How to Maximize Your Internet Marketing Tactics
No one rules forever.
But, as firmly as IBM ruled mainframe computing and Microsoft the personal computer age for many years, so currently Google is ruling the Internet. So says Stefan Swanepoel, 14 time author in his latest best-selling 2008 Swanepoel TRENDS Report.
According to the Report the Internet, as gatekeeper of potentially all information, has enabled Google’s vast network of servers, already a substantial piece of the Internet itself, to become a vital national security.
As Google continues to release new services, aggregate more data and enter into more industries, it becomes harder to wrap your mind around just what exactly the company is – and more importantly what it may become. “Clearly, it’s already way more than just a search engine,” Swanepoel says.
Google has become a network composed of hundreds of thousands (by some estimates one million) of cheap servers, each not much more powerful than the PCs in our homes. It stores staggering amounts of data, including numerous copies of the Web. This makes searching faster, helping ferret out answers to billions of queries in a fraction of a second.
Unlike many traditional supercomputers, Google's system never ages. When its individual pieces die, usually after about three years, engineers pluck them out and replace them with new, faster boxes. This means the “Google cloud” regenerates as it grows, almost like a living organism.
This cloud handles quadrillions of bytes of data and is in essence a map to the world’s largest marketing channel. With each new search, whose data refine that map and each new business that links its own digital explorations to the search engine, Google gains more knowledge and more power. Essentially, Google is becoming the nexus of all advertising and media, thus the most efficient aggregator of ad dollars of all time.
And in the end, this has made Google one of the wealthiest companies on planet Earth. Its market value exceeded $200 billion in October 2007. (Maybe this is TMI but for your edification only Exxon Mobil Corp., General Electric Co., Microsoft Corp. and AT&T Inc. have a higher market capitalization among U.S. companies).
So how do real estate brokers and agents maximize technology and the Internet?
A 2006 survey by Borrell Associates found that 61% of real estate brokers and agents do not advertise on the Internet and 87% do not buy keyword advertising from search-engine companies Google or Yahoo. Not that keyword advertising is the most cost effective way to go, but if you don’t even show up organically in the top 10 you might as well accept the fact that you don’t really have an effective online marketing strategy.
The Swanepoel TRENDS Report has 170-pages of great facts, trends and recommendations. Here are three options Swanepoel says each agent should consider:
- Make Google part of your online lead strategy and make sure you place high on organic search results.
- The dollars you spend on print advertising can be better spent in enabling the consumer to find you online.
- Stop driving around collecting handwritten signatures on paper or manually faxing copies to attorneys - upgrade to an e-solution with one PC that processes the entire transaction digitally.
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