Property agents (local Singapore agents especially) have this rookie mistake in web marketing; getting a website to list their property listings and not doing anything about. Most, especially the less internet savvy agents would be muttering to themselves on the few hundred dollars spent on companies who tried to market their listing products and just forget that they have an existing potential marketing tool that they haven’t exploited.

Photo Credit: CarbonNYC

What went wrong?

Imagine a television channel that has no one knowing its existence. The channel keeps rolling but there’s no viewership to support. No matter how good the variety shows, the movies or the entertainment channel is doing, no one is watching it at all.

Eventually the people that’s churning out the contents got tired since there’s no viewership to sustain the cost of running the channel; it dies.

The above is just a metaphor of what is actually happening with an agent just listing his/her properties online on their own website without letting people knowing its existence. No or very little effort is being placed to emphasize that they have a marketing site. Soon, they think that ‘internet marketing’ is a waste of time and stops updating their site completely.

The truth is, internet marketing isn’t as simple or as automatic as it seems. TARGETED TRAFFIC (note my emphasis) is the key.

Targeted Traffic?

People always argue the fact that traffic is the key to internet marketing. They’re only 1/4 right. The 3/4 that really and exactly convert sales would be targeted traffic that stays on your listings and actually read what you have to offer.

You can drive loads of traffic to your site. But without people actually browsing and giving what they are looking for, you’re simply again wasting your time and money, without any Return on Investment (ROI) that you have spent on your site.

So what if you have a personal MLS (multiple listing service) that has little to offer on information of your marketing property? They either

• Leave your site in 5 seconds because it’s boring
• Leave your site in 10  seconds because they can’t find the information they want in your site
• Leave your site in 15 seconds when they realise you have nothing to offer, not even a photo
• And not calling you because they’re either phone shy, or can’t even find a way to contact you through a online form even if they have keen interest in one of your listing.

What should Rookie Internet Property Agents do to Market Online?

Find Supportive Real Estate Agencies

We can’t underestimate the power of selling through internet now, so I would say it is absolutely necessary to understand the necessity of establishing a good online prescence. If you’re worried about setting up your own website for now; join existing agencies that could give you guidance on web establishment support such as Knight Frank or OrangeTee.

A Quick Start By Paying The Correct Channels

To get a quick start and bang for your buck spending on internet marketing for properties, start paying for subscriptions to PropertyGuru and ST701 where they have targeted traffic already established.

The audience that you are looking for are with the two market leaders of Singapore real estate portal at the moment. So spending about $1,000 a year on their pro subscriptions gives you an edge over people who’re not mulling over how much their pro accounts can do.

Understand what is SEO and ROI conversions before starting a personal MLS site

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) and Return On Investment (ROI) are basic and necessary terms to digest in internet marketing. They should be part of your ‘what’ and ‘how’ in converting relevant traffic into prospective leads and finally sales.

An SEO-ed site can drive the right people to look at possible relevant landing page and funnel them into a process to eventually contact you (we can’t convert sales that easily like selling an e-book online, but you can make the whole lot process easier for your potential client).

With understanding ROI, you can spend the minimal (or maybe just optimized) amount of money for maximum relevant exposure on your site to convert your readers into valuable leads which might lead to sales. The higher the ROI on the amount spent, the better.

I’ll touch more on these topics as I go by optimizing my site as an example of how to soft-sell and capture the correct audience to your website.

Related posts:

1. ST701, PropertyGuru, iProperty Will Be Fighting For the Spot
2. The Singapore Property Search – Review, PropertyGuru
3. PropertyGuru Wins CNBC International Property Award

PropGO, the latest realtor social portal is starting an online competition for Property agents to use their services,

Singapore’s Top Agent Competition

Winner Gets $10,000 SGD, 4 Runner Up Agents Get $2,500 SGD. This Could Be YOU! Its FREE to Compete!

Details can be downloaded here.

Why PropGO?

It’s a neat way to drive traffic. If you don’t understand how PropGO works, I suggest you to register and add me to your list of friends if you’re a fellow agent *grin*.

Social portals of such are like Friendster and Facebook if you’re familiar with them; allowing you to build your network of agent friends, share news and information with all, do advertisements. As a social portal, the things you could do is limitless if their web traffic is good.

Traffic is Picking Up for PropGO

Traffic Details for PropGo from Alexa

The traffic for PropGO is picking up, with most users coming from Hong Kong, and China just slightly behind. It should do well should they continue to market their portal right. I would suggest picking up an account and start building your network to avoid missing any type of opportunity.

The only thing that I worry is with the blogging function that they have which interferes with my own blog. Duplicate contents usually doesn’t work very well with search engines; Google hates them, nobody likes them anyway. So if you have to blog two places or more, make sure your contents are never duplicated anywhere else; aka unique to PropGO.

Win SGD$10,000 worth of advertising!

Remember to add me if you’re registering with them. Contests starts from 4th of February and ends on 28th of February. There’s a list of things you’ll have to do; and those are farely simple, and if you’re all out to win, remember to put your heart to it

Good luck!

Related posts:

1. PropGO – Network your Group of Real Estate Agent Friends!

Let me fill up this space tomorrow, in the meantime, check out my virtual tour of a Sanctuary Green penthouse, courtesy of Myoochi.

It looks absolutely great.

Related posts:

1. The Singapore Property Search – Review, Myoochi

Congratulations to PropertyGuru for winning an international Property Award from CNBC

PropertyGuru.com.sg Scoops Prestigious CNBC International Property Award

The results of the CNBC Asia Pacific Property Awards 2008 have just been revealed and AllProperty Media’s www.PropertyGuru.com.sg website has won an award in the category of “Best Property Portal Singapore”. The award will be presented at a glittering gala dinner to be held at the Marina Mandarin in Singapore on 20th July 2008.

Now in its 13th year, the International Property Awards are the largest real estate event recognizing the industry’s leading property professionals from around the globe. Hundreds of residential property-related firms from over 56 countries in Asia, Europe and Americas were evaluated by a senior expert real estate panel as part of CNBC’s annual International Property Awards process. In the case of the “Property Portal” category, firms were assessed against key criteria including Strategy and Website Design, Structure and Operation, Online Presence and Innovative Features, Breadth and Depth of Property Services, and Strength of Online Marketing.

“We have worked hard to build PropertyGuru.com.sg into Singapore’s leading property portal and are delighted to be recognized by our industry peers. It will spur us on to continue to innovate and provide even better service to Singapore’s consumers, real estate developers and agents.” said Jani Rautiainen and Steve Melhuish, co-founders of AllProperty Media and PropertyGuru.com.sg.

Having been given this high recommendation, PropertyGuru.com.sg is now entitled to display the CNBC Asia Pacific Property Awards’ logo with pride. This symbol of excellence will be recognised and appreciated by the public who are increasingly well informed and discerning about the properties they seek to buy.

Entries were judged by a panel of professionals whose collective knowledge of the property industry is second to none. Chaired by Eric Pickles, British Shadow Secretary of State, this year’s judges included Helen Shield, editor-in-chief of International Homes magazine; Peter Bolton King, chief executive of the National Association of Estate Agents; Phil Spencer, property expert and presenter of Channel 4’s Location and Relocation TV shows; Imtiaz Farookhi, chief executive of the National House Building Council; Christopher Hall, past president National Association of Estate Agents; Wilhelm Harnish, Master Builders of Australia (MBA); Thijis Staff, International Consortium of Real Estate Agents Association (ICREA); Santiago Herreros de Tejada, SIMA; Kirkor Ajderhanyan, French Real Estate Federation (FNAIM); Graham Norwood of the Daily Mail; David Hoppit, property writer; Paul Wyatt, head of design for LYCOS UK; Geoff Cohen, design director at Aukett Fitzroy Robinson architects; Jill Keene, editor of International Homes magazine; Diana Yakely, chairman British Interior Design Association; and Tad Zurlinden, Association of Relocation Professionals.

The award will be officially presented at a glittering gala dinner in Singapore on 20th July 2008 at the Marina Mandarin, attended by senior representatives from the international real estate industry.

About CNBC International Property Awards:

The annual International Property Awards recognizes the industry’s best residential property professionals from around the globe. Now in its 13th year, the awards have seen steady growth and the support team has grown from just two people to a team of 12 over the period and with entries from across the globe with firms representing 56 different countries. The awards are now established as the biggest in the world.

Winners from each country are re-judged and up to five are nominated within each category for the chance of being chosen as the Best in the World. In 2007 we held the grand final gala event at the internationally famous Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. Winning companies were also showcased at the world’s largest real estate professionals event organised by two of our sponsors – NAR and SIMA. 30,000 property professionals attended this in November 2007. In 2008 Gala events are planned for Singapore, Dubai, Madrid, London and New York.

The annual International Property Awards are judged by a panel of well-respected experts representing well-established professional bodies from different countries.

Now that’s another good way to bang your bucks for advertising if you’re a fellow Realtor.

Related posts:

1. ST701, PropertyGuru, iProperty Will Be Fighting For the Spot
2. The Singapore Property Search – Review, PropertyGuru
3. When Internet Property Listing Isn’t Selling For You

After the recent major huge Google Pagerank and Alexa Internet traffic rank update, it seems that these three online classifieds, ST701, PropertyGuru and iProperty are gaining grounds and should be fighting for a really good spot for Singapore Realtors to reach out to our local community for real estate listing.

And as of recent Mocca changes if you didn’t notice, they have already started charging for property and car ads. Makes me wonder when are they starting to charge for everything else.

Wish there’s a Gumtree, Olx or a Craigtree version solely for Singapore which is totally free and is pretty effective for marketing.

I’ll be trying the premium service for the above mentioned for a year to see the effectiveness, coupled together with my own expertise in SEO for this domain to bring REM (Real Estate Marketing) in Singapore to a new height.

Watch out for my review.

Related posts:

1. PropertyGuru Wins CNBC International Property Award
2. The Singapore Property Search – Review, PropertyGuru
3. When Internet Property Listing Isn’t Selling For You

We continue our Singapore Property Search shootout on the next website, PropertyGuru.

Ease of Listing

Registration process is okay. It would be better if there’s a registration tab on top just for agents, especially the logging in for their “AgentNet“. Bookmarking it would seem to be the only easiest way to access the listing area since I can’t find the link to it on the index.

The AgentNet index is fancy. You can promote yourself by answering questions. I think Howard Teo (Dennis Wee) is doing pretty well as compared to the rest of the Singapore Realtors in this segment. Agents who’re knowledgeable can score well with queries coming from the public and leaving their contact behind so that they can clinch some new leads.

Are you a Property Guru?

Options to list a property are comprehensive, but you can’t seem to expire a listing. Also, some properties do have more than 3 bathrooms, I suppose they’ve added the + sign after people had feedback on it, but it would be nicer to add bathroom numbers to “4″ or “5″. It would be nice if people can add more than 3 photos to showcase.

Searching for a Property

Uh Uh. I’d be bashed, but it isn’t user friendly to me. I’d rather much prefer Myoochi‘s way of searching, at least with street or for a development. To each its own, but I wouldn’t be stereotyped or bogged by budget, the area, or the exact maximum price for rental or sale. To improve, maybe they would like to list down the areas in the districts rather than the district numbers (North/ West).

Plus Points of Listing

This is how it looks when you list it with PropertyGuru

+ Very clean listing, development details are listed as well (good for condominium listings, with the developer name and TOP date)
+ Allows potential clients to submit a form to contact you, with their email/ contact and their preference of contact.
+ Location map with amenities are listed by the sidebar. Great for potential buyers who’re interested in the particular development

Minus Points

- 3 photos limit isn’t good
- Premium listing are REALLY focused than normal listings. I understand when you pay you’ll get better features, but I suppose it shouldn’t be made so obvious. All the premium listing gets in front. My Sanctuary Green listing gets hidden in the pile of premiums without photos.
- Adding a video tour option would be good (though impractical at the moment)

Traffic/ Viewership

It’s doing better than Myoochi. One reason I can think of is it’s advertisements on the television. But is it the number one Property Search portal in Singapore as claimed by someone who actually gave me a call to register for the premium member (from PropertyGuru’s office) yet? Let’s see. *Compares.

True to some extend (those that I’m more familiar with), but very close fight with one which I will be reviewing soon. With such page views, you’ll get 200 – 300 unique visitors daily. From what I can see on the charts, their traffic is improving as well.

To hit expatriates or overseas market, I think SingaporeExpats is doing fantastic as compared to the search portals that I’ve seen. (In fact, the best).

Extra Features

The estate market data seems interesting. Also, the online valuation function is pretty accurate to how much a particular project cost now. Information about the different condominium projects and photos are here.

The site is tastefully done, but I’d say if it could improve on not focusing too much on Realtors that pay for their premium listing, it would fair better. (Not that I don’t want to pay to list, but with that kind of uniques in terms of traffic, it’s not worth my $50 per month just yet). Register here as an Agent to advertise your listing.

Rating: 2.5 /5.0 (Better viewer ship, but not worth the money to spend for membership for now)

Next…

iProperty will be next in the shootout.

Related posts:

1. The Singapore Property Search – Review, Myoochi
2. PropertyGuru Wins CNBC International Property Award
3. ST701, PropertyGuru, iProperty Will Be Fighting For the Spot
4. When Internet Property Listing Isn’t Selling For You

Our first Singapore Property Search shootout focuses on Myoochi, an aesthetically beautiful Singapore Property search portal.

I’ll review all these sites base on my understanding of the previous factors which I’ve mentioned about.

Ease of Listing

Registration as an agent is fairly simple, fill up some forms, no sensitive data asked. There’s a problem with my signing up previously as I didn’t receive the verification email from the system. A kind lady from Myoochi’s office actually gave me a call and resent the verification to settle the issue.

Most of the real estate consultancy companies are there for you to choose which firm are you from, and they allow you to add a photo of yourself (So your face, handphone number and even your real estate company’s address appears next to your listing).

Platinum Listing Looks Really Nice with the correct amount of information

Two types of listing are available, General Listing & Platinum Listing

General Listing basically allows simple text descriptions, with options to choose from like Property Type, For Sale or Rental and many more options. A plus point is to allow you to just simply key in the postal code of your property so you do not have to key in the full address.

Platinum Listing allows unlimited uploading of photos (apparently since I don’t see the limit stopping when I click on the plus signs of the uploading section), has a property location map to show you exactly where your property is located with other projects nearby.

Searching for a Property

Easy, just key in your minimum sum, maximum sum and rent or sale in which area, most of the listings are tastefully shown up with a summary. Thumbs up for this.

Plus Points of Listing

+ The listing is tastefully displayed and you’re allowed to edit it if its a platinum listing (check out my Sanctuary Green Penthouse listing to see how it looks)
+ Allow people to click to offer, bookmark and add alert service to update you of any changes (Though usually the case, potential clients will just call your mobile
+ Per Square Foot pricing of rental or sale is up for easy reference so you don’t have to do your calculation.

Minus Points

- If they do allow a click to the existing photos to enlarge to allow potential customers to see the picture clearly, it’ll be fantastic.
- If only they have a video option for linking Youtube or Metacafe videos for a video tour of the place.
Generally it is easy to list your properties with Myoochi, I’ll give this a thumbs up to the aesthetic, the ergonomics of the site, and the functions. You get a help desk to call if you have problems with the site.

Traffic/ Viewership

This is something Myoochi could improve on. A ranking of 448,200 on Alexa means it hasn’t really reach a good viewership as compared to big guns like Mocca, Gum Tree, and Craiglist (classified ads). We could say with 440,000 odd ranking, there’s a viewership of about 30 – 50 daily uniques (I know, I’ve a few sites running)

Also, to improve viewer ship, they could focus on SEO, permlinks settings and advertising if they have the time and budget to do so.

Bonus to sign up as a Member

You’ll also get a weekly wrap up of the real estate happenings in Singapore via email, which I think is pretty useful for a Realtor. It basically could sum up most of the new news mentioned in Business Times/ Straits Times.

Rating: 3.0/ 5.0 (With viewer ship lacking, I don’t see anything else is missing much)

Sign up as a Realtor on Myoochi to list your properties here | or as a member to receive updates

Next…

We’ll be looking at PropertyGuru, another search portal that has gained popularity from TV media lately.

Related posts:

1. The Singapore Property Search – Review, PropertyGuru
2. Myoochi Virtual Tour – Sanctuary Green

Suddenly, there’s an influx of property websites that’s bursting in the scene lately; (Yes and you’ll even get phone calls from operators to paste your listing in their website, let’s not mention names). The competition is that stiff.

Is there an exact winner to all the Realtor’s marketing needs? Just one that fits all? Currently in Singapore, there are a few that are vying for the top spot with one another. Some aren’t even just doing real estate (sites like ST701, Mocca), but they’re being really aggressive in promoting their viewer ship and advertisers with them.

Indefinitely, there’ll be one ultimate winner that will be charging for listing any properties with them. What’s my concern when I pick a website to list my listings? Before we begin the shootout reviews for the properties site, let’s take a look at some of the factors we’re considering.

Ease of Listing

The steps needed to list my property. The steps should be pretty self explanatory and we shouldn’t need to refer to their FAQ to add my listing in. Standard procedures like registration, email validation and then adding the property should be easy.

Additional steps or validation from operators before use is wasting of precious time.

Cost of Placing Advertisement

Currently most of the property sites allow advertising to be free as most are trying to boost their readership/ viewer ship and traffic. Once the dogfight ends between the sites, I’ll like to know would it be expensive to put in ads to push my properties.

With such competition at this moment, Realtors should take this advantage to try out all the sites and see which is effective for their marketing needs.

Functions and Aesthetics

Are there extra functions in the property search site? Say maybe after I add my listing, it displays a map and shows the location, shows the nearest MRT, restaurants and amenities nearby. Or maybe even an sms function for you to contact the Owner or Agent of the prospective property? These are bonus functions that a listing site could have.

Also important is the aesthetics of the website, whether is it attractive and ergonomically easy for people to browse and find what they want.

Traffic/ Viewer ship

This, everyone would agree would be the most important element to anything else. Sure you could argue that if you use every property search websites available to list, you’ll get the maximum exposure. I’d say as long as you have good viewership and have a niche over any other property search website, you stand to gain the most market share, just like SgCarmart for used cars in Singapore.

We’ll review to see which is topping up the traffic chart in the shootout issues that I have in mind.

Authenticity of Target Audience

Ah, please don’t get some people to call us when we list somewhere. No names, but I’ve heard of cases where Realtors actually paid for some online listings, and towards the expiry of the list, the company actually got someone to give them a call to ‘generate interest’.

The authenticity of the general target is important.

Speed / Server Load

If a site loads slow, it’ll be out of the question to use them if the database is massive. Though this is really a secondary issue, we’d generally prefer a fast loading site.

Support

Is there a number for us to call if we face account issues? Email support? Ticket support? How about when we list something wrongly and would like to edit them? Is it easy? Or is there someone waiting to solve any of our problems?

We’ll begin the shootout with Myoochi, a Singapore Property Search site.

Myoochi, how will you fair?

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