The New Real Deal
Last July, Coldwell Banker broke YouTube.
They didn’t mean to. But they were uploading agent videos to their new “On Location” branded channel and added so many that YouTube had to revise its rules.
“First, they didn’t allow YouTube channels to have more than 1,000 videos on a single playlist,” says David Marine, senior manager of e-marketing at Coldwell’s Parsippany, NJ, headquarters. “We broke that. Second, they never had a channel with more than 2,000 videos on it. So when we hit that number, the system basically shut down, and YouTube had to go in and arrange special access.
“I’m putting it on my resume,” he laughs. “The guy who brought YouTube down.”
Why the massive video upload? Because Coldwell Banker Real Estate, the corporate arm that services a network of 100,000 independent broker/owners in the U.S. and 46 other countries, has been on a drive to increase the ways it can get its listings in front of potential homebuyers at all stages of the decision process — including, in the case of the Internet, those who are in what CMO Michael Fischer terms the “dreaming stage.”
“Before coming to Coldwell Banker, I spent 15 years at Nissan North America,” Fischer says. “And I’ve noticed here in Jersey that the local car lots see some of their heaviest traffic on Sundays — because they’re closed. You can go and kick the tires without anyone bothering you.
“One of the beauties of YouTube is that when people are in that dreaming stage, six months away from buying, they’re not ready to call anyone, but they might find an online video listing with an agent that just clicks for them. We want to start getting our brand name and our agents’ profiles in front of them in that dreaming stage, so that when they’re ready to go we’re top of mind.”
YouTube videos aren’t the only weapon in Coldwell Banker’s new-media arsenal. The company has also launched a Facebook page and corporate Twitter account, and is integrating listings with the Dash Express GPS navigation device.
In August, Coldwell also rolled out a free app for smartphones, both the iPhone and Google Android versions. Users can now use Web-enabled phones to search for listings in 28 countries and save their results in a mobile “My Coldwell Banker” account. For any searches saved to their smartphone mobile accounts, users can also opt in to receive alerts of new properties and open houses on their phones.
And last July, visitors to New York’s Times Square were able to interact with the electronic billboard above the W Hotel to display a selection of home listings in any Zip Code in the nation. By texting “homes” and the chosen Zip to a short code, they could call up three properties — lowest-priced, median and most expensive — from Coldwell’s database for that area. A follow-up text message invited mobile users to surf to the main ColdwellBanker.com site on their phones.
“We have a brand promise of any listing, any time, anywhere, through our listing platform,” Fischer says. “Going on the billboard and letting people pull up listings by mobile was to me the ultimate form of listings any time, anywhere. You’re on Broadway at TKTS waiting for ‘Lion King’ seats, and yet you can shop for a home.”
Disruptive technology
All these steps are breaks with tradition in the world of real estate marketing, which has relied on personal contacts within the community, open-house showings, and such channels as classifieds, print ads and direct mail.
Those high-touch, highly local marketing tactics have been real estate staples for more than a century — at least since Colbert Coldwell formed his first real estate firm in 1906 and hired Benjamin Banker as a salesman five years later. But they no longer fit with the way most people start the process of looking for a new home.
“Because of the Web, a real estate agent has no idea who the next customer will be,” says David Siroty, corporate communications director for Coldwell Banker. “They’re looking through listings on the Web at work or at home before ever setting foot inside a broker’s office.”
Instead, they’ve been combing Craigslist and prowling Zillow, Trulia and a host of other Internet sites that offer not just listings but the quality-of-life information that agents used to have a lock on, from local schools and shopping to property values. A 2008 study by the National Association of Realtors trade group found that 87% of buyers purchasing a home reported using the Web to do research.
Homebuyers’ habits have changed, but the real estate industry has been generally slow to adapt. In 2005, the Department of Justice filed an anti-trust suit against the NAR for obstructing Web-based brokerages in some markets, a suit that was settled only last year.
Looking around for a technological edge, Coldwell Banker realized that while YouTube contained real estate videos galore, they were disorganized, not geo-targeted, impossible to search and often obsolete. “Type in real estate on YouTube and you got 68,000 results with no connections among them,” Siroty says. “We realized we were sitting on a trove of unbelievable information, with 100,000 sales associates, homes to showcase, and agents whose personalities and expertise could jump off the screen.”
Next Page: Video voices
So the company approached YouTube about developing a more effective portal for real estate video. Last May, the company launched a branded, highly integrated corporate channel on YouTube that has become one major focal point of its social initiative. Users can go to Coldwell Banker’s “On Location” channel for a wealth of information. But the heart of the channel is a mapping mashup developed in partnership with YouTube and its parent Google.
“On Location” locates where users are connecting from (using IP lookup) or goes to a map based on a Zip Code they input. It draws a 25-mile radius on that map and pinpoints videos in that area bucketed into categories: home listings, agent profiles, agencies or brokerage offices, local and community profiles and a catchall “other.”
Most of the videos are less than five-minutes long. When they’re over, users have the option to link to the same listing on the main Coldwell Banker site and get much more detailed information about square footage, an interactive map showing local services, community data, and the names and contact info of the brokerage and sales associate carrying the listing.
The videos are tagged to the listings on ColdwellBanker.com, so that when an agent sells a property and the system removes that listing from the Web site, it’s taken down from the YouTube channel as well.
The company made a conscious decision not to require user registrations on the channel.
“We are a premium real estate brand, with an average sale price about 10% to 20% higher than the national average,” Fischer says. “For our target audience, a registration is a roadblock, and they’ll bail off the site. We’d rather have them empowered to find the information they want, and then we’ll find them as they move through the system.”
Video voices
The YouTube channel contained 500 videos at its May launch, but currently has more than 4,700 clips uploaded: mostly home listings, but also content ranging from third-party tips for selling or maintaining a home to mortgage advice for buyers and economic insights from Coldwell Banker president and CEO Jim Gillespie.
Thanks to promotion in TV commercials, online banners and search advertising, Coldwell’s On Location channel has already garnered hefty channel view numbers: more than 430,000 channel views in its first five months.
“Our agents are starting to find their ‘video voice,’ ” Fischer says, and the company is helping by offering tips and highlighting examples on its intranet. One agent, Salem, MA-based Jen Maxwell, has even developed a signature video “bumper” with a tight shot of a Coldwell logo coffee cup against a seashore with soaring gulls and the tagline: “Yep, that’s why I live in New England.”
Another agent in North Carolina creates weekly v-logs of her thoughts on the market from behind the wheel of her moving car, by attaching a Flip camera to her rear-view mirror. “We do not condone recording while driving,” Fischer adds.
Video also gives an opportunity to explore the luxe features of high-end properties, from building details like leaded-glass windows and pocket doors to gardens that would come off flat in a simple photo.
Siroty admits that the economic model for video may not work at the low end. “You can spend $5,000 to produce a good video for a $1.8 million property with no problem. But does that also work for a $200,000 property? That has yet to be determined.”
THE VIEW FROM CURBSIDE
Michael Fischer and Coldwell corporate can target real estate dreamers, but when those prospects start putting their dreams into action, they make contact with actual agents. How does this 3.0 marketing evolution look from the agency side?
Suzanne Mueller is vice president of marketing for a company that runs two Coldwell Banker affiliates in the Seattle and Portland, OR areas — taken together, the largest affiliate in the company. Like Fischer, she built her marketing resume in fields other than real estate and believes that outsider perspective informs her thinking.
“Marketing has been very agent-focused in real estate, and the consumer has been underserved,” she says. That has become more apparent as technology has put more information into shoppers’ hands.
“Before, the listings were tightly controlled, and that was a source of power for the brokerages,” she says. “Now it’s ubiquitous, and it’s worth nothing unless you package it properly and deliver it to the right audience.”
Agents in Mueller’s tech-savvy Northwest region have embraced video in a big way, she says, not just for listings but for their own profiles. They see it as a way to promote their personal brand prior to any outreach via phone, mail or e-mail.
Of course, it didn’t hurt that one of the first agents to upload a video quickly sold a property — to a Californian who saw her video long-distance and felt a connection.
“You have to think of it as a migration,” Mueller says. “We started with video, which is very tangible to our agents, very understandable. Now we’re moving into social media and started running classes in that last year. Since real estate is still a heavy-communications, high-touch industry, social media really hits our sweet spot.”
— Brian Quinton
