A story of Internet lead generation And Vlad the Valiant

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A story of Internet lead generation And Vlad the Valiant

My blogs are for my home buying, home selling and real estate investor clients and prospective clients (mostly Internet leads), those that I am working with and the ones I am not working with. If you want to understand how I look at you, in part, the below blog will provide you with an insight. You are not someone who I want to disengage through overwhelming contact; rather I want to respect your anonymity wishes. I just don’t know how to know when you are really ready to be a buyer or seller… AND that is who I am looking for. So please, take a moment to just let me know your goals, objectives and time frames. Who knows, we could be friends! You could view me as a resource to answer your real estate and mortgage questions without being badgered. You don’t want to be badgered and I don’t want that either.

You should be interested in the Internet leads (you) portion of this blog and the section dealing with Vlad and open warfare might just be an interesting piece. I feel that, as a blogger, there is a need to support Vlad by letting you into an interesting story.

This is a tale of intrigue, a tale of a lead generation company and their efforts to promote their unique method of lead generation, a tale of how they employed an authoritative real estate blogger to review their website and how it backfired on the lead generation company.

But first a primer….

There are a couple of sources of prospect leads I receive, but this is about Internet leads.

Internet leads

1. What makes a lead? It is not someone who visited your website and turned around to go elsewhere. A lead is someone, sometimes Mickey Mouse, who provided contact information in order to get complete access to my website resources and really may just want to get educated about what the real estate market is like in Seattle Washington and its environs. Only about 1% of Internet leads will ever do business with me. So an agent would be foolish to spend their entire advertising budget and more importantly TIME garnering more and more Internet leads. The problem is that not enough agents understand how Internet leads work, they think that spending money generating “Leads” is some sort of panacea which replaces belly to belly contact with REAL PROSPECTS!

2. What do too many real estate agents think a lead is? They get really excited about the fact that someone has signed up on their website and begin hammering the lead with “Lets do business TODAY!” messages. Whereas they really should be patient and look for the fallout of leads that turn into prospects.

3. Internet advertising brought in between 300-500 leads per month during the height of the housing frenzy. It turns out that Internet leads have an incubation period of 12-18 months, want to maintain anonymity and dont respond to attempts at communication. They just roam around looking at homes forever. Once I, as a real estate agent, recognize this there is much less frustration. PLEASE- feel free to enjoy my web search engine. I hope that one day we talk and work together! What I have learned is that if you are 6-10 weeks from getting serious Give me a call! Its time we talked.

4. Real estate agents are like any business person, they are desperately seeking leads to work with. And there are plenty of people with an idea of how to generate leads to sell to agents. One question is how many times their models involve selling the SAME LEADS to many real estate agents. Another model involves selling specific areas, like zip codes or neighborhoods to individual real estate agents.

5. Internet leads are terribly expensive and the payback is something that frequently builds over time. Expecting immediate results will be very disappointing. Not that Internet leads, as human beings are disappointing. They just may not be ready yet, as described by my friend over at Department of Search.

6. The real question has to do with how ethical the lead provider companies are. I remember when everything came to a standstill last year. Lead count dropped from hundreds to “Where the h…. did my leads go?” That’s when the lead companies got really desperate and began selling leads to tens of agents. Leads were overwhelmed with desperate agents trying to survive the experience.

7. Then there is the better mousetrap, the lead generation company which has a better idea and this is where eperks comes into the fray. Their business model appears to strike a resonant chord with many real estate agents, some of whom are rabidly trying to save their careers, others who see a real value to the client in their offers. It is all about product differentiation. My own personal attitude is that I would rather give something to my client than spend the money with the Seattle Times, Homes and Land Magazine and any number of other traditional advertising sources. Eperks does appear to have a unique business model, which if implemented correctly would bring new business in TODAY, rather than “just” Internet leads.

8. By the way, I prefer prospects that are referrals from satisfied customers to Internet leads that never materialize. I Love the Internet leads that stick their hands up and say “Now is the time to do something, can you help me?”

Now for the Rest of the Story…. Its like internecine warfare… ds original review was relatively positive, I can only go by what I have heard as I did not read that review and it has been removed by compliance with an injunction. The real fun begins with real estate agents who have had negative experiences with eperks and other bloggers who have responded to the eperks effort to stifle the blogosphere.

Eperks business model seems to fill a niche, real estate agents who are willing to provide a real estate commission REBATE to their their buyer. This is a valid form of using your money to generate business. Agents seem to have bought into the idea. It appears that the agreement between agents and eperks is that eperks would use the monthly fees to buy leads in zip codes and distribute them to subscribed agents. The interesting question is whether or not these are people who are ready to buy now vs. longer term leads. Properly implemented the eperk lead generation system would seem to appeal to the immediate buyer.

It would appear that Vlad’s review of the website and its objectives led to dozens of real estate agents posting negative comments, you have got to love the democracy of the Internet. Eperks invited the world of real estate agents to respond to their business practices. And the consensus appears to be one of great dissatisfaction.

Vlads blog did what all bloggers hope to do; it elicited responses that he and others would read. It brings traffic to his website and increases his authority and respect. Once a blog story is published, the right thing to do is allow others to place comments on your blog. Unfortunately for eperks the true story of their business model appears to be unfolding as one of over promising and under delivering, in fact, based on agent responses it would seem that they have a short term business model of raking in as much money as possible, while delivering no or limited results. The agents indicate a lack of communication after their purchase.

Eperks has handled this whole situation in pit bull mode, attack the person who wrote a favorable review. Attack him because others are commenting with their experience, like Vlad had any control over that. Pit bulls and their owners can be irresponsible, unpredictable and can inflict significant damage before they are put to sleep by the authorities for their horrible actions. If the blog commenter’s stories are true, good riddance.

Blogs are great for knowing the person behind them. Its a lot like having your daughter leave her diary lying around. When you find it, are you going to read a few pages to see who she really is? Bloggers lay out their thought processes and you can see into their persona. This is a world where we shouldn’t be stifled, as long as we are being responsible in our interpretation of our thoughts and stories. A lawsuit is a disgusting way to attempt to impose ones will on a blogger for the comments placed on their blog response roll.

If you take a few moments to read some of the following links you will see a public relations nightmare unfolding for eperks and a time consuming horrible situation for Vlad. This is really a story of Freedom of Speech and how the Blogosphere has come together to defend one of its own.

Get the story: ePerks Sues Real Estate Blogger, Blogosphere Unites to Destroy the ePerks Brand

I hope that the introductory to this blog proves useful in understanding how to view Internet leads and that the Story of Vlad is intriguing enough to have some fun reading. I shall provide updates as time goes by.