The agent did a great job of telling the listing prospect about all of the Internet marketing, newspaper ads, and home magazines where their home would be advertised. A notebook computer with a PowerPoint presentation helped the agent to lay out a great presentation and it was flawless. Well...
When the agent received an email of thanks for the work and great presentation, it also said that the prospect was listing with someone else. Of course, this conscientious agent immediately called the homeowner to ask what was done wrong. The answer was a bolt of lightning, as the seller said: "The other company said that they would do what you do plus place a sign in the front yard with a link to my home's web page, and directional arrow signs at major street intersections." Huh! Of course this agent's brokerage was doing exactly the same thing, but it seemed so obvious that the agent forgot to mention it.
In today's Internet marketing world, there are some other things that we take for granted, and we assume that our site visitors know what's going on. One of these is the IDX search on our site or blog. There's more than one assumption here that can cut your income in the future:
- The consumer site visitor knows they're searching all local MLS listings of all participating brokers.
- The same consumer is aware that Trulia, Zillow and other national sites do not have all local listings.
- That the site visitor knows that you can help them as a buyer broker/agent with any other broker's listing in the MLS IDX search on your site.
From experience, all three of those assumptions are wrong in a great many more cases than you think. I get emails and calls all of the time from site visitors who think they're searching my company's listings, not the whole MLS. I know that there are others that I never hear from who assume that they need to contact the listing agent shown in the IDX display. I also will never know how many don't use my search because the Trulia interface is great, and they think they're going to see the same listings there. But, I know it happens more than I like.
So, the best way to cure a lack of knowledge is education. Place pages and posts on your site or blog explaining how IDX works, and especially that there is no national site with the comprehensive listings that will be found by using your site search. It works, really.
