When your heart speaks…….take good notes

Let’s look at Chris Anderson’s rules for long tail marketing that emerged from that original article written for Wired Magazine.

 Rule 1:  Make everything available.

The real estate industry resisted this concept as long as it could but finally gave in to the demand of the public for information.  Remember the MLS books?  Real estate licensees were the gatekeepers of the listing information and were fearful that if the public could access this information online there would no longer be a need for the licensee.  Wrong…..however it did change the job description of the licensee.  Now consumers come to a real estate office armed with printouts of properties that they are interested in viewing which is a good thing.  It allows both the licensee and the consumer to more quickly narrow down the search.

So now, all licensees offer all available properties for sale in a given area online in the form of IDX listings.

Rule 2: Help me find it

While IDX information goes a long way to solving this problem for the real estate consumer, most licensees are missing the point with this rule.  Why?  Because in the opinion of most licensees responding to the public demand for Rule 1 by providing IDX information also answered  the public’s demand for Rule 2.  However, this means that most licensees are missing the point of Rule 2.  A lot of licensees are still operating from the old mindset that the only service a licensee has to offer the public is that we are the gatekeeper of the listing information.  Nothing could be further from the truth.

There is a lot more information desired from the public about real estate transactions.  Finding the appropriate property is just a piece of this information. 

Like what other information is in demand?  The answer to that depends on your niche.  Because remember the long tail is not about being everything to everybody.  The long tail is about finding your niche and serving the needs of that niche.

Long Tail keywords are 3-5 word phrases that very specifically identify your niche target market.   They answer the questions:

What are you selling?

And

Where are you selling it?

When a customer uses a highly specific search phrase, they tend to be looking for EXACTLY what they are ACTUALLY going to buy. …because once they have made their decision to buy something and “where”, that’s when they start using very specific search phrases to seek out their target purchase.

There are significantly less daily search counts for these phrases. However, such extremely specific searches are far more likely to convert to a quality lead than general generic searches.  Generic Searches tend to be geared more toward the type of research that consumers do early in their research.

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