[Video] Are Competitors Eating Your Lunch?

Are competing brokerages getting leads off your listings? You may want to look at your systems and processes. But if you run an otherwise tight ship, it's probably time to think about what's happening with your listings online.

The online listing landscape is shifting rapidly, though. With the looming termination of ListHub's relationship with Zillow and Trulia, brokers and MLSs are looking at alternatives to syndication to get their listings to portals. One of those methods is direct data feeds.

On Wednesday, we hosted a panel discussion of four industry experts to explore the ins and outs of direct-to-portal listing feeds. If you weren't able to attend the event, you catch what you missed via the recording below:

On the Need for Speed

One advantage of direct data feeds is that your listing information gets to its destination far faster. If you're wondering why this matters, take a look that chart below.

"When a listing first hits a site like Trulia, we see within the first couple of hours a dramatic increase in the number of leads that are generated," said panelist Alon Chaver, Trulia's VP of Industry Services. "The consumers that are engaged and watching for [new properties] are the ones that will react immediately. ... When the listing is able to get there fast and fresh and quick, that helps with the brand presence and all of those other nice things, but it really does translate out into money, into high quality leads, high consumer engagement and real things that can lead to revenue."

Accuracy Matters

Quality is another advantage that direct feeds have over syndication. The North Alabama Multiple Listing Service (NALMLS) has experienced this first hand. "We started to get an increasing number of complaints from consumers and from our members that the data was appearing to be old," NALMLS CEO Kipp Cooper told webinar attendees. "There was duplication of data and [members] weren't quite sure all of the places that their data was going to."

So the NALMLS technology committee started a syndication task force to explore the problems with data in their marketplace on all of the various portals. After a thorough examination, that committee decided the best way to eradicate quality issues was to "take back control" of their data.

NALMLS gathered 40 of their brokers to establish syndication rules. They did this by identifying what was most important to them--everything from display rules, use rules, copyright protections to resyndication and more.

"We decided that there had to be a fair exchange of data for something that benefited the listing agents and the brokers," said Cooper. Trulia was the very first portal they entered into an agreement with.

"We've enhanced that customer experience, which is a positive, regardless of which brokerage firm you're with, regardless of what franchise you're with. We've strengthened the public trust of our agents because that listing information is vastly more accurate than anywhere else."

Smart Handling of Leads

No matter how fast or accurate your listing data is, it means nothing if you have no systems in place for managing leads you get from portals. Panelist Dave Garland, Manager of Rainmakers Consulting Group, recommends that brokers have systems in place for capturing leads. Be sure that they link with your CRM and marketing system.

"I would highly advise that you track each touchpoint in your own system and challenge yourself to improve--not just on the number of leads that you receive, but the average response time to the leads, the type of response, the marketing material response, the average spend per converted lead," Garland said.

He reminded brokers that the end goal of quality listing data "is to maximize the value for our sellers and to also promote our own brand both online and offline. To the extent that our information is accurate or untimely, we're doing ourselves a disservice and we're doing our sellers and potential buyers a disservice."

To learn more, view the full webinar recording.

Don't miss our next webinar, Top 5 Reasons Brokers are Choosing Digital Transaction Management, on April 1. Sign up now to reserve your seat!