IDX Policies Proposed to Go More Broker-Friendly

I am proud to say that WAV Group has been working with the Leading Real Estate Companies of the World to create a set of recommendations for ways to improve and update IDX policy. No, there have no bloody fights or name-calling on this one. Just a collaborative process led by Pam O’Connor, CEO of LeadingRE and the MLS Emerging Issues and Trends Committee. In April, LeadingRE sent a list of recommendations facilitated by WAV Group and drafted by their Technology Advisory Council of top Brokerage CIOs to NAR.  These were designed to streamline and update the NAR IDX Guidelines. The [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:56-07:00October 29th, 2014|Main category, Marketing|10 Comments
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Brokers Out-Marketing Competitors

I attended Luxury Connect last week in Beverly Hills. If you are not familiar with the event, it was expertly delivered by the team from Inman News that is host to the Real Estate Connect conferences held annually in New York City and San Francisco. I don’t think that anyone really appreciates how difficult it is to put on a great event. This group does it with ease and grace even when pitted against seemingly insurmountable challenges. There was so much fanfare about this event, it is speculated that the original property selected for the event was sold! A week [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:56-07:00October 29th, 2014|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Marketing|Comments Off on Brokers Out-Marketing Competitors
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Brokers and Franchise Remove Barriers to Marketing

Marketing is a key component to success in real estate. I hate stating the obvious, but if you don’t start with it, one can hardly understand the reality of the impact that the cost of marketing has on the adoption and utilization of marketing plans by various segments of real estate professionals. Franchise giant RE/MAX announced an agreement with Imprev for marketing solutions. You can see the program in the video below. In the past, the fee for access to these marketing tools was $299 per year. For the sake of argument, let's presume that the pricing is fair. Judging [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:57-07:00October 14th, 2014|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing|Comments Off on Brokers and Franchise Remove Barriers to Marketing
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The Real Benefit to Z and T Merger

Big advertisers need big media sites. Zillow is big and Trulia is big, but they are not huge.  The hugest would be Facebook. Think of the Madison Avenue crowd. Both companies have sales staff pitching pretty much the same value proposition. That sales team now turns into one. Zillow CEO Spencer Rascoff pretty much said exactly this in an interview with Jim Cramer, the host of Mad Money (http://business-news.thestreet.com/crookstontimes/story/jim-cramers-mad-money-recap-now-is-not-the-time-for-panic/12861526) “Rascoff noted that when it comes to the Internet, user experience rules. Once you have an audience the advertisers will follow, he said, which is why the Trulia acquisition makes sense. [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:57-07:00October 13th, 2014|Main category, Marketing|2 Comments
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Real estate industry veteran to lead WAV Group Communications

Arroyo Grande, CA – September 23, 2014 – Real estate industry communications and marketing veteran Kevin Hawkins has been named President of WAV Group Communications, the newest division of the real estate industry’s leading consulting firm, WAV Group. Being officially introduced at the CMLS2014, the Council of Multiple Listing Services national conference that starts tomorrow, September 24-27 in Huntington Beach, California, Hawkins will expand and deepen the communications services The WAV Group provides to leading MLS firms, REALTOR® Associations, top real estate brokerages, and real estate technology firms. “We have known and worked with Kevin for a long time. He [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:59-07:00September 23rd, 2014|Main category, Marketing, Our Services|1 Comment
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And the Lead Goes Round and Round

I had a rather interesting conversation about lead management and lead sales today. The story went something like this. A broker enhances listings and purchases zip code leads from a portal. The broker believes that there is some form of exclusivity on the leads generated through the system in so far as the lead is only distributed once. In his case, he distributes the leads as they come into one of his agents. To test the system, the broker had a staff member go to the publisher site and generate a lead. The lead came through to the broker as [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:59-07:00September 23rd, 2014|Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing|Comments Off on And the Lead Goes Round and Round
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Allre Causes Brokers To ReThink Strategy

The FSBO dam just sprouted another leak, and brokers better pay attention. If you have not heard about Allre, you better watch the video below right now. It is a collaboration between banks like Prime Lending, Home Insurance providers, home warranty companies, and even a lock box vendor to facilitate FSBO sales. The fee to the consumer is ZERO – nothing. There are no brokerage services at all, so they completely surpass all RESPA regulations. It is 100% FSBO. The only thing that will sit between Allre and success is venture capital. If they attract enough venture capital to attract [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:59-07:00September 18th, 2014|Broker Technology Research, Main category, Marketing, MLS Insights|6 Comments
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Midyear Broker Website Benchmarks

WAV Group just completed providing our broker clients with a review of their Google Analytics for September. Something rather remarkable happened this month that has confirmed a strategy that we have long suspected, but have not had enough data to confirm. Virtual Tour Videos Drive More Traffic Than Listing Syndication on Broker Websites. Quite a number of WAV Group broker clients have been publishing automated virtual tours to YouTube for a few years now. They are using vendors like Property Panorama, RealBiz, Virtual Tour Café, Imprev, VHT or some other solution. We do not endorse any product over another but [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:23:59-07:00September 11th, 2014|Main category, Marketing, Technology Evaluation|1 Comment
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Agents Love MLS Newsletters

When RE Technology was founded by WAV Group partners in 2010, the goal was to provide an information resource inside the MLS system that would sharpen agent understanding of technology in real estate. We will forever appreciate MRED, MRIS, MLSListings, and MFRMLS for introducing the first 100,000 users to the service. Today, 91 MLSs and over 700,000 users have access to RE Technology as a member benefit. Because technology companies sponsor the service, there is never charge to the MLS or the broker or agent. The concept behind RE Technology is to support MLSs at delivering insightful information about technology [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:00-07:00September 3rd, 2014|Main category, Marketing, MLS Insights|1 Comment
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Sometimes Profitability is NOT as Important as Market Share

Of course, the ultimate goal of any business is to create profitability for its owners, shareholders, and stockholders.  Without profitability, the business will cease to exist. To quote Kenny Rogers, sometimes you need to know when to hold up and when to fold up, though.   There are times when a company is in a significant competitive situation where it needs to go into the market guns a-blazing and grab as much market share and mind share as it can. In the market we’re in right now, some might think the worst is over.  They may think it’s time to start [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:02-07:00August 6th, 2014|Main category, Marketing, MLS Insights|Comments Off on Sometimes Profitability is NOT as Important as Market Share
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Goomzee Growth

MLS Mobile is a highly competitive space. There are so many companies challenging for the lucrative contracts that I am afraid to list them all here. We get press releases sent to us almost every day about who has signed a contract with this MLS or this Mobile provider. One of the things that angers me when we get these press releases is that many of them are renewals. I am not sure what is press worthy of a renewal – but that is another story for another day. Goomzee announced this week the addition of a bunch of new MLS [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:02-07:00July 24th, 2014|Marketing, MLS Insights, Technology Evaluation|Comments Off on Goomzee Growth
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Your Spam Filter May Be a Lead Source

Leads sometimes come from humans. That’s a light joke. The point it is that when technology companies test lead capture and routing systems, they typically test them with stock lead content. Unfortunately, many real human leads do not contain stock text. Real humans write real questions and sometimes use language that may not be whitelisted for your spam filter. **It happens! One of the good ways to check your lead generation and a delivery engine is to compare reports. Look at the lead reports that you get from publishers like Trulia, Zillow, Realtor.com or Homes.com. Look at them carefully and [...]

By |2018-05-03T21:24:03-07:00July 23rd, 2014|Broker Technology Research, Broker-Agent Information, Main category, Marketing, Reports|Comments Off on Your Spam Filter May Be a Lead Source
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