A recent article on ClickZ, an advice and opinion site for marketers, outlines some of the hurdles Developers face as they come to terms with online marketing. According to a study quoted in the article, "[there is] a large disparity between where buyers are spending their time (77 percent used the Web as the primary source)" and where real estate marketers are spending their ad dollars.

We suspect that Developers spend approximately 15% or less of their ad budgets in online media. Developer marketing is complex because Developers need to reach three different groups: Buyers, Agents, and often times, Investors. In the last two years, we have seen a lot of innovation on the part of brokers assembling groups of investors to help Developers launch projects through pre-sales events and network buying. While a few brokers and agents attempt to market new construction independently online, only newconsearch.com has been effectively helping Developers in Florida reach out to Agents and their buyers in a targeted and trackable manner.

The life cycle of a project does not lend itself to the concentrated and patient investment in legitimate Search Engine Optimization (SEO) techniques required to really benefit from "natural search." In analyzing over 2200 projects and hundreds of websites, we have not seen a single developer website which was really optimized for search engine traffic. These websites are glossy brochures that are sometimes beautiful to look at, but completely invisible to search engines.

We have seen many Developers jump on the Agent email marketing bandwagon in the last year only to find the response rates going down. Developers, agents and other vendors all bought the same lists of agent addresses. These are not opt-in lists and agents did not give permission to be on the lists. Internet providers and corporations have gone to great lengths to avoid delivering this type of mail. In this environment, an agent either gets frustrated because his or her email box is filled with 100s of messages per day or they never receive the message at all. Email blasts for a single project are similar to the traditional postcards -- they are lost in the clutter and useless if the agent does not have a prospect at the moment they chance to open the email.

We understand and we are here to help. On newconsearch.com, your project is never lost in the clutter and it can be found the moment an agent has a prospect. Our weekly Alert email is sent to an opt-in list of over 12,000 subscribers. Our agent subscribers always find something interesting in the email, so we enjoy much higher open rates and response rates than any individual e-blast campaign.

Plan to make 2007 the year you really engage the Internet. Lock in our recently reduced ad rates to boost your business in the first quarter. Space is limited and rates will increase.

To discuss your online marketing strategy for 2007 and take advantage of our expertise, call us at 877-257-6880 and ask for Steve at extension 701.