Editor's note: In a Realty Times exclusive, Realtor.com is announcing it's bold new I-LEAD program for Realtors. I-LEAD spokesperson Clay Aldrich will monitor and respond to all responses from agent readers in the Realty Times interactive forum. If you would like to know more about I-LEAD XL, please log in and post your questions and comments at the end of the article.

Where do Internet leads really come from? What makes a client pick a real estate professional online? Experience? Having the right listings? The right hair-do? More likely it is a combination of factors that make a client say yes to one agent and not another. The more positive factors you have going for you, including a dynamic Web site and a Pepsodent smile, the more likely you are to get an e-mail or phone call from new clients.

Yet, this simple marketing lesson that "more is more" is lost on many agents when it comes to Internet marketing. Frustrated by the breadth of the Web, they give up on spreading themselves among as many contact entry points as possible. Some want low-cost Web tools to hand-deliver leads as if they were paying top dollar to the most expensive custom Web designer. Is that asking the impossible, or can agents' demands for more leads for reasonable costs be met with new technologies?

Realtor.com plans to find out with a bold new agent marketing program that will not only allow agents to track their leads, but compare the results from all Realtor.com-enabled marketing tools, including online listings, Web sites, virtual tours and more.

Lead tracking is central to Realtor.com's new Web page strategy, something that is almost unheard of in other forms of advertising. Newspapers, radio and television advertising salespersons aren't required to quantify viewers or listeners, yet Internet technologies mean that advertisers, including subscribers to Web sites, hold online marketing to a more exacting standard. Viewers' movements can be tracked on the Internet, causing subscribers and advertisers to demand more from their advertising/marketing dollars.

Yet this has posed a problem for advertising-based sites, causing advertising revenues to slide. While other companies such as MarketWatch are eliminating traffic numbers from advertiser sales reports to boost ad sales, Realtor.com is clearly taking a risk in the opposite direction. Why? Internet traffic broken down by marketing tool or listing may not prove to be impressive to agents and brokers who are still trying to understand how the Internet works. But Realtor.com believes that when agents have empirical proof that Web sites and listings with enhancements get more leads, that Realtor.com will be vindicated as the premier lead generation resource for agents on the Internet and will be able to sell more Web sites with more value add-ons.

And it has to. Subscriptions are key to Homestore's and Realtor.com's survival, yet even with the most subscriptions sold of any competitor in the space, some market analysts are already beginning to grumble that Homestore, Realtor.com's parent, might have reached a big part of its potential in sales to real estate agents, and that's not something a growing company wants investors to believe. If Realtor.com's strategy pays off, the company will not only get more subscribers, but it will be able to upsell them to more lead generation tools, proving analysts such as Henry Blodget and others who may follow him wrong. Here's how Realtor.com plans to do it.

Realtor.com has come out with a new version of its lead generation package - the I-LEAD Web page, called I-LEAD XL. "This is I-LEAD 2.O," says Clay Aldrich, spokesperson for Realtor.com and I-LEAD. "It has a new look and new features."

"We reevaluated our objectives for the product," he explains. "Through focus groups, interviews, and more we asked brokers and agents, "What are your priorities for I-LEAD?" Leads were the big one. Our approach was to improve lead generation capabilities. We haven't played up the branding they get on Realtor.com but that is extremely strong. And through the new tools, we will provide insight into how well the agents and brokers are positioned among consumers looking for homes."

Starting today, agents will be able to buy silver, platinum and diamond versions through which they can access and learn about their online marketing from a control panel. They can look at and evaluate how much traffic each of their listings and their Web sites are getting. Offices that provide I-LEAD pages for their associates will have new versions through which they will also be able to track the performance of their agents' listing and marketing efforts.

"There are seven categories of tools that they will be able to access from a single password. They will be able to see their I-LEAD page and their listings, and see the page views," says Aldrich. "They can see how many times the listings have been viewed, and compare the listings and they can see if the ones with virtual tours get more click throughs. That is a huge step forward in the way clients will use, view and value I-LEAD." The listings report is detailed, and printable as a handout to clients.

In the upgraded versions, I-LEAD Web packages will become more personalized Web sites. "We are going to allow an agent or office to personalize the site with a "showcase" page, a custom page which allows photos and text and those pages will appear on the site," explains Aldrich. "I-LEAD has been a template site and the showcase pages gives a higher degree of control with their appearance on the Internet."

What if the agents don't like what they see? "It's a risk we have to take, some are going to be underwhelmed by the traffic, so we are ready to help them with several things they can do," offers Aldrich. "You can enhance your listings, add virtual tours, add more text than perhaps your MLS allows, add additional photos, and we give you a place to do that. That's what makes it good for both sides, - the agents are getting more exposure for listings, and the enhancements provide a better experience for the consumer."

And what if offices and agents like what they see? It would be hard to resist adding a virtual tour to every listing when listing reports clearly show that listings enhanced with them get more traffic and inquiries.

"We are here to promote properties and transactions," sums Aldrich. "if we can give agents and offices insight into how their properties are performing, it creates value."

Published: July 11, 2001

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