Hello Folks,

I am looking to get some feedback on a new web concept I recently developed.

First let me introduce myself... My name is Kevin and I operate a company called The Media LION based in RI that is specializing in helping real estate agents market their listings.

I realize there are forums for soliciting products and I've recently added some related posts there. In this post I am hoping to get some feedback on the concept I developed.

One of our primary products are virtual tours. A new product we are offering is called Smart Web Links and this is what I am looking for feedback on.

I recently sat in a meeting for my local board of realtors and the topic of dicussion was print advertising.

A few local paper representatives gave presentations on their particular offerings. The agents were very animated in conveying they are very reluctant to print advertise, feel they are not sure what they are getting in terms of "reads", and had differing opinions amongst themselves as to what papers worked well and what ones didn't.

As a virtual tour provider, I often see listings that my company has done a virtual tour for advertised in a local paper but with no mention they have a tour online for people to see.

To me this is a real waste of money and a loss of potential leads.

I started thinking of all the reasons they should be referencing their virtual tours and also all the reasons they may decide not to.

I also started thinking of how I can get them more feedback on how much "potential interest" each print advertisement is generating.

I decided agents need the following:
1) Short web addresses to fit in costly/small print areas. Most virtual tour web addresses, including my own, are too long to reference in print advertising.

- or -

2) Short web addresses to something about the listing on the internet even if the agent doesn't want to pay for a full virtual tour or perhaps the seller doesn't want a virtual tour for security purposes. In RI, the RI MLS has a very nice web site... www.riliving.com and each listing gets a very nice web page with a unique address, although way too long to use in print advertising. I felt I could make a short web address that mapped to this long address and I can also use a special counter feature to track how many hits are going to that MLS listing by someone who read about the listing in a local paper. I assume the same type of MLS systems exist elsewhere in the country, or realtor.com listing web addresses can be used with my short web addresses.

The solution I came up with is:
1) 5 unique short web addresses that are unique in terms of their internet address (i.e. I can convert my typical virtual tour web address:
www.TheMediaLION.net/show/38200 to vt93.com/901 . The short addresses have been designed to be about as short as a full phone number (both 111-222-3333 and vt93.com/901 are 12 characters)

My virtual tours track statistics at the source web address level, so a hit that came from vt93.com/901 will show as vt93.com in my stats page and with this the agent will know any hits from vt93.com came from that Sunday ad in the local paper (for example).

They might use a 2nd address... vt83.com/801 in another local newspaper or perhaps even in the same Sunday paper but in a different part of the pager (perhaps the classifieds).

Now the agent can see what print advertising is generating what interest and they may be getting more leads because now buyers have an easy way to see more about the property on-line while avoiding calling the agent until they know more about the listing (i.e. see more pictures!).

2) For listings that won't get a virtual tour (by agent or seller choice) or their virtual tours don't have such detailed statistics I can add a counter to the page so the agent can see how many hits the print freindly web address is getting. For example... vt93.com/902 . Notice the red box at the top of the page indicating how many hits this page has gotten (note: in a real implementation unique hits will be considered a hit from different IP addresses or a repeated IP address but not within a 1/2 hour of the last time that IP address hit the page to avoid someone pumping the number of hits up artificially).

Now the agent can have statistics and multiple print friendly web addresses even for listings with no virtual tours or with virtual tours that don't have great statistic tracking.

I know this can seem a bit complicated to follow and I've been working on finding a simply way to explain it. Hopefully this was understandable.

Looking forward to any and all comments/opinions on this concept.

Thanks for reading this long post.

Kevin
The Media LION
www.TheMediaLION.com
401-359-4696

The problem with newspaper ads isn't so much that it's hard to track. I mean, paper ads were the main advertising medium for many years and it worked just fine. The problem is that very few people read printed paper classifieds when looking for homes. They just find a local realtor's website with the IDX feed and virtual tours are linked from there. Or, they just work with a realtor who sends them full property reports that have the virtual tour link. You're not going to have the full inventory of the whole city, so why would people waste time looking in the paper for a few select homes? It's not targeted advertising, which is why it has fallen out of favor.

Agents obviously still use newspapers and people still read them but I don't feel a listing description and a phone number work well in today's internet based society anymore.

People want info asap and without announcing themselves to the agent. i.e. they want to go to the internet to learn more about something they may not have been looking for in the fist place (it's a push/pull type of marketing tool, the paper pushes a listing to them, they pull more info online if even somewhat curious).

Why make buyers hunt down a listing on-line or make phone calls to learn more when a simple web address right there on the ad takes them directly to more info?