“Facebook recently reached the #1 ranking on Christmas Eve, Christmas Day, and New Year’s Day as well as the weekend of March 6th and 7th. The market share of visits to Facebook increased 185% last week as compared to the same week in 2009, while visits to Google increased 9% during the same time frame. Together Facebook and Google accounted for 14% of all US Internet visits last week [the week ending March 7th, 2010].”

In fact, according to Mashable, networks such as Facebook been pushing hard against the biggest names in web search including Google for several months: “Now, we’ve learned that in the UK, people are visiting social networks more than they’re visiting search engines. Facebook dominates the current crop of social networks, accounting for the majority (55%) of all social site visits. When compared to the wider web, Google gets around 9.3% of all web traffic, while Facebook now captures over 7%.”

And, global page view trends for Facebook and Google show that “while social networks such as Facebook don’t pose an immediate threat to search engines for their core functionality, they do pose a large threat to search engines’ largest revenue source, advertising.”

Click Here to read the entire article on Mashable.

You may have heard some rumors about the eventual demise of e-mail, with whispers of Facebook and Google wave-type platforms as the likely successors. The facts, however, show that e-mail is alive and well, and only continuing to grow in popularity and omnipresence.

247 billion emails were sent each day in 2009, and there were approximately 1.4 billion global email users in 2009, according to market research firm The Radicati Group. Even Google’s popular Gmail web-based e-mail served approximately 176 million users all by itself in the month of December 2009 according to the Wall Street Journal. In fact, according to mail2web.com, there were 100 million more e-mail users in the world in 2009 than there were in 2008.

So the number of e-mail users within the United States and around the world is massive and getting even bigger. But best of all, according to the Email Experience Council, e-mail marketing produces an ROI of 40-50% greater than all other direct marketing media or methods. Just like your online advertising, e-mail is trackable and analytics are available for your usage and response that can help you refine and finely tune your messages and approaches to ensure the most response.

And as to the idea that social media is taking away market share and eyes from e-mail, the fact is that many employers are now simply blocking social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter to maintain productivity, leaving e-mail as your primary communications conduit and best option for creating trackable results.

So you should feel very comfortable making e-mail a major component of your new home and real estate marketing—it’s cheap, quick, versatile, and, when executed properly and ethically, produces astounding returns that you can monitor, track, and use to guide your refinement on the path to e-mail marketing success.

Next time, we’ll discuss Website & Online Advertising Analytics and its role in getting the most for your money in your online advertising and marketing.

NDG Communications CEO Tom Nelson was quoted in the document: “Homebuyers now start their buying process online first, using many different web resources to shop by elimination—deciding which precious few communities they will actually visit in person. Online success requires you to be where your prospects are looking, continually ready with the fresh content they’re looking for.”

Read the New Home Feed Blog HERE, and Download the White Paper HERE.

“Banner” or “online display” advertising can be found on every search engine, and on many news and portal websites. These ads can be targeted to specific consumers based on their browsing habits and on the demographics associated with each website’s content. And setting a budget is easy: You decide how much to spend and where within a specific timeframe, meaning you can test your ads for a very small cost until you have refined for the most results, and that you can easily control costs.

Best of all, you can not only measure how many impressions—how many people were actually exposed to the ad—but also how many people clicked the ad as well. Most banner advertising is very cost-effective, with the average cost per click (CPC) under $2, and the average cost per thousand impressions (CPM) at approximately $10.

For several years, fewer and fewer people have been clicking on banner ads, raising the question of how effective banner ads really are. Current research shows that low number of clicks doesn’t necessarily mean banners don’t work; online culture and consumption habits have changed over the years, and there is a great deal of evidence that regardless of clicks, banner ads contribute greatly to increased visits to websites. According to one report, “Within one week, consumers exposed to a display ad were 65% more likely to visit the advertiser’s site than users who never saw the ad. Even at four weeks, people exposed to displays ads are 45% more likely to visit the brand’s site.”

And, if you still doubt the importance and effectiveness of banner advertising, just look at where other media buyers placed their money in 2009: “TV ad spending fell 10%, magazines dropped 17%, newspapers and radio each dropped 20%, and outdoor fell 13%. The only major growth area: Online ad spending. Internet display ads increased 7% in 2009.”

Remember, you control the budget, so you can test your outreach to ensure the most return on your investment. Like all other digital advertising and marketing tools, banner ads are an effective component of a larger plan, and they too must be linked to real and meaningful content to help prospects on their journey toward becoming your customers.

Next time, we’ll discuss E-Mail Marketing and its role in your online advertising and marketing fundamentals for 2010.

An XML feed is a simple way to share your listing information with other websites. An XML feed allows you to publish as frequently as you need to, and modify the relevant fields (price, availability, square footage, etc) as often as you need to.  In order to help provide their users with relevant content, the referral websites will allow you to link your feeds to them, thus propagating your offerings further and creating more frequency and exposure for your listings.

WHY should you share your listings with these websites?

• They have a Captive Audience: Homebuyers in the Market, Ready to Buy
• Most are FREE, or are very cost-effective
• Realtor.com is the most utilized real estate website with a 6.7% share of the market (2009)
• RealEstate.Yahoo.com, NewHomeSource.com, Move.com, and Trulia.com all have considerable market share as well

HOW do you share your listings with these websites?

By setting up an XML feed from your website to the 3rd party vendors of your choice. Your website or technology partner can help you organize your listing data into a standardized set so that your information is always represented accurately. This requires that your information utilize the correct fields and structures, as well as content tags. While the intricate details can be complex, the big concept is that you’re making sure your information is set up so that it can be shared effectively with the people who are looking for it—web-savvy homebuyers who are searching for your new homes.

Next week, we’ll discuss Banner Advertising and its role in your Online Advertising and Search Engine Marketing plans.

Facebook, YouTube, Twitter—there’s a growing number of social media channels and platforms out there. It’s easy to get overwhelmed and off course trying to be everywhere, so we’re going to set the record straight about what you should, and shouldn’t, expect from your social media marketing efforts.

Make sure to review NDG’s online integration map for flowing data (content) throughout the fundamental online marketing components for Homebuilders, Developers, and Real Estate Brokerages.

NDG recommends that our clients have a living strategic plan for implementing, engaging, and monitoring your social media outreach. While social media can help build brands and maximize publicity efforts, do not expect these marketing components to instantly drive traffic or sales. Social media platforms are recommended because of their word-of-mouth generation capabilities and because of their wide-ranging reach across many varied demographic audiences. Do NOT abandon all other forms of marketing; rather, integrate social media into your current marketing strategy and, most importantly, your corporate website.

As a first, fundamental step, develop a blog to serve as the “content repository” to feed timely, relevant content to your corporate website. This same content can be distributed via a Facebook fan page. Then,  you can add other platforms such as Twitter and YouTube to your mix as you develop more content appropriate for these digital meeting places. Your website is the hub of all your marketing and advertising, and from this hub are distributed communications, each tailored to the channel you’re using.

Finally, remember that Content is Queen, and especially so for the social media. If you’re just shouting the same stuff down these channels, you’re wasting your time and money, and potentially damaging your brand and reputation. The ROI on your social media outreach will be directly influenced by your investment in generating good content, because this is what will help your Search Engine Results Page (SERPs) rankings grow higher and higher, and create more authentic engagement with your prospects—not repeating the same weak content over and over, which will just get you ignored by both your prospects and the search engines.

Your goal is to have your website appear on the very first page of search engine results pages (or “SERPs”) when your prospects search under the keywords associated with your website and its content, and have it appear there “organically” — that is, without resorting to paid advertising to help maintain this first-page ranking. This is no easy and simple task, nor does it happen overnight, but with testing, vigilance, and perseverance, you can achieve this goal.

Search Engine Optimization (or “SEO”) refers to improving your search engine ranking via non-paid methods. This is different from Search Engine Marketing (or “SEM”), paid search engine advertising that can help you eventually achieve your search engine placement goals without any financial investment. The most prominent example of search engine advertising is Google AdWords.

Keyword research will help guide the ongoing development of your paid search engine advertising, so that you can allocate minimal funds to test your advertising first. Once you have positive results, roll out your complete, tested & proven paid advertising. Remember, your goal is to have your website appear on the first page of search engine results. With a combination of Search Engine Optimization and Search Engine Marketing, you can achieve this goal, and then eliminate the expense of paid search advertising once you achieve sustainable “organic” first-page ranking.

Next week, we’ll discuss the facts and myths of how “Social Media” such as Facebook, YouTube, and Twitter can help you distribute your content online to help achieve your search engine goals.

Now you really can see what is working, and deduce why or why not with your online efforts (including e-mail, advertising, and websites)—giving you the power to refine and adjust over time to maintain and increase positive results. Your content will generate the results, and tracking will ensure that your content is as well crafted and targeted as possible to create the most response over time as situations evolve.

Remember: Advertising is what brings you the first contact with the prospect; marketing is what happens when you respond. Analytics help measure both your advertising and marketing results. Now you can have true ROI metrics that spell out the who, why, where, when, and how.

Of course, it takes time to analyze. And of course it’s not black and white; there will be shades of gray, but this is what gives you the most clarity. There are also industry benchmarks available to help evaluate your performance against other competitors in your selected arena. For example, here are some recent real estate industry e-mail averages, courtesy mailchimp.com:

Open Rate: 22.84%
Click-through Rate: 4.24%
Soft Bounces: 2.02%
Hard Bounces: 4.31%
Unsubscribe Requests: 0.30%

And since almost all online advertising and marketing can be tracked if the proper steps are taken, there’s no reason to blindly assume or guess about what is working and what isn’t anymore. So, never forget that the key to your online success is the formula of CONTENT + TRACKING.

For the real estate industry (and practically every other industry), the key to online success is the formula of CONTENT + TRACKING. Today we’ll talk about why CONTENT is the fuel of your online engine.

So, an engine will not run with fuel. As you know, the gas in your car won’t last forever—you’ll use it up and will need to fuel up again to get further down the road. The same is exactly true of your online content. You’ll need to put new content into the system continually to keep your company moving toward your online goals.

Since consumers start their buying process online, your website must be the hub of all your activities. Even with the numerous social media platforms and channels available, your website must be the central core that radiates content outward, and receives, processes, and interacts with inbound communications.

Content is everything. Content is what brings consumers to you. But once they’ve seen it—unless it is complex or incredibly compelling—they won’t be back. Thus, ensuring that your content is changing, fresh, and answers the needs of your potential audiences is absolutely critical to the success of all your online efforts.

But what does “fresh content” really mean? It means that you’re telling your story continually; and not just your story, but also the story of how you can fulfill your clients’ needs. It means that your representation of your product must stay fresh as well, even if the product or service itself has not substantially changed. And it means that you are getting your content in front of as many targeted faces as possible—adapting for each new segment’s unique needs.

So commit to regular fresh fuel-ups of your website and outbound channels with fresh content, tailored to the wants and needs of your audiences. Otherwise, you’ll always be going nowhere.

Next Week: Why Tracking is King

See the entire album here.