Real Estate Marketing: The Future of Intent and Content
Sunday, March 16, 2008 at 11:24AM John Battelle wrote a book a while back called The Search which is basically about Google. In this book he discusses, among many other topics, the mountain of information being gathered by search engine companies and gives a few scenarios of how this might affect adverising and marketing. One particular scenario is something I think is not too far away from being a reality.
He uses a couple gathering information about the expected birth of their first child, how the husband is badgered into taking a part and learning about child-birth, parenting and such, so he begins searching -- searching for articles, searching Amazon for books, etc. Battelle's point is the merging of intent-based and content-based advertising. The husband then gets with his wife to use the TV search capabilities to find the programs related to child-care and parenting.
He goes on with the scenario describing the behind-the scenes computer gyrations that trigger connected sites to form the "intent" and begin the auctioning for advertising -- all this taking seconds, from TiVo to Amazon to BabyWorld.com to whatever other connection he's made.
When they start the child-care programing, in the corner of the screen is a message that three advertisers have information packages. The agreement with the cable program services is that he will access the ads every so often in order to get an incredibly low cost for the program services. He really doesn't mind this because he's found the ads very useful and pertinent to his needs.
The auctioning process behind the scenes was preset by advertisers with a maximum bid they will go, or they set always bid to go the highest for top placement. The bids are in and three advertisers have won the top spots.
When the husband clicks on the ads, he not only gets a textual ad saying "We're the greatest", he gets links to information sites, discount offers, a whole package of useful content.
Now, plug in a home searcher and real estate and we get a glimpse of what the future might hold. I won't even go into the predictions of barcoding technology, but imagine scanning your smartphone over a barcode on a for sale sign and uploading every piece of information you'd need about the house and surrounding area.
Reader Comments (3)
I use Google AdWords to promote my real estate business. I was fortunate to find a Google AdWords expert named Mike that specializes in real estate marketing at www.Marketing4Leads.com
AdWords works because the ad campaign can be configured down to the "geo targetd" level. I only bid against realtors in my local market. Also, lately I have hired this same expert to preform SEO (search engine optimization) on my canandaigua real estate website.
Placing my website on the first page of Google for my best keyword phrases has really jump started my marketing. SEO is worth every penny I have invested in it.
In closing, thanks for a great real estate blog.
Thank you. I also have an adword campaign that I've used for a couple of years. I don't use it much now because I'm placing high in organic results, but I am a believer in it's effectiveness.
Cindy,
I checked out your website and that's a beautiful front page of the water.