Grab the market by The Long Tail!
In Real Estate, as in much of business, being all things to all people is an impossible business model to chase. In Business 'The Long Tail' concept states that you can sell more 'less popular' items than you can of popular items. A common example is that Netflix rents more niche movies than popular ones. So what does this mean to real estate agents? That you can make a business in marketing niche markets and that it can be often times more profitable.
Offering people and online consumers 'the same but less' is not a sustainable business model. The Irony is that local real estate agents are in the best position to capitalize on their local market knowledge, but they typically do the worst job at capitalizing this knowledge online. Instead, they are trying to compete with Realtor.com, Trulia, Zillow with the proverbial 'one arm tied behind their back.' Local agents know what local buyers and sellers are searching for in real time, which is more reason for them to focus their efforts on niches rather than compete head-to-head with companies investing millions on technology and marketing. Why else? For starters:
- They have a better chance of being found and noticed, and
- They have a better chance at being relevant to some people (a market) vs. not relevant to anyone (the market).
And this has important implications in all your online marketing as well.