By Rachael Adler
The final speaker for the 2007 ANA Annual Conference was the president of McKinney advertising. He discussed the Coldwell Banker Case Study.
There is a fundamental shift taking place in the expectations of the American home buying/selling consumer.
- Average of home buyer is 33 years-old and getting younger
- Average of realtor is 52
McKinney’s research showed Coldwell Banker that the Web is more broadly used in shopping for real estate than shopping many other categories. Coldwell Banker’s challenge is about relevance, taking its history of leadership and innovation and making it relevant given today’s consumer needs and the landscape.
Objective: Reposition Coldwell Banker all starting with the consumer and quantifying the opportunity.
Key consumer for Coldwell Banker is the future builder; they embrace tradition and agents, but also moving to the online space. Into empowerment, not to go it alone, but to work with an agent in the process of buying or selling their home.
Today, the top 10 real estate websites accumulate over 200 MM unique visitors per month.
Five key steps to new process:
Dreaming – begins 6 months before consumer enters the marketing
Initiating – must begin taking tangible action
Shopping
Negotiating
Ownership
Opportunity to drive consumers to ColdwellBanker.com when they first begin the process – then move toward an agent. Embracing both the way the market is heading (online), but also keeping the personal interaction/touch.
ColdwellBanker.com attracts 30 MM unique visitors per month; this is up 11% from last year. Key attractions:
- Video that provides info-tainment to consumers
- Neighborhood videos
- Satellite mapping over-layed with comp sales data and neighborhood amenities
- Lead Router product that allow franchises to track leads from site and respond to consumers immediately
Coldwell Banker has become an active player in Second Life. Key learning objectives:
- Could it be a channel to drive consumers to ColdwellBanker.com
- How do 3-D objects work online and could there be a role for them on ColdwellBanker.com?
- Can we send a message to the “real” world that we were serious about innovations?
Also, they created Coldwell Banker Works – a Web-centric campaign to teach and provide turn key resources for all of their marketing tools. This site was recently recognized as a top 10 Intranet site across all categories. In early 2008, we will launch a comprehensive consumer-facing advertising campaign that will be a complete departure from anything you have ever seen in Real Estate advertising to date.
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