According to Realtor.com’s latest statistics, 66 percent of homebuyers using the Internet chose to visit Realtor.com. That translates to a whopping 4.7 million unique visitors a month. Yet some Realtors continue to snipe that they don't get enough leads from Realtor.com.

Even though Realtor.com serves a customer base of over 100,000 with lead generation packages, the company does not see itself as a lead generation provider. It sees itself as media.

Where the line got blurred is that Realtor.com helped its customers design their online presences with silver, gold and platinum lead generation packages. That meant it crossed the line from providing exposure, which its competitors newspapers and magazines provide, to becoming responsible for leads to agents.

You don't see newspapers take the flack when a customer's ad doesn't work. That's because newspapers sell exposure - not lead generation, and that's the difference. Newspapers call it advertising, and Realtor.com should, too.

Listings, Web sites, school report sponsorships, and other lead generation tools like these are ads, pure and simple. Realtor.com is selling ads for Realtors, and it should announce from the rooftops that it is selling exposure.

Online exposure implies an accountability for lead generation. Yet, when held to the light of similar products by other similar media, that's not a fair comparison. That's the handicap that Realtor.com has labored under - that it is more responsible for supplying leads than it is for exposure. So putting 4.7 million people a month in front of Realtors becomes less appealing to agents who are more interested in knowing how many leads are generated from that number. It's funny, but true, that newspapers, magazines and billboards aren't held to the same standard, yet everyone universally recognizes these as advertising mediums. Why doesn't the same hold true for Realtor.com?

Until now, Realtor.com has been muzzled by its investor-pleasing parent Homestore. They don't want to call the lead generation packages they sell "advertising" because companies with advertising-based business models aren't valued as highly by investors. But with the company's stock selling at $.89 a share, at this writing, is that really such a problem anymore?

Realtor.com has bigger problems to worry about - its value to customers.

Competition to Realtor.com continues to be fierce, particularly with newspapers waking up from their slumber, re-evaluating their classified ad business models, and engaging MLSs and other third parties to provide better advertising opportunities for Realtors online. So far, early mover advantage has been with media companies like Homestore and Realtor.com, but those days could be numbered. Newspapers and their conglomerates like Classified Ventures will shortly give Realtor.com and other online media a run for their money where it hurts - on the Web, and that's because they have recognition advantage in local markets. If you read the Dallas Morning News everyday, you'll go to DallasNews.com to find apartments and cars, where the company has big deals in place with Apartments.com and Cars.com. You can't find many homes online there yet, but it's only a matter of time before some deal is struck with some online listings aggregator.

Today's leaders at Homestore, led by CEO Mike Long, and Steve Ozonian president of Realtor.com, see reality for what it is. Now all they have to do is get the message across to their customers that if they look at Realtor.com as media, then they are getting a heckuva bargain. But first they have to disabuse their customers of the notion that Realtor.com has total responsibility for generating leads, particularly when they can't be accurately tracked.

But everything is trackable on the Internet, you say. No, it isn't. Here's a reason why.

According to a never-before-published internal survey of Realtor.com visitors, out of every 100 visitors:

• 80 are presently active in the market or thinking about buying or selling
• 66 visit more than once a week
• 34 contact a Realtor (that’s one in three visitors)
• 8 of 10 contact the Realtor by phone

By phone? Eight out of 10 customers contact Realtors from Realtor.com by phone?! You gotta be kidding. If that number is true, then everything we know about online lead generation has to be re-evaluated. While consumers do use e-mail to contact customers from Realtor.com, they don't do so with the frequency we would like. They use the phone. What a shock!

But that's exactly where the disconnect lies between Realtor.com - the national listing service and online media giant, and Realtor.com - the lead generator. Until every Realtor asks every customer, "How did you hear about me?", it stands to reason that credit won't be given where credit is due. What if a customer goes from your Realtor.com listing to visit the home, and calls you from the yard sign without ever mentioning that he first found the home online? But that is exactly what consumers do, according to Ozonian.

”People hunt on the site,” explains Ozonian, “and they print off listing pages or write the address down and do drive-bys. Then they contact a Realtor once they have sorted through their research."

Ozonion knows that this lag time between viewing listings and contacting Realtors is crucial to agents' perceptions of Realtor.com's ability to provide leads.

”We aren’t getting enough credit for the leads we are generating for Realtors,” he says. “We gave some Realtors 800 numbers and tracked them, and they were getting calls, but we can't afford to give every Realtor an 800 number. We know that a lot of people are contacting Realtors. Although we have 100,000 e-mails a week from consumers to Realtors, the vast majority of consumers use the phone.”

Yet, many brokers and agents believe they are generating those calls without the help of Realtor.com. Maybe it's time that Realtor.com did a little public relations that includes slapping some folks upside the head with one fact - Realtor.com's lead generation packages are simply good, better, best levels of exposure, not numbers of leads.

Published: July 18, 2002

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Blanche is a renowned author of five real estate books. Her newest, Bubbles, Booms and Busts: Make Money In Any Real Estate Market, McGraw-Hill, was rave-reviewed by The New York Times. She was also selected from hundreds of real estate experts to contribute to Donald Trump's book, Trump: The Best Real Estate Advice I Ever Received: 100 Top Experts Share Their Strategies, Rutledge Hill Press, and is featured on page 68. Order Now Review - Honors In 2006, Blanche was selected among scores of candidates to author two consumer real estate guidebooks for the National Association of Realtors: The NAR Guide to Home Buying, and The NAR Guide to Home Selling, Wiley & Sons. She is currently planning two new books for the NAR and its members.       Known for her keen insight into real estate industry issues and for her ability to make complex subjects easy to understand, Blanche is a sought-after keynote and continuing education speaker. Real estate organizations from MLSs, to brokerages, to franchisors, to associations hire her to provide up-to-the-minute analysis of real estate industry news and advice on how to improve revenues. Her passionate delivery, peppered with stinging wit, is a huge hit with audiences and fans. Don Klein, CEO Greater Nashville Association of Realtors, Blanche Evans, Richard Courtney, president 2007, GRAR "The GNAR membership meeting last week featured Blanche Evans as the keynote speaker. Her comments and insights resonated extremely well with those in attendance and we have had many requests for copies of her PowerPoint Presentation. She was a terrific part of the membership meeting and convention program!" - Don Klein, CEO Greater Nashville Association of Realtors Coverage from WSMV, Nashville - 8-14-2007 That Interview Guy - Get Inside The Head Of Today's Generation 2007 AE Institute Session - To purchase 2006 AE Institute Session - Parts 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 HouseValues Mastermind call - Parts 1 2 Blanche's fireside chat with Jeremy Conaway, HAR - Click here. For more articles by Blanche, click here.