What is the role of corporate real estate websites?
Posted by pete quinlan on Aug 23, 2007
What is the role of corporate real estate websites? That’s an interesting question. I bet you would get a different answers if you asked an agent and someone at the corporate office. I think agents have general mistrust or apprehension when discussing the corporate website. I know that John L Scott is doing everything they can to make the corporate site assist agents. I would guess that it is no different at other major real estate companies. In fact every time I make a suggestion as to how I think the site can be better, I am met with the same question…How will this benefit the agents? I fear that my company and other companies have similar philosophies but the agents either don’t believe it or don’t see that the site is working on their behalf. However, if I put myself in the role of the agent I can see how this view might be skewed. Agents are independent business owners for the most part and if a corporate website provides a lead for one agent, and not another than I can see how the corporate site my be regarded as useless. It seems that a majority of the agents don’t benefit directly from the corporate site with regards to leads. I spoke with an agent from a competing site recently and he asked for some advice in regards to his blog and how he could rank better in his specific area. I gave him some tips and in the end, he told me that he hoped my company kicked his company’s ass in rankings for top placement. I thought that was an odd thing to say about your company. Perhaps you would get a more positive response from an agent that is involved in internet programs with corporate. Maybe you should ask your company if they have some program for getting leads to agents and how you can get involved. It might take some time but you never know!
Overall, the company website is there:
1. To promote the company. To basically represent the company as a whole on the internet. This is the hub of operations for anything that has to do with the company — as for franchises… it serves as a representation of the branch.
2. To promote the agents. Typically an office website should have an agents roster that showcases the agents in the company — a short bio and most importantly, contact information for all the agents. One key thing to remember here is that the typical company will provide equal coverage for each agent, though there are companies who may give top billing to their best-of-the-best.
3. To enable users to search for properties. The company site is also a depot of all the property listings of all the agents within the company.
Keeping those 3 things in mind, it’s quite understandable why the typical corporate website is viewed as somewhat useless to the agent — it’s there to promote everyone and not the agent personally above all else. That’s why, as an agent — you should never just rely on your corporate website and not do your own marketing. It’s always advisable, especially in this competitive day and age — to market yourself at every opportunity you can get. Which is why agents need their own websites. It not only allows the agents to distinguish themselves from the pack — but also provides the opportunity to provide more personalized service and a more ‘human/personal’ touch to their clients. It gives you a look at how and what you’d expect with working with that agent.
Going back to the role of corporate sites though — as mentioned above, it’s still important for corporate to help the agents. But how to do it is the question. Not everyone has the budget of John L. Scott for their website and may not have the resources to develop add-ons or plug-ins for their agents’ websites. Still, the corporate site should serve to help funnel traffic to the agents where possible. Some of the better corporate sites I’ve seen allow you to search a geographic area for a property then provide you with the list of agents who serve that area — very well timed so that you don’t get to the agents yet and are able to look at the area first.
One project I was working on last year involved building about 9 websites total: 1 Corporate website and 8 branch/office websites. It was a pretty big yet simple project (over $30k) that was a combination of lead generation and targeted marketing that was set up in the following manner:
CORPORATE WEBSITE - this was geared to showcase the offices, property listings and agents in the company (totalling about 120 agents). Marketing for this site was to be done on a global scale — basically driving traffic to the region where they did business and then funneling those down to the offices. It would basically target anyone wanting to move to maybe California, Nevada, or Oregon then the leads would be distributed to the specific branches - - L.A., San Francisco, Las Vegas, Portland, etc…
OFFICE/BRANCH WEBSITE - this was geared more for marketing the community or area where the branch was as well as the agents in that office. Marketing was geared more towards the area — for people who wanted to relocate to that specific city. For example, the Los Angeles branch website would be all about L.A. and would specifically target relocation to L.A. It had its own marketing and lead generation that was then divvied up among the agents in the office.
For each agent, we also recommended that they not rely on just this but were also encouraged to do their own marketing via their own websites.
In closing, corporate websites are there to represent the company. It rarely revolves around the agents except for the smaller companies or brokerages because it has to weather the coming-and-going of agents within the company. For the bigger and more resource-laden companies, they will usually devote a bigger budget towards marketing and providing tools for their agents. One thing remains constant however — and that is that the corporate website should also be there to market and provide leads and business to its agents.