You probably know that publishing “off-market” information about a home has been a successful strategy used by the big portals for quite a few years now. The idea was to create a web page for every home and give the visitor something compelling to see when they arrive. If the home isn’t listed for sale, the visitor typically sees public record information and an automated valuation model (AVM) providing a rough sense of what their home is worth.
That’s juicy content driving visits. Who hasn’t visited an online property portal to see what’s out there about their home—the biggest thing most of us own? I certainly have.
These portals, and the big brokers who have done it, too, know that having a single web page for every home populated with as much compelling data as possible is great for SEO. Every time a homeowner searches their own address, up pops that page. So all those years a homeowner is not in selling mode, they’re visiting those sites and getting accustomed to thinking about them when it’s time to find an agent.
This truth is not a good dynamic for brokers who limit their websites strictly to listings. They haven’t driven consumer traffic all those years, so consumers aren’t thinking about them (or their agents) when it’s time to buy or sell. That’s a significant disadvantage.
That “sticky content” approach has worked quite well for the portals. It’s a cornerstone of their customer acquisition and retention strategy. Their huge visitor numbers are significantly impacted by consumers who simply check in. Familiarity is the greatest asset in lead gen and data value is the key ingredient to driving multiple visits.
This is a “parcel-centric” strategy to create visits, loyalty and leads. It’s above and beyond the traditional “listing-centric” approach most brokers take today.
Adopting a parcel-centric approach on your website takes work. Specifically, two things are required. First, a broker must have a developer who’s willing to translate a public record data feed, create a unique page for it on the broker’s website, publish it and refresh it as needed. That’s not trivial. Second, a broker needs to purchase a license to the public record data to be that sticky content driver.
If you’ve ever used Realist®, you might have an appreciation for the sheer volume of public record data that my company, CoreLogic®, curates on a daily basis. Pretty much every home in the U.S. has rich Realist public record data. CoreLogic provides brokers with the option to license this data as a feed to publish on their websites. And, good news, the price is reasonable. Not only is the public record data licensable, but the CoreLogic AVM is, as well. While AVMs aren’t perfect measures of true worth, we like to think of our AVMs as the industry “gold standard”—worthy of showing lenders, appraisers and visitors to your websites.
A user often visits simply to get a read on what their home is worth today. That’s as sticky as it gets.
Driving traffic, building loyalty and investing in a long-term strategy to create leads for agents is what adopting a parcel-centric approach is all about. It’s certainly working for the portals that have adopted it. If we can help you with the data licensing part of that equation, I’d be happy to tell you more. Feel free to contact me at lwendt@corelogic.com.
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Linda Wendt is principal, Solution Sales at CoreLogic. For more information, please visit www.corelogic.com.
