Top Trending Agent is a destination home search portal that markets the listings and personal brands of top-performing agents in unique markets.
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Top Trending Agent is an agent and listing marketing portal.
Platforms: Browser app; mobile-responsive
Ideal for: All top-producing teams and agents
Top selling points:
- Website powered by Agent Engine
- Agent-centric search portal
- Hands-on approval of each agent
- Overall value
Top concern:
Like all niche property marketing and agent branding websites, TAP is going to need some outreach horsepower to get its pages in front of consumers.
This article was updated on 8/8/22 to reflect the company’s new name, Top Trending Agent.
What you should know
Top Trending Agent (TTA) is a destination home search portal that markets the listings and personal brands of top-performing agents in unique markets. As a result, most of the listings are considered luxury properties, many being second homes or trophy residences. There is no software product or technology to learn. Qualified agents are selected by the website’s developer.
There’s very little to learn when becoming a user of TTA. There are no training videos to watch or a CRM to update. It’s simply a hand-managed, curated website of high-end properties and shareable profiles of accomplished real estate agents.
However, TTA is a web marketing service, so we (myself and its founder, former-agent Ron Mariotti) decided it’s worth a review. And there’s a lot to like here.
What TTA has going for it, among a few things, is its web engineering team, Agent Engine. If you’re not familiar, this is a company built by part of the team behind Copyblogger, one of the internet’s longest-standing and most credible resources on digital content marketing.
TTA agents benefit from one of the best-designed web profiles the industry has to offer. Its flexibility, user experience and overall aesthetic lend immediate credibility to the agents being searched for by potential buyers and sellers.
Because of TTAs Agent Engine-powered UI/UX, agents can use it as extra marketing horsepower in a listing presentations.
The website itself is very well done, lacking the harried experience of a major consumer portal. There are no ads or calls to action distracting users. The main page invites users to search for an agent by city, state or name, or dive straight into their listings.
Property pages are presented with large visuals, tight copy, video if available and a wide selection of links and custom content, if desired. There’s included embed code for sharing agent profiles, too. I used it here
Agents of any brokerage can join TTA. In fact, consumers can sort TTA members and listings by brokerage brand.
Mariotti selects agents for his site that have at least $20 million in volume or 50 transactions per year. His goal is to land the top 1,000 agents in America. Lofty, but admirable.
Each agent who applies is reviewed personally, and that includes a look into social media presence, community involvement and even philanthropic endeavors. As it turns out, TTA has a somewhat altruistic bent, which stems from Mariotti’s personal mission of wanting to work for something where money isn’t the ultimate goal.
Those selected are reviewed each year for membership, the cost of which is quite affordable at $299 for those who want to build their profile themselves, using Agent Engine. The cost goes up by a $100 to have TTA do it.
Again, TTA will have to spend quite a bit to get its URL in front of those already familiar with Zillow and HomeSnap. But TTA also looks 50 times better than any search experience those companies offer. Granted, TAP is also working with considerably fewer properties and less content.
Then again, maybe that’s what makes it so worth the price.
Have a technology product you would like to discuss? Email Craig Rowe
Craig C. Rowe started in commercial real estate at the dawn of the dot-com boom, helping an array of commercial real estate companies fortify their online presence and analyze internal software decisions. He now helps agents with technology decisions and marketing through reviewing software and tech for Inman.
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