Realtor.com will harness Twitter and other social media channels to ramp up its “Find it First” marketing campaign, which the listing portal launched in March to emphasize the timeliness and accuracy of its listings.
Realtor.com is partnering with Airstream Inc. on a summer promotion that gives consumers a chance to win a 22-foot Airstream Sport by downloading the realtor.com mobile app and following @realtordotcom on Twitter. Participants can increase their chances of winning by sharing on social media channels the location of a virtual Airstream trailer as it travels across the country.
Realtor.com’s “Find It First” campaign emphasizes the timeliness and accuracy of its listings database. Thanks to its relationship with the National Association of Realtors (NAR), realtor.com receives direct listing feeds from 800-plus multiple listing services in the U.S.
Other real estate search portals, like Zillow and Trulia, don’t have as many direct MLS feeds and must rely on a variety of sources for their listings, which creates listing accuracy and timeliness challenges for them in some markets. Zillow and Trulia don’t have data on about a quarter of MLS listings, according to studies by brokerages ZipRealty and Redfin.
“Real estate inventory is at historic lows. Realtor.com launched ‘Find it First’ to highlight how accurate and timely real estate listings help homebuyers stay ahead of the competition,” said Barbara O’Connor, executive vice president of marketing at Move, in a statement today.
In April, realtor.com unveiled three “Find it First” video ads depicting would-be buyers imagining themselves enjoying their dream home, only to have other homebuyers show up and disrupt the dream.
Zillow and Trulia, however, have moved ahead of realtor.com in terms of Web market share. Realtor.com used to battle for No. 1, now it’s solidly at No.3, according to data from Experian Marketing Services.
In May, Zillow and Trulia captured 12.4 percent and 8.2 percent, respectively, of real estate-related Web traffic from desktop computers, according to Experian. Realtor.com came in at No. 3 with 6.7 percent of the real estate Web traffic in May, Experian data shows.
NAR is holding a special meeting in July to discuss how it can help Move and realtor.com regain the market share lost to the other portals in the last year.
