by Michele Newbern Gillis
Staff Writer
While most Realtors are cutting back on marketing to survive in this market, Pete Dalton, the broker of Vanguard Realty/GMAC, is doing just the opposite.
When searching for homes in Northeast Florida, Realtor.com and Trulia.com are two of two main search portals on the Internet. All real estate listings are listed on Realtor.com via the Multiple Listing Service.
Dalton is taking that one step further. He is paying for all of his Realtors’ listings to be “Showcased” on Realtor.com.
“The product enhances the chances that the house will be seen,” Dalton. “It also dramatically increases the chances that you will get a contact from that. As far as I know, we are the only broker who pays for all of our agents listings to be a showcase property on Realtor.com, which is huge.”
In addition to that, his agents’ listings are on 30 different directories and 30 plus Internet sites. Dalton also pays for listings to go in the Real Estate Book.
Dalton said that most users of Realtor.com are older whereas Trulia.com tends to the appeal Gen-X and Gen-Y public.
“There are a lot of interactive things, blogging, Q and A’s, relationship forming and a lot of things on Trulia.com that Realtor.com does not do,” said Dalton. “Trulia also has an enhanced product (branded) and we pay for all of our listings to be branded, which is the same as an enhanced product on Realtor.com.
“What we’ve done is taken the two main search portals for real estate in Northeast Florida and we’ve put our people in position for all of their listings are displayed differently than their competitions.”
All that fancy talk equates to over 3 million people in the last quarter of last year that saw one of Vanguard Realty/GMAC’s houses online. Boil that down and it equals 1,800 hard inquiries to their agents in the last quarter of last year.
“Well, that’s 1,800 hard inquiries that other people didn’t get,” he said. “Based on the number of sales in the last quarter of last year, it is a huge number.”
Dalton said this advanced form of marketing costs his company approximately $100,000 a year but it pays off.
“In 2005, we peaked just like everyone else did,” said Dalton. “From 2001 to 2005 our business grew from $5 million to $24 million. Our company doubled in size virtually every year. We went from the seventh largest real estate enterprise in Jacksonville to the second or third largest. We went through a tremendous growth and that is because our business model is a lot different than other agencies.”
First of all, they do not bring on people new to the business.
“That is a tremendous expense item,” said Dalton. “I don’t think most brokers know how much they spend on that.”
Next, most of his agents work from a home office so he doesn’t have large offices for agents to call home. They do all communication over the Internet and all phones are answered in one phone center.
“Rather than having 20 offices with 20 receptionists, I get it all done in one place with two receptionists,” he said. “Our expense structure is different. Rather than having 20 offices with 20 or 25 agents and a manager in each, I have three sales managers for 200 agents. All of our agents are productive.
“Because my model is different, it enables me to maintain a marketing position that my competitors can’t.”
In this type of environment, Dalton says that most people cut advertising and marketing first. But, he said to look at other things that can go and keep on marketing.
“We didn’t cut advertising,” he said. “We’ve done 800 things to maintain our advertising. We’ve cut staff, cut the number of times our couriers go to other offices and adjusted manager’s duties. We’ve done everything we can do to keep from cutting our advertising budget. Now is the time when the agents need that support.”
For any agent to compete in this market, Dalton believes they need to bring four things to the table: a name brand, strong corporate marketing program, a personal program that reaches as many people as possible with as good a product as you can as inexpensively as possible, and a personal brand.
“I know everyone has seen a bump, but I’m not sure everyone has seen a 100 percent increase,” he said. “Agents who are going to survive this look around and say, ‘What am I getting from my broker?’ We think there is a group of people who identify with what we are doing and understand that it’s all about the marketing. They will be attracted to us.”