Hawaii Life Real Estate Brokers » Marketing

Tomorrow’s Marketing and the Mobile Agent Today with Nobu Hata

David E. Buck, R, BIC — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 19:03:12 +0000

Nobu Hata Speaks to Honolulu Realtors

I had the pleasure yesterday of attending a seminar hosted by the local chapter of YPN, which is the Hawaii Association of Realtors’ Young Professional Network. The title sponsor was Old Republic and the featured speaker was Nobu Hata of Edina Realty in Minnesota. Nobu is a nationally acclaimed speaker and contributing author for the National Association of Realtors’ blog.

Nobu Hata demonstrating Google’s new social aspect to search…Hawaii Life in #1 Spot

The Key Points

The topic was “Tomorrow’s Marketing and the Mobile Agent Today.” He packed in a lot of good content within the 3 hours:

Google is now factoring social into their search through Google+. A thumbnail of our own Katie Minkus’ face showed up under HawaiiLife.com as we appeared in the #1 Spot when he Googled “Hawaii Real Estate”
How much more empowered consumers are by the tools at their fingertips.
How mobile devices are making up a larger market share every day – 7 Million new cell phones were activated on Christmas Day!
The power of Google, tracking analytics and how to identify what works and what doesn’t.

What I’m pretty impressed to say, is our company is already aware of these trends and we will continue to keep up on them to stay ahead of the curve. What was exciting to see was the number of Realtors in the room with perhaps over 150 in attendance. Those that showed up see the power of internet marketing, the power of search and the power mobile devices. I saw a lot of people taking notes, which is encouraging. The question becomes, how many Realtors will actually implement some of the things he covered?

The Challenges

Not to discourage anyone, however here are some of the challenges:

He showed how it was possible to copy the HTML code off a site to copy what is working for another company. The challenge with this is Google recognizes “unique content” and that if you copy someone else’s site, you won’t get the credit. In addition, Google is always changing their algorithms, so what works today may not work tomorrow.
He recommended going to start a WordPress blog. This is a great recommendation, however unless anyone does blogging full time for a living, it will be very difficult to get the page ranking of a more established site. For instance, if I were to go write a blog post today on Diamond Head Real Estate on my own (new) site or were to write the same exact article on Hawaiilife.com, the article on our blog would actually show up. Why? because Hawaii Life has an established track record of authority with the search engines.

You know the saying that goes “if you can’t beat them, you might as well join them?” In order to overcome the hurdles above, I followed a similar path and philosophy of Neal Norman, Kauai’s top producing Realtor, Dano Sayles, Maui’s former Top Producing Coldwell Banker agent and so many other Realtors throughout Hawaii have decided to do. We joined Hawaii Life!

What other real estate firm in Hawaii do you know that has been nominated for national awards in the last few years and has cracked Pacific Business News’ Top 10 Real Estate Firms within a few short years of opening its doors? Feel free to contact me if you’re a Realtor here on Oahu and ready to take your internet marketing and presence to the next level.

We List and Sell Maui Property, Properly

Jeremy Stice, R(S), Accredited Buyers Representative — Fri, 30 Dec 2011 07:00:01 +0000

Are you considering selling your Maui property? Perhaps you previously had it listed on the market, but it did not sell. Was it the market or the marketing?

We list Maui properties properly, which leads to Sold Results even in this challenging market. We have 27 closings in 2011—including sales in Haiku, Makawao, Kula, Kahului, Wailuku, Kihei, Lahaina, Kaanapali, and Kahana. What differentiates us from other brokers? Our smart marketing and solid representation.

Here are the most important components of our results based on marketing that we implement with all of our listings. I am happy to present these 11 key points to you in person, or feel free to read on:

Accurate Pricing
International Web Exposure
Professional Photography/Videography
Direct Marketing via E-Flyers
Direct Marketing via Maui as Our Muse, our Monthly E-Newsletter
Direct Marketing via Neighborhood Postcard Campaigns
Property Custom Websites
Seller Communication—real time information via a custom website communication portal for sellers
Listing Syndication via the internet
Lifestyle Blogging
Leading Real Estate Companies of the World/Luxury Portfolio International

Accurate Pricing

There is no more important component of marketing than accurate pricing. Before meeting with you on a listing appointment we will begin the process of a very detailed market analysis that often times takes us several hours to complete. In our 40 years of combined Maui real estate experience we have sold a lot of property and we have a very strong pulse on what is taking place in the market.

We look at the macro-economic factors affecting the saleability of the property like the overall Maui market statistics (November 2011 Market Stats) and go as specific as the micro-market conditions while making detailed property valuation adjustments of your property versus similar other ones that have sold in the area.

There is a very strong correlation with days on market vs. what a property eventually sells for as a percentage of the original asking price. The shorter the days on market, the higher net proceed to the client with less time for inconvenience of being on the market. We are so accurate with our price opinions that we are almost always a few percentage points of professional home appraisals, which usually cost $500 or more—we offer this for free as part of our professional service package.

International Web Exposure

HawaiiLife.com is the #1 trafficked real estate website in the state of Hawaii. We get over 120,000 visitors on our website per month. Google “Hawaii Real Estate” (the #1 key word search term related to Hawaii Real Estate) and we consistently are the #1 organic placing. Google “Maui Real Estate” and you will see we are in the top 3 organic listings on Google as well.

On the search function for HawaiiLife.com, we optimize all of our listings by pushing them to the top of the searches for any geographic region—the top 4 spots are always Hawaii Life listings. This means that, often times, we get up to 20 times more “virtual showings” for any properties than the competition’s listings.

Professional Photography and Videography

According to the National Association of Realtors, for 90% of buyers starting their search for property online, the appearance of one’s property is of paramount importance. We invest in your property by hiring professional photographers and videographers to make your property look as great as it possibly can. We will also work with professional home stagers to set the appropriate mood of your property, so that the buyers can envision themselves at home in your property.

Are you aware that YouTube.com is the #2 search engine in the world right behind Google? We are, and that’s why we post videos of all listings here and optimize them for buyers searching for Maui real estate.

Here are some examples of marketing utilizing pretty awesome photography:

Click either one of the images to visit the websites that we built for these properties

We procured multiple offers on these properties (pictured above) and put both of these properties into escrow at very close to their respective asking prices. Smart Marketing+Solid Representation=Sold Results

Direct Marketing via E-Flyers

We use E-flyers for three distinct purposes:

To send out to all the Maui Realtors as a Just Listed Notification or New Price Announcement and to invite them to our broker’s tour of the property.
To send out to our database of 45,000 buyers (and growing) that fit the parameters of the property. We link these e-publications to video blogs and/other websites that we create for the property.
Buyers can scan the QR codes (something like a virtual barcode which is the square black and white box in the flyer below), which direct buyers to the website for the individual property. We also use these QR codes on physical brochures that attach to our For Sale signs.

In 2 weeks of listing this property (click the image for the custom site), we sent out 2,000 E-flyers, 500 Just Listed postcards, sat 5 open houses, and we generated 3 offers on this property—we have an all cash transaction in place set to close.

Please click the above image for the Just Listed and Value Proposition Blog. Please view this link for an example on how we would use this piece as a New Price E-flyer. Here is a gallery of some of our other marketing E-flyers: Stice Team Property E-Flyers

Direct Marketing via e-Newsletter

In Maui as Our Muse, we place a strong emphasis on promoting our listings to over 3,000 international contacts through our email campaigns.

Direct Marketing via Neighborhood Postcard Campaigns

We market directly to the neighborhood where the subject property is located because we know this gets serious results as these people already know and love the area, and are likely to tell their friends, family, and co-workers about the new listing.

In select areas and very often in condo complexes, buyers who own there are looking to acquire more Maui real estate and this is a fantastic channel to get them to tune in. Unlike other real estate companies, we integrate our print marketing with our web marketing—we use it as a means to drive traffic to the websites that we create. For example, take a peek at the video blog at www.857anapuni.info that we have on the postcard as a printed URL as well as a QR code on the back of the postcard.

We sent out this particular postcard to over 600 addresses in Ka’anapali—we ended up selling the property in 3 weeks for all cash and over the asking price to a buyer who received this card.

Here is a gallery of some of our marketing postcards: Stice Team Marketing Postcards.

Property Custom Websites

We will create custom websites (sometimes several different ones) for all of our properties. These websites are really blogs that are Search Engine Optimized so that the properties get maximum viewing exposure.

For high end luxury properties we will design more elaborate websites like these:

Seller Communication

One of the most common challenges when listing their property is that many Realtors get the listing contract signed and never communicate what they are doing to market the property, only getting in touch with the seller when the property is not selling and they want a price reduction.

This is exactly why we have a system that allows the seller client to view exactly what is being done to market their property in real time. Please check this sample Maui Property Marketing Page. As a seller, you will always know exactly what is going on with your property from marketing to showings to property Realtor/buyer feedback.

We will be sending you regular reports via email as to how many “virtual showings” you are getting on HawaiiLife.com. Here is a sample of one of our listings: 610 Kaupakalua Road-HawaiiLife.com Viewing Statistics.

An important point here is that, in our personal experience, when we worked for a large national real estate franchise, we are getting roughly 20 times the amount of exposure on HawaiiLife.com that we were on our previous company’s website.

Listing Syndication

Many real estate companies make the contention that they put your property on hundreds of websites, and most of them do. What they are not telling you is that Hawaii Life Real Estate Brokers has the same enhanced packages for Realtor.com, Trulia, Zillow, etc., but the truth is that the traffic we get on HawaiiLife.com compared to these other sites makes them pale in comparison.

Craigslist.org—many people don’t know that Craigslist is one of the most regularly trafficked real estate websites around the world; we know this and this is why we regularly promote our listings here. Here is an example of how we make our listings stand out and get virtual showings on Craigslist: Live and Love Ka’anaapli Beachfront Living – Mahana #608

Lifestyle Blogging

We know that people live on and come to Maui because they love the Maui life—we do our best to sell our listings by means of sharing part of the Maui life.

Leading Real Estate Companies of the World/Luxury Portfolio International

Did we hear you say that you want a connection with a large international firm or referral network? Hawaii Life is now the exclusive Maui affiliate company of the Leading Real Estate Companies of the World, the world’s largest group of real estate brokerage firms. This company does more business than any other real estate group in the world and has an international network unparalleled to any other.

All Hawaii Life listings in excess of $1 million are part of the exclusive Luxury Portfolio program. Luxury Portfolio is the #1 real estate website in the world for Luxury Real Estate. Luxury Portfolio receives over 1.2 million visits by high net worth individuals on its website each year.

In addition to its own traffic, they do a fantastic job of syndicating these listings to The Wall Street Journal, Unique Homes, duPont Registry, Veranda, Smart Money, and online through WJS.com, CountryLife.co.uk, PropGoLuxury.com, and more.

Luxury Portfolio Seller Information

Was it the Market or the Marketing?

The Stice Team is excited, passionate, and ready to list and sell your Maui property properly. If you are serious about getting results, please reach out to us today for a personal presentation, a phone/Skype conference, or whatever works best for you. Our team of 4 full-time real estate professionals services the entire island of Maui, has over 72 years of real estate experience between us, and we are here at your service to get your property sold.

Aloha,

Nancy White, R(B)
Heidi Farmer, R(S)
Tracy Stice, R(B)
Jeremy Stice
808.281.2178
Stice@HawaiiLife.com

Why Photos Matter – Smart Marketing Case Study on Ilikai Condos For Sale

David E. Buck, R, BIC — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 23:51:45 +0000

Today, I decided to update my gallery of Ilikai Condos for Sale. As you’ll see, there aren’t too many there. Why? It is because even though I am a Realtor, I also think like a consumer and want to see more photos of a property. So, I decided to include only the ones where the primary photos showed something unique.

Generic MLS photo of Ilikai building exterior used by over 50% of active listings

So often in marketing you hear about a USP (Unique Selling Proposition). Why is it then that 9 out of 17 active listings (over half) at the Ilikai have the generic MLS photo of the building as their primary photo for all marketing?

Is it because the agents don’t care?
Is it because the agents are lazy?
Is it because the agents don’t know how to upload new photos?

In my opinion, none of these are excuses. If a seller hires you to sell their property and are paying you thousands of dollars in commissions, why wouldn’t you get the best possible photo up there for the primary photo? After working with hundreds of buyers, time and time again they tell me they skip over looking at properties with no photo, 1 photo, or the ones that have generic photos.

For example, if you were online looking for real estate (where over 90% of consumers are) and see the photo above on over half the listings, then see one like this below, which one would you take a closer look at?

This Ilikai listing (MLS# 1112757) is a great example of an agent who “cared”

This one above not only had a better primary photo, the remainder of their photos were done with effort and consideration. Now, this one below is an example of my last listing I had at the Ilikai.

Building exterior shot on my last Ilikai listing

I am not saying an exterior shot is the way to go for a primary photo, however, I do recommend choosing something that is unique and not so “cookie cutter” like over half the listings out there. The idea with a USP is to engage the consumer and convince them why your listing is the best one.

In a competitive building with 17 listings on the market, which one do you think will sell first? Here’s a hint: Of the last 19 sales at the Ilikai, only 3 (16%) of them sold with the generic photo example I used above. The other 84% that sold used a photo that was unique to their listing.

This case study is just one small example of Smart Marketing that Hawaii Life offers. If you are interested in learning more about how we List Property Properly, we are here at your service.

Real Marketing Takes Real Work

Matt Beall R(B), Owner, Principal Broker — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 01:19:23 +0000

We see (and hear) a lot of real estate agents who say that their marketing is primarily “internet driven”, but then they go to talk about the fact that their listings are placed on websites like Realtor.com, Trulia, and Zillow. This “marketing” is absolutely free. So is placing your listing on the websites below:

Every Multiple Listing Service in Hawaii (of which all Realtors are members of at least one), utilizes free services to display their listings on dozens of websites, all at no additional cost to the agent. So, is this really what a seller should expect when they pay thousands of dollars for their property to be “marketed”?

Anyone can do automatic.

At Hawaii Life, we closely study the traffic and the exposure we receive from any website. The traffic to our listings from ALL of the above websites combined is still far less than what we generate to Hawaiilife.com

For the larger, more popular websites like Trulia and Zillow, we discovered that the free version of listing syndication (arranged through the local MLS providers) only displayed some of our listings, and only at random. So, we built a custom xml feed for each of them, so they can now display all of our listings, all the time.

In the case of Realtor.com, Hawaii Life utilizes their Company Showcase product, which optimizes the presentation of our listings on Realtor.com to insure maximum exposure and, more importantly, maximum inquiries. It also allows us to track the page views for our listings, so we can see the return on our investment, and factor that information into our marketing budget.

Listing Traffic from Realtor.com to Hawaii Life Listings

Without metrics, and real numbers to measure the return on our investment, it’s not possible to know if our marketing is effective. Exposure (and a lot of it) is the first step. But we can’t settle for free services. Without proactive, aggressive steps to drive traffic to your listings, we can hardly say we’re “marketing”. That’s why Hawaii Life’s Smart Marketing focuses so intently on top placement in internet search engines, our increasingly large contact database (of over 31,000 people) and powerful usage statistics. We track and source every inquiry, and maintain relationships with customers and clients for as long as required before they’re ready to purchase.

Reduce Market Time with Home Staging Tips

Marisa Kagan, RA — Thu, 06 Jan 2011 19:00:17 +0000

Home staging has become a hot topic these days thanks to shows like HGTV’s “Designed to Sell.” Staging a home for sale normally involves things of an aesthetic nature, such as design, organization, and overall appearance (as opposed to mechanical or functional improvements).

In today’s buyer’s market, you need all the ammunition you can get to justify the asking price. Proper home staging can do that by positioning your home more favorably in the buyer’s mind and reduce market time. The key to this whole thing is appealing to the largest audience—that’s what it’s all about.

Here are some easy home staging tips courtesy of the Home Buying Institute:

Clear the room of family portraits and other items that say “you don’t live here” to buyers.
Clean like the sale of your home depended on it…because it does.
Let the room breathe. If it’s crowded or hard to walk through due to having too much furniture, remove some items, and place them in storage.
Arrange the room in a conversational way, if it’s not that way already. Try different furniture arrangements until you get the best fit.
Choose a nice and warm paint color for the living room. Use neutral tones in this space. That doesn’t mean you are limited to beige. There are plenty of warm colors that will neutralize the space, while also adding visual interest. These include the softer shades of green, blue, and brown.
“Neutral” does not have to be boring. You can liven up a neutral color scheme with colorful accent items, such as pillows and rugs. Color-coordinate these items for a professional and “put together” appearance.
Consider renting furniture for staging purposes. If your family room ensemble consists of that old couch from college days and a cheap table with wobbly legs, replace them with some nice rental pieces.
Slip covers are a great inexpensive way to camouflage worn furniture, or to neutralize bright or loud fabric colors.
And don’t forget about the home’s exterior an equally important (but often overlooked) home staging hot-spot. Curb appeal is exactly what it sounds like. When potential buyers pull up to the curb in front of your home, you want the home to appeal to them as much as possible. This gives a good first impression, so it should be part of your home staging checklist.

Home staging is about illusions. It’s beyond decorating and cleaning. It’s about perfecting the art of creating moods. Staging makes your house look bigger, brighter, cleaner, warmer, more loving, and, best of all, it makes home buyers want to buy it.

Looking for New Construction on Oahu?

David E. Buck, R, BIC — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 20:44:56 +0000

If you’re looking for New Construction Homes on Oahu, it’s really tough to find a good resource.Â A number of the homebuilders and developers market their own product seperately outside of MLS.Â So, where do you start?

198 Kokololio Place (MLS # 2915630) above is listed for $2,580,000

Here’s a gallery of Oahu New Construction Homes I put together, which consists of homes built in 2010 and others to soon to be completed. In addition, you want to find goodÂ Realtor to represent you to look for the listings that aren’t in MLS. Our agents have recently represented several buyers on New Construction listings that were not in MLS. By working with a Buyer’s agent, they can set you up for alerts of new homes as they come on market and the good agents know where the projects are that aren’t in MLS. If you’re looking for a “Brand New” home, contact one of our great agents today!

I’ve also noticed that a number of the developers that do advertise in MLS do not have good marketing and also a lack of (or ommission) of photos… As a matter of fact, 17 of the 40 active listings did not have one photo in MLS! When will sellers figure out that 90% of homebuyers start their home search online? Hawaii Life is starting to team up with developers on the neighbor islands to sell their product.Â If any here on Oahu are looking for better exposure and marketing of your product, we’re here to help you!

Why Do Realtors Put Misleading Photos in MLS?

David E. Buck, R, BIC — Mon, 12 Apr 2010 17:02:23 +0000

Diamond Head Lookout within walking distance of Oahu home…

I just saw a new listing pop up today in Diamond Head and the main photo in MLS was a picture of the coastline. The description of the photo said it was within “walking distance”. Well, what do you define as walking distance? I guess anything on the island of Oahu could be considered walking distance for that matter. The catch is how willing and able would someone be willing to walk? Since I live in Diamond Head, I know that this particular listing was a 5 minute drive in the car and a good 20 minute walk to where the photo was taken. In my opinion, this is misleading to the consumer.

At Hawaii Life Real Estate Services, we market your property smartly, however never mislead the consumer. The listing I had mentioned is a perfect example of why you want a good buyer’s agent to represent you (especially if you are not on Oahu & not familiar with the island) in your next real estate purchase.