JACKSONVILLE, Fla., July 19, 2017 — Massachusetts area real estate agents and brokers interested in gaining market share by attracting more online consumers now have another option to reach this fast growing marketplace. The service is called Search AllianceSM, a first-of-its-kind national marketing platform being offered by real estate technology company, Home ASAP™.
Search Alliance enables agents and brokers to own websites that are natively connected to each other, forming a cooperative home search network for consumers that rivals the national portals such as Zillow® and others.
Taking a page from social media’s formula for creating value around the extended network, Search Alliance participants collectively deliver through their networked sites, a search experience on par with any national portal, and for a fraction of the price.
During the beta period, over 20,000 agents across 175+ MLSs have joined or expressed an interest in joining Search Alliance. The company is now expanding in key regional markets including Massachusetts, Greater Chicago and the Phoenix metropolitan area.
Prior to Search Alliance, Home ASAP is best known for pioneering innovative marketing and lead generation applications on Facebook®, used by over 500K agents nationwide.
“We have always been aligned with the industry, particularly agents and brokers,” says Mark Bloomfield, founder and CEO of Home ASAP. “We wanted to create a solution that could help them regain their position on the web and at the same time meet the most advanced search expectations of consumers. Transforming the traditional ‘siloed website’ to one that is networked was key to our vision.”
Leveling the Playing Field
Search Alliance is a network, not a portal and is markedly different than traditional stand-alone websites where costly and repeated marketing is required to generate meaningful consumer traffic. Third party portals have gained mass market appeal, consumer confidence and have become the defacto destination for search traffic. Search Alliance helps agents and brokers level this playing field against their much larger competitors by leveraging the power of co-opetition, a business model that aligns competitors for a common good or benefit.
Sharing the Wealth
Agents and brokers participating in the network are credited for traffic that originates on their site and is later routed to another site in a non-competing area, should the consumer broaden their search. This builds incremental high quality traffic inside the network while rewarding participants with reduced costs and increased traffic priority. In effect, Search Alliance pays participants for delivering network traffic that is not likely to be of value to themselves but has high value to another participant in another market.
“The multiplier effect of hundreds of thousands of agents working cooperatively to create their own network of high quality consumer traffic is a game changer for the industry,” said Bloomfield. “The future of the web for real estate sales professionals is about being networked to each other and connected to a pipeline of market ready consumers.” he said.
Name Your Own Everything
In addition to agent-generated traffic, participants receive traffic from Search Alliance’s consumer marketing campaigns managed by Home ASAP. Using a name-your-own-price bidding system similar to Priceline®, agents stipulate their own bid price, budget and service area for network traffic, and are charged only when traffic is delivered. Search Alliance is free to join. A minimum monthly spend on network traffic is required to participate.
A Fight for the Future
“The industry is in a fight for its future,” said Bloomfield. “If portals win the tug-of-war over consumers, agents are on a fast path to becoming devalued, and in the worst-case scenario, disintermediated. On the other hand, if agents stepped up their investments to compete independently with better websites, technology and marketing, this will be costly, time consuming and still fall short of what portals can deliver. Search Alliance is the only solution for agents and brokers to compete with the portals and accrue the benefits for themselves.”
Join Search AllianceSM: https://joinsearchalliance.com/massachusetts/
Home ASAP™ is the leading provider of online marketing solutions for RE professionals, offering a broad portfolio of integrated applications and services to help connect homebuyers and sellers with agents and brokers. Visit https://homeasap.com/.
Zillow® is a trademark of Zillow, Inc.
Facebook: www.facebook.com/homeasap.LLC
Twitter @homeasap : www.twitter.com/homeasap
Instagram: www.instagram.com/homeasap
