free’ and ‘Up For Auction’… one more viral than the other, both likely promoted through traditional PR channels.

In San Diego, Michael Crews Development is offering to give away a row home valued at $400,000, if the buyer purchases one of their luxury estate homes, in nearby Escondido. "We thought, 'Why… (do these sorts of promotions)… just have to be on Pop Tarts and restaurants? Why not buy one home, get one free,'" Dawn Berry of Michael Crews Development told 10 News in San Diego.

Hmm…I immediately questioned the quality of the row home construction and the location. Why would a developer opt to market their luxury homes the same way they would market Pop Tarts? After scouring the web a bit, though, I was intrigued by the viral status the promotion had acquired.

A quick glance at some of the major new outlets – Reuters, Yahoo News, The Street, US News, MSNBC, and The Wall Street Journal Online – revealed that nearly every major news outlet had picked up the story of the developer’s wacky marketing ploy. Additionally, independent stories started to show up in my Google searches, as well as links to YouTube videos. Finally, bloggers – including this one – are commenting on the strategy and seeing it is a ‘sign of the times’ (or zeitgeist, if you will…)

To date, I believe only ONE individual has made an offer on a Royal View estate home, but the exposure has been impressive. I wouldn’t be surprised if Michael Crews Development seeks to extend the offer beyond the original May 31st deadline. So, the ‘Buy One (House) Get One’ approach is not yet a case study in successful marketing strategy, but it certainly got a lot of publicity and achieved viral status. And, when the Southern California real estate market picks up again, the strategy may just achieve its original goal of closing more sales.

Locally, Westrum Development, in an attempt to gain traction for their stalled ‘Hilltop at Falls Ridge’ development in East Falls, Philadelphia, opted to auction their remaining 11 Phase I units. Many saw the ploy as a risky strategy or a sad commentary on market conditions. However, all 11 units sold and – at least for now -- their lender has been silenced. And, although the auction, which is more common than ‘Buy One (House) Get One’ didn’t reach online viral status, there were a number of local threads and articles pertaining to the event. Good old-fashioned word-of-mouth also helped, contributing to the sizeable turnout at the auction. On to Phase II!

A little Eye Candy...

Het Strijkijzer, the largest residential tower in Den Haag, Netherlands, stands 132m tall and has 41 floors. The building was awarded the 2007 Gold Emporis Skyscraper Award, with Emporis citing "its elegant reinterpretation of classic high-rise architecture, its contextual approach to a limited site, and its efficient program for accommodating new entrants to the housing market."[1]

We thought the building was beautiful, elegant and would lend itself to rendering. We've added it to our portfolio, which we're recently filling up with more urban imagery, as we expand our market reach into New York and Washington. And, speaking of the Big Apple, it was interesting for us to learn that a partial inspiration for the building was the Flatiron building in Manhattan.

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References

1. ^ Emporis Award 2007. emporis.com. Emporis (February 2008). Retrieved on 2008-06-03.

Branding Alert: Your marketing does the walking, but does your sales team do the talking?

(Editor's note. Once again, we thank Rob Armstrong, from Matador Creative, for contributing this week's article...)

We all know how crucial establishing a consistent brand image is. And during the branding process, a great deal of research, strategic and creative resources are devoted to produce that identity. Then that all-powerful brand image is made public through a spectrum of communication channels—over the Web, through the mail, e-mail, and in magazines and newspapers. Sometimes, when it fits the budget and the target audience, it’s relayed via radio and television.

Despite how extensively these marketing vehicles can saturate your target buyers’ minds with meaningful, convincing messages, all of it can be undermined, undone and defeated by a small yet crucial faction beyond the influence of your marketing communications team. That renegade element, my friends, is your sales force. If prospects don’t get the same vibe from the salespeople that they do from the marketing, their belief in your brand promise may be irreparably shaken.

Take, for example, a destination property in Florida whose brand identity I helped to build as a writer and creative strategist. Its brand image evoked a British West Indies style ambiance. The main clubhouse featured the décor and architecture of a late 19th century English manor surrounded by swaying palms and pineapple trees. At its grand opening, calypso music played, cool tropical drinks flowed and an island-style barbecue had hungry prospects lined up at the door. About 1,200 qualified buyers eager to tour furnished model homes were snatching up brochures, maps and inventory listings over a single weekend. Yet the two-day event only produced a handful of reservations and even fewer sales. The culprit couldn’t be the marketing—it did its job remarkably well. It got more than a thousand qualified buyers to the property on one sunny Florida weekend. No… the blame for this debacle had to be elsewhere.

When I popped my head into the sales center, it didn’t feel very… cool, relaxed, British West Indies to me. “You want golf? We got golf.” boomed above the din of buyers. No dulcet, soothing voices discussing Hurdzan-Fry, the world-renowned designers of the golf course or any articulate mention of the developers’ efforts to recreate the ambiance of a turn-of-the-century island plantation. Of course not. All I heard was the coarse, throaty, staccato rattling of sales people who sounded more like they should be working the floor of the stock exchange. “Yeah we got golf. That’s in this neighborhood. We have another neighborhood with no golf.” My first instinct was to slap the salesperson and demand to know if she had even read the brochure I took great care to write. I didn’t.

I don’t know anyone who’d respond positively to the way the brand messages were communicated by the sales team. Had no one explained the brand strategy to them? Did they even know what they should emphasize about the property? Were they listening carefully to buyers, so that they could contribute valuable feedback to us, the marketing team, so that post-event ads could address any points of hesitation floating around out there?

Sadly, no. Lost opportunity big time. I don’t know how many sales are lost on a daily basis because the sales team is never indoctrinated in the brand. They should be selling with cult-like adherence to brand messages. If that takes brainwashing and reprogramming—so be it. The most bewildering part of the scenario I described was that everyone on the sales team was an employee of the development company—not a third-party realty agency. Yet they still were never held accountable for their lack of eloquence and brand awareness at a time when every sale was precious.

There is a definite dividing line between marketing and sales. Marketing drives leads. Sales closes sales. When voluminous leads don’t produce sales, poke your head in the sales center. You may find the reason as grating to your eardrums as I did.

Craig's Virtual List is an Actual Goldmine...

Ahhhhhh.... Craigslist. That crunchy granola commune-on-the-web. Source of slightly-used steal-of-a-deal large screen TVs, purebred puppies and new employees. One part yard sale, one part classified job site and one part hook-up site. I used to think of CL as embodying an updated zeitgeist from the sixties. Everything should be free and everyone should share. Then I stumbled across this headline from Inman News. "Craigslist Revenue May Reach $81 Million This Year."

Wow. Who knew? Turns out that those teeny-weeny $25 and $10 charges CL hits up its employee seekers and property sellers -- in just a few urban markets -- really add up. Imagine if they charged everyone everywhere ten bucks to post a job ad? They'd be rich, I tell ya, rich. Oh, I mean richer.

The article is here.

Reality Check 101: Mortgage Counseling in a Down Market

Now that the subprime mortgage crisis has left all of us in the industry with quite the morning after hangover, fellow blogger Helen A. at Bankaholic sent us this link intended for those finding themselves looking for property in this buyers' market. Helen reminds us that subprime lending was a historic exception in the history of residential lending and offers sound advice for buyers. Namely, she writes that buyers should have their finances in order and not buy more of a house than they can afford. By doing so, buyers can take advantage of the large inventory of price-depressed housing on the market now and benefit from what are still historically low interest rates. The entire article is here...

Dorothy, We're Not in Lower Manhattan Anymore

PhillySkyline.com ran a well-written story the other day about Philadelphia's proposed new addition to its skyline, the American Commerce Center. With a floor to top-of-spire height of 1500', the building would be significantly higher than its Center City brethren and bring a sense of renewed urban cache to our fair city. I'm not going to write at length, because the PhillySkyline article is thorough. I will however, note, visually, the project's uncanny resemblance to another noteworthy project originally slated to be built about 100 miles north of here...

The PhillySkyline article is here.

Commercials...on Google???

A while back, I read that Google would soon be offering advertisers an additional option: including a video (read: commercial) with their paid listing. Google's video ad program is now in effect, although from what I can tell on a very small scale. When I first heard about this advertising opportunity, I immediately thought, " commercials...on GOOGLE?" But let's face it, Google has "gone public" and now has to answer to its shareholders by offering additional services that result in income.

Some analysts claim that Google's income from paid advertisements has plateaued and has not reached the numbers that investors originally anticipated. In my opinion, the addition of video will help Google more than it will help the advertisers, if only for the sheer novelty of it. Technogeeks everywhere are now flocking to Google, searching for "smart phone" and watching the video, more to see how the program works, rather than to learn about what's new in Blackberryland.

Kudos, however, to Google for controlling the visual intrusiveness of the ads. To view a video ad, one must click on a plus-sign button that reads "watch video" or "view demonstration."

On the flipside, many of our clients who may already be paying for AdWords already have sales videos that may easily be manipulated for use in this advertising opportunity. If not, it's another reason to give Splat a call and get yourself a sexy marketing reel.

In semi-related news...it was once the trendy thing to create a MySpace page for your product/property. Then, as that became passé, businesses and developers began creating YouTube accounts, posting their videos and broadcast news clips. If you are considering this, but are unsure of the perks, YouTube, purchased by Google in 2006, is offering analytics similar to Google's html analytics. YouTube Insight, an add-on feature, allows account holders to view general statistics that you may not be able to gather if you post your videos elsewhere, depending on your host: how often videos are viewed in various geographic locations; which videos appear to be more popular; how visitors came to find your video.

A Philadelphia Realtor's Brave New Brokerage Experiment

Earlier this week, I sent an announcement about this blog to about 1000 area Philadelphia Real Estate Professionals. Initially, when we began writing Sitegeist, my hope was that the local real estate community might -- well -- actually take an interest in us and began sending us news about local projects. For the most part, that hasn't happened. Yesterday, though, in response to my mass mailing, a local broker did get back to me with an interesting initiative he's started.

This blog is, among other things, supposed to address itself with the intersection between brands and buildings. Namely, we started writing it to focus on the marketing of real estate and how marketers try (or don't try) to set their projects apart from their competition. In his message to me yesterday, Philly-based broker/developer/designer, Steven Nebel, told me about his brokerage's new branded subdivision, the "Boutique Collection." You can check out their emerging site here.

I really like the fact that someone out there is thinking about brands in the residential market in Philadelphia. I think many of the points Steven raises, in the quote that follows, are right on the mark:

"The broader mission of the boutique collection is differentiation... My biggest issue with the brokerage community has always been its indifference. Most of the most successful people in the city rely upon social connections over understanding of the product and the market. In a changing cityscape, I think the time is right for a more informed brokerage.

Of the three initial members of the Boutique Collection team... all have substantial design and development backgrounds. In pooling our efforts on the listing side, we aim to be a valuable resource for builders and developers in helping them to create turn-key projects of the highest quality. We work with developers from identifying ground, to suggesting civil engineering moves, to helping with supply chain management, and providing interior design services. For buyers, we aim to provide a critical approach to buying premier properties. I very much believe that the real estate in Philadelphia will begin stratifying rapidly and that most brokers are completely unaware of shifting values...

Another exciting aspect of our group at the moment is our 'boot camp' program. We are currently working to identify great, but misunderstood projects currently languishing on the market and bringing them into the light, so to speak. Our first project is The Essex in Old City. In terms of the building itself, it's one of the best projects out there. Yet the presentation, marketing, and final touches were so mishandled that it languished on the market. We are working to accentuate the building's strengths, reposition its feel, and reintroduce it to the buying public in the coming month..."

I appreciate the fact the Steven is creating an entirely new brand devoted to the creation and marketing of "luxury" real estate. Of course, the devil is always in the details with these sorts of things and -- as the business matures -- I'm very curious to see how, precisely, this brand of luxury is defined. At any rate, though, it's refreshing to see the amount of thoughtfulness being offered here. We need more innovators like Steven in Philly.

Advertising online is a no-brainer. But what sites? That's tricky -- but a fun question to answer. Here are a few ideas.

(Note: Sitegeist has invited Rob Armstrong, owner of Matador Creative, to be a regular contributor to the blog. Rob does most of the writing at Splat Productions and, additionally, takes on clients of his own, under the Matador name.)

Not long ago, my friend David Hitt brought up an interesting aspect of online advertising. Specifically, just how does one determine where to do it? Once you’ve created banner ads, what websites should you post them on? Not being a media specialist, I can only hypothesize based on my experience as the guy who writes the ads that find their way into the daily papers, monthly glossies and yes, the Internet.

I won’t waste time discussing real estate sites. Nobody needs me to tell them to post ads on their local paper’s website, local Realtors’ websites and national sites like wallstreetjournal.com or REALTOR.com. And despite how unglamorous it is, the good ol’ MLS should be on a must-post list as well. Those are easy choices. It’s obvious they get scanned by people actively looking for homes—that is, when those people are actually making the effort to look.

Hit them when they're NOT really looking.

Homebuyers don’t just comb real estate sites all day looking at pictures of pretty condominiums. They’re real people with busy lives. They’re checking their bank balances, shopping on eBay, searching for the meaning of life on Google… People in homebuying mode will go a lot of places online. The trick is to figure out where. You have to start thinking like a grocer. It’s no accident they put the raisins in the same aisle as the oatmeal and the peanut butter with the jelly and bread.

One place to start might be sites about home-related stuff. Furniture, interior design and even home improvement websites. “Hey, why fix that roof again? Buy a new condo already!” Then there are the more esoteric choices. Think about music sites like rhapsody.com or the iTunes section of apple.com. I mean, why not listen to that new Alicia Keys mp3 file (or the latest from Paul McCartney for you Boomers) in the comfort of the living room in your brand new home? Liberty Mutual and Logitech were hitting customers there on my recent visit.

Think about what your prospects enjoy doing.

If you advertise where homebuyers are buying music, why not where they’re buying food—or at least getting recipes and tips on entertaining like marthastewart.com? By advertising on specialty sites, you can customize the message and make the connection between your new condo high-rise and, say, those freshly baked sticky buns from Williams-Sonoma—they’ll taste even more delicious in your new home’s designer kitchen.
More food for thought—newlyweds! They’re part of many developers’ target demographic. Young, and some not-so-young, professional couples seeking digs that suit their lifestyles. How interesting then that on theknot.com, a wedding planning site, I found a link to thenest.com, its sibling site all about setting up house together. And smack dab in the upper right, a prominently placed banner ad for the Dodge Journey crossover, PERFECT for small or growing families. Just like your new building in Center City.

Another way to show you “get” your target audience’s needs and interests—YouTube. One of the most popular sites on the Internet. Why not put your two-or-three-minute virtual tour or “commercial” on YouTube and send a link to your whole e-mail distribution list? Then link them from YouTube to your site. You could continue adding videos like footage of the building in progress there, or shorts on the neighborhood, the lifestyle… Most developers limit their distribution to the property’s website. The whole world could be seeing them! And you won’t spend one extra dime to do it.

Go green—if you’ve got the guts.

My last idea (for now) would be on a site related to environmentally conscious products and services, like green.msn.com. Chevrolet is doing it with their hybrid vehicles. You can do it, too—provided you are a genuinely green company building a genuinely green residential destination with earth-friendly products and building practices.

I’m working with such a client here in Naples, Florida. Still in the planning stages, São Grato promises to be a Brazilian-inspired mixed-use destination with eco-sensitive features in place. Beyond building materials and practices, the community will have recycling programs as well as incentives to donate towards rain forest conservation. Be warned—going the green route is like running for public office. Absolutely everything about your company will be scrutinized for its innate greenness, and if any fatal flaws are exposed, you’ll be vilified by the media and granola-crunching tree-huggers alike. This is not one for the faint of heart.

The best thing about advertising on the Internet is that you can change your mind on a whim, adapt your placement almost immediately and adjust your strategy based on the results you get in a very cost-effective way. So just do it—experiment. Put your property out there where few, if any, competitors are. You’ll be the sharpest developer on your block if you get it right.

Is the New York Luxury Real Estate Market Recession Proof?

As real estate markets around the country reel from the bursting of the housing bubble and mortgage crisis, local pockets of strength still remain. Residential housing in New York City, for example, has weathered the storm better than most and, particularly, the luxury residential sector has appeared surprisingly robust. This article from The Real Deal, looks at the factors responsible for this resilience but, simultaneously, questions how much longer the party can last. Noting that luxury units were up 28.4% at the end of 2007 from the previous year, the authors go on to note some cautionary conditions that might signal a slowdown, namely:

1. The predicted national recession will result in fewer Wall Street bonuses and, probably, layoffs.
2. Current market strength is somewhat dependent on the weakness of the dollar and the resulting influx of foreign money. Foreign investment money, though, often represents discretionary spending. (Buyers don't HAVE to purchase a residential unit. They're simply acting on what they think might be a wise investment.) This places these buyers in a privileged position, allowing them greater negotiating strength.

Again, the entire article is here.

How Healthy is Your Brand...

The Branding Strategy Insider, a well-written Branding Blog I read on occasion, has put together a "Top Ten" list for determining the relative state of your company's brand. While I'm not usually a huge fan of Top Ten lists, this one has some solid, basic advice for nurturing your brand's health. I especially liked the multi-part section on loyalty (number six on the list), which touches upon the importance of keeping clients or consumers coming back. The author writes:

"6. Loyalty – The lifetime value of loyal customers is often not fully appreciated. The rule of thumb is that it is 7 to 10 times more costly to gain a new customer than to keep an existing one. The primary measures of this are:

a. Actual loyalty as measured by ‘share of requirements’ or ‘share of purchases’ and the following attitudinal measures:

b. Willingness to recommend the brand to a friend,

c. Repurchase intent (willingness to repurchase the brand considering all of the experiences the customer has had with the brand), and

d. Switching propensity given different competitive price discount scenarios or brand out-of-stock situations."

The entire article can be found here.

Online advertising is more than just Pay-Per-Clicks and SEO tricks...

As the world of internet marketing evolves, clients and their ad consultants are getting savvier in the strategies they develop to drive traffic to their web sites and increase brand awareness. As recently as two years ago, we were frequently called upon to design new sites for clients, without any real corresponding discussion about how the new site would fit into the client's online advertising strategy. The relationship would begin something like "We really like what you did for Client XYZ, can we get something similar?" Only later would the client begin to ponder precisely how they were actually going to get noticed on the web.

Shame on our clients for their shortsightedness and shame on us for not advising them better.

As things progressed, the stock-in-trade solutions for an online ad plan relied on organic search optimization and Google pay-per-click. As a firm which frequently builds websites for new construction real estate projects, the concept of organic optimization is a thorny one for us. Most larger scale developers desire -- and the market benchmarks these days demand -- the enhanced entertainment platform that only Flash websites can deliver. The problem with this is that, as web developers know, Flash websites are tough to make "search engine friendly."

After having worked with scores of real estate developers, though, we've become skeptical that optimization is really critical for the average new construction housing development. Buying a new condo or house is a very intentional act and the traditional portals people use to survey the market are still viable. If I'm shopping for a new hard drive for my computer, I might very well start my search and buy from a vendor that floats to the top of a Google search. However, if I'm searching for a new condominium in Philadelphia, it's highly unlikely that I am going to be swayed by the first listing that comes up through an organic search. There are many local
and national portals on the web people can use to begin surveying properties on the market and, frankly, most folks still rely on the "call a well-known realtor" approach to getting the lay of the local real estate landscape.

Beyond organic search optimization, Google Adwords or "pay-per-click" was the next ad strategy frequently mentioned by our clients as being attractive. Pay-per-click works well in partnership with Flash web sites, as it allows the client to compensate for their "optimization-challenged" natures, by allowing paid advertisements for their projects to show up when predefined search criteria are entered into Google. So, for instance, our clients can choose a search string in Google ("Philadelphia Skyscraper Living," for example) and an ad and link will float to the first page of the resulting search page.

As the internet matures, though, much more sophisticated marketing strategies are being developed. In the recently published, "Online Advertising Playbook," authors, Plummer, Rappaport, Hall and Barocci discuss some of these. Many borrow traditional strategies and apply them to the interactive realm. For instance, Google now places their "sponsored links" (which are essentially Adwords messages) on contextually relevant sites for a given demographic. So, for example, if I'm on an automobile site, there's a good chance that I'll see auto-related Google adwords somewhere within the site. Besides, Google Adwords, though, similar strategies are being employed to place all manners of ads on sites deemed contextually relevant. Other strategies, many borrowed from the world of broadcast advertising, are being employed successfully on the web. For instance, the authors cite Kentucky Fried Chicken's successful rollout of their "popcorn chicken" product, which was promoted through the use of "daypart advertising" on popular general interest web sites, such as msn.com. Daypart advertising
basically relies on the idea that you run an ad at a particular time of the day when either your target market is expected to be online and/or is in a buying mood for your product. In the case of KFC, the ad was run between the hours of 11:00 AM and 2:00 PM, when a large percentage of the online audience is contemplating their lunch choices.

For those of you interested in learning more about the strategies shared in "The Online Advertising Playbook," I urge you to click here...

More Nifty Web Tools...

Now this story from Inman News... There is truly a dizzying array of online tools available to real estate marketers. From Zillow to Trulia, the internet is awash with companies trying to capitalize on "Web 2.0" technologies to create a more instantaneous and interactive real estate sales environment. In the following video, shot recently at the New York event, "Real Estate Connect: New York City," panelists share some (lengthy) thoughts about what Web 2.0 tools are and how they can be employed within the context of real estate marketing. The linke is here...

Tenets of Online Ad Design

Falling into the "from the vaults" category, I happened upon an interesting blog entry written by Alex Kirtland, an information architect who writes about web-related design issues.

One of the issues we find ourselves increasingly concerned with is moving beyond thinking of ourselves simply as website designers and broadening our scope of expertise to create "complete" online presences for our clients. For instance, our clients usually want to market or advertise on the web and, as a result, we've created online newsletters, email blasts, designed online ads and, generally, tried to develop the expertise necessary to counsel them about the best use of their marketing dollars.

In the following blog article, Alex addressed the issue of the design of online ads. Always a challenge for designers, we must constantly balance the level of intrusion which any online ad places on the content of the reader versus the advertisers need to "be heard." In the article, Alex offers several summary design suggestions for artists, including: wrapping ads in borders to distinguish them from their surrounding content, clustering the ads in one location, and using "leaderboards" (full width ads running at the top of the web space) to best effect. In the end, the win - win proposition for advertisers to both be heard but also to not intrude on the reader's experience of web content. At any rate, the article's worthy of a peek...

Some Belated Holiday Cheer

The holidays have come and gone but, in the spirit of holiday cheer and in an effort to begin the New Year on an optimistic note, I thought I'd share some "let's put some things in perspective" news I found in the December issue of The Real Deal.

True, housing starts are down nationally and, in fact, many regions of the country have experienced price declines over the last several months. However, Ken Harney, notes several reasons for optimism in his December Real Deal column. Consider, for example:

• Despite the recent fall in both prices and sales, (in some markets) the overall upside of five years' worth of boom has been a positive one for the American homeowner. Harney, notes that, overall, the total equity owned by American homeowners is still at near-record levels, topping out at almost $11 trillion. (Total equity holdings, he notes, refers to the difference between the market value of the entire residential market, which is $21 trillion and outstanding mortgage debt, which is approximately $10 trillion.) So, then, American homeowners have more money tied up in their homes than (almost) ever before.
• Even in hard hit areas such as South Florida, most homeowners and homebuyers through most of the boom are still way ahead of the game. In South Florida alone, for instance, home values increased a whopping 130 percent between 2001 and 2006. Thus, even accounting for the double digit drops in prices over the last year, the net out for most homeowners in the region remains robust.

The sub-prime lending crisis is, of course, throwing the emergency brake on a train that was already slowing down, but, with the exception of those that bought late in the cycle, Harney counsels American homeowners to look at the bust within the light of the overall (significant) gains which were made in the first part of the decade.

And if that news doesn't perk you up, there's always that leftover egg nog in the fridge...