This is the pre-conference for Inman’s Real Estate Connect conference – it’s all about technology and the web. What’s interesting is seeing some pretty big name bloggers and others in the general technology industry here. They’re busy educating the real estate agents and brokers on what’s going on in the web-world.
We’ve covered everything from the long-tail to the 1% Rule.
Interestingly, Andrew Coleman Founder of LeadQual, stated that he believes, “the Long-tail is dead for real estate.” It was great because Andrew Braccia, VP of Yahoo Search and Sam Sebastian Director of Classifieds and Local at Google were both there at the same table when he said it.
It’s dead because even for the most obscure terms, like “red victorian house in San Francisco” can end up being quite expensive to buy as a sponsored search term. Therefore, though the long-tail is actually still there, it’s dead to real estate agents. What he was saying is that it’s just not as effective for the general real estate agent/broker anymore.
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[...] Brad Inman has talked about transparency, and how the internet is changing the industry. Onc CEO of a Web company told us that “the Long-tail is dead for real estate” – this was great because a director from Google and a VP from Yahoo were at the same table. [...]
[...] I will write more on the conference in a separate post, but here are a few links to some that have already posted on the conference: Greg Sterling writes about the panel he moderated and that I was on. The Inman Blog talks about the Zillow API announcement. Joel Burslem is aggregating some posts on the conference, as well as photos, presentations, etc. Realty Thoughts talks about the long tail of search panel. Zillow Blog has a good summary post on the first day. [...]
The long tail is 20% of a given market if you subscribe to Pareto’s Principle. Since real estate is a HUGE market, 20% is also EXTREMELY LARGE. Now cut a slice of that tail for your niche, if you have one, and you will do very well—provided you leverage it with you blog . Post every thing you can on your niche and you will draw enough free traffic to your site. If your office covers several niches, have a separate blog for the other niches and so on. In this way you cover more than one obscure title. If you notice, large blog enterprises have sprung up which do just as i describe—create a number of niche blogs and hope to cover more slices of the tail.
Long tail is just a new word for an old marketing strategy. Become an expert in any niche and cover that niche better than anyone else & you will be successful.
Its the difference between organic and PPC placement. I agree with finding and servicing a niche. The entire real estate industry is massive, and even the residential sales segment is in the billions. Groups that find and service their specific niche don’t need to waste money marketing to the entire planet; especially if there is no ROI for the investment.
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You guys are both right on about this. The truth about the long-tail is that it allows for many smaller enterprises to take advantages of expertise in that niche area. What JF from Sellsius says is 100% true, and there’s enough money around in it for everyone. The beauty of the long-tail is that it’s extremely hard for “big business” to get into it, whereas the little guy has an advantage.
I agree in niche marketing. As soon as I started niche marketing my business blossomed.
Defining the niche can be difficult. If you find out later the “niche” you chose was too small, you are in trouble. It can take months or longer to fix that mistake. I have found that if you start larger it is easier to redefine your niche by going smaller. Just my opinion.
I work as a real estate agent in Bangkok, and the market in Bangkok is seriously different from where I originated from in England, the latter being driven by a retail approach. In Bangkok, virtually 90% of my business in internet driven.