RISMEDIA, July 31, 2007—Atlanta-headquartered brokerage Prudential Georgia Realty has successfully developed a long-term program to increase the number of online visits to the company’s listings.
Leveraging a two-month strategic initiative in which its agents created and posted over 6,000 virtual tours to the industry’s top syndicated real estate Web sites, Prudential Georgia Realty generated an immediate jump in search rankings for its listings.
The initiative started with research on how to increase the listings presence and how to drive more traffic to those listings. Based on Realtor.com statistics which indicate that listings with virtual tours are viewed more often than those without virtual tours and industry statistics that show the majority of buyers find virtual tours to be very useful in the home search, Prudential Georgia Realty decided to include virtual tours on every new listing, and to add virtual tours to all existing listings.
“We researched industry providers of virtual tours and Imprev rose to the top” says President & CEO of Prudential Georgia Realty, Dan Forsman, “The sheer variety and quality of the virtual tours, slideshows, and multimedia Web commercials was unique to the Imprev offering. That coupled with the fact that included in the cost of the virtual tour solution is a complete Imprev Marketing Center, which allows our agents to create an
unlimited number of multimedia pieces and over a thousand beautiful print marketing materials—sold us on this solution.”
To help jumpstart the initiative, Prudential Georgia Realty created a contest to spur agents to post a virtual tour for every single one of their listings—including rentals and land. And because the quality of the tours is so high, instead of allowing agents to use the low-quality photos that are typically posted to the MLS, agents were tasked with taking better photos to complement the higher quality virtual tours. The results speak for themselves.
“Our agents have been winning more listings as they show sellers how they can more effectively market their properties,” says Prudential Georgia Realty’s Forsman. “More importantly, agents are selling more listings since consumers find their properties more often due to the listing rankings. And our brokers are getting more productive agent recruits who want to join their teams.”
Renwick Congdon, Imprev President & CEO isn’t surprised. “This initiative was really well thought out. By identifying the goal (increase traffic to listings), the path (add virtual tours to all listings), and the tools required to reach the goal (cost effective, high quality virtual tours and Showcase status on Realtor.com), Prudential Georgia Realty virtually guaranteed a successful outcome.”
Adds Congdon, “Our corporate clients who have the most success understand that by providing their agents with the right tools to improve their marketing and production
efforts, their agents become more successful. Not only do their materials look great –clients and prospects take notice because of the staggering difference in the quality of the materials–the company reduces the agents’ costs, and saves the agents’ time, while protecting the company’s brand. All of this boils down to more listings, and more revenue.”
For more information, visit www.imprev.com and http://www.prudentialgeorgia.com.
