Mission Grove in the News

We've always been huge fans of our Real Estate Merchants. They routinely do everything they should to make sure they're everywhere on the web - and that customers are finding them. Merchants like Mission Grove Realty, Pam Westman and Steve Mun are great examples with great MerchantCircle listings, complete with constantly updated content (blogs, pics, coupons).

Recently, Joel Burslem wrote about us on his popular website and blog - Future of Real Estate Marketing. You can read the blog here. It's filled with information and technology that helps real estate professionals. Joel also recently invited us to join a panel of experts at this year's Real Estate Connect Conference being held in San Francisco.

We look forward to the discussion topic: "Social Networking: New Ways to Participate and Prospect". Our Co-Founder and Chairman Ben Smith will engage with reps from Zillow, PropertyQube and Fatdoor. We're excited, not only to be representing MerchantCircle, but to represent what MerchantCircle has become - you, our merchant base. We, as a group, are the largest online network of small business owners in the country. More than 130,000 strong! We will continue to look out for your best interest.

Sincerely,
Kevin
MerchantCircle  

Inventing the Circle

There’s no shortage of companies trying different ways to get small local businesses to make the jump to online advertising. Google, Yahoo!, MSN and A9 are all out there beating the bushes to set up business profiles for local enterprises that don’t now have their own Web sites. And the Internet Yellow Pages directories are putting their sales forces into motion to convince Mom and Pop concerns that they, too, can have a prominent online presence with a minimal investment of time, if not of money...............Merchant Circle began developing its platform in 2004 with funding from Rustic Canyon Ventures, the development fund set up by the Chandler family, former owners of the Times-Mirror newspaper chain. Bank of America Ventures and the Disney-operated Steamboat Ventures were also early investors.

His particular favorite is All American Gutter of Lemoyne PA. “This is a smart guy who runs a great business, I’m sure, but he clearly doesn’t know how to spell very well. But he writes regular blog entries about how and why to clean your gutters, and he’s very active on the system.” Another local merchant Mission Grove Realty of Hemet CA is at the opposite end of that spectrum of Internet savvy, managing its own search marketing program on Google and MSN and handling both a main Web site and up to 50 targeted landing pages, but owner Christopher Walker still sees value in the added exposure that his firm gets from participating in the Merchant Circle network.

“Search the term ‘real estate’ on the web and see how many potential sites there are,” he says. “The World Wide Web is a giant parking structure filled with 300 million, 400 million cars. How’s somebody going to find mine? So you’ve got to attack it from multiple points.”

Walker says he particularly values the Web coupon feature of Merchant Circle. “if someone’s going through the site looking for a local dentist and a coupon for Mission Grove comes up with free moving or free notary services, that gets our name out there. I’m getting in front of them in a lot of different ways.” Since Walker was one of the first businesses in his area to join Merchant Circle and to create coupons, his coupons appear often when searchers look for businesses in his region.

Mission Grove also makes use of the blogging feature, turning out posts on local real estate market conditions in both Hemet and Yucaipa CA as well as service-oriented posts on holding out for a higher home price and avoiding negotiating traps.

Realtor Magazine

BY ELYSE UMLAUF-GARNEAU

Online Marketing

As advertised on eBay. Practitioners use auction site to gain visibility, drive Web traffic.

Depending on your perspective, eBay is either a glorified flea market or a revolution in resale. Some real estate practitioners are taking the latter view, using the auction site’s reach to supplement their presence at REALTOR.com and their personal and company Web sites.

eBay says it reaches 56.1 million active users. The obvious drawback: A vast majority of those users aren’t in the real estate market. But to reach those who are, eBay is a tool—like direct mail or news-paper advertising—that some practitioners are using to market listings, drive traffic to their Web sites, and attract new prospects.

“As a result of our exposure on eBay, we can attribute two sales, one listing, approximately three good prospects per month, and about 700 visitors per day to our Web site,” says Christopher Walker, e-PRO®, vice president of Mission Grove Realty in Hemet, Calif. His company started advertising properties on eBay in 2003. He says that 80 percent of his business comes from various online efforts, but he also does traditional print advertising.

An electronic billboard
eBay (www.eBay.com) is well-known as an auction spot for everything from teacups to hubcaps. Less known is the eBay Real Estate section (http://pages.ebay.com/realestate), where single-family homes, commercial buildings, land, and vacation rentals are advertised and auctioned.

The site targets FSBOs. But real estate practitioners who use eBay say they aren’t bothered by eBay’s appeal to those with a do-it-yourself mentality. For one thing, it’s not easy to actually sell real estate through the site. eBay explicitly states that its property auctions are nonbinding. There’s also still a perception by many that eBay is a less-than-secure place to conduct business.

Several practitioners interviewed say adding eBay to their online marketing mix is like buying a giant billboard on a high-traffic stretch of the information superhighway.

Those practitioners say they typically forgo the auction route and opt for eBay ads. eBay charges $150 for a 30-day real estate ad and $300 for a 90-day ad. Adding pictures and changing copy can increase the cost. “An enormous amount of traffic goes through that site, and you just can’t overlook that,” Walker of Mission Grove Realty says.
Web experts point out that the huge number of hits to an eBay ad is a rather meaningless measure of effectiveness. And salespeople agree that hits don’t -necessarily translate into sales. But there are other benefits to the volume of exposure that comes from eBay ads, practitioners say. Although eBay is no substitute for more targeted marketing efforts, such as REALTOR.com, Hayes and others are finding that—with few practitioners currently using eBay—it’s a way to set themselves apart and link up with more prospects, particularly those who are relocating or seeking vacation properties.

Says Walker : “People are finding us online through REALTOR.com, eBay, and at our Web site. Seeing our name over and over helps build our brand. It’s especially important since we’re a smaller office and don’t have the national image of a big franchise.”