Online Marketing Is a Public Service

Guest contributor Scott Schang of REALTOR® Mag says:

In 2007, I watched possibly one of the worst implosion events of any industry in recent history unfold. The housing bust and financial meltdown forced me to reinvent my company's business model.

In retrospect, this was an opportunity, and I'm grateful that we were able to take advantage of it. We moved 100 percent of our marketing online, not only because money was tight and WordPress was free, but also because at that time most consumers would have picked chewing off their own arms over talking to a real estate or mortgage salesperson.

With that in mind, we set forth to build a consumer education-focused lead generation Web site on WordPress. It took almost two years to understand this new medium to the point where we could measure results directly attributed to our online marketing practices.

Now, five years later, I'm trying to translate what I've learned, what worked, what failed, and what I think the future looks like — even as the strategy itself evolves over time. I approach this area not as a technology vendor or solutions salesperson, but as a small businessperson working daily in the trenches.

Since 2009, I have been trying to identify a parallel between the successes we've achieved with our online marketing approach and the challenges and opportunities that real estate practitioners have being on the ground and in the community every day.