Offline Can Be a Killer

Meh... you just knocked at the wrong door.
A lot of people have this stubborn approach towards the internet and well, i think it's gonna turn around and kick them in their butts on their own time.
What I'd suggest you to do is, rather than going to someone that's already making a lot of money, go to an agency that's not making a lot and could benefit from some extra sales.

Tell them that you can bring them extra leads, and would do that on a commission basis. Can't hurt to try, can it ?

As a general point .... is it not possible to sell the campaign before starting it? E.g. charge someone a fixed fee for the SEO work then do it? Then you do the work knowing you'll be paid.

Anyhow ... an alternative idea if you can't sell this is to set up a real estate site and charge people who want to sell their house directly without an agent, perhaps for $100 an ad.

Once you get some success stories and testimonials you can put the per-ad fee right up to whatever you think you can get away with.

The same agency that turned you away may be paying you $100s per ad to put their most premium properties on your site

Fernando,

It's not that "offline" is difficult. The thing you've run into is that your approach is a bit of a gamble. It's low-risk, because there are good odds that another company will take you up on your offer, but there are no guarantees.

Selling pre-made sites is a tiny slice of the offline world.

Fernando, is the big website you're talking about the MLS?

Chances are you just spoke to the wrong real estate agent. In the offline business you are going to get some acceptance and some rejection. It really just depends.

Your real estate clients are right, of course. Why in the world should they give a cr@p about Google, SEO, pagerank or anything to do with IM. If I were them, I wouldn't. I would only care about making more money at the end of the day. Oh, you're saying that your IM efforts will translate into more $$$. Great! Show me! Quantify it; spell it out. Assume for a moment that I don't know (or care) about things like backlinks, SERPs and SEO. Help me care by translating this into sales (and please use language I understand). Your situation is vaguely reminiscent of a recent experience I had with my hosting provider: 200 of my domains suddenly became inaccessible and I was fuming. All I cared about was having my sites back up and online so that I could continue making money. Their IT Support team kept emailing me every hour or so to tell me that they were running this script or commenting out that line of code or altering the Apache permissions, or some other technical jargon bull$#$%. "Yes" I said, "That's great! Are my sites back up?" They'd reply: "Well no, but we're seeing that you're getting a large number of script calls from IP 67.191.blah.blah.blah." "Well, that's awesome! Are my sites back up?" "Not yet, but we see that some of your plug-ins may not be coded correctly and aren't closing their requests". "Well, that's just friggin' awesome! Are my sites back up????!!!!" <rinse repeat, ad nauseum>

The point being, local businesses don't know diddly-squat about what we do. Your FIRST responsibility as a potential service provider is to provide EDUCATION. Period. Here's a good basic outline when speaking with your potential customers: 1) "I have listened and learned about your business and here is my understanding of what you do and how you do it today. 2) Here is my understanding of your 'pain points', or how you would like things to be in the ideal world; 3) Here is what I do as an Internet Marketer, and here's how what I do can transform your business from point #1 to point #2 above. 4) Here is how you will know what I do is working for your business; here is how you can quantify it; 5) Here are the risks/benefits you will see when moving from step 1 to step 2, and here is how we can mitigate the risk while maximizing the benefit.

I believe if you can make the steps I've outlined above so clear and simple that your grandfather could understand it, you'll then have a winning presentation.

Good luck!

I once thought about doing what you are doing so i went out and asked a few real estate agents about the idea. They all said that they get approached by many people like me who are trying to sell leads but they are not interested because just doing "home open" on 2 to 3 weekends and they get enough leads to sell to (so that they don't have to pay commission to people like us)....

Maybe i spoke to wrong agents......

Most real estate agents don't understand the power of well-done search engine marketing. They stay stuck in old offline ways of doing business (like holding open houses...what a time waster!)

As a whole, agents are NOT particularly internet savvy. Yet there's always a handful of agents who get it. For example, here in Austin, there's an real estate agent who's incredibly smart with getting backlinks and focusing on the right keywords.

He shows up all the time on highly competitive keywords. I've actually met the guy. Down to earth and friendly. The funny thing is his website URL looks like a travel agency URL. :

www.escapesomewhere.com

Just goes to show you having the keywords in the URL isn't a requirement to rank high for competitive keywords.

Fernando - these don't sound like great people tbh - but potentially a very cash rich deal.

I like to avoid all tech talk for this very reason - they just don't get it.

Plus, there is also the chance that they can get upset - after all, here is an outsider telling them they are doing it all wrong. I realise you aren't actually doing that, but you would be surprised how easy it is for some ego centric clients to get in a mood.

If your going the approach of Build First -> Approach After would it not make sense to target the Realtors who are doing PPC for those keywords (assuming you haven't yet)

It'll be much easier to show someone the value in free traffic when they're paying hundreds or thousands of dollars for the same traffic.

Add to that the fact that natural traffic gets something like 75% more CTR then PPC and you've got great results.

Another thing would be creating a lead generation report and placing it on the website with an autoresponder and collecting targeted leads...then you have even more ammo to bring to the table (a proven lead generation tool and lead follow-up system)

Food for thought!

~Dexx

This is a classic example of why IMers find dealing with offline businesses so hard.

It's really just a symptom that you didn't ask them what they wanted first and then tried to sell them something they didn't want.

Funny how as marketers it's still easy to forget how important research is before taking action in a niche.

Some businesses will think it's all good but ultimately unless they're stupid they really just care about if you can make their phone ring more, and if they've been approached by 100's of people already telling them how they can help them (and you know they have), you're just another sales person to them unless you've been referred to them by someone they trust.

If you go in all guns blazing talking about Google, most of them just don't care and they have no idea how much difference what you're offering will make.

If they're switched on, they probably already have a lot of processes for maximizing their revenue and they probably have some sort of web presence, but it's quite often controlled by their head office and there's an advertising budget for online marketing.

If you go for a chain of agents, you may be able to get traction by working with their main office if you can show them that you can deliver better and cheaper than PPC.

Andy

Thanks guys, appreciate all your feedback. Powerful stuff, as usual.

Just a sidenote: the company that dumped us, did it arrogantly because they already have "advertising in the internetzzz".

Anyway, I will share with you our approach to this market. It was this... well, sort of:

You sell houses.
You want to sell these houses.
You want to make more money.

BUT You need more customers - There is a crisis right now and less people are buying.

No problem.

We have new customers for you.
They come to us everyday.
They want to buy houses in your city.

Who are they? They are buyers.

They use Google.
The Search Engine.
They use it to search for "buy home in this city".
When they search, they see our sites at top spots.
They click.
They like what they see: great opportunities, a friendly city and friendly people!!
They click to go to your site.
You do your thing.
You make the sale.
They buy.
You make more money.
You happy.

You interested?

-----

This not the exact presentation, but you get the idea. Hopefully we'll close this deal soon with someone with good heart and high expectations.

Thanks again for your input!!

Are you sure people use Google to find houses locally? See I suspect they go straight to the big real estate listing portals instead. That's what I do.

So maybe you should be targeting the related businesses which ARE usually found through google. For example: mortgage brokers, property lawyers, buyers agents, building inspectors etc.


Andrew

Hey Fernando,
It's a shame that some companies do not share our vision.
However, You're sitting on a good thing if your ranking already.
In my view, I would do as Dexx suggests and capture as much
information per lead as possible.

Rather than just getting the email and name, maybe numbers etc...

Offer a solid report on home buying/hunting etc...

Then if the Real Estate companies do not bite, I would try brokers.
They are independent, and will appreciate the leads a lot more.

If all else fails, you'll be building a targeted list that you can sell products to yourself!

They don't care about the lingo. They care about LEADS.

Translate the site into number of actual leads for them and the conversation is very different.

Put an opt-in form with a "are you interested in buying or selling a home" traffic split. Show up at that meeting with a list of 500 opt-ins from the past 2 weeks and name your price. How you got the leads, being #1 on Google, etc... that's all nerd talk to most offline businesses. We care about that stuff, but I can assure you that most offline business owners don't care and won't care. It's all lingo to them, and in their perspective, what's popular now will change in 3 years anyway.... which is true to a certain extent.

What doesn't change is the metrics of THEIR business. A contact sheet with a real person's info on it is real to them. Being #1 on Google doesn't necessarily translate for them.

I use telemaketing for getting offline business to bypass all the clients who already think they r Internet savvy and get straight to the ones who know they need your help.

Offline people can be stupid they do not understand the internet and how powerful it is.

I only help people who want to be helped. I drive traffic to my site from all over the world. I also call local business offer them a Free coaching program where I have a number of video lesson that explain internet marketing and the art of advertising.

If they watch the video I work with those businesses if they don't well... I have gotten FREE rent from a insurance business I have given them free coaching in exchange for FREE rent they have not done a single thing I have suggest in 3 years. Even though they see these business owners walk through my doors who have really grown their businesses after working with me.

They are in a rut and unwilling to change. My suggestion is to seek only those deserving of your skills and talents.

I'm now partnering with someone showing Realtors how to use the
internet to make sales -- but it has nothing to do with selling houses!

If you show them PROOF online tools work, they'll listen whether it's selling homes
or something related.

JIM

Quick update: Tomorrow will have another appointment and the one from today just got delayed to next week.

Bill:

Did check the laws and, as expected, same rules applies to European countries. That's why we're discussing the possibility of one of us (me or wife) get our broker/agent license and work from there.

Andrew:

We've been tweaking our sites and since yesterday visitors can insert their own listings AND ask for custom solutions for their needs for FREE.

So far we have NONE, but I guess that has to do with the "No Listing In This Category"... As soon as some listings show up, people will insert more of them.

Heck, I might try to sell my apartment!

I had the same experiences when I went from offline real estate work to online (I dealt with the largest firms in the city). You have to think of the target client you are going after. The big real estate brokers are totally old school to the point of thinking Kijiji, craigslist, rentals and even websites are useless and do not produce valid leads (which is the key).

What you want to focus on is real estate agents just getting started and know the importance of Internet Marketing. Hit them with statistics about how many people go online to find houses now. You can find them on Twitter, facebook.

Believe me, I know the pain. My jaw dropped when I was asked to speak to the top real estate guy in my city and he said Internet was totally useless in producing leads (only time-wasting welfare people - his words).

Old school people do not want to put in the hard work to get those leads. They know their dying client base will come to them whether they are on google or not.

What they don't get is the BUYING generation is almost exclusively using the net to find and sell homes.

I know where you are coming from. I had the top spot in a city of 25,000 + and I was sitting on the #1 spot of Google - citylawyer.com

Everyday there were 5 unique visitors coming to the site BUT no lawyer seemed to care about it. I tried explaining what one conversion meant for them financially , etc.. but could not get rid of it. The site looked great, the proof was there, etc.. nothing. Perhaps I just needed to go to one more door but I moved on to strictly the online world.

Why only real estate?

Surely there are lots of other business areas which need your service?

Abdul.

That sounds like a good idea.

Why not cut the crap, and say something like:

I'll set it all up for you so you don't have to worry about anything, i'll send you all the leads free for one month, and if you think its worth it, we will talk about continuing it.

Something tells me the thought of having to learn how to use the internet scares some of them off - or that they don't have the time to do that.

Make it so easy for them that it would be stupid for them to say no.

How are things working out with them Fernando?

From my experience the most important thing to do when dealing with OFFLINE businesses is to show them - REAL MEASURABLE RESULTS.

They want to see PROSPECTS, LEADS and SALES. Most of them couldn't give a stuff about any of the web jargon or the nuts and bolts of how we generate traffic.

Example:

For my first OFFLINE venture I went down to my local gym and spoke to some of the Personal Trainers. I've since set up several webpages and have increased business for many of them by 100-200% and I can prove it since i take care of all their online payment processing

The system works for both parties for several reasons:

Trainers Benefit:
- they get more regular work since sessions are paid for by CC online with bulk rate discounts
- they get MEASURABLE results - they get a payment from me each week - this is revenue they didn't previously get so they know they are getting value for the money they pay me - If I don't deliver - they don't pay - they can't argue with that!
- they don't have to know or care or worry about how the system works - they stick to what they are good at - training clients.

My Benefit:
- I get a fixed fee plus a % for all payments I generate for them
- the system I use is easily scalable (the payment system/website template is literally a copy&paste job - I literally only change their photos and logo)
- you don't need many trainers to get a 5 and possible 6 figure income from this
- using local search it's incredibly easy to rank well in google and PPC clicks are CHEAP!!!

I think the trick with OFFLINE is to

1. target the right market
2. keep it about them and show them RESULTS free and in advance before asking for payment (ie/ they pay if you deliver on your promise - this really isn't that hard)
3. make sure you work as little as possible (make a system for everything)
4. once you find something that works - REPEAT

I'm not surprised at all. The RE business is faltering at best. Not much cash there.

I am working with painting/drywall contractors (mom and pop style). I never do the work until I have their approval.

Have you learned how to promote Google Local? That is a good attention getter.

I agree you knocked the wrong door, find the agency that wants to beat the top dog and you'll have a new client.

Dealing with people is complicated. It comes down to understanding their perspective and speaking in terms that they relate to. Everyone likes to feel in control of things rather than at the mercy of the whims of others.

What the heck am I talking about? Guide the conversation so they -- not you -- are making the great "discoveries" and having eureka moments and you just happen to be there to implement it for them. Sometimes it is a matter of planting ideas and letting them grow in their minds.

(Machiavelli)