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Zavvie is an online publishing platform for real estate agents aimed at becoming local experts.
Platforms: Browser; iOS companion app
Ideal for: Teams and agents wanting to win local markets; agents needing to bolster social content.
Top selling points
- Creation, curation of business Facebook page content
- Locally focused website
- Mobile post publishing tools
Top concerns
I don’t feel content providers who publish the same material for different agents in the same market are offering much to their clients. Zavvie does this. Lead qualification is limited to website click-throughs.
What you should know
This Denver-based content creation company was spun of out 8z, an independent brokerage. I was hoping for a lot more from them.
It was positioned as a technology that provides a platform for agents to provide transparent expertise to their local audience. I was hoping for a Truepad-slash-Relola type presence.
But Zavvie is a publishing service.
The company’s primary value proposition is that it builds robust Facebook business pages. It also provides websites designed to focus solely on an agent’s community.
Unfortunately, only a small percentage of what it posts on behalf of its clients is original.
For example, five Zavvie customers in the same city will have the same blog posts, and those posts will be uploaded on the same days.
Posts sync to Facebook and encourage readers to “click to read more.” Doing so pushes them to the agent’s website for the full article.
At that point, the individual’s email is captured and he or she is recorded as a lead in the user dashboard.
There aren’t any direct information-capture tools or landing pages, or ways to ask if they want a home value assessment or when they may be interested in buying or selling.
Everything runs smoothly, and there is definitely value in knowing who’s interested in your content and business. But, like an email click-through, you can hardly consider it a hot lead.
The content provided is curated by Zavvie staff; it’s not created.
That means they browse the web (setting Google alerts) for locally-relevant news and insights for sharing on agents’ sites.
For content marketing to really work, it has to be original and unique. It takes a lot of work, talent and time. It’s a proven tactic for earning an audience; and when leveraged, a solid lead aggregator.
Nevertheless, for what Zavvie does, it does very well.
Client pages look great and posts are consistent and position their owners as local experts.
Once a week, instead of sharing curated news or a blog post, Zavvie publishes a story about a unique market listing.
Zavvie offers a very slick mobile post publishing tool that enables users to share content in moments.
Users can choose content topics from a menu of templates, such as a market update, listing review, pre-market listing or a sold review, among others.
I like this tool. It’s simple and encourages interaction.
The browser backend has a mechanism for publishing and managing posts, as well as a running list of those who have clicked through to your website.
There’s nothing to dislike about Zavvie. It’s intentions are sound. Real estate agents are in dire need of assistance when it comes to creating and managing an online presence. And being locally-present is always a plus.
Zavvie does that well.
But I would like to see native functionality for easy exporting of contacts, as well as a way to know when the same person continues to click-through without subscribing.
I was surprised by the absence of video content, which I think most would consider essential in today’s content marketing landscape.
How about a premiere account level that charges more for original content, like white papers and downloadable articles?
The company told me there are too many CRMs out there to consider integration opportunities.
BoomTown, Pipeline ROI and Chime are examples of CRMs already combining high-end marketing content with sophisticated local lead-capture tools.
Granted, those are big systems.
I believe the foundation is there for Zavvie. I’d like to see it start construction.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe.
