Real estate marketing has changed, and Sequim Real Estate Agent Chuck Marunde is pleased to announce the publication of his third book, The New World of Marketing for Real Estate Agents. It’s already catching the attention of real estate agents around the country. The book will be available on Amazon.com in a matter of weeks in a paperback version, but it is available now as an eBook download for $9.95. Following are some quotes from the book.
Real Estate Marketing Has Changed
How is
real estate marketing changing? Real estate offices are closing all over the country. Real estate agents are hanging up their licenses all over the country. The traditional bricks-and-mortar real estate brokerage is hemorrhaging, and all that keeps this archaic business model alive is consolidations. As offices close, some agents quit, but the survivors move their licenses to another sinking ship, a ship that looks just like the last one and often with the exact same name on the bow. The changes in
real estate marketing are dramatic.
Real Estate Marketing and Traditional Real Estate
These changes in real estate marketing are killing traditional business models. Bricks-and-mortar real estate brokerages that stubbornly refuse to bridge the gap to an entirely new business model will die a slow and painful death. It’s one thing for brokers to ride their own ship down, but it is quite another thing altogether for those brokers to sell tickets to real estate agents with promises they can’t keep.
The most unfortunate thing about all of this is that the agents who think they are doing what it takes to survive are only re-arranging the deck chairs on the Titanic. Many of them truly do not know or comprehend how precarious their fate is. They know generally that real estate marketing has changed, but they are getting little genuine help from their brokers. Just like so many of the passengers on the Titanic near the end who smiled and kept saying, “Don’t worry, everything always works out alright,” traditional agents continue to greet people with a smile and wait for the phone to ring. But the ship is tilting, and they are at risk. They just don’t know what to do.
This is the great dilemma of being stuck, and being stuck with a real estate marketing model that doesn’t work anymore is a crisis of major proportions for buyers, sellers, and their agents. Traditional brokers and agents who have operated within a traditional brokerage model for many years struggle to think in entirely new ways. What makes this especially difficult for so many is their discomfort with technology and the Internet. Some simply refuse to learn the technologies.
Real Estate Marketing and the Internet
The new methods of real estate marketing have changed the game entirely. As I used to say to my clients when I practiced law, “The answers you get are only as good as the questions you ask.” In business and in life, just when you think you’ve found the reason something happens, dig deeper. When you assume you’ve gotten to the bottom of a matter, do what children keep doing every time you answer their questions. They keep asking, “Why?”
I’ve identified changes in consumer preferences as a fundamental driving force today, but too many entrepreneurs are not digging deeper. Why are consumer preferences and habits changing? There are many reasons, and I address several of them throughout this book, but an underlying reason for the change in consumer behavior that real estate brokers and many businesses are completely missing today is part of the bigger tectonic movement.
Read more by downloading the eBook, which is in a pdf format so you can read it on your computer, on your iPad, or any eBook reader. This is not just a book for real estate agents. Buyers and sellers will find this an interesting read as I walk through the last 30 years of the real estate industry and examine traditional real estate brokerage and the rapid trend toward entirely new business models that buyers and sellers find much more consumer-centric. The New World of Marketing for Real Estate Agents is available as a download right here for $9.95.