This Zillow print ad appears in RISMedia’s December 2007 issue. We wonder if Zillow has evidence to show you will sell a house faster on it’s site than somewhere else. And to what are they comparing? Knowing Zillow’s reputation for transparency, we ask they back up their marketing claim with some data. Perhaps it’s only age old advertising puffery. Right David?
Technorati Tags: zillow, advertising, real estate marketing, property listings
Puffery? In real estate? Surely, you must be joking!
Alfie,
This is what I don’t get. Z is supposed to be this new breed of transparent online real estate, yet they pitch the same hackneyed ad copy to attract agents– sell your listings faster. I guess it still works.
Your puffery link is busted.
Thanks Phil
Hmmmmm, when I tried to purchase ads for my area on Zillow they couldn’t sell me the amount I wanted because the traffic didn’t support it. I had to settle for a much lesser amount of exposure. Not one hit, go figure. I guess they are just not very popular here in LB. Just as well RE is difficult enough now without having to battle with the absurd Zestimates.
For advertising to be successful it has to actually reach the consumer!
Hey Joe, remember about a year ago when Z said they would have their algorithms for the Zestimates straightened out by Spring? Didn’t happen. My favorite this year was a condo complex in Downtown, they had the 2 bedrooms (all similar) valued crazy ranging from about $175k to over $500k with no describable pattern. Go figure.
Zillow has also frequently boasted that they have never advertised and that their high ranking and traffic was all due to word of mouth and good PR.
Now that statement is also no longer valid.
With all the broken promises and inaccurate zestimates it is no wonder that Vannessa Fox left them.
Hey Joe -
Thanks for asking. Here’s the data behind this ad;
We’ve found that when an agent posts their listing on Zillow, it gets significantly more attention (on the site) than if it were not advertised. Our analysis shows that of the homes listed in the MLS that were visited at least once, those advertised on Zillow typically attract 19X the attention of those that are not. When we consider all listed homes (not just those visited on Zillow), the multiplier is closer to 200X. Homes advertised on Zillow get far more buyer attention than those that aren’t and therefore sell faster. Thanks to the massive audience Zillow’s attracted, more and more agents are hearing from buyers who first saw their listing on Zillow.
What’s your experience with traffic to listings on sellsiusrealestate.com? What’s the data behind the claim that it’s “The Better Way to List and Search Real Estate”
Stefan -
This is trade advertising; obviously this ad won’t reach Zillow’s consumer audience. We are proud of the fact that Zillow’s consumer audience is primarily attracted to our product, not our advertising. It’s not that Zillow spends absolutely zero dollars on advertising - we certainly buy a few key words here and there - but rather, the bulk of Zillow’s marketing spend is invested in the product and not advertising. I hope that explains the claims you’ve heard.
Are you saying listings on Zillow sell faster than those on the MLS? How does Zillow have access to MLS metrics?
re: Better Search:
Zillow’s real estate search is fuzzy (like most others)– meaning you get results that are not wanted, as shown in this post, for example: http://tinyurl.com/3dld92
We thought if searchers had the option to do an “exact match” search that would be an improvement– hence better. So we created a search system that would allow for an exact match search option.
Here’s how it works (try it out on the site):
Let’s say you choose all the parameters below and check “Exact match”:
For sale
Residential property
Single family
house
colorado springs, Colorado
between 125,000 and 150,000
with min 3 beds and 2 baths
between 1200 and 1400 sq. ft
must sell
reduced
With this exact match search, you will only get a property that meets ALL these criteria. And that would be this listing:
http://www.sellsiusrealestate.com/HTML/Search_basic_results.aspx?id=4&type=s
You just can’t do that on Zillow. So our exact match option is one reason we claim our search is better.
Exact match is just one of our search options—there are others (such as a comparison search). You can even search by school district. If you have the time, we can show you how each search method works. We believe one size search does not fit all.
No search is perfect but we think ours is at least a little better than yours. And we didn’t have millions to work with.
When I see an ad like this, I ask the question: Faster than what? I advertise some of my listings on Zillow and track page views. My listings get more page views on other sites, including my own. I am not interested in how many millions of viewers a site has, I want the people that may be interested in buying the listing to view it.
Im a little confused by this
Our analysis shows that of the homes listed in the MLS that were visited at least once, those advertised on Zillow typically attract 19X the attention of those that are not
Do you mean visited online or visited in the real world.
Without speaking for Zillow, we would assume they mean 19x more internet views.
As you point out Late Night ARE, the meaningful metric should be visits in the real world.
What say you David G?