I read a quote yesterday from Facebook’s COO that’s stuck with me because it’s so darn relevant to real estate marketing, but totally unintentionally.
According to the story, Sheryl Sandberg (FB’s COO) drew a funnel and described how Google does a great job delivering customers at the “point of sale” but that point-of-sale ad spend represents only 10% of total ad spend. The idea being Facebook sees the big win being helping business the ability to target people before they’ve actually made a decision to buy or sell. It’s much more of a relationship and branding play.
To make the connection to real estate, I gotta take us back to the same Agent Business Cycle diagram I’m been harping on lately… and comparing the business that is generated by agents from their sphere to the business generated by reaching consumers directly.
Google does a ridiculously great job generating business at the point of sale and that’s where money is being spent today just as most online real estate marketing money targets reaching ad spends that reach consumers directly. However, in real estate, the majority of business is *not* generated by reaching consumers directly. It never has been and I don’t think that’s going to change any time soon. The majority of business is generated by agents who know how to work their sphere… and for that business case (i.e. the case for increasing one’s reach or sphere), I don’t think there’s ever been a better technology or tool than Facebook.
As Sheryl demonstrates, the folks at Facebook not only “get” this, but they’re building the tools that will help not only help you reach this sphere, but also the ad platform so they can make millions (billions!) in the process!
As service providers, we are in a different position in the transaction cycle. We are not selling t-shirts or jewelry (in which case, being tops of the SERPs of google would be phenomenal), we are selling a service that would be based on trust and professionalism (neither of which can be communicated directly from being high on the SERPs, it’s a relationship that needs to build). Thanks for the post, Dustin. This whole NEO is very intriguing.
Couldn’t agree more. The whole NEO thing is gathering pace and I for one will be monitoring how things develop.
I love having folks comment, but leaving a comment just to get some SEO benefit (i.e. backlink with key anchor text) is getting old. I used to delete the comments, but I think I’m going to try something different for a while. Instead I’m going to leave the comments up, but delete the link and see if that changes behavior.