So let’s break this down one piece at a time:

1) CONTENT
This one should be a no-brainer. If you want to attract eyeballs on what you are posting, it HAS TO BE relevant, and value added content. If you are a Realtor® that only posts “Call me if you are thinking of selling your home”, you are missing the boat.

Why should someone call you, instead of the other 1,000+ Realtors in your marketplace? What industry news, market trends, or advice can you share that will position you as a knowledgeable thought leader in the industry, and your marketplace?

Can’t think of what type of material this may be? As the infographic suggests, doing a search to see what is trending (for instance, visit http://search.twitter.com and type in a keyword, or go to a site like trendsbuzz.com), will give you some ideas.

2) CONVERSATIONS
The key to any successful social media initiative is CONVERSATION. You should converse with people. Not only that, but listen to what they are saying, and interact with them. You CANNOT promote how you are the top 1% of this or that, or an expert at X, Y or Z all the time. Get in the conversation and reap the rewards.

The key to this is you have to stay on top of it. As the infographic depicts, the majority of people check responses and mentions several times a day. While the infographic shows that many of the IT Vendors find a day or two an acceptable range of time to respond, with Real Estate, I strongly suggest that you be sure to follow up with everybody the same day.

3) COMMUNITY
The entire idea behind social media is building community. As mentioned above, you want to use social media to be viewed as the thought leader in your marketplace.

Ads will not help you in this endeavor. While ads aren’t necessarily a bad thing, DO NOT get trapped in the thought that by running ads, you don’t have to converse with people in your social sphere. Start conversations EVERY DAY!

4) CONNECTIONS
Back in the day, nobody went online to start their Real Estate Search. Now the web is the first place prospective buyers and sellers go. Part of that online hunt is also social media. What do you have on YouTube? Do you have an introduction video about yourself and your team? Do you showcase your listings?

What do you have on LinkedIn? Is your professional profile up to date? Do you have connections, and testimonials on there?

When is the last time your updated your facebook business page?

Not updating these things will make you look irrelevant to a prospective buyer or seller, making them more apt to pay attention to those that are actively updating their social media properties and professional online profiles.

So as you can see, the 4 C’s are critical to the success of your online strategy. How many C’s have you nailed down?

Do you need help with any of these things? Do you have zero social media plan and want to know where to start? Is your online marketing strategy not working out and you want input as to why? Contact me anytime and I am more than happy to help you in any way I can.

For instance, our Cloud Based Real Estate CRM solution syncs your calendar, tasks and contacts. The two most common ways to do that are through Outlook (installed on your computer), or with Gmail (a cloud service that hosts your data for you). While many agents are more than happy to have Gmail take care of this for them, a good number of you express to me your concerns that “big brother” shouldn’t have access to everything about you, your interactions with your clients, and your other personal data.

So how do you know who is protecting you and who isn’t? Luckily, the Electronic Frontier Foundation has your interests in mind, with their annual Who Has Your Back? Reporting.

The idea behind this report is to give the companies incentive for transparency regarding how your data is disseminated to government agencies. It also is meant to encourage them to ratchet up protection for their users, ensuring that data is safe from potential privacy gaps. According to Gizmodo, the data on each company was based on six criteria:

1) Require a warrant for content of communications

2) Tell users about government data requests

3) Publish transparency reports

4) Publish law enforcement guidelines

5) Fight for users’ privacy rights in courts

6) Fight for users’ privacy in Congress

And the findings you ask? It might surprise you:

This is a very interesting infographic. It is most interesting to me because many of the companies I hear clients complain about, actually go the furtherst to protect their users, and vise versa.

For instance, as mentioned, many of you have problems with Google. Additionally, I hear concerns about companies like Dropbox, and LinkedIn (Mostly based on their recent cyber attack). Yet, they actually have scored pretty high scores in this report.

Other companies, such as Verizon and Facebook, which many of you choose over other competitors, in reality rate the lowest in these categories.

Can you draw a direct line between a company’s privacy policies and their ability to keep your data secure? While not a direct line, it could be suggested that today’s marketplace is changing rapidly. If a company is on the leading edge of new policies, the culture of the company is most likely one that quickly adopts new technologies and strategies across the board (including security).

Whether or not you are concerned about your online privacy rights, it definitely is interesting to see who has your back and who doesn’t.

What has me at a loss for words, you ask? A program which Rapid Realty NYC is running in it’s brokerage.

Based in Brooklyn, New York, Rapid has 62 locations from New Jersey to Boston, tipping the scales at almost 1,100 employees. The founder of the company, Anthony Lolli has instituted some programs employees can take part in that will net them a 15% raise.

His company-wide program allows people to get a 15 percent raise if they do charity work, produce certain benchmarks, mentor a new agent, or if they get inked with the company logo (which can be any size and put anywhere on the body).

Okay, charity work, hitting benchmarks and mentoring, I get. But a tattoo of the company logo? Really?

After reading the article about Lolli’s program, I had a broad range of knee jerk reactions:

• My first thought was, “Great. Just what the Real Estate Industry needs to make themselves look super professional”

• Then, I considered this: Tattoos are actually mainstream these days. People of all walks of life and all backgrounds have them. In fact, I could probably go one step further and say it is more unusual these days for someone to have no tattoos at all (For the record, I don’t have any. I like them, just don’t have any).

• Then it occurred to me that in my 15+ years of working in the Real Estate Industry, the only thing that I have found as a constant, is change. Agents change brokerages frequently. Tattoos are permanent. If you leave brokerages, do you remove it? Do you leave it on? What if at a listing appointment a prospective client asks you, “Well, if your company is the best and we should work with you, why do you have that other company’s logo tattooed on your body?”

So as you can see, today I am at a loss. But this is a good thing. Let’s get a conversation going. What do you think about Lolli’s program? Inspired? Tacky? Wacky? Great?

Leave me a comment in the section below. I look forward to hearing from you!

As they build that Real Estate Practice, their past client list and sphere of influence will grow, giving them additional opportunities, outside of that farm area, to do more business.

What happens though, when after many years in business, a Realtor® decides that their past client and sphere list is large enough that they no longer need to do Geographic Farming? After all, they are getting lots of referrals and doing additional business with their current client base, right? So arguably this tactic wouldn’t necessarily be a bad one, would it?

While the answer may be surprising to you, it’s quite simple: Not Good.

Realtors® should NEVER consider completely stopping Geographic Farming as part of their marketing initiatives, for one major reason:

Many People You Sell Homes To Are Actually Moving Out Of The Area

This is a pretty obvious phenomenon. Many people you represent in the sale of their home have plans on moving out of the area. Perhaps their job has transferred them to another state, maybe your clients are “empty nesters” and want to move to a warmer climate, or maybe life’s circumstances have simply demanded they move to another part of the Country.

When these people move out of the area, your odds of getting referrals and future business from them are greatly decreased. After all, they are no longer regularly communicating with people in your marketplace. They also most likely are not interested in doing a future transaction in your marketplace.

So, if you do enough transactions, over enough years, and enough of your clients move out of the area, you could theoretically sell yourself right out of Real Estate.

Geographic farming helps you hedge your bet and keep this from happening. As you do deals in your geographic farm, you have opportunities to pick up new business from new people that simply know you from your postcard farming, see your for sale signs in the area, or have met you at an open house. Those things will trickle new names into your active clients, past clients and sphere lists. Those activities will ensure that you are successfully keeping your lists rich.

Have you let your farm go to the wayside and want to get it fired back up? Have you never farmed before and don’t know where to begin? Would you like advice on the best farming practices, and how to turn a farming program into a success? Contact me anytime and I would be more than happy to help you in any way I can.

As promised, in this post, I am going to share with you the plans this Realtor’s® marketing agency pitched to him, with regards to content strategy and social media strategy, and something surprising that you may have never thought of before.

When we moved from this agent’s blog creation plans, we got on to the discussion of what would actually be going into the blog, how that will help him with his social media strategies, and what else they may have planned in the way of a social media marketing strategy. Not surprisingly again, the ideas, in theory, that the marketing agency this agent was working with, pitched to the agent were fairly sound. Again though, the execution of these ideas had much to be desired.

What was their strategy?

Their strategy revolved around creating 1-2 blog posts for this agent, per week, using the agent’s social media platforms to promote this content, and to additionally post industry related links on the agent’s social media properties as well.

This sounds like a great strategy. Being curious by nature, I asked the agent how much his monthly retainer was for such services. He happily responded to me that all of this was only going to cost him $30 per month.

Now, I get it. Everybody likes a great deal. But let’s be realistic here. Any of you that have ever posted a blog post of your own knows that it takes anywhere from 30 minutes to an hour to craft most posts.

So if we agree on that, let’s do the math:

45 minutes on average for a post X 6 posts average, per month= 4.5 hours of work per month on these posts

That equates to the agency charging this agent roughly $6.67 per hour to work with them (this isn’t including any social media stuff yet either).

As I’m sure you can see, clearly there is more to this story than meets the eye.

I worked with the agent to come up with a series of questions he could ask this agency that would hopefully fill in some of the blanks and solve some of these mysteries.

How were they doing this?

So it turns out doubling back and asking the agency some more questions turned out to be a great move on the part of this agent. What he found out was very interesting.

The strategy this firm employed was to write content, and put it into social media packages for Realtors®. The thing of it was though that there was only one package, meaning that each month, every agent would get the same material posted on their blogs, social media platforms, etc. This is what many refer to as “Duplicate Content”.

Why the agency is doing it makes sense. After all, if you consider they write one package of stuff and sell it over and over and over, they are no longer working for sub-minimum wage fees, but making a lot of money each month, on something that didn’t take that long to put together, when you compare it to how many times they can resell it.

While this may be a perfect strategy and business model for an agency that wants to spend little upfront revenue to gain lots of recurring retainers, this is actually a total disservice to the Real Estate Clients they service.

Some of the recent changes Google made to it’s search algorithm actually penalize sites that are using duplicate content. The way the new algorithm looks at it, if it sees duplicate content, it can look at it as malicious content (content people are putting on sites for the purposes of spamming), and therefore it pushes those sites further and further down in the search results. This happens because those sites are looked at as possibly fraudulent.

If you replace the term “search engines”, and use the term “people”, the same could be said for repetitive social media marketing. People interested in Real Estate most likely follow many people involved in the Real Estate industry. What happens though, if all that ever comes out of their social media accounts is the exact same thing some other guy is posting? You guessed it. They are going to stop following many of those people, thus making their social media efforts moot.

Even worse, what if one of these agents is occasionally posting content of their own? By using this “canned, widely sold content”, the stuff they are working hard on creating will suffer as well.

So there you have it. I hope you can see how even though something as this might be attractive, given it’s low, low costs, doing nothing at all would actually be better than using a service such as the one described above.

Of course we don’t want you to do nothing. We want you to work smart and do “something” and thrive, growing your business in ways you never thought possible. Do you need help with your content marketing strategy? Do you want someone to look at what you are currently purchasing from other social media/content management firms to make sure they aren’t “sharing content” with others, without you knowing? Contact me anytime, and I am more than happy to help you in any way I can.

As this Realtor® put it, they wanted “A second pair of eyes” on what they were about to embark on, and my opinion on what the outcome might be.

This agent had been talking with a social media/inbound marketing firm, and what that firm wanted to do for the agent was set up a blog and roll out a social media campaign. Sounds like a great idea, right? Well not so fast.

Because I like to tease you guys, and keep you waiting, with baited breath, I’m going to split up the blog and the social media. Today I will address our conversations about the blog. In my next post, just because I know you love to wait, oh so much, I will address our conversations about the social media.

While speaking with anyone that calls our office for the first time, I tend to immediately open up a web browser, and snoop around, while chatting with them. In this case, it took me a few different searches to find this agent (one good reason to set up a blog, and have some sort of social media strategy). When I did finally find them, I saw that their website actually really wasn’t half bad.

The site wasn’t on a content management system, but it did have some good content on it, was set up with some pretty basic, yet good SEO practices, when I took a look at the source code, and visually, while not super up to date style wise, was not a bad looking site.

When I asked the agent if the firm they were speaking with was going to convert their website into a hosted, WordPress website, there was a little bit of silence, and then I got the response, “they aren’t going to touch my website, but they are going to set up a wordpress blog for me.”

Fair enough. Many people with websites that were already built, add a sub-directory to their server, for a hosted wordpress blog. The thing is though, the agent gave me a couple URL’s to see some of this agency’s work, and it turns out that the blog they were going to set up for the agent wasn’t a self hosted blog, but rather a blog on the wordpress.com, free platform.

What is the difference between WordPress.org and WordPress.com?

Simply put, there are three main differences between the .org and .com versions of WordPress:
• WordPress.org is self hosted, meaning you need to set up a database on your web server to run it. This is an extra level of complexity, compared to the easy to use, free, WordPress.com platform, but there are plenty of tutorials out there on how to set it up, and even more firms out there that can do this for you.

• WordPress.com, while free, has ads on it and has many, many limitations that the self hosted, .org version does not. Granted, some of these restrictions can be lifted, if you pay annual fees to them, ranging between $30-$100, depending on what you wish to do, but even then, there are many restrictions as to what you can do.

• The .org version of WordPress is hosted on YOUR Website’s domain. The .com version is not. By default, you’ll get a URL for your blog of something to the effect of: http://JoeSmithRealtor.Wordpress.com

Right there, that is the number one issue I see with using the free, hosted version (WordPress.com) of WordPress.

What difference does it make if I use “myName.WordPress.com” for my blog?

There is one reason you want to use a self hosted blog for your website: SEO.

If you are simply using the “yourName.WordPress.com” version of a blog, all that great content you put out there is doing NOTHING to get your Real Estate website higher in the search rankings.

It’s not part of your website’s domain if you set your blog up that way, so as far as search engines like Google are concerned, the two are completely non-related.

Think of your website as a bicycle wheel. Your main Real Estate Website (e.g. www.JaneSmithRealtor.com) is the hub of that wheel. Then, you have spokes. One spoke on this wheel is your Featured listings and MLS Search (e.g. http://search.JaneSmithRealtor.com). Another spoke would be your blog (e.g. http://blog.JaneSmithRealtor.com, or perhaps http://www.JaneSmithRealtor.com/blog). From there, you can have many other spokes that lead back to your hub (e.g. branded social media integration such as RebelMouse, chat features, even features such as our neighborhood capture pages), thus making the footprint of your website larger.

The larger the footprint of your website, the more content you have out there for Search Engines to index, and the more relevant those Search Engines will think your website is. This of course means that your website will rank higher in organic search rankings. Which of course IS WHAT YOU WANT.

So in this case, while I applaud the agent for realizing they needed a better online presence, and while the ideas that marketing agency gave them, in theory, are not bad ones, I think the execution of this project leaves much to be desired.

I was happy to lend some advice and get this agent started off on the right foot, in the beginning, to ensure success, just like I am happy to do the same for you. Do you have questions about setting up a blog? Do you have the feeling something is wrong with your blog, and because of that, you aren’t getting the results you think you deserve? Do you have ideas on launching a new blog and want to get another set of eyes to look at your plan? Contact me anytime, and I am more than happy to help you in any way I can.

So what about the social media aspect of this agency’s plan, for the Realtor® described in this article? Well, as I’m sure you can guess, it was a little off the mark, but not in the ways you would probably have imagined. Stay tuned for my next post and find out one of the most misunderstood things about social media and content marketing, and how to avoid this pitfall.

They hate blogging for the wrong reasons though. The top two reasons generally are:

1) I can’t come up with good ideas about what to blog about
2) I don’t have time to blog

If you feel this way, even though I don’t necessarily agree with it, I feel your pain. Because of that, I generally take it really easy on Real Estate Agents, when they object to blogging. I save the heavy hammers for other things I need to pound into their heads, to help them get their businesses to the next level.

That was until the other morning. While on my morning swim at the gym, I was listening to my favorite podcast from Hubspot called Inbound Now. The host, David Wells was interviewing a gentleman by the name of Marcus Sheridan.

The long and short of it was that Marcus’ Fiberglass Pool business took a massive hit during the time of the Mortgage Fall out. He was scrambling to try and keep his business going, and one day he finally decided it was time to knuckle up and start blogging and trying to increase his online presence, while increasing his sales.

Obviously, since Marcus was a featured guest on a well respected podcast, you know his plan worked. What is noteworthy though was his approach to blogging and content marketing. To Marcus, a blog is just another page on your website. While of course it’s another page on your website, it’s important to consider that it’s also a page that is very, VERY well regarded by search engine spiders, thus giving you great page rank opportunities.

Even more than that though, his approach to “gaming the system” is inspired. Marcus wasn’t an SEO expert or marketing guru. He was just a regular guy. And being a regular guy, he understood how regular people search the web. Namely, they ask questions.

For instance, taking Marcus’ profession of fiberglass pools. He realized that people searching the web would type in things such as:
• Fiberglass pools vs. plaster pools
• Problems with fiberglass pools
• How much do fiberglass pools cost
• Company A Pools, Vs. Company B Pools
Etc.

Based on this, Marcus put together a strategy and every evening would spend a couple hours putting together every type of article that would meet these types of searches. He wrote a blog article called “Every question I have ever been asked about Fiberglass Pools”, and another one comparing types of pools, another one comparing costs of pools, etc.

All of these posts were actually quite long. They were not “traditional blog posts”. For all intents and purposes, just as Marcus described, these posts are basically just more web pages on his site.

And guess what? They work. They work because he has put them together, answering the types of questions the average consumer will type into a web browser. Clearly it didn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this strategy out, BUT it did take a very inspired idea from a creative person. That is exactly what Marcus Accomplished.

So how does this pertain to me as a Real Estate Professional?

What Marcus has done can most definitely apply your Real Estate Practice, and getting more web traffic and leads. For instance, how about writing articles such as this:
•The difference between my services and “fill in the blank realtor name”
• Every question I’ve been asked by home buyers about buying homes
• Every question I’ve been asked by home sellers about selling homes
• Services every Realtor® should offer when selling a home
• How you can get top dollar when selling you home

You get the idea. One thing of importance to note are the comparison articles. If you post comparisons, whether it be your services vs. another agent’s, or your brokerage vs. another brokerage, BE CAREFUL and most of all try to be as objective as possible. Only use comparisons that can be made by someone reviewing something publicly available, such as a website, brochure, etc. You can certainly give opinions, but you should always explain why you think those opinions are pertinent to the home seller. In other words, just try to be fair

So at the end of the day, if you want web traffic, and don’t want the stress of being “a blogger”, Marcus Sheridan has put together a fool proof, easy way to get the content you need, on your site, and indexed by search engines, to get you more traffic and more leads.

Still not sold on blogging and want to discuss your thoughts? Want to get started, but aren’t sure where to begin? Does your website not even have a blog, and you need to get one built? If you have any of these issues, or even just want to call to say hello, please contact me anytime. I’d love to chat with you, give you my input, answer questions, and give you any help I can.

Peter Klaven is a Realtor in a movie. His billboards illustrate an interesting point though.

Being that I’m a “gambling man”, and who doesn’t like a good bet, I would like to make you the following bet:

Go grab any homes magazine, Sunday Real Estate Edition of your local newspaper, or even the stack of Real Estate postcards that ended up in your mailbox this week. I bet you that you cannot get all the way through them without seeing something to the effect of:

“Your (fill in the city name) Real Estate Specialist”

“Top 1% Worldwide”

“Diamond (or any other exclusive sounding word) Society”

“Joe Smith, Realtor®, MBA, CRS, CDPE, E-pro, ABR, CPM, GRI, SRES, SFR, etc. etc. etc.”

I get it. As a Realtor®, you are your business. So it seems logical that you need to promote yourself. In fact, many of the best Realtors® are consistent, solid self promoters.

I’ll even take it one step further. If you have worked your tail off and reached the successful level that puts you in the top tier of your marketplace, or spent your time furthering your education to get more designations, you should be proud of those things.

The reality of it though is that while these things are great, and while you should be proud of them, the public does not care. When I say “does not care”, I mean every time, in every circumstance, no matter what.

First off, if you take a look at everyone that claims they are the top 1%, 5%, or whatever, it is statistically impossible for all those people to truly be in that category. As for designations, or even the brokerage designations like “gold circle, diamond society, etc.”, the typical homeowner has no idea what those things are. Again, it simply doesn’t matter.

FACT: As human beings, we are all selfish people. At the end of the day, all we want to know is “What’s in it for us”.

This has never been more true than when a homeowner is considering selling their home. A home is most people’s most valuable asset. Because of this, they have a very clear idea in mind as to what they want. They want answers and assurances. Specifically:
• How can you prepare my home to stand out above the other homes on the market that are similar to mine?
• Being that online home search is so popular, what type of online exposure are you going to give my home that others can’t?
• How are you going to get me top dollar for my home?

Does your marketing answer questions like this, or does your marketing talk about yourself? If your marketing falls in the category of the latter, don’t feel bad. Not a week goes by that we don’t meet an agent that is in the “Me” marketing mode and not the “What I will do for you” marketing mode. It’s a very common mistake. The good news is that it’s also one of the easiest things to fix.

When planning your marketing messages, think of things in terms of the following:
• What are my differentiating factors in my marketplace?
When you answer this question, DO NOT think of it in terms of your rank, or stature in your marketplace. Think of specific things you do when listing homes that others don’t, and how those specific differences will benefit the seller in the successful sale of their home.

• What are the top three benefits I will bring a home seller, in the sale of their home?
For instance, maybe you are known for quickly selling homes. Perhaps you are known for historically selling homes for x% over list price. Maybe you just have a proven process that makes it easy for sellers to sell and gives them a stress free experience.

No matter what you come up with, just remember to ask yourself, “Is this something that would benefit a seller, specifically?”

• How can I showcase my past production to illustrate to homeowners the benefits I can bring them?
There are lots of ways you can do this, but be careful. This is a tricky one. With just one wrong turn, this type of marketing message can easily shift from the “you” to the “me” thinking. You have to be aware of this and make sure you don’t accidentally cross over into that realm.

One of the easiest ways to do this, without getting into the “me” area is by using client testimonials. Let one of your past clients explain specifically how your performance helped them with the sale of a home. This type of marketing will allow a potential seller to easily put themselves in the shoes of your past client and automatically understand what you can do for them.

So there you have it. It’s not easy being a Realtor®. Marketing can be just as difficult. With a little planning, and the constant mantra, “what is in it for them?”, you’ll be on your way to a wildly successful marketing campaign.

Since I truly appreciate you reading all my articles, I did a quick internet search, and I have a bit of a “video funny” for you. Clearly this goes a little overboard, but you’ll get the idea:

Do you need help re-crafting your marketing messages? Do you need help getting an entire campaign designed and deployed? Do you have some marketing ideas and just want to bounce them off someone? If the answer to any of those questions is “yes”, please contact me anytime. I am more than happy to help you in any way I can.

So along those lines, today we will be comparing our LeadingAgent Neighborhood Capture Marketing System to Corefact’s Capture Marketing System.

Now again, before we get started, let me disclose the following:
• We have gathered the information in these posts based on what we have found during a comparison of our product, against what we found on the corporate website of the competing product.
• This is a point by point review. We of course happen to love our product, however we are not saying our product is superior to any other product out there. Our intent is to lay out the facts, as they are available, give you our thoughts and let the reader make their decision as to what solution is the best fit for them.

Similarities

Okay, so unless you have reading comprehension issues, you should have immediately noticed that both of our solutions have the word “Capture” in them.

Why is this? It’s the technology with which we use to print our postcards and the print/web collaboration that both products offer:
• Both of us employ a type of printing called Variable Data Printing

• Both of us have a way to track responses from any given direct mailing via a dynamically created “capture code” that is printed on the card, which homeowners can use to get further information, online.

• Both of us give the homeowner a customized online experience, based on where they actually live

I realize that based on the above three points, the systems seem very similar, but they are in fact quite different. Here’s how:

Differences:

Because both of our systems rely on print, web, and a back end interface that a Real Estate Agent can interact with, we figure the best way to show the differences of these two systems is to break it up into a section for each piece.

1) Print:

Sample Corefact Postcard

We have samples of the postcards printed by Corefact. The cards are professional looking. At first glance, compared to the cards we print for our Neighborhood Capture Marketing System, we see a couple distinct differences:

Sample LeadingAgent Postcard

1)Postcard Thickness: The recycled postcard stock we use for our Neighborhood Capture cards is thicker than those that Corefact Prints

2) Postcard Finish: Both solutions offer high gloss U/V Coating. The difference here is that by default, we put a high gloss finish on BOTH sides of the card, giving it a consistent look and feel throughout.

3) Printing Process: This one admittedly is only for you “prinitng geeks” out there (admit it. Lots of you know waaaay more about printing and print quality than you ever originally wanted to learn, right? ). There is a vast difference in the printing processes used for both solutions:

Corefact uses Xerox digital printers. These are toner based machines that burn the toner into the paper (think a glorified laser printer or photo copier. In fact, they have options on all these units for a copy deck). The result, while nice, doesn’t get near the highest resolution for photo printing and quality.

The LeadingAgent Neighborhood Capture cards are printed on and HP Indigo Digital Printing Press. This press uses liquid inks (just like a traditional printing press), giving you the highest resolution, and the truest, most vivid photos, as the ink absorbs into the paper, giving you a true, photo quality image.

2) Consumer Facing Web interface

This is actually where both systems couldn’t be more different.

Corefact offers a consumer that punches a capture code into a website a listing of current homes for sale, as well as current sales. They also have a slider bar feature that allows the homeowner to select “The strength of the Real Estate Market”, as well as the “Condition Of Their Home” (Think Kely Blue Book’s website that allows you to assess the value of your used car). Based on where you set the sliders, it gives you a price range of your home.

Our system is vastly different, in that we have a fundamental difference of opinion as to giving home values to homeowners. Our general opinion is that nobody should EVER give anybody the value for their home, UNLESS that person is a living, breathing, licensed Real Estate Agent (Translation: Computers Can’t Do This). In fact, in a recent article published by Inman News, Corefact’s Founder, Chris Burnley was quoted as saying, “The valuation tool is just a toy for a prospect to come in and make changes to…”.

Based on our beliefs, the LeadingAgent Neighborhood Capture Product is built massively different. First off, as explained above, there is no reason we can think of that a computer should tell a homeowner what their home is worth. That should always and only be left to a Real Estate Professional.

Next, the LeadingAgent Neighborhood Capture product goes much deeper than current listings. In addition to current listings, our capture pages, tailored to the homeowners exact location offer the following features on the dynamic page:
• School Maps, scores and reports
• Crime maps
• Local restaurants, shops and stores maps
• At a glance Real Estate Statistical Charts
• Local News Headlines
• The ability for the homeowner to type in any street address, street name, or city they are interested in learning more about. At that time, the Neighborhood Capture page will dynamically rebuild itself giving the homeowner all the above information about any area they are interested in (thus changing the online home search process).
• Lastly, when a homeowner finds an area they are interested in, they can set up a “listing alert” and be notified, via email, anytime a listing comes up in that area that matches what they are looking for.

3) Back End Interface:

This is another massive difference in the two systems. While both Corefact and our LeadingAgent Neighborhood Capture system log the number of people that have responded to a mailing, and activities they have embarked on (for instance, signing up for a market analysis), that is where the similarities end.

Our system goes above and beyond. In fact, any subscriber to our Neighborhood Capture Marketing system not only gets that system in it’s entirety, but also, the full version of our one of a kind LeadingAgent Cloud Based Real Estate Marketing CRM.

Our general theory is this: If you are going to get leads from a marketing initiative, it is irresponsible of us not to give you all the tools possible to convert those prospects into clients, helping you close more business than ever before. Our one of a kind, Cloud Based Real Estate CRM Solution is a massive step in that direction.

4) Additional Options

Everything under this banner falls into the realm of what our CRM solution offers.

Sync Options:

Corefact’s solution offers no sync options whatsoever.

LeadingAgent’s option will sync all your contacts and prospects with any internet enabled device (ipad, iphone, android phone, blackberry, tablet, pc or mac), as well as things like Outlook, Exchange or Gmail.

 Social Media Integration:

Corefact seemingly has no Social Media Integration.

Our system, on the other hand, not only has an integrated social media control panel, allowing you to create and schedule posts on every popular social media site and blog platform, but ALSO integrated social media monitoring.

For instance, if you specialize in Palo Alto, CA, you can set up an alert to go to you anytime somebody types into Twitter the phrase “Moving To Palo Alto”. You can set up as many keyword monitoring searches you wish.

Support:

It is not disclosed on Corefact’s site what their support options are, however they do have published group training sessions every week.

For our solution, included with our partnership with Salesforce.com, you not only have access to our Full Video Training and Support Database, as well as our in-house, 9am to 5PM (PST), M-F support, you also get 24/7, worldwide support by our support teams at Salesforce.com.

So even if you are having a problem at 3AM, no matter where you are in the world, we can get you what you need, when you need it.

Trial Period:

Corefact does not have one

The only requirement to get a free 30 day trial of our system is that we simply require you go through a 20-30 minute initial training seminar, where we show you the best practices on how to utilize your trial, ensuring you will be successful in your evaluation of our system.

We will give you no harm, no foul access to our system, for 30 days to see how it works.

If you wish, during that trial period to send out postcards and test the effectiveness, all we ask is that you pay for the sending of the postcards you want to go out to your farm area, and any MLS Fees incurred to pull the listing maps, listing alerts, etc., for the period of the trial, on the Neighborhood Capture Page (Postcards range between $0.49 per piece and $0.69 per piece, depending on the qty you send (INCLUDING POSTAGE) . MLS Access ranges between $35 and $49 per month, pending on your MLS System. You are able to hook that up for a 30 day trial, with no cancellation repercussions).

Cost:

Corefact’s IDX Site Solution is advertised at $99  per month.

Our system, INCLUDING our cloud based CRM Solution is also $99  per month.

Extra Integrations:

As far as we can see, Corefact is not offering any third party integration whatsoever.

Our system is able to be integrated with many, many systems. Currently, some of those include:

-Cloud CMA

-Evernote

-Google Contacts

-Google Calendar

-Gmail

-Facebook

-Twitter

-Yelp

-Klout

-MailChimp

-DocuSign

-Listings To Leads

-Skype

-Ring Central

-DropBox

-Box.net

-Vertical Response

-Constant Contact

-Dot Loop

-Tango Card

-Chatter

-Your Website IDX Provider (most of them, if you don’t want to use our solution).

And Many More

So those are the similarities and differences between our LeadingAgent Neighborhood Capture Page Solution, and Corefact’s Capture Marketing Solution.

Do you have questions about Print Marketing For Real Estate? Would you like to further explore your Marketing needs? Contact me anytime, and I would be more than happy to assist you in any way I can.

Now before our competitors get in a tail spin, let me disclose:
• We have gathered the information in these posts based on what we have found during a comparison of our product, against what we found on the corporate website of the competing product.
• This is a point by point review. We of course happen to love our product, however we are not saying our product is superior to any other product out there. Our intent is to lay out the facts, as they are available and let the reader make their decision as to what solution is the best fit for them.

In today’s article, we are going to compare our LeadingAgent Cloud Based Real Estate CRM Solution to Top Producer’s CRM Solution.

1) Cloud Based Vs. Web Based
Last week, in a comparison between LeadingAgent and IXACT Contact, we discussed the difference between Cloud Based & Web Based and how IXACT was Web Based.

While Top Producer’s newest version is an HTML 5 version that is device agnostic (accessible by any mobile device), you are still dependent on their servers, vs. the security of a third party (Salesforce.com has one of the largest, most secure cloud infrastructures in the world)

Additionally, of curiosity, the Top Producer Website hints that you just open the browser on your mobile device and go. That actually isn’t exactly the case. You see, there is a mobile version of their CRM they expect you to use.

As we’ve discussed before, mobile versions of things, or downloadable apps are generally lacking the features of the full fledged desktop version. One of the unmatched strengths of our LeadingAgent Cloud Based Real Estate CRM system is that we have no limitations. Whatever device you have in your hand, you have full access to every single element of our CRM system.

2) Are all contact records the same?

At a glance, this seems to be pretty even keel. Both solutions offer contact records allowing for detailed histories, refined categorization, detailed search characteristics, and associated task lists.

Adding fields to the Top Producer CRM system seems a little counter intuitive to me, but that is probably just personal preference.

3) Task and Calendar Reminders

This is an obvious thing. If this wasn’t a feature of both CRM systems, one of us would not be able to call their solution a CRM system.

4) Automated Workflow (setting things up to be automated for you, rather than having to assign them)

Unlike our review of IXACT Contact last week, which showed that they charge extra for this feature, Top Producer has a feature included in their standard CRM called “Contextual Coaching”.

Even though the name is misleading, it’s not a “Real Estate Coach”, but instead your virtual assistant that helps you cultivate your prospects.

Just like the LeadingAgent Cloud Based CRM solution, Top Producer’s Real Estate Coach is a contextual based workflow system that keeps you up to date and in the loop with every aspect of all communication with your prospects.

While in LeadingAgent, a Realtor® can easily set up custom workflow to fit the way THEY work, it is not clear if Top Producer allows for such customization.

5) Does it Sync?

Both solutions offer sync solutions, but slightly different:

Both solutions have smartphone, Microsoft Outlook and Gmail Integration.

The difference is that LeadingAgent also offers Microsoft Exchange Server Integration, as well as Mac Mail Integration.

6) Is there a mobile App?

Mobile apps are not “where it is at” anymore. Mobile apps are basically a “dumbed down” version of an entire solution. That generally means that from that mobile app, you can not do everything you could do, as if you were sitting at your laptop or desktop computer.

While the LeadingAgent Cloud Based solution does have an actual downloadable app, from the Apple Itunes Store, BlackBerry World Web Store, or Android Marketplace, it’s really not necessary, as you have full access to everything in the CRM, from your mobile device’s browser.

Top producer does not have an actual downloadable app, and requires you bookmark their mobile version on your mobile device’s web browser.

7) Is the CRM “device agnostic”?

Both systems for sure work on all mobile platforms. I didn’t see anything specific on Top Producer’s website as to if all features work on both Macs and PC’s. In doing a quick google search, I see lots chatter that their CRM solution doesn’t “truly” work with macs (I guess some features don’t work).

I do also see a link to Top Producer University that specifically says it works seamlessly, so I suppose this would be something to investigate, if you are considering their solution.

8) Mass Email Capabilities

Both solutions have pre-made email templates, as well as the ability to create new ones. Both systems also appear to have no limit on the number of emails an agent can send.

9) Drip Marketing Campaigns

LeadingAgent comes pre-built with drip campaigns for buyers, sellers, open house prospects, website visitors and people that respond to your postcard mailings. Additionally, users can create their own custom drip marketing campaigns.

While I know that top producer has the ability to put together email campaigns, neither their website, their blog, or their downloadable brochure states whether or not they have any sort of basic templates for you to use as a starting point.

10) E-Newsletter Capabilities

Our LeadingAgent system has a newsletter template, as well as Vertical Response, Constant Contact & MailChimp integration, allowing for easy creation of an attractive HTML newsletter. These solutions are fully integrated into our standard CRM offering.

Top Producer University shows that they do have an e-newsletter that is available, but it is filed in their Market Snapshot tutorials. Market Snapshot is an additional feature that costs $80 per month.

11) Web to Lead Capture Forms

Both systems offer customized web to lead forms. Both appear to be on par, and able to be integrated into any web solution, and offer automatic notifications to the agent, should a lead come in.

In addition, both systems have a solution that allows an agent to push new inquiries from sites like Realtor.com, Zillow.com, Truilia.com, and ListingsToLeads.com as well. All those of course will immediately notify our client that there is a new lead in their system.

Taking things one step further, we also have an integrated, Interactive Open House Sign In Book offering as well that will allow agents to ask open house visitors to sign in on a tablet or laptop, thereby pushing that person’s contact information directly into the CRM.

Even more, if our client is also a subscriber to Altos Research,($50 per month) we can also set up that open house sign up to automatically trigger automated monthly market statistics, sent directly to the open house visitor, for the zip code where they currently reside.

Top Producer does have a similar app called Bright Open, but it requires the $80 per month Market Snapshot service.

12) Calendars & Tasks

There appear to be no vast differences worth noting here.

13) Transaction Management, Listing & Selling Plans & Closing Activity Plans

While Top Producer gives you the ability to transfer closing information to a third party, there does not seem to be any automated system tracking and keeping your listings and closings on track.

LeadingAgent uses automated action plans (customizable plans you can create and enact with the click of a button), that will ensure you and your team are on the top of your game, all the time, making your clients think you are superstars.

14) Reporting

Both systems appear to have saved reports to help you. The biggest difference seems to be with what we call, “Business Practice Management”, and how it relates to reports on the health of your business.

Our system not only tracks the health of your business, but we track your business opportunities on a true “Weighted Pipeline Percentage”. What does this mean? You can get at a glance reports of the health of your business, and where all your leads are in your sales cycle at any given time.

Not only that, we also have reporting to track marketing expenses. So you can cross reference your sales revenue, and specifically what marketing activities led to that revenue, allowing you to make intelligent decisions about what marketing you should spend more on, and what marketing you should cut back on. This gives you a full, 360 degree view of everything.

While Top Producer does have income and expense reports, it seems to be simply that and nothing more. There are no pipeline reports and the only value these reports would bring you would be AFTER you close a transaction and note it in the system, along with the expenses incurred for that transaction.

So in other words, you would not know if you were having business problems, before it is too late. LeadingAgent on the other hand, working on weighted pipelines, gives you a quick, at a glance indication of the health of your business, at any moment you wish to check it out.

15) Social Media Integration

While Top Producer does allow you to set up your Facebook and Twitter accounts, to push updates out to your social media platforms (as does the LeadingAgent system), that is the end of the similarities between the two systems.

Our system, on the other hand, not only has an integrated social media control panel, allowing you to create and schedule posts on every popular social media site and blog platform, but ALSO integrated social media monitoring.

For instance, if you specialize in Palo Alto, CA, you can set up an alert to go to you anytime somebody types into Twitter the phrase “Moving To Palo Alto”. You can set up as many keyword monitoring searches you wish.

16) Upgrades

Both systems offer free upgrades

17) Support

Both systems offer free, and unlimited support. It appears Top Producer’s Phone support hours are 9am to 8pm (EST), Monday through Friday. They also have email support seven days per week, from 10AM – 6:30PM (EST). They also offer live training classes.

For our solution, included with our partnership with Salesforce.com, you not only have access to our Full Video Training and Support Database, as well as our in-house, 9am to 5PM (PST), M-F support, you also get 24/7, worldwide support by our support teams at Salesforce.com.

So even if you are having a problem at 3AM, no matter where you are in the world, we can get you what you need, when you need it.

18) Trial Period?

We cannot find any reference to a free trial on the Top Producer Website. LeadingAgent offers a 30 day (4 week) trial.

The only requirement to get a free 30 day trial of our system is that we simply require you go through a 20-30 minute initial training seminar, where we show you the best practices on how to utilize your trial, ensuring you will be successful in your evaluation of our system.

19) Cost?

Top Producer’s CRM is advertised at $39.95 per user, per month.

Our system costs $50 per user, per month.

If you choose to use sales statistics, Top Producer’s solution is $80 per month. Our integrated solution, Altos Research, which offers the same automated reports, etc. costs $50 per month.

20) Extra Integrations

While Top Producer offers integration with a few of their own products (Market Snapshot, Facebook/Twitter Connector and Website Landing Pages), we couldn’t find anything else on their website. A quick Google search though, did show links to the following integrations:

- IDX Broker

- Stewart Title Sure Close

- Drive Buy

-Google Contacts

-Google Calendar

Our system is able to be integrated with many, many systems. Currently, some of those include:

-Cloud CMA

-Evernote

-Google Contacts

-Google Calendar

-Facebook

-Twitter

-Yelp

-Klout

-MailChimp

-DocuSign

-Listings To Leads

-Skype

-Ring Central

-DropBox

-Box.net

-Vertical Response

-Constant Contact

-Dot Loop

-Tango Card

-Chatter

-Your Website IDX Provider (most of them)

And Many More

So those are the similarities and differences between our LeadingAgent Cloud Based CRM Solution, and Top Producer’s CRM Solution.

Do you have questions about CRM? Would you like to further explore your CRM needs? Contact me anytime, and I would be more than happy to assist you in any way I can.